tv Port Commission SFGTV November 11, 2020 10:30am-2:01pm PST
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which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> clerk: item number 7 is announcements. be advised that a member of the public has up to three minutes to make pertinent public comments on each agenda item unless the port commission has a shorter period on any item. during the public comment period, they will use a phone to register their desire for public comment. audio prompts will signal to dial in participants when your audio input is enabled for commenting. please dial in when the item that you wish to comment on is announced. and note that if you're watching this meeting on sfgov-tv streaming on the internet, there is a broadcasting delay. so when the item that you want to comment on is announced, dial 1-(415)-655-0001.
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and then interio enter access ce 146-893-0133. and listen through only your television which is a live broadcast. when public comment is announced, dial star, 3, to raise your hand to comment. and listen for the audio prompt to signal your turn to comment. for our participants, please mute your microphones and turn off your cameras when not presenting. that brings us to item 8, public comment on items not listed on the agenda. >> we will open up the phone lines to take public comment on items not listed on the agenda. for members of the public joining us on the phone, we will provide instructions now for anyone on the phone who would like to provide public comment. >> thank you, president brandon. at this time we will open up the
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queue for anyone on the phone who would like to make public comment on items not listed on the agenda. please dial star, 3, if you wish to make public comment. the system will let you know when your line is open. others will wait on mute until their line is open. comments will be limited to three minutes per person. the queue is now open. please dial star, 3, if you wish to make public comment. >> president brandon: thank you, do we have anyone on the line? >> president brandon, at this time we have no one on the phone wishing to make public comment on this item. >> president brandon: thank you. seeing no callers on the line, public comment is closed. next item, please. >> clerk: that would be 9a, the executive director's report. >> good afternoon president brandon and vice president adams and commissioners and members of the public and port staff.
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i'm elaine forest, the executive director. i would like to start with a report on reopening today our mayor announced that the city is adjusting due to the rapid increases in covid cases. and those increases are here in san francisco, and notably regionally state-wide and across the country. the city is rolling back higher risk indoor activities, indoor dinedining will close as will te capacity be reduced for fitness centers and movie theatres. this is all in our effort to reduce the spread of the virus. closely tracking health indicators and making decisions based on data and science has and will continue to be the way that our mayor and the public health department, the city has responded to the virus. under mayor breed's leadership through careful planning and work, we have been able to avoid some of the worst outcomes of the pandemic that so many other
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communities have experienced. we haven't had an overwhelm of the health systems or high mortality rates fortunately. these decisions are not easy to make for our administration because, of course, we know that small businesses are struggling and the economic impacts of covid are very hard on our small businesses, on businesses and on all of us in the city. notably the mayor's office announced a $4 million packet that continues to support small businesses during this difficult time. you know, mayor breed always reminded us that the spanish flu pandemic of 1918, it was in the fall and winter that san francisco had its worst outcomes of that virus. it had prior terrible outcomes. so we are to remain very vigilant as the weather gets colder and we're trying to gather for holidays. stay vigilant. i know that it's a long journey but stay vigilant and stay the
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public health orders and we'll get through this winter. with vaccine news in the press we all have a kick in our step. so hopefully, 2021 we will see vaccine and the distribution in the early terms. so that we can get back to a life post-covid-19. on equity, the port race equity working groups continues to develop feedback from the listening tours into recommended actions that will be implemented as early as next year. in addition, staff are working to complete the development of goals and metrics to reduce racial disparities and increase racial equity within our portfolio. we will present this action plan at a commission in december and we're really looking forward to presenting the specific metrics and planning for a very strong equity program in 2021 that is consistent with this commission's strong leadership and values and vision for our
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waterfront. on economic reopening for the port, we are in the process of finalizing our edited financial statements for fiscal year 2019-2020. and i'm very happy to report that despite the economic shock from covid, that we actually improved our financial position last year by $37.9 million to a total balance sheet position of $49 million. we ended ending the year -- the prior year was 340.6. and the increase in our financial position is largely related to the sale of the jail bonds, but it also is related to ongoing really strong revenue results from the port that we've been working so hard to build over time. also today our current revenues are actually not far off what you approved in the budget. staff projected a revenue loss in 2021 of up to $40 million and
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that -- that projection appears to be accurate. staff did assume a deeper decline and a faster recovery, but on balance the revenue loss is about right. with staff projections we could be okay if we used all port savings, except for a minimum rainy day reserve of $30 million. and funded only the highest priority capital projects through 2023. this would be a big cost, because it would add to our backlog and delete our savings, however, we do see a path to get through 2022-2023. but as this strategy needs refinement and work because it is not clear that it will be enough. the port base has faced big unknowns whether tenants can make it through this period without business closure, for
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how long it takes to take care of this, and so we're in a wait, analyze and see mode, and we're working diligently on recovery concepts and strategies. we'll bring a revised budget in february for 2022-2023, and that will be the starting point for us to review our outlook and recovery responses and strategies. port staff is soliciting feedback internally and from tenants because we know in this covid pandemic it's very open and flexible to new ideas. shifting to more operational updates, last friday the south beach harbor playground reopened to the public with guidance and directives from the san francisco health department. and thank you to tiffany tatem for all of her hard work making that happen. so we have the required safety measures, the signage and the new handwashing stations. and it's a great place to provide safe play for children
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and have a fun interactive experience with peers. so i'm very pleased that port staff worked hard as i said led by tiffany tatem and tim did a lot of work on it as did karen taylor, and keith hu keithhubba. and i understand that there's users identity there so we're happy to provide that space. that the time i'm happy to report that 81% of pier one staff have completed their covid safety training and all completed by december. we've had great compliance in performing our health training wearing face coverings and maintaining social distance. we, thanks to jenna calu, and manny, updated our cars and vehicle fleet with all of the disinfectant kits and everything that is required for safe operations. the reoccupancy has safety
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procedures for events in health order as well. we had three walks for critical construction projects and i'm very pleased to say still no positive covid cases among the staff workforce. a key project update, to update you on the northern pier's r.f.p. in 2019, the port commission directed staff to issue the south beach r.f.p.s. this is -- then we're doing the 3032 seawall at 330. for south beach we have a development partner now and we're going to turn to the north issue, the subsequent r.f.p., bit really need to revise our schedule, because we previously had planned to put it out this year, but right now we have the pier 38 and 40, seawall lot 330, and piers 3032, and mission rock and pier 70, very important
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resiliency efforts that will culminate in the selection of prop 8 projects along with the efforts to make a port-wide resiliency program full and functioning. and our recovery efforts. so we will return in 2021 with a schedule for the issuing of the r.f.p. in addition to responding to covid-19, and the pause in the r.f.p. is important because it will allow us time to look at the climates that are affected by covid. and we can incorporate that thinking into our next solicitation. and also the resiliency program is making findings and doing analysis and gathering data that we need to analyze and to look at carefully and weave into this r.f.p. as i said, we will be back in 2021 to discuss schedule. we're currently targeting the spring but we'll be looking to provide more details to the port commission. and, lastly, we received a
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partnering award. so i'm pleased to announce that we won a partnering award for infrastructure projects under $20 million. and we got the award for the pier 29 utility upgrade and belt line sewer rerouting project. so this award is from a committee that includes six department heads that really pushes the city in a positive partnering position and gives awards to the departments that especially partnered well for budget savings and to keep projects on track. so i'd like to commend andré antonio and tim leon who won the award for their good work on pier 29. and i'm very happy to let the port commission know that despite some conflicts that required partnering, we were able to get creative problem solving and to come in with the project on budget, with minimum disruption. so, well done, to tim and andré. congratulations. and that concludes my report.
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>> president brandon: thank you, elaine. we will now open up the phone lines to take public comment on the executive director's report from the members of the public who are joining us on the phone. jennifer will be our operator and will provide instructions now for anyone on the phone who would like to provide public comment. >> thank you, president brandon. at this time we will open up the queue for anyone on the phone who would like to make public comment on the executive director's report. please dial, star, 3, if you wish to make public comment. the system will let you know when your line is open. others will wait on mute until their line is open. comments will be limited to three minutes per person. the queue is now open. please dial star, 3, if you wish to make public comment. >> president brandon: thank you, jennifer. do we have anyone on the line?
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>> president brand ar brandon, o one on the line to make public comment. >> president brandon: thank you. public comment is closed. commissioner gilman? >> commissioner gilman: elaine, thank you for your report. i completely understand and understand the rationale for holding off on the historic northern pier's r.f.p. i hope that we can make a commitment to get it out early q2 next year. and around the resiliency and real estate conditions are important, but the community asked for a long time to look to develop these piers, so i hope that it doesn't lag too much into q2 of 2021. but thank you for your report. and i want to give a shout out to the port staff for following safety protocols. we should feel proud as an agency within the city and the department that we've had no positive covid cases amongst the staff. thank you.
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>> president brandon: vice president adams? >> vice-president adams: i wanted to thank director forbes for her report, port staff, and i am pleased with the report. i have no questions. thank you, president brandon. >> president brandon: thank you. that was a lot of good stuff. first off, i want to commend mayor breed on how she has handled the covid efforts here in san francisco. and how we are a model for the rest of the country. so if we're, you know, going back on indoor dining and other items, it's something that we really need to look at and make sure that we're adhering to all of the covid protocols. hopefully soon we'll have leadership that will help us through this crisis, but it's just spreading. so i really want to commend her and to commend our staff for following all of the protocols. i mean, out of 250 plus
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employees, not one covid case is phenomenal. so thank you for your leadership also. elaine, congratulations on the award. and congratulations on the financial position. i think that put us in a better place to be able to deal with, you know, the covid and our -- our balance sheets. so the staff has done an incredible job through this whole journey. so thank you so much for your report. call next item please. >> clerk: item 9b, the commissioner's report. >> president brandon: commissioner, anything to report. commissioner gilman or vice president adam? >> no. >> president brandon: okay, nothing to report and no public comment needed. next item, please. >> clerk: that would be item number 10, the consent calendar. there's one item on the consent calendar, item 10a which requests approval to enter into a memorandum of understanding
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with the san francisco public utilities commission for temporary youth of up to 5.1 megawatts of power capacity at pier 68 and 70 for up to three years. this is resolution number 2049. >> president brandon: commissioners, can i have a motion to approve this consent calendar. >> so moved. >> second. >> president brandon: okay, let's open it up for public comment. we will now open up the phone lines to public comment on the consent calendar. for members on the public who will join us on the phone, jennifer is our operator and will provide instructions now for anyone on the phone who would like to provide public comment. >> thank you, president brandon. at this time we will open up the queue for anyone on the phone who would like to make public comment on the consent calendar. please dial, star, 3, if you wish to make public comment. the system will let you know when your line is open.
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others will wait on mute until their line is open. comments will be limited to three minutes per person. the queue is now open. please dial star, 3, if you wish to make public comment. >> president brandon: thank you, jennifer. do we have anyone on the line? >> president brandon, at this time there are no members of the public on the phone wishing to make public comment on this item. >> president brandon: thank you. seeing no callers on the phone, public comment is closed. we have a motion and a second. can we have a roll call vote. >> clerk: yes. [roll call] >> president brandon: motion passes unanimously. resolution 2049 is adopted. call next item please. >> clerk: item 11a is an informational presentation on
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the status of current tenant relief and proposed stabilization measures and a request for approval to use port property for restaurants and retail businesses adjoining port property under the shared spaces program for outdoor dining and retail activities. that is resolution 2050. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i'm the manager -- i'm on the real estate and development team. accompanied by michael martin, the assistant port director. i'd like to thank a couple of the port staph staff who are instrumental in getting prepared for this. [list of names] and it has been a lot of work to get us to this point. thank you. next slide, please. i will provide an update on our
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rent forgiveness programs and the commercial eviction moratorium. michael lead the discussion on the proposed repayment program. and our rent forgiveness program and the waiver of related license fees. we are recommending an approval of resolution 2050 as carl shared earlier. next slide, please. a brief update on our broadbase rent deferral program. as you recall we passed a commission resolution which authorized the waiver of fees and interests and deferral of rent from march 1st through july 31st. during that period of time on average there were 274 tenants that took advantage of the program and they represented $12.8 million during this period of time. and there were 271 tenants representing $12.5 million in
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revenue that continued to pay us rent during that period of time. next slide, please. we did pass an opt rent deferral program from august 1-december 31st. since the passing of that program and launching, we have had 81 tenants that have been deferring rent, representing $11.3 million from the period of august 1-december 31st. we during this period of time we have experienced 211 tenants paying rent and representing $11.8 million. and, unfortunately, 238 of our tenants are representing $8.3 million. at this time they have not resumed normal rent payment. it should be noted that of the 81 tenants in our opt in program, 14 of those tenants submitted forms after the original deadline of july 14th.
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in response to the lack of participation in the opt in program and the non-payment of rent, they have elected to keep the application online to maximize the participation in the program. i'd also like to highlight that of the $11.3 million in rent deferred, some of that will be forgiven through our sector-based rent forgiveness programs. and in regards to our over 200 tenants that have not opted in and resumed normal rent payments, there's outreach to these tenants to understand the reasons why they have not resumed normal payments. this drop in tenants making normal rent payments could be attributed to the depletion of the payment protection program and other government-funded small business supports that lacks additional approvals at the federal level through cares act funding. we will continue to keep the commission updated on this data as it evolves. next slide, please.
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and to update the commission on our rent forgiveness programs, as you recall, we have awarded -- or we have made available rent forgiveness to three of our tenant sectors. our local business enterprise tenants and our select maritime tenants. on our percentage rent tenants as you recalled we needed to introduce an ordinance at the board. director forbes and i presented at budget and finance last week and the items were well received by the committee. many of the supervisors hailed our rent forgiveness program as a very thoughtful approach that other landlords to look to as a model. so we came out of committee with flying colors. we had recommendation by the committee to the full board of supervisors. and it is actually currently at full board for first reading today and rebecca is limiting the full board as we speak.
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we anticipate approval on the 17th, and the ordinance in place in december and will help our 32 tenants impacted by this ordinance. it should be noted that some of our percentage rent tenants listed in this category can move forward in their lease amendments and we will be beginning those discussions in the coming weeks. as for l.d.e. tenants, outreach has been conducted. we mailed letters to all of our l.b.e. tenants and we have posted all of their documents online on our website. and i imagine that our online application will be confirmed on thursday with the help of kelly mckoy and the communications team. as we look to our maritime tenants, there are 121 of those tenants and we are working with our maritime team and our property managers to begin the accordinatioaccordination to gee outreach conducted and to have the application to be posted in
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the coming weeks. next slide, please. so i'd like to turn our attention to the commercial eviction moratorium. as you may recall in march, mayor london breed had the eviction moratorium program in response to the covid-19 pandemic. and the shelter-in-place orders put in place to keep us all safe. in april, that initial eviction moratorium was extended through september 30, 2020. and in september, governor newsome extended the state program through march 31, 2021. there's been discussions and inklings that this may be extended even further into 2021 and we will continue to monitor those changes. in september, the members of the board codified protections and provided definitions under the eviction moratorium.
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staff are going through all of the documents to better understand how the new proposed amendments might apply to our leases here at the port. next slide, please. the current proposal prohibits eviction for missed payments from march 16-march 31, 2021 and is contingent on extensions by the governor. it also institutes repayment timelines of up to two years -- of up to a two-year period, depending which tier a small business may fall into, as shown on this table on this slide. next slide, please. what we know is that it excludes the occupants that is approved for office uses. it has interest and other charges to the end of the relief period. it does allow for agreeable repayment plants to replace the deadlines that we're seeing in
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the table in the previous slide. and it notes that if a tenant in a tier 1 category terminates the lease prior to march 31, 2021, or through any extensions that the tenant would still be responsible for outstanding balances but would not be subject to any early termination fees. it should be underscored that the moratorium does not apply to city agencies, but as discussed earlier, they follow the processes laid out in the moratorium. we will monitor the progress through the board and provide updates at the december meeting on where that lands. i'd like to turn it over to mike to continue the presentation. thank you. >> thank you. this is michael martin, assistant port director. i'll take on the presentation from here and we'll move on to
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our new items for discussion and direction to hopefully to bring back to you as directed by the commission. next slide, please. the first is a repayment program. so the eviction moratorium ordinance does not cover tenants of city agencies such as the port. but i think similar to that legislation i think that we'd like to create a clear set of repayment options for our tenants, both the ones that have opted into the deferral program as well as the ones that have just not been able to pay rent so that everybody understands the ways that they can try to get themselves back into current status with us and, obviously, hopefully, to support their continued survival along the lines of the shared prosperity framework that we use to discuss our other tenant relief programs. so standardization of the program would allow us to be
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more fair across the different tenants and different tenant sectors and, obviously, the efficiency of having clear paths would help us in implementing this across that large number of tenants who will have balances to repay. it incentivizes the resumption of normal rent and observes that more tenants may be more impacted than others in trying to provide pathways for each of those tenants to see a repayment strategy that works for them. this last note, we tried to think about for tenants that typically under leases that we see a deferred -- a late payment interest charge of up to 10%, that we thought that we were trying to find a different percentage that i will talk about in a moment and we wanted to provide the context that the 3% that we have chosen actually exceeds the port earnings on its deposits with the pool. and so it's a prudent approach to these repayment programs over an extended period of time. next slide, please.
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so the proposed criteria very much reflects how we have approached rent forgiveness and our other tenant relief programs. we need the tenants to resume the normal rent as of january 1st of next year. they must pay any balances outstanding prior to the -- or the onset of the covid pandemic in march. we would limit the repayment programs to tenants with monthly rent on the individual lease hold, not exceeding $20,000. so hopefully our smaller lease holds are the target and must be a small business, again, trying to focus this on the tenants most in need and most challenged in bringing in additional revenues. next slide, please. so this slide encompasses the options that we would like your feedback on to offer different pathways to repayment. option a reflects the fact that there are some tenants who may have entered the deferral
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program but who have been able to get back on their feet because their businesses aren't as impacted by the health orders. and we'd like to encourage these tenants to repay as soon as possible. as noted in the staff report, that there's a city administrator memo that applies to other city agencies that we have looked to to help inform what we're doing here and it calls for all deferred balances to be repayable, on or before june 30th at zero percent interest. we see value in encouraging tenants to pay even before that date, but in this option a it is meant to say if a tenant pays the full balance -- or 95% of the full balance they received 100% credit of that balance and be fully current as of december 31st through early january when they made that payment. so instead of forgiveness of that additional 5%, obviously, it's an even better deal than the city administrator memo, but, again, i think that there's value to us in this very
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impacted fiscal year in getting those revenues in the door and getting a tenant back into current status. option b reflects that the city administrator memo more closely by saying that we would also offer an option for someone who is able to continue current rent payments starting the beginning of the year and they could repay their back amount or deferred rent amount in six equal installments between january and june of next year at 0% or no additional fee. so that principal amount split up six ways. the third option is targeted at tenants that have received the most impacts but have not quite made it back to a point where they can not only pay their current rent but also pay -- start paying down their balance. so what we have offered here, proposed to offer here, is that those tenants would begin repaying current rent amounts starting in january, but we wouldn't require repayment of the deferred amounts or the
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deliquent amounts until the beginning of july of 2021, so giving an additional six months to get their revenue generation abilities back up to where they can pay the deferred amounts or the delinquent amount in 12 equal installments. we have that 3% fee that i alluded to earlier to the outstanding balance that would then be divide understan dividee payments. though it's an upfront fee to make it more easily administratable with our systems, and, you know, ultimately this would hopefully allow the tenants more runway but hopefully will get them back on their feet by the end of june of 2022. you know, what is that -- 20 months from now. so this slide in particular is something that we're hoping to get commission feedback and direction on at the end of the meeting. next slide, please. the second item that we're looking for commission feedback and direction on has to do with
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what we call civic impact rent forgiveness. so this was sort of the catch-all category that we have been talking with the commission about, you know, ever since we started the rent forgiveness discussions over the spring and summer. you know, we realized that the prior approved rent forgiveness programs for percentage rent tenants and maritime tenants and l.b.e. tenants may not capture all of the tenants that, you know, that are important to the port commission and the public aspect of the port commission, but who otherwise need support but don't get it under those categories. so what we've proposed is a capped dollar amount in, you know, in a program that would reach out and receive forgiveness who can demonstrate financial need with the impacts of covid-19. based on commission feedback at prior meetings, the two
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categories that we are proposing are based on that feedback are locally serving non-profits with budgets of less than $3 million. and this is akin to the special events waiver that we approved with you a couple years ago on the parameter rent delegation authority. in terms of this categorization. so it's something that we're comfortable with. and the next category is -- we have heard about the commission's interest in helping artists, so we have tried to have tenants who use art as a primary use of port space. that seems to be a harder category to administer, i will confess, so we're interested in your feedback in ways that if we do want to target that tenant sector, ways to define this that may be more objective. and we can continue to think about it with your input and to bring back a revised proposal once we have heard your thoughts. next slide, please. and the proposed terms are to focus on the rent due in the period of sort of the deepest shelter-in-place. so march 1, 2020, through may
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31st, 2020. that three-month period that was part of our rent deferral program. relief would be available to each qualifying tenant on a pro-rated basis. which means that if we get eligible applications and the total rent for those three months of all of those tenants s and not add up to $200,000 or more, we'd forgive all of the rent due for all of those tenants for three months. if, on the other hand, if we had exceeded $200,000, we would pro-rate each tenant so that they, you know, according to the percentage of the total rent as compared to $200,000, so each would be forgiven an equal percentage of the rent for those three months. next slide, please. this is sort of more background as summarized in the staff report of how we'd approach this. in terms of applications we'd require tenants to document their satisfaction of the
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criteria of the program that we agree to based on the commission direction. we need tenants to resolve any unsettled disputes and pay any amounts outstanding prior to march 1st in advance of receiving the rent forgiveness. or that if they were -- if they had already paid rent for this period they would be entitled to rent credits as we have approached our other tenants, who have received forgiveness but have paid rent for the forgiveness period in question so that those rent credits would begin in june of 2021. and, obviously, to my earlier point about paying prior balances those rent credits can be applied to those prior balances first and whatever is remaining could be taken in fiscal year 2020-2021 if the tenants wanted to participate in the program. i think that summarizes this slide. next slide, please. so i guess -- sorry, i should have realized that was the
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closing slide of that item. so that's the second of your items that we're looking for your feed back and direction on so that we can bring back a proposal for action at the next meeting or a subsequent meeting based on your feedback. this slide begins the last section of this multifaceted presentation. thank you for your patience and allowing us to sort of outline all of the different pieces that we're keeping track of on this. this is a fairly targeted update on the shared spaces program which allows free use of sidewalk or outdoor park space for city restaurant and retail operations who would like to pursue outdoor dining in the face of the restrictions on indoor dining under the public health orders. so recap of the history of this program. on may 26th, the mayor announced the shared spaces program which drove the port staff to work closely with our partners who are implementing that program to
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try to align our work with our tenants in a way that made sense and sort of is in keeping with the mayor's intent. we also work with the bay conservation commission and we appreciate their help in providing a sort of streamlined route to review these applications for compliance with the policies that apply to port property. so we sort of had that additional regulatory hurdle to jump and we were able to work together to get that into a place that we could offer the program at the same time as the city did on june 15th of this year. and then on june 16th was the day that the businesses were allowed to activate and, in fact, they were allowed to activate before the license was fully executed by the city in recognition of the emergent circumstances and wanting these businesses to operate, generate revenues and keep people employed and obviously to try to blunt the very massive effects of the pandemic.
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next slide, please. so we're happy to report that the port shared spaces program has offered 17 businesses the opportunity to expand their outdoor dining by over 700 seats. we've activated 20,000-square-feet of port property with these activations and having gone to a number of them i can say that it's been a great way when live in the waterfront and to bring people down to the waterfront in a responsible and socially distanced way and it's something that we as the port want to continue to support into the winter months when we know that the weather is going to be challenging and as we have heard with today's announcements, you know, that more indoor dining rollbacks. so we, obviously, want to be on point with our tenants to make sure that they have these opportunities in a way that can generate business and can offer dining opportunities to san francisco residents and visitors. we also have an interesting category of non-port tenants that border our property. and so these non-port tenant
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does not have leases with us but their sidewalks are on port property. in the past we had licensed those sidewalks to those tenants that wanted to do outdoor dining in a shared spaces sort of way so long as we could, you know, uphold the requirements of the right-of-way and the regulatory requirements in operating a sidewalk or a curb space or wherever they were looking to operate. those licenses required the payment of a fee. and it was brought to our attention as we implemented the shared spaces program that, you know, we issued new shared spaces licenses at no fees to those new applicants, but the prior applicants who had non-port tenants who had port licenses were still paying those fees. those licenses were terminable on 30 days' notice but in speaking to these tenants what we wanted to do was to try to figure out a way to get on the footing to facilitate what they
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were also doing. and keeping with our own tenant relief programs and how they have treated rent paid. next slide, please. so to achieve and to confirm what we've been working on, we wanted -- we brought a resolution forward as part of this previously scheduled tenant relief item to try to address the unique situation of these non-port tenants with -- with and without pre-existing licenses, to use outdoor space. so the proposed resolution would confirm the port staff's ability to continue to issue licenses for non-tenants who border and want to use the outdoor port space. and confirming that ability through the current expiration of the program on june 30, 2021. if that program was extended we'd economic back for further extension so that we could stay in keeping with the city's program based on, you know, the role that the port operates
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under on state law. in addition, the resolution has a temporary waiver of sidewalk and street use license fees for pre-existing licenses for non-tenants, retroactive to the start of the city program when the other areas of the city, those operators, could occupy sidewalk space. so for those tenants whose licenses still exist from the before times when they were required to pay license fees, we authorize a waiver of those fees for this same period. for those non-tenants who had a pre-existing license who did pay those fees and did not choose to terminate their licenses, we would authorize a rent credit on the same terms as we have authorized for port tenants who received rent forgiveness for rent they already paid. so that if and when the shared spaces program is terminated that additional fees do after that time -- that are due after that time would be credited to those tenants. prior to the issuance of the waiver as we have shown in our other summaries we require
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non-tenant licensees to pay any outstanding balances from before the shared spaces period. so that is our proposed resolution. next slide, please. so to summarize again, this multifaceted presentation and our request for the commission feedback and direction, we're hoping that we request that you approve the proposed resolution and we're here to answer any questions that you may have about it. we have proposals for the payment of outstanding balances and then, obviously, we are here to answer any questions that you may have about the other tenant relief updates that she provided. with that, that concludes my presentation. thank you very much. >> president brandon: thank you, mike, for that presentation. commissioners, may i have a motion. >> so moved. >> president brandon: is there a
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second? >> second. >> president brandon: now let's open it up for public comment. we will now open up the phone lines to take public comment on item 11 a from the members of the public joining us on the phone. jennifer will be our operator and will provide instructions now for anyone on the phones who would like to provide public comment. >> thank you, president brandon. at this time we will open the queue for anyone on the phone who would like to make public comment on item 11 a. please dial star, 3, if you wish to make public comment. the system will let you know when your line is open. others will wait on mute until their line is open. comments will be limited to three minutes per person. the queue is now open. please dial, star, 3, if you wish to make public comment. >> president brandon: thank you, jennifer. do we have anyone on the phone? >> yes, president brandon, we have three callers on the line at the moment.
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>> president brandon: thanks. first caller. >> thank you. opening up the first line now. >> caller: hi there. my namely an family and i have n long-term customers, and i'm happy to see that the port is addressing these issues but i still do have concerns. firstly, these restaurants are already struggling. they really need every cent in order to stay afloat. so i believe that the port should make this a refund, rather than a credit. specifying the end date is problematic. and i just think that the commission should tie the date to the city-wide shared spaces program to keep it fair and consistent. that's all i've got to say. thank you. >> president brandon: thank you, caller. next caller, please. >> thank you. opening up the next line now. >> caller: hi there.
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i live along the waterfront and really enjoy going to these restaurants. i read in a report that the port wants to offer a rent credit. these restaurants are already struggling so i strongly encourage the commission to fully refind these payments rather than to offer a credit. the restaurants should not be required to do business with the port to benefit from payments they've already made. this is only brought up now because they reached out to assemblyman david chu and has been really helpful. so please issue a refund to these restaurants instead. thank you. >> can you please state your name? next caller, please. >> okay. thank you. opening up the next line now. >> caller: hi. good afternoon. my name is stephanie muston. i have been directed to address this committee based on my conversations with jennifer gee
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of the port with regards and emails that i received and expectation to repay the missed rent payments since march. i build the floats for all of san francisco's parades and i work out of pier 54. the lease is held by the chinese chamber of commerce. and i'm a sub-tenant and a close relationship with the chamber and the chinese parade. i employ artists of all mediums to create floats and art for the cultural events including chinese new year, pride, carnival and cherry blossom, and since march we have lost an approximate $500 million from the cans laitionz of these events. -- cancellations of these events. i had to lay off employees and with no chinese new year parade in 2021, we anticipate a loss of $175,000 to start the year. we started getting small projects again in september and i have been able to rehire two of my 20 employees. and they are now working
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part-time. i have been saving up enough money to be able to get back to paying my rent starting in january. and i have been working a second job to be able to pay my own personal bills. i received the $10,000 grant and a $10,000 loan to help to cover my insurance and to keep one employee working part-time for six months whout work. at the beginning of covid i was in communication with the mayor's office who said they welcome the value that our company brings to san francisco and that we would be taken care of. i was under the impression that we would not be under the hook for rent because of the loss of events and income. i hope that you will consider the creative and cultural value that we bring to the city and to the greater bay area. and we really hope that you will work with us to get us back to track so we can continue to do what we do. thank you very much. >> president brandon: thank you, stephanie.
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jennifer, any other callers? >> yes, president brandon, there's one last caller on the line. >> president brandon: please go to the next caller. >> thank you. opening that line now. >> caller: hi, i am a loyal customer to several of the restaurants mentioned. and i'm a strong supporter of the shared spaces program. given today's news that the indoor dining is being paused, more and more restaurants will continue to rely on their outdoor space. putting a specific date on when this fee waiver would end raises is a lot of concerns as this pandemic is changing every day. i urge the commission to tie the end date to the shared spaces program so that these restaurants are not left out when the city expands the program. thank you. >> president brandon: thank you. jennifer, any further callers? >> president brandon, at this time there's no other callers on the line wishing to make public comment on this item. >> president brandon: thank you. seeing no more callers on the
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line, public comment is closed. mike, do you want to address -- (indiscernible). >> yes, i would. so in terms of the comment of stephanie muston, i think that is exactly the kind of tenant that we felt that was not covered by the prior categories of rent forgiveness that you approved. and so that's why we came here today to discuss with you what this additional category could potentially do. and so that is definitely a tenant that we feel that is very important to the civic fabric. i feel that that's definitely i think the reason that we wanted -- i would assume the reason that we wanted testimony to you was to emphasize the value of this program to a lot of the very important tenants
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that are not, you know, already captured by the other sort of mission driven categories that we have already directed us to provide rent forgiveness to. so that's the kind of feedback that we're looking from you today and we'll definitely try to bring back a proposal that addresses that in more detail. in terms of the shared spaces callers, we wrestled with both of the issues that -- that have been raised by the commenters when we spoke with the restaurants themselves, both in the call organized by assembly member chu and a follow-up call after that. in terms of the termination date of the fee waiver as i described in the original presentation, we would come back to -- the city program was extended for a temporary basis and we'd come back to you and request that you extend the fee waiver for that same period. that's fully our intent. our concern in tying this to the
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city program is that if that gets extended indefinitely or permanently, that there are other legal issues relating to the use of our property and getting fair market value for our property that we'd have to work fly together. and so we -- work through together. so we felt that the best option was to set up the resolution so that it's expiring on the current expiration of the shared spaces program, with the intent to come back to you and to discuss any changes or extensions of the program as the conditions on the ground change. as for the fees that were previously paid by the restaurants, as we described to them in our calls with them, these were actually -- unlike our tenants that, you know, had to endure the impacts of the pandemic, you know, in other context, these were not leases that they were required to sort of maintain on an ongoing basis and they were terminable with 30 days' notice. so these tenants when they didn't elect that, we obviously continued to build them and to collect that rent after the
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broad-based deferral moments for that deep shelter in place. so in trying to deal with what to do about the rent -- the amounts paid, we wanted to set them on equal footing with the port tenants who in similar situations, in fact, in other situations where they were required to keep paying, they did pay. and so we thought that it was appropriate to sort of credit those dollars back at the end of the program when the prior arrangements with license fees were sort of reignited. so we've tried to address each of those comments in what we presented to you, but we're definitely interested in your feedback and direction from here. >> president brandon: thank you. commissioner gilman? >> you're on mute commissioner gilman. >> commissioner gilman: thank you, sorry. before i started -- because i have several sets of questions
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and in many ways i appreciate the bundling of these items, some being informational and some being action items. i guess that i wanted to just ask staff or commissioner brandon, how do you want to take questions and reflections? do you want me to just run through all of them or take them piece-by-piece, since they are separate items? >> president brandon: run through them. >> commissioner gilman: okay, just wanted to check. so i -- i guess that i'll take them -- sorry, i'm just looking at my notes. maybe i should take them in order. so could you go back -- so on the rent forgiveness deferral program, first of all, great work for i believe that it was the 81 that was on the slide who have opted in. and my one question that i have about that program, which i know
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that is informational is on the folks who are not opting in, i think that you said it was 221. is there any way to pull back up that slide? thank you so much. i really appreciate it. so of the tenants who have since not being paying the 238, $8.3 million in the scope of the other categories, it's the smallest. i had a question why -- why we wouldn't -- i know that it's not been approved by the board of supervisors but indications are that it will be. why wouldn't we mirror the city program for non-city tenants that are being tasked by the board of supervisors. or why wouldn't we offer a longer runway as the governor has in his proposals? i just wanted to understand the rationale behind sort of the timing and the framing of having
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it all due, as my understanding, january 2021? unless i'm understanding it wrong. >> are you talking about the proposed repayment program? >> commissioner gilman: yes, the repayment program. >> so, i think that we thought a couple of things. but basically, you know, as you know that -- and as described, the city ordinance sort of laying out those new repayment plans has not been adopted. and technically does not apply to the city agency as of now or it may. or they may make an amendment to change those repayment programs. you know, other agreement plans are available. and so i think that we were trying to set something up that we thought that made sense that was more favorable than our lease terms and i believe that under the moratorium that -- i think that our attorneys can correct me if i'm wrong, i believe that tenants still need to pay, you know, late charges
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or deferred interest, so what we're trying to say with our repayment plan, is that maybe it's a different time frame but we're trying to give something more favorable, again, as ann incentive to bring people in to get dollars into our budget sooner. because we have not received relief so that's part of the incentization that we're trying to create. >> commissioner gilman: okay. and more questions, both of my questions are for the other two items. what if someone -- you know, can't begin repayment or just can't pay rent in january and february, looking at outstanding balances between march and december of 2020? so, you know, the pandemic is still happening and we're actually moving backwards. knock on wood, and mayor breed's leadership, we don't move backwards in the system. what is the game plan with the same group of tenants that we
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saw, the 238, don't pay q1 of next year? >> well, that's -- well, we observed that we're doing outreach to those tenants who haven't paid that amount and opted in. we assume that that outreach would grow to those tenants who have opted in but aren't able to fully play in and don't select the repayment plan. you know, the mayor's eviction moratorium requires an exchange of notice and a request for feedback from the tenant on why they can't pay rent. sort of setting up a more extended negotiations and sort of running off to court to get an unlawful detainer to cover our property. so i think our strategy is to observe as we've tried to observe or share with you sort of the shifting environment of eviction moratoriums and we're going to have to take a collection strategy that takes that into account. >> mike, can i add to that as
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well. of the 200 plus tenants that haven't resumed normal rent payments, some have already reached out to us to start the conversation on potential terminations and other alternative approaches, like right-sizing their lease hold. some of our tenants, you know, have a small tenant has two office spaces in 412fb and he moved all of his operations into one. so it's unfortunate -- i think that the 200, we're going to have to just take that information and approach it as they come through the door. >> commissioner gilman: okay, great. thank you so much. and the next set of questions is someone who has been asking the staff to bring this forward, sort of the tenant relief program forgiveness for community serving artists/non-profits, that program. i just had a couple of questions. and i apologize if it was in the
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staff report. i think that the jumping around i was having a hard time tracking it. can you -- just overall, what was the rationale for capping the program at $200,000. is that mirroring our maritime or l.b.e. programs or sort of how did you come up with that number? >> mike you want me to -- >> well, i'll start and you can fill in if i get it wrong. but basically what we felt that it was appropriate to do a capped amount because we don't actually keep data, for example, on non-profits on port property. and so we try to take account of how much rent was due from what we thought would be eligible tenants. and we saw that based on the time period that we're talking about, $200,000 would cover all of the ones that we knew that would come in. and you have more specifics about that calculation. is that pretty much tied up against our estimate? or is there a contingency amount
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for additional eligible tenants? >> yes, for the three-month period of time on the tenants that we believe to be artists producing art or a non-profit 10ant it came to about 185, so we bumped that number up to 200 to give us a bit of breathing room for tenants that we may not know of their non-profit staffus. >> commissioner gilman: and how many tenants or entities do you believe that to be? >> at this time i think that it was about 50 or so tenants. >> commissioner gilman: okay. >> i think that it's -- i mean, to give scale, it's less than 10 on the non-profit side and the rest are artists. >> commissioner gilman: okay, just a question. thank you. and then can you just remind me for the l.b.e. rent forgiveness deferral program, which is different from the loan program, what was our cap for that?
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i'm sorry. >> our web page -- >> commissioner gilman: i know that we'll revisit this and this is not an action item today and so i'd like to see this group of tenants benchmarked against the l.b.e. and the maritimes because i just want to understand the rationale if the terms are different. and i'll say the same thing with the rent forgiveness period. unless i'm remembering wrong, i thought that for those tenants we were forgiving rent through the end of this calendar year with the option to extend. so these are just some of the things that seem inconsistent compared to those two programs that i would neither need to understand staff, and you have strong rationals, i would go along with that, but i couldn't approve the item until i have a deeper reflection on how that reflects against those two programs. i think that this is absolutely needed. i just want to make sure that this is not -- because this is
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an unknown tenant entity to us, unlike our l.b.e. contractors who rent from us for maritime, i want to make sure that we're having equity in how we're lining up these programs for three groups of tenants which i think that our core -- you know, to the trust, and also core to the fabric of san francisco. i actually won't go into more details since this is an informational item and i'm happy to also one-on-one to send a list of questions that i need to be answered before i take action on this item. does that make sense where my mind is going to you guys and where i'm trying to see alignment? >> it does. we may have some denominator challenges, you know, with the dollar amount versus how many tenants would be benefited. but we could take that and lay it out more clearly as we come back with a more defined proposal. >> commissioner gilman: i don't
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want to belabor it here but i want to make sure that we're being equitable because i do note that many -- some of the non-profit tenants are non-profits that are run by communities or mostly serving communities of color. i don't know that about the artists but i want to just make sure that it's equitable against those three areas of forgiveness. and you addressed it a little bit about the action item which is today, which is the fee forgiveness. and you said in the staff repore -- how many of the folks who are paying for the shared space program who were going to be waiving or possibly not refunding, how many were leasing space from us before? i sort of lost that. did you say that it was -- hold on -- i think that it is here. >> i think that --
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>> it was only two. there are two that are on that area across on the western side of the area. >> commissioner gilman: okay. so the shared space program did not exist, and they would end their outdoor seating? >> no, it was pre-existing licenses to use outdoor seating. >> commissioner gilman: okay. but rest are new licenses? >> the rest are new licenses that we issued on the basis of the city's program as a sort of temporary special event type of thing. so part of the resolution was just making that clear to you, the commission, that we were doing that and to hopefully confirm our ability to do that going forward. >> commissioner gilman: okay. i guess on this item -- you know, i would love to hear commissioner adam and commissioner brandon's thoughts. when we pass this resolution that instead of us putting an arbitrary end date and having to
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come back to commission as it gets extended, because i think that causes anxiety for business owners and uncertainty, especially if they're trying to leverage other resources through these hard times, that we tie our resolution to any action by the board of supervisors to extend the shared space program during our state of emergency. because i do concur with you, mike, that if when the program ends, the pandemic ends, that we are no longer under -- i guess that i looked to director forbes, our city attorney, to note that the state of emergency is the right tool. but if life goes back to normal and, you know, the emergency is over and people choose -- for some reason the city decides to allow these structures to be permanent, i do agree that we need to negotiate new leases and we have fair market value. all of those thing comes into play. but i would like us to give certainty to our restaurateurs and businesses that as long as
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the emergency is in place, and the board of supervisors extends the shared space program that our program would follow suit. so that's more for discussion with my fellow commissioners and that's the only piece of your proposal that i had a slight difference of opinion on. >> thank you. >> president brandon: vice president adams? >> vice-president adams: yeah. mike, thank you so much. and thank you for your comments to commissioner gilman. i look at this situation here ae truth and the truth of the matter is that this thing may get worse before it gets any better and you just always tell people the truth and then they have time to prepare for what is coming. i think that is what you're trying to do.
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i think that -- i know that we'll have a change of leadership in the white house, but it's going to take some time and i see going through june of next year at least. and even with this virus and the vaccination, i still think that 2021 could be a lot like 2020. i'm just being honest. and i appreciate what you're doing. and we are doing the right things by helping these artists, non-profits, and commissioner gilman's maritimes and restaurants. i mean, we don't have a blueprint for this, this is trial and error, and we don't know. we have never been to this dance before but we'll definitely learn from this. and so i have a very, very open mind and want to do what we can, but we have to help our tenants. because we're going to be in this for a while. and we're shutting down and they're saying the worst is yet to come with this virus, and we've got just to be honest about it and get our head around it and to help as much as we can
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help. and that's where i'm coming from. and because this is a very painful conversation because we're going to lose some people along the way, but if we can help as many people i think to stay afloat, this is our commitment as a port. and so, yeah, you have my support. i know that commissioner gilman wants more things to come back, i appreciate that. i aplawt applaud that, and i agh her. and i want to hear what president brandon says, but this will take time. 2021, will be just be like 2020. and we have to face that and just tellen tha tell everybody . and we anticipate the worst and if something better in between happens, we can move on from there and i think that, mike and criza, we're having a reality check here. we have an obligation to do whatever is needed along with the port staff and our director and the mayor of our city
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leading this charge to do what we have to do. so i'm all in to do what we need to do to keep this thing going. thank you. >> president brandon: thank you. i need to reopen the public comment line. i think we have a caller that was having problems getting in. so, jennifer, if you could open up the line to the caller that is waiting. >> yes, i can do that. thank you. unmuteing their line now. >> caller: hello, did can you hear me? >> president brandon: yes. >> caller: hello? can you hear me? >> president brandon: yes, we can hear you. >> caller: yes, hi, hello, everybody. this is about chapter 11a. my name is john van lu, and i'm from waterloo beverages. i immigrated to the united states in 1998. i have been a tenant at the port of san francisco since 1999.
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and presently holding three leases. the estimated revenue that i have paid so far for all of those years is about $690,000. we are an independent beverage distribution company who serve 80% of our business through restaurants and bars. my business was strongly affected and it's been challenging until today. we are making it, but your support is needed. i'm not requesting the full forgiveness, but a forgiveness for the first three months when everything was shut down. during the shutdown we lost over $40,000 in inventory due to outcoded dated products. and due to the restaurants shut down, we have over $15,000 in
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unpaid collections. it was not successful in receiving any grants -- i was not successful in receiving any grants as i was in a very weird category, and, therefore, not applied to receive anything. thank you, gentlemen, thank you for listening. >> president brandon: thank you. thank you for your call. are there any further comments? >> president brandon, i do not see any other callers on the line. >> president brandon: okay. public comment is closed again. mike, we thank you so much for your presentation. it's very thorough and a lot of information. a lot of food for thought. i think that it's really commendable all that we are trying to do to help our tenants to stay in business during this pandemic. i think -- i think that, of
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course, there's a lot more that we could do, but there's also a lot more that our tenants can do. because of over half of our tenants chose to not opt in to work with us is really hard to find ways to further help them. so i think -- i think that we have been very, very forgiving and we have tried to work with all of our tenants, but i don't think that we can put ourselves in the position to respect our tenants who won't let us to know how they're doing or how we can help them, and so they can be helped during this crisis. so, commissioner gilman asked a lot of great questions. but tenants have to meet us
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halfway. you know, you guys have done outstanding work in putting these programs together. and following tenants individually to try to get them whatever help we can give them. but i do think that we have to work both ways. and then we also need to -- we have to look at our bottom line. and how supports flow and how we keep our staff, and how we keep our operations going while we're forgiving and deferring all of this revenue. so all of this has an impact on our finances. and thankfully we were in a great position prior to covid. so hopefully we can wade through this for the next couple years because, you know, nothing is definitely going to go into 2021
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and we'll continue to have to help our tenants. i agree that we should do all that we can. but i know that there's a limit to what we can do. so with that i think that -- with the opt in program, i think that our tenants really need to work with us and opt in so that when we're trying to come up with these policies going forward that we have a better understanding of what our tenants need. because they're just not giving us any information we don't know. i think that -- i think that the rent forgiveness program is phenomenal. i think that what we're doing for the artists and the non-profits is also great. and what i thought that i understood you to say is that the $200,000 cap was based on six months rent from those particular tenants. so hopefully everyone -- we
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would have enough for six months relief for all of those tenants. and, if not, then it would be up to aer i a percentage. if you have further needs you can always come back to us, right? >> yes, that is true. i just wanted to clarify that the proposal, the $200,000 is tied to three months of forgiveness. but per commissioner gilman's comments, we're going to come back to you for an action item on that and we'll be more detailed how that fits in with the length of time and dollar amounts that we have forgiven on the other categories. >> president brandon: right. but it should be tied to how many tenants there are and what, you know, you know, what the total amount of the rent is for those tenants. >> yes, we'll definitely provide that estimate of tenants and their rent too. >> president brandon: yes, yes, that would be great. but i think -- i think that the port has done a phenomenal job
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in trying to work with our tenants. and to helping our tenants during this time. and so i want to commend our staff for that. and for me it's always, you know, how does that impact our fiscal capacity. whatever decision we're making, what -- no matter how big, no matter how small, and with shared spaces, with those tenants that we're forgiving those licensing agreements, what is that impact? >> in terms of all of the shared spaces? >> i think she means the two, mike, that had previous license agreements and were paying us. >> president brandon: i mean like -- like on the opposite side of the street. that aren't port tenants.
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so we're waiting -- >> just so that it's ratifily those two tenants that we're discussing at this point in time and are under $3,000 a month. >> very nominal. >> correct. that's why we sort of moved ahead to sort of align with the mayor's program, but also to bring visitors to the waterfront because we see that indirect effect on our businesses when people are down there. so we saw that as a worthwhile approach and we're hoping that you support that today. great. >> president brandon: i do think that you guys have done a great job. you know, there's -- i am sure that there's a lot more that we could give, but what can we fiscally, responsibly do? >> president brandon, if i could just add to your comments around fiscal prudence and
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responsibility. we did have a good year closing, but as i said in the director's report, things are looking good -- relative terms. but there are a lot of wait-and-see moments. so one of the things that staff and i really liked about the proposal for the civic tenants is that it was limited and there was a certain budget amount and it was based on the tenants that we identified. if we needed more funding for it, we should come back and we'll make a proposal, of course, looking at commissioner gilman's questions and justifying the three different categories. but if we do need to prepare for february, and we're in such a wait-and-see mode as we wait to see what happens. so i would feel more comfortable if we can come back with more information and financial reports if we were to increase that amount. because at this point i can tell that you we're on budget, our losses look to be about right.
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the program is coming in as anticipated. but as we move further, i can't continue to make those statements without more information. >> president brandon: right. right. thank you. definitely i appreciate that information. commissioner gilman, did you want to say something? >> commissioner gilman: yeah, sorry, just raising one additional question. so going back to the staff report -- sorry, i'm maybe getting confused about the tenants. there's 17 businesses currently right now that we're talking about doing the fee waiver from today, from november 1, through june 30th, 2021, to align with the city's program. >> sorry. no, so that 17 is the total amount of all port tenants and non-tenants who have done a shared spaces activation. >> commissioner gilman: okay.
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>> so our tenants are still pulling licenses on the basis they have in the past where they don't pay additional fees, they just pay a percentage of sales as they would pay under their lease. >> commissioner gilman: so we're talking then only about this resolution affecting five tenants? >> at this point in time there are two that we've identified that have reached out to us that prior to covid had existing licenses with us. and they are requesting -- the request is to waive their fees between june 16th through the june 30th, 2021, timeline that we are proposing. and as of a ballpark figure, that amount of money for those two particular tenants is roughly $36,000. with that said, there are other tenants -- non-port tenants that are adjacent to port right-of-way that may and can take advantage of this program if they approach us. so there are a handful up in
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jefferson -- >> commissioner gilman: right, so this is like an opt-in program. so i guess -- it seems -- >> how many licenses are used for things like dropoff space, etc.? so it's not clear. if the non-port tenants are using the shared space program for outdoor dining, you know, for ways to assist businesses they would approach us and we'd have the same policy that we're asking for today. which is to align with the city and not charge for the use of that sidewalk space. >> commissioner gilman: okay. >> so a question for commissioner adams, are you comfortable because i will concede having this only go to june 30th, 2021, knowing that most likely it will be extended and having the staff to come back to us each time. or do you want to amend the proposal to say that we would
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just mirror the city as long as the state of emergency is in? i guess that is just the question. >> well, i thought that mike said that there was some legal reason for us not doing that. >> so, commissioner, i was worried about the potential permanent extension beyond this emergency sort of moment in time. and so if you wanted to pursue commissioner gilman's proposal, staff doesn't have an objection, i think we'd probably tie it to the mayor's -- let me see -- expiration of the mayor's order because that already is tied to the state of emergency. we don't have an objection to that. we just felt like the commission -- we would offer you more control but, obviously, the argument now would be the same if the mayor extends another six months and there's still an emergency. >> yeah, it might give more
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certainty if the folks know that while they're participating in this program under the mayor's order we're waiving these fees. if they want to continue post-mayor orders, we should negotiate with them and take into account the whole other step of priorities and our trust responsibility for fair value. >> i'm on the same page as you, president brandon, when you said that we give them love, they've got to love us back. i agree, but i kind of am thinking that we're following kind of mayor breed to june of next year. i'm good with that. and if we have to extend it. but i have a feeling just within myself that with the new administration coming in that the new president and then our vice president who is from this area, vice president harris, i think that we are going to get
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some stuff done. i believe that they're going to try to get as much done as they can. i'm willing to go to june next year and then look at it. but i think that is all we really can do because none of us have a crystal ball. >> right. i don't know -- i know that what we're talking about is based on a restaurant using a shared space for outdoor dining. i think what the mayor is looking at is so many different businesses and industries within the city and not just this. and so i would be more comfortable with going with the staff recommendation. >> okay. >> president brandon: of june. and then if we need to extend it, i mean, let's -- let's look at it again first quarter next year. >> okay. >> president brandon: so we can give tenants leeway if needed. but i think that for now i'm comfortable with june of next year. >> yeah, me too. and i think that you're right --
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march, look at it, first quarter. i agree with you. >> president brandon: any other questions? with that, we have a motion and a second. a roll call vote, please. >> clerk: on resolution 2050 [roll call vote] >> president brandon: thank you. motion passes unanimously. resolution 2050 is adopted. call the next item, please. >> clerk: item 12a is an informational presentation regarding the waterfront resilience program alternative development strategy and proposed decision framework. >> good afternoon, president brandon, vice president adams, commissioner gilman and director
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forbes and members of the public. the port waterfront resilience director here today, along with lyndee lowe, the port resilience officer, to make a very important presentation about work that is ongoing in the resilience program. we want to talk today about alternatives development and a proposed decision framework. next slide. so this is our agenda today. we want to start with a discussion about a goal for the resilience program and principles underlying that goal. then we'll move into alternatives, development, and how to use evaluation criteria to evaluate these alternatives and we'll talk briefly about seismic and flood standards. we have developed some proposed
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proposition a funding guidelines for the commission's consideration as well as the public consideration. we'll talk a little bit about our adapt plan and adaptation guidelines that are under development. discuss community and stakeholder engagement. and then most importantly we want to engage the commission with some key policy questions related to this work. we will trade off during the presentation to cover different elements of this presentation. next slide, please. we wanted to start with the draft goal statement and draft principles. next slide, please. for context, we want to remind the public that the waterfront
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resilience program has a number of efforts port-wide and in specific geographies. the port-wide efforts include the adapt plan that you will hear about today. and the flood resiliency study that staff presented on the last commission meeting. and the seawall program is in a more limited geography for fisherman's wharf to mission's creek. we've got somests in the southern waterfront including the seismic vulnerability assessment and the creek adaptation strategy that we're pursuing along with the planning department. and the san francisco municipal transportation agency. and then there are a number of related port efforts by other divisions that have a resilience component. next slide, please. so just to get a sense about how these efforts overlap, i will
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focus in on the flood resiliency study which is -- it's an effort looking at the flood risks and how to reduce those risks port wide. the entire 7.5 miles of port jurisdiction. and the seawall program is looking at flood and seismic risks and risk reduction strategies for those -- for those specific hazards. there's clearly an overlap between the flood resiliency study and the seawall program in that northern waterfront area. where we're looking at flood risk reduction. and where we're working very closely with the army corps to see how we can also begin to solve some of the seismic risk exposure as well. next slide, please. so we have been over more than a year working on developing a draft goal for the waterfront
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resilience program. we presented on an earlier version of this and been out in public workshopping this goal statement to see if it reflects community values. more recently working with commissioner forbes to work on the resilience plan and the strategic plan today which says to prepare the port for natural and human-made risks and hazards. we propose today that the goal for the waterfront resilience program should read that the waterfront resilience program will take actions to reduce seismic and climate change risks that support a safe, equitable, sustainable and vibrant water front. we understand that the commission will be considering
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potential updates to this strategic plan in february and this would be among those proposed amendments. next slide, please. underlying that goal we have draft principles that we have also been sharing with the public. clearly want to prioritize life safety and city and regional and port disaster response. we want to advance equity throughout the waterfront resilience program, including stakeholder engagement, planning, contracting, jobs and decision-making. enhance and sustain economic and eclogical opportunities. inspire an adaptable waterfront that improves the health of the bay and ensures public access and protects historic and maritime resources. and provides opportunities for diverse families and businesses and neighborhoods to thrive. finally, we want to lead a
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transparent and collaborative and adaptiv adaptive resilience. next slide, please. we have been out seeking feed back from the public on both goals and principles and we have heard a lot of what is embedded in this to be reflected back, to be transparent and to continue to engage communities and clearly prioritize life safety and emergency response and responsiveness. in terms of the principles, people embraced the idea of inspiring an adaptable waterfront and asked us to think about how we can connect the city with the waterfront through additional public open space and accessible waterfront. and clearly on protecting job centers and people have a deep attachments to the creeks, both
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with mission creek and want to protect the housing, schools and youth facilities. next slide, please. i'll hand it off to mindy to talk about alternative developments. >> thank you, brad, good afternoon president brandon and vice president adams. i mindy lowe. my portion of the presentation includes alternative evaluation criteria and the adapt plan, community engagement and key questions and considerations for the commission. next slide. and waterfront resilience program team has been developing draft alternatives over the last month or so. these alternatives are designed to reduce the risks and consequences in a way that is consistent with stakeholder and community input as well as port and city priorities. it includes a range of time and geographic scales.
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that can be implemented in phases. the program will use adaptation pathways to communicate the alternatives to ensure that near, mid, and long-term risks are conplated an contemplated it address the costs and efficiencies. next slide, please. as we have presented at the last few commission meetings, the team is using the sub-area material that has information about hazards and priorities and measures of a sub-area scale. and added the focused work that we prohibited tpresented to thet the last mideasting. those developed in the army corps study to have a range of alternative from site-specific actions to subarea alternatives to waterfront-wide alternatives. next slide. and an important considerations regarding the draft alternatives that have been developed to date, we would have a range of short, mid and long-term as was
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site specific to larger scales alternatives for the commission to consider. the draft alternatives being developed will be used to inform both the army corps flood study and the proposition project. due to the unique characteristics of the waterfront there's alternatives that are specific to areas such as fisherman's wharf and the ferry building that won't apply in areas such as south beach and piers one through 35. and the program will emphasize the alternatives that will serve as the initial emphasis -- or the initial investment funded by proposition a, which will be focused on the highest priority life safety and emergency response risks. next slide, please. i'm now giving to give you an overview with the understanding that none of the alternatives apply equally well to the entire water front and the team has not started developing alternatives
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south of mission creek. that work will start next month. the first high level alternative that i'm going to talk about is the alternative waterfront alternative that has razeeing and rebuilding the wharves. the primary actions to prevent flood risks to the city and the port and the wharf area by rebuilding and elevating the wharf zone. this alternative is relatively low cost, less disruptive, and it reduces the impacts to the bay and the roadway. next slide, please. another draft developed by the team is the resilient alternative in which the roadway corridor is raised to reduce the flood risk. this increases the adaptation space available by including the roadway, it could provide ability for stormwater improvements and allows for a
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utility to have flood risks for utilities currently in the roadway. next slide. and the seawall includes the construction of a new seawall, which stabilizes the old city wall and reduce the seismic and flood risk to both the port and the city. this alternative has opportunities for mobility and utility improvements depending on the design. next slide. last waterfront-wide alternative developed by the team is the tactical life safety alternative, which is designed to prioritize the risks at high occupancy life safety and emergency response locations. the focus of this alternative is to reduce the highest consequence seismic risks and to address the flood risks opportunistically, meaning in the same locations. the purpose of this alternative is to reduce as much of this type of risk as possible for the
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lowest cost with limited disruption. i want to remind the commission again that these are only some of the alternatives under development and they are presented just to provide a high level understanding of where we're at in the process at this time. a critical way to know if we're consistent with the city priorities is through the use of evaluation criteria that the port resilience team has drafted for the program. next slide. evaluation criteria is important because it enshirrs that decision-making has considered the program, provides stakeholders with a link to the decision-making process, makes decisions transparent and accountable, and identifies tradeoffs for additional benefits, provides clear ways to improve approaches to alternatives and allows a comparison of the alternatives
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to one another. next slide, please. the port program team developed evaluation criteria in four categories to ensure that we are considering a wide range of issues that are important to the port and the city. these categories include feasibility and performance, economy and jobs, society and equity, and environment and ecology. next slide, please. the program evaluation criteria categories have a number of more detailed metrics and here's a limited example of what is included in the broad categories. for example, under economy, the number and diversity of jobs are one of the metrics. the criteria will be used to refine and to improve alternatives as well as to assess the performance of those alternatives. when using the criteria, the team is not currently planning to produce waiting and scores for the different metrics, but report whether and how alternatives address these criteria to make it easier to
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communicate and to understand each alternative's strengths and weaknesses. i now turn it over to bad to give the seismic and flood standards. >> next slide, please. next slide, please. so as part of program development, we are looking for guidance on performance standards by which we'll evaluate these alternatives and ultimately the team will design these alternatives. so what are performance standards? performance standards describe the engineering performance of buildings and infrastructure as compared to seismic and flood hazards. they could be used to evaluate how the existing assets are anticipated to perform before
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and after improvements as well as new assets. when performance standards are established they are used to develop the engineering design criteria. how are they developed? thinking about the army corps flood risk management efforts underway with the army corps, there we're thinking about building flood risk reduction to benefit the city. so that -- thattest requires consultation with the city -- effort requires consultation with the city departments and policymakers to determine the city's flood risk appetite. the seismic performance is a bit different. the port's chief harbor engineer manages the port's building code. we have assembled a seismic peer panel to provide advice for particularly difficult issues. next slide, please.
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so flood zone codes address the performance of buildings and marine structures. it does want be address the performance standards for shoreline stability. that is a pretty unique condition that was just identified in 2016. after that was identified the port's chief harbor engineer issued guidance requiring that the new projects that overlap the seawall in areas subject to lateral spreading risk would have to perform to a certain standard. the chief harbor engineer has the power to publish new or revised guidance for life safety as our understanding of these risks develops. next slide, please. thinking about flood risk, as we engage the city in the policy discussion about the level of flood risk management that we should be pursuing along the
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shoreline, there are a number of factors to consider. ultimately as we build things we'll look at a design elevation. that could be built initially or over adaptive measurement over time. in order to chiez tha choose thn elevation we need to understand what sea level scenario we'd be building to. the army corps has three sea level rise curves. they overlap, they do not match the state of california, likely a one in 200 chance curves. so this is an area that we need policy guidance. we have coastal storms and extreme tide events. and the national standard is a hundred year flood for a flooding event that has a 1% chance of occurrence each year. we need t need to have feed bacm
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the city on that standard and any safety margin that we call free board. next slide, please. next slide, please. we have been working on funding guidelines to help us to all think about how to allocate that initial investment that voters have provided for. a strong point for this discussion, mindy talked about the alternatives that we are developing that are waterfront-wide. we'll have a range of alternatives and a process by which the port commission can choose preferred alternatives for each geography of the port. so we're really thinking about a case where we have identified the alternatives for the entire seawall area and using these funding guidelines as they may be modified by the commission to
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identify specific assets and locations for first investment. because we know that we won't be able to improve the full three-mile area. and then i'm going to walk through each of these. next slide, please. life safety and prevention response. and this is what we emphasized with proposition a on the ballot. which are subject to the highest lateral spread risk and other seismic risk that could pose a risk to life safety. where are the highest concentrations of people. importantly, where are the critical disaster response assets. and we have identified all of this through the port's multi-risk assessment. finally, we want to ask the question, are there relatively cost improvements that are less disruptive that can provide a
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significant improvement to life safety? next slide. in some areas we may determine that we don't have sufficient funding. lyndee talked about the sufficient corridor and we had risks to the utility infrastructure. if there's a determination to address those risks, obviously, that is a multiagency effort. with a cost well beyond what we have in proposition a. so is there further planning, stakeholder alignment or analysis required? if the answer to that is yes, should we seek other funds -- grants or dedicate a part of proposition a to advance that plan and work and stakeholder engagement for those areas? next slide. other partnership opportunities.
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iare there city agencies pursuig a project or in their 10-year capital plan a project in areas that we might be making investment in order to allow for economies of scale? is there an opportunity to partner with the private for-profit or non-profit? are there federal, state, regional funding opportunities where we can leverage proposition a funding. that was specifically called out in a bond report as a use of bond funds. next slide, please. equity is a key principle. that benefit the entire city. that was really the theme of proposition a, you know, protecting waterfront functions that benefit the entire city. are risks addressed across the area in an equitable way?
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are alternatives informed by a broad range of stakeholders? they have been committed to the prospect of engaging all the way through this process of both risk assessment and developing alternatives. and then are the economic benefits putting equity first in terms of jobs, local businesses, community projects. next slide, please. and then we want to evaluate the projects that are going through this set of questions and geographies. can the projects be delivered within the time schedule identified in the bond report. does the collection of projects together represent a program that we can efficiently deliver? next slide, please. we have heard that, you know,
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earlier in the agenda that there's a plan to pursue the pier rehabilitation efforts for piers on the northern waterfront. is there a planned redevelopment in an area? is there another source -- private equity or c.f.d. proceeds related to that development that can pay for the improvements that would be required? if yes, is that project financially feasible. would it need an additional subsidy to ensure that those historic rehabilitation projects could move forward. next slide, please. similarly, is there a tenant, a long-term tenant, that might perform a lease extension and might be willing to make substantial mysterimensubstantiy for the program. and i want to caveat that to
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note that there are some seawall alternatives under consideration that are probably not appropriate for delivery by a -- one of the port's private development partners. for instance, ground improvement in the embarcadaro is not something that we recommend as an action for our private development partners. and the other alternatives, the new resilient wha wharf that wey described are appropriate. next slide, please. so now i'll turn it back to lyndee to go over the adapt plan and the adaptation design guidelines. >> thank you, brad. next slide. if has the program for the critical components of the program and including the area from fisherman's wharf to harrington park. so the entire port jurisdiction. and the plan is underway now and
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it includes the narrative of the port's waterfront resilience program, including the risks and the stakeholder engagement fundings, decision-making criteria, adaptation design guidelines and recommendations for the proposition a projects. and the other actions and alternatives to address the waterfront -- sorry -- to address and achieve waterfront resilience. next slide. the adapt plan will integrate the recommendations with the port's near and long-term objective. describe how risks will be reduced over time. allow the port to take action on the most urgent risks while adapting over time to remaining with the increasing risk. and integrate with the waterfront plan to support the resilience work over many years. support adaptive actions communicated clearly to provide the public and stakeholders with confidence regarding the port's
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approach to resilience. next slide. this is a chapter abstract review of the the adapt plan wih the idea of the content of the plan. it's meant more to be a takeaway than for me to walk specifically through it. but as you can see it includes the hazards that we identified and the multi-hazard risk assessment and includes findings from our stakeholder engagement process. it describes the alternatives that were processed and engaged in, the decision-making criteria that we're talking to you about today. as well as includes a set of recommendations for the proposition a projects and the flood projects. next slide. one critical component is the adaptation design guidelines which provide the elevations and the design approaches to ensure that the resilience work taken over time and by different
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actors will result in consistent functional and desirable waterfront, rather than a myriad of elevations and approaches to reducing seismic and flood risks. the guidelines apply to all port projects and provide a framework for adapting the waterfront over time and, again, for actions undertaken by different actors. next slide, please. i will now provide an update on the community and stakeholder engagement that we have planned over the next three to four months. next slide. as we have presented at your last meeting, we continue to work closely with our city department partners to ensure that the resilience work considers the city perspectives and expertise, and it is designed to take advantage of partnerships. next slide. we have some upcoming community engagements, including co-hosting meetings with the community-based organizations
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and the bayview and the mission creek communities. we will continue to use our digital engagement during this covid-19 period to obtain feedback on the material and storing that that we have previously shared with the commission. and then we have been engaging with the tenants over the last several months on the multi-hazard risk assessment finds and we will continue to engage as we develop alternatives. we're also working with our wonderful l.b.e. team members on youth engagement and engaging on our element and coming up for approaches for both of these exciting upcoming engagement opportunities. next slide. i want to thank the commission for your patience with all of this material. we know that littl it is a lot o consider in a short period of time. we have a few areas for the commission consideration that we would like to highlight. and to receive your input and
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feedback on. today if you would like. but we also want to let you know upfront that we'll be returning in december to provide the commission more time to consider this information and provide input at that time. next slide, please. the first area for input results to the goal statements and principles. does this goal and do these principles reflect port values and the role that the port plays in the city-wide resilience. is there anything that the commission would like to change or feel that is miss something next slide, please. -- missing? next slide, please. and the next area is on the evaluation criteria. does the commission feel that there's the right side of metrics and the alternative work? is the commission comfortable with reporting out how the alternatives measured against the criteria, rather than a more detailed waiting and scoring approach? next slide, please.
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does the commission have any guidance to staff on the issue of coastal flood risk reduction standard as we begin to engage the city on this issue? next slide. finally, on the proposition a funding guidelines, does the commission support the approach to using these guidelines to help to advance and to communicate decisions on proposition projects. do the guidelines prioritize decision-making appropriately? does the commission support aligning the waterfront resilience program to work with other strategic work that the port is doing such as the location efforts and the long term lease extensions and other work? next slide. this is our last slide. in december we will return to obtain feedback on the items that we have presented to you today. including the gold statement and the principles, evaluation criteria and proposition a funding guidelines and the role and structure of the adapt plan.
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next slide. thank you again for your time today. and we're looking forward to your input. we have greatly benefited from hearing from the commission over the last few presentations. and we look forward to further engagement over committing months. thank you again for your time and attention on all of this material. >> president brandon: thank you. that is a lot of information. (indiscernible) going to public comment. we will open up the phone lines to take public comments from the members of the public on the line. jennifer will provide instructions now for anyone on the phones to provide guidance. >> thank you, president brandon. at this time we will open up the queue for anyone on the phone who would like to make public comment on item 12 a. please dial star, 3, if you wish to make public comment.
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we will let you know when your line is open. others wait on mute until their line is open. comments are limited to three minutes per person. the queue is now open. please dial star, 3, if you wish to make public comment. >> president brandon: thank you, jennifer. do we have anyone on the phone? >> president brandon, we do not have any members of the public on the phone wishing to make public comment on this item. >> president brandon: thank you. public comment is closed. commissioner gilman? >> commissioner gilman: well, first of all, brad and lindsay, i want to thank you so much again, two commission meetings in a row and we'll see you again in december for these very thorough and in-depth reports. i have no questions. i guess that i just wanted to have a couple observations. one, i want to thank you for your community outreach approach leading with equity and always remembering to include our l.b.
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partners. i think in the long term for our prop a funding and the funding decisions and for the resiliency of the port, they're key players. i wanted to thank you for your engagement with them. and that i am very interested in seeing the interconnectedness between this resiliency program that is so critical with the historic piers on the northern waterfront to the overall strategic planning and the update of the waterfront plans. i wanted to say that you're right on the mark, that this needs to be part of everything along the stage that we're doing on the waterfront to protect us. when we know that sea level rise is coming, and now that is coming, and now that we have lived through a pandemic, and we need to prepare for it. so thank you for all of your diligent work. i have no questions and that concludes my comments. >> president brandon: thank you.
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vice president adams? vice president adams? you're on mute. >> vice-president adams: i just wanted to say that it was a good presentation. i'm going to continue to monitor this, but i thought that it was very in-depth. it looks like we're moving along. so at the moment, president brandon, i don't have any questions. i took a lot of notes and i know that they'll come back. >> president brandon: thank you. thank you so much for this presentation. you have covered a lot of information and definitely a lot of us -- a lot for us to think about. my only question is on the
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evaluation criteria and what we should be considering. can you go over that again and the difference between using this so everyone can know how it works one way or the other. if that makes any sense. >> yeah, it does, it does make sense. and i'll start. so there's a variety of ways to go about using evaluation criteria. and i may have heard of triple bottom line or quadruple bottom line. and those are evaluation criteria approaches and processes. one thing that we're lucky in at this point in time is that a lot of folks have been using evaluation criteria in a variety of different ways over the last 10 years for big programs like this one. and one thing that they're finding is going through a very
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lengthy waiting and touring process, that when obscuring the actual way in which the evaluation criteria are interplaying with your alternatives. so what happens is that you come out of the end of a process -- this alternative scored a four out of five, this one scored a two out of five. but you don't know why. and you can dig back into the material, but the challenge is that you can't communicate to your stakeholders and you're not exactly sure why it happened the way that it happened. and rather than doing that, what we're proposing that we do is that we have a very transparent process where we go through the evaluation criteria and we say this alternative scored very, very well in the areas of you know, you focusing on equity and addressing some of the most pressing community and society
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concerns, the city-wide concerns. where it seems to be not scoring highly or even scoring well is more on the area of environment and ecology. and that allows us to share the tradeoffs very transparently. it also allows us to maybe to change the alternatives and to maybe do a better job on the environment and the ecology side of it. so it makes the process much easier with the criteria, to communicate the criteria and then to fix the alternative if it's not performing up to the system. does that help? >> president brandon: that does. it makes a lot of sense. so that way -- coming up with a score. that way we can really see why it scored the way it did, versus just saying this has a one, this has a two and this hases a three. thank you. so there's a lot of information.
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we have a long way to go. so can you briefly go over what the commission should focus on for the next presentation to be able to give feedback. >> brad, you want to take that one? >> sure. so in the staff report for this item, we included the questions that lindsay went over and they're in italics in the staff report. i think we really want to come back -- not to reiterate everything that we have explained today, but to dig into a conversation offered by those questions. so that -- that's our intention with the december presentation to the commission so that we can get valuable feedback from the commission. we -- there's alignment about the decision framework and we can continue to prepare these
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alternatives knowing that we're coming forward in a way where the commission agrees with the proposed approach. >> president brandon: we have our homework. thank you, guys, i really appreciate this presentation. and i'm glad that it's staying fresh in mind so that each time you come back we don't have to dig back to figure out, okay, where were we last time. but this is great. and i think also that it is key to include -- it's key to include our city -- our city family. our city family, in -- in all of our talks about how to tackle
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this huge project. because it's going to affect all of us, it's port property but it's going to affect the entire city. so i'm really happy that we're looking to other departments to engage in this discussion now so they too can play a critical role in this process. so, thank you. and we look forward to seeing you in december. >> thank you so much. >> president brandon: okay. call next item please. >> clerk: that would be item 13. new business. >> i have recorded coming back on the shared space update in the first quarter of 2021. is there any new business? >> president brandon: any new business? >> i have no business at this time. >> i have none, president brandon. >> president brandon: thank you.
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okay, so i guess that, carl, the next item is adjournment? >> clerk: correct. that's right. item 14 adjournment. >> motion to adjourn. >> second. >> president brandon: roll call vote please. >> clerk: [roll call vote] >> president brandon: the meeting is adjourned at 5:25 p.m. thank you, everyone. >> thanks, everybody. >> take care, everyone.
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>> coping with covid-19 with chris manning. >> hi. i'm chris manners, and you're watching coping with covid-19. my guest today is tanya peterson. she's the director of the san francisco zoo on sloat boulevard, and she's here today to talk about how the zoo's managing during the pandemic and how they're reopening. tanya, thank you for being here. >> thank you for having me. >> i'm really pleased to hear that the zoo has reopened
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again. that's great news. can you tell us what changes you've made to make visitors to the zoo feel comfortable and safe when they're there. i understand now you have to make reservations, and there's only a limited number available each day. >> we were making changes before shelter in place. fortunately, because we work with animals, and we have a vet hospital on-site, we have the safe coverings before the shelter in place. while we were closed, we made some internal and external changes. the first one, i guess, would be on-line reservations. you now need to make reservations to visit the zoo, just like your favorite dinner restaurant. that is an effort to slow down congestion. try to keep everything smooth,
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and we can control the number of families coming in over the course of time. >> that's great. what about the indoor exhibits and the playground. are those off limits now? >> well, they're not off limits, but the playground, we had -- we had started child care program for essential workers even when we were closed, and the playground is used exclusively by our child care programs. so if you can think of the zoo, 100 acres, about a good third of it right now is reserved for child care, so what we do is we have the -- we've got the children in their safe pods. they're with each other for three weeks. they're in a controlled environment, and in the morning, one pod has the playground, we disinfect, and in the afternoon, another pod comes. all indoor spaces were closed before the shelter in place. the one thing i'm asked most frequently about is the train. we have a 100-year-old train,
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and as soon as we can disinfect that, we'll get that open, because that's the number one question i guess, when is the train reopening. >> is there a map how you're supposed to walk around the zoo? >> yes. in certain areas, we created a one-way path. we try to make it fun. they're generally in the shape of bear paws and colored -- you know, follow the blue bear paws, follow the red bear paws -- but we've tried to make it fun. when children have not been out for three months, they were climbing anything and everything. we didn't anticipate that, so we put coverings open water
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fountains, statue signs. kids had been cooped up, so they went crazy the first few days. more control in place. >> that sounds great. how did the zoo's residents respond to a lack of visitors. did you observe any behavioral differences? >> absolutely. we have some shy residents, gorillas and orangs. we have a male orangutan, he would blow me kisses. the rhinos, they would come out when i would feed them. >> how does it feel to have the zoo open again to the general public, even if it's a limited fashion? >> it feels fantastic.
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i'm a mother, and i know it's been hard on kids. to be able to open safely outdoors -- we're one of the few zoos on an ocean, so you've got the coastal air coming through. we see families or self-ascribed pods coming through. it's been great for our staff and for our visitors. it's been heart warming, all the true experiences the first few days. >> clearly. you have a lot of mouths to feed. how did you cope with the pandemic so far? were you able to get some financial assistance, and how can viewers contribute if they'd like to? >> well, thank you. we received some help, but we
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burned through that quickly, and we received some financial donations. we burned through a lot of our funding, and we were really feeling it. all of the people who supported us and hung in there, i thank you. you can join as a member. it's a tax deduction. david attenborough said it best. if the zoo becomes extinction, we all do. in the wild, poachers are
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getting the best of the wild anima animals, but i think with the help of the zoo and the community, we can save the animals. >> where can i go if i want to donate? >> you can go to sfzoo.org. you can join, become a member or make a donation. it takes about $30,000 a day to feed all of our 2,000 animals, so you can pick how you want to help. >> well, i appreciate you coming onto the show today, miss peterson. >> thank you. the animals and i thank you from the bottom of our hearts. >> you've been watching coping with covid-19. for sfgovtv, i'm chris manners.
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thanks for watching. >> we are, we are at the balboa movie theater, but you're not going to be watching a movie today. maybe tonight, but not during the daytime outside. thank you all for being here. i'm san francisco mayor london breed, and i'm joined by a number of folks who i'll introduce later to speak. but i wanted to take this opportunity to just start with, really, how far we've come. it's been a very, very challenging seven months in san francisco. when this pandemic first hit,
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we had to make some really hard decisions. and with those hard decisions, we knew it was not only going to hit our economy as a whole, but it was going to have a tremendous impact on our small businesses, especially businesses in the community. we saw, within the first time that we closed in the month of april, we saw unemployment go to over 60,000 people, and as of today, we have over 200,000 people who have filed for unemployment. we've seen businesses close, and some that we have gone to our entire lives, we've seen them close permanently. we've had to balance a $1.5 billion budget deficit in san francisco. it's been hard. our unemployment before the
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pandemic was less than 2%, and at its height, went to 12%, and today, it's 8%. so yes, from an economic standpoint, we have had some really challenges in our city, and the good news is that because we are a resilient city, there have been a lot of adjustments. we've adapted, we've improvised, and when movie theaters called, what was it call? >> oh, popcorn thursday. >> the hon. london breed: i remember the first movie you played was "clueless," and i was all excited about that. it was look, we can't have it inside, but let's particultake the streets. let's come together as a
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community to enjoy something that all of us have missed, and that's going to the movies. and in addition with that jazz permit that we provide, it allows them to provide jazz music. adapting is what we do best. do we want to do it? no. we want to maintain our businesses and serve the community, but in the course of this pandemic, i've got to tell you, i'm so proud to be a san franciscan. i'm so proud of what everyone has done to just say, you know what? we'll figure it out. we'll do the best we can. we'll make changes, like these parklets and some of the great ideas that came out of carmen chu and the economic recovery task force to say, let's make some adjustments.
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let's try and continue to support our businesses in a way that we didn't before. and even though it has been challenging, i don't know how you feel about these incredible pa parklets that are all over san francisco, but i feel like the city is alive again. and part of what we have to do in addition to some of the hard decisions we've had to make, we have to make decisions to get our economy going again, and that means making the right kinds of investments. today, i want to announce that we are making an additional $7.4 million investment into the jobsnow program. and some of you might be wondering, what is jobsnow? in 2009, when we had the
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previous economic recession in this country under president barack obama, we had programs like cal fresh and job assistance. i was the executive director of the african american art and culture complex, and there were people that qualified for the jobsnow program, they started to work for me at the african american art and culture complex, and our organization got money to pay their salary. now one time, they were late with the checks, trent. you remember that time, when i called you, wondering when is it coming? when is it coming? i've got to meet payroll. well, that program happened. over 26,000 people were served, and many of them still working today. and so carmen chu, what was head of -- who was head of this economic recovery task force,
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provided a lot of recommendations. and one of those recommendations was to get people back to work, we should look at investing more in the jobsnow program. to support small businesses, we should make it easier for them to get help from this jobsnow program, and that's exactly what we're doing here today, because what we want to make sure is when people reopen, that they are able to hire people, but they're not generating the revenue that they want to generate. so this is another way that we can support our small business community. i remember, i went to a coffee shop in my neighborhood. and i've been going there many, many years, but this was the first time i've met the owner of the coffee shop. he told me that he couldn't afford to bring his employees
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back right away. so that's why programs like jobsnow and making programs like that available, it's all about helping people. we want to get our economic going, we want to get people back to work, we want to support our small businesses. we want to make sure that we come back out of this pandemic more successful and stronger more than ever before, because this is san francisco. this is what we do, and this is one further step towards meeting that goal. i want to thank the san francisco chamber of commerce for their work and their support. i want to thank ucsf for being an incredible partner with the jobs now program, and i really want to express my appreciation to this community, to folks in the richmond, because i know
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that it's been hard, even before the pandemic, that this community sometimes feels neglected and forgotten. and as a native san franciscan, i want to make sure that so many outskirts of our city, that they receive the resources and help that they need to thrive. that is my goal, that is my hope, and that is my desire, and that's why it was important for me to come to this community. we've got a lot of work to do, folks, and that is why we need to do as a city is make sure that we are not creating policies in a bubble. we want to make sure that we understand what the needs are of the folks that have the businesses out here, and that we are able to respond to these needs in a way that makes it easier for you to do business in san francisco but also makes you a success in san francisco. that is my goal. that is why i'm excited about this incredible program. i've worked with this program
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directly, as i said, before, and because of my experience in the jobs now program and getting my check late, i made it clear to trent that we have to do better with not this reimbursement model. we've got to get folks their payroll. so at this time, i want to introduce trent rorrer who's going to talk a little bit about the program, how small businesses can connect to the program, and how quickly they're going to get reimbursed from the program. trent? >> thank you, mayor breed. as mayor breed said, i'm trent
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rhorer, executive director of the city's human services agency. the jobsnow was borne out of president barack obama's jobs program. we immediately in the city seized on the opportunity right after 2009, when it passed, which, in its first year under the stimulus act, placed over 5,000 people in subsidized jobs. this went to unemployed san franciscans, san franciscans on benefits, and impacted hundreds of thousands of san franciscans, businesses big and small, and it was able to make a big impact on the recession. so this time, mayor breed didn't wait to pass a stimulus
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packages to assist residents and the unemployed, and it's a good thing she didn't because we'd still be waiting. in it, she included $7 million to the human services agency to expand jobsnow to serve an additional 3,700 people as well as businesses looking to reopen, to expand, or to simply start a new business. this mayor's investment, as she said, is in line with the city investments programs. so what is jobsnow? it's the subsidized employment program that we at the human services agency operate that matches low-income unemployed or underplayed people with job opportunities in the public sector, the private sector, and
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also the nonprofit. what is subsidized employment? it is a job strategy that uses public dollars, in this case, over $7 million, to reimburse employers for the wages that they pay to workers that are hired through jobs now. the idea behind the program is very simple and straightforward. as businesses are thinking about opening for the first time or reopening or expanding, there's obviously a lot of uncertainty, given the pandemic, and given the local connect rig economy right now. things like what will be the customer base when it reopens? how immediate and how robust will the supply chain be? all of these thinks are what employers are thinking about when they're thinking about rehiring. so it's all about us saying say, let's lessen your risk and allowing you to pay for a large
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risk in your business, which is wages. the other benefit of jobsnow which isn't talked about a lot, but other people who participate in the program will talk about it, is it takes care of businesses' hiring needs. the human services agency does the job announcements, the outreach, resume screening based on the skills of the people that we're working with. rearrange all the incident -- we arrange all the interviews. it allows the employer to get all that work done by us rather than the employers who are thinking about other critical issues related to reopening and expansion and other things. time and time again, in 2009, we heard from employers who said this program is great. but even the best thing, above the wage replacement, is we are meeting their human resources
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needs. they wouldn't have to place a job announcement on craigslist, schedule interviews, and have one person show up. we do everything. so we are offering several tiers of wage reimbursement to meet the specific needs of businesses. i'm not going to go into the different tiers and the levels, but i want to talk more broadly about what our strategy is. we're offering the deepest subsidies to businesses that are trying to reopen and rehire staff that they had to layoff or businesses opening for the first time. for these situations, we're reimbursing 100% of the wages for the first three months and 50% of the wages for the next three months. [applause] >> i'll take that. we're also not excluding existing businesses, of course,
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we'll reimburse businesses $1500 a month for the first six months depending on the wages that they're offering and their ability to offer full time or part-time work. initially, the program is designed to meet san francisco's residents needs who are enrolled in benefit services. but this is going to allow us to open up this to any job seeker in san francisco. if they're unemployed, if they're underemployed -- and generally, someone who's unemployed is low-income. if they're unemployed or underemployed, they're eligible for jobsnow. so we'll be partnering with the office of workforce development, and doing a
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biggobig outreach campaign so that any san franciscan knows they can come to jobsnow, and we'll get them a job. right now, more than 270,000 san franciscans have filed for unemployment. at this time in 2009, about 44,000 san franciscans applied for unemployment. a year ago, the unemployment rate at this time was 1.8%. we're now well over 8%. in addition, the public assistance caseloads have sky rocketed. we're seeing thousands and tens of thousands of people applying for food stamps, and calfresh services to provide for their
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families. even as importantly, if not more importantly, the small business owner to my right, it's a benefit for small businesses and large businesses struggling in san francisco to stay open or who are trying to reopen. all the city's 311 line. they'll connect you or sfhsa.org sla sfhsa.org/jobsnow. i want to thank our partners like the mayor, but also our other partners. office for workforce development, joaquin torres and joshua arce, and then, the cochairs of the city's economic recovery task force, rodney
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fong, the president of the chamber of commerce, as well as assessor carmen chu, for their vision and their leadership in crafting an economic recovery plan that's sure to make a difference for our citizens and our residents. so i'm really happy to introduce one of the cochairs, assessor carmen chu. [applause] >> thank you very much, trent. couldn't be more pleased to be here today, and i want to just start off by sharing my deep appreciation for the mayor's leadership in all of this. i know that many of you are aware that it's through her leadership and her vision that brought together businesses small and large, community leaders, and nonprofits to put forth ideas to assist in recovery. i'm joined by awe teen torres
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from eowd as -- oewd as well as -- joaquin torres from oewd as well as my cochair, rodney san francisco, from the chamber of commerce. through the partnership of our professionals at the department of public health, we've put forward a plan that has been thoughtful and measured, something that has put san francisco apart from the rest of this nation. we're one of the only counties in the state of california to have just recently hit the yellow tier, the least restrictive tier when it comes to the state tiering system. but not only that, we did it in a way that was responsible, in a way that didn't ping pong businesses back and forth to open and close, to open and close.
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these are really hard decisions, tough things to do, but i think that san francisco did it right. this doesn't mean that we don't have a lot to do, that we can let down our guards, but it shows that we can reopen and do it safely. but just because we say that we're opening businesses, that restaurants can open, that movie theaters can reopen, it doesn't mean that businesses can come back. through our conversations with folks in the neighbor, we've heard about how even with reopening, people are really worried about bringing back their memployees. do employees feel safe coming back to work? these are questions that many of our businesses do face. that's why a program like jobsnow and its $7.4 million is so incredibly important. it's a way for small businesses
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to be able to make those choices to bring people back in a responsible way that help them get through this time. if you're a small business, and you're wondering whether you're going to see customers coming in through your doors, you're going to have the ability to hire someone and get those wages reimbursed for the first three months and 50% for the three months afterwards. that's a big deal. i certainly would do that if i was a small business, and i think this jobsnow program creates the stage to get the help that all our businesses need to get in the right space. so again, i couldn't be more pleased as a member of the economic recovery task force, representing my cochairs and all the members of the community to see this investment come back and be made in san francisco. thank you, mayor breed, for your wonderful investment and for your wonderful leadership. [applaus [applause] >> and with that, i am really pleased to announce our next
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speaker, someone who i have come to know, and the owner of this wonderful establishment that we all know and love in the richmond district. adam is going to be coming up to say a few words on behalf of not only the richmond district but the balboa theater. >> hello. i'm adam bergeron of the balboa theat theater. we thought we had used this stimulus money and the p.p.p. and the loan money, but this has just gone on for so long, that even though strategically using it, we just ran out of our p.p.p. money last thursday, so now we're in a position where the rubber is hitting the road. it's time to make some pretty
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big decisions, and it was right at that moment that i was turned on by my friend to the possibility of jobsnow, and it really does seem like this could be a lifeline to get us from now to the end of the pandemic to keep some of the valuable staff that we have on board, right, and be able to bridge that gap until we're in a spot where we feel a little more kment about business, the ability to do business. you know, the theater business is a little unique in that i think we're all a little weary of being in a room with people for hours, and it's something we need to consider if we're allowed to reopen, what's going to be the financial viability of the business, and is it going to be safe? thanks, everybody, mayor breed, and thanks, everybody.
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[applause] >> the hon. london bree >> i want to join ucsf in thanking mayor breed for bringing us together, and putting san francisco back to work by expanding the jobsnow program. ucsf is the second largest employer in san francisco, and for us, ensuring that our workforce reflects the communities that we're in is part of a long-standing commitment and critical to our priorities. the health and science field is a huge job generator in san francisco. at a time when other parts of our economy are struggling to survive and recover from covid-19, ucsf is committed to doing our part in creating a skilled workforce, not just for our employees, but for the communities we serve.
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i served on mayor breed kazz task force, and i, too, want to thank the leadership for rodney fong and carmen chu, and thank you for the work that the economic recovery task force has done in the last few months. briefly, i just want to talk a little bit about our excel program. since 2010, ucsf has worked with the city to create jobs through our excellent community engagement learning or excel. it uses live virtual classroom training and on-the-job experience to prepare san franciscans for administrative jobs in health care. students participate ten weeks of training. next, they're placed in paid, four month clerical and
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administrative internships with ucsf's campus and our medical center. we provide ongoing internship support throughout the duration of the program as well as job placement assistance when our interns graduate. to be eligible, you must be a san francisco resident 18 years or older, with a high school diploma or g.e.d., proficient in english, able to pass a basic office skills assessment, and able to pass a criminal background check, occupational health check, and background health screen. ucsf interns earn $14.25 an hour during their trernship. we have recently increased our cycles per year. since we've started excel, we've graduated 230 interns, and just to let you know a little bit of who our graduates are, half our african american. almost 25% are latinx, and 92%
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are female. ucsf is offering well paying jobs for women of color in san francisco. our next cycle will start training on monday, november 9. i want to acknowledge josh arce and joaquin torres for the projects that we're doing in the construction field. we're working hard to increase our hires at impact in san francisco. thank you for your leadership, mayor breed, and thanks again for the work of the economic recovery task force. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: all right. thank you so much. as was said, ucsf has been an incredible partner, not just in the jobs program, but they have
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been incredible in helping to lead our response to covid, so we truly appreciate ucsf and the work that they continue to do. i want to take this opportunity to also acknowledge joaquin torres, who is right over here. he is the director of the office of economic and workforce development, and if any of you are small business owners, please call him directly for any -- any questions, any assistance. if you want to know what the city is doing or you want to ask some questions, joaquin is absolutely incredible. now if you are looking for a job, josh arce will give you his cell phone number because these are the two tag team folks who are really about making sure that we get to people and provide opportunities in this city. it is so important that we get people back to work, and we do so safely. i want to also just take this opportunity to acknowledge that there have been so many people
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helping in our economic recovery and our response. you know, i was telling adam how now, i feel bad, when i was here watching wonder woman, i got kicked out of the theater with my friends because we were talking. i had to explain, black people, we're talking in the movie theater. we're telling people what to do and whatnot not to do. but any way, i have so many incredible memories of this incredible neighborhood. i'm so lucky to be here with one of the local business owners who owns -- is it blue pottery? blue stone pottery. they don't just sell pottery, but they sell a lot of other items that are cute gift issues, and i want to introduce one of the owners, margel howard, who is here today [applause] >> thank you. thank you, mayor breed, for
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being here. we've got a lot of star power on balboa street today, which is really tlihrilling and amazg for us business owners. several years ago, i cofounded the balboa village merchants association, and our members, like adam bergeron who's done amazing things with the theater and has adapted so well at the movie theater, he's got these amazing bags. at least one of our family members is wearing a balboa theater t-shirt, and there's a cafe right down the street, according to my daughter, they have the best b.l.t. on the strip. you might want to try that out. these have been trying times as business owners. the pandemic, and the shock to
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the economy, it's caused us to be more closely knit. there's so much that we've seen mayor breed do, with the help of oewd and assess or carmen chu. i know we're going to get through this together, and i think how exactly is this going to happen? and then, i hear about this reinvestment in jobsnow, another way to make it easier for small business owners to emerge from this pandemic. galindo, another great place for lunch, stuck in permit purgatory for four years, is now in business. here in the richmond, tens of
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thousands of residents have filed for unemployment, are looking for jobs, where businesses are getting more and more creative in how they share spaces and how they attract business. we have so many good places to go for lunch, but -- i know, it's all good. but i am just so grateful. i know our fellow merchants are so grateful to be gathered here at this anchor of our community, one of our community hubs, to really represent what is going to happen here in the future. so thank you again for being here. it means so much to all of us. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: and i'll just wrap it up by saying it's halloween this weekend in san francisco, so look. i just want you to all remember that we are still in a pandemic, and i know you're
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wondering, well, mayor, what are you going to be for halloween? i'm going to dress up, but i'm going to wear my mask, and i'm going to abide by some of the recommendations of public health. i know that's boring, but at the end of the day, we are doing an incredible job, and we are in a good place. and because we know that many of those businesses depend on our recollection and how we react to remain open, and out of love and respect for our community spaces, we are going to follow the social distancing and all the guidelines that you're tired of me repeating. the balboa, in fact, as a number of activities planned, so you can always buy your ticket in advance. there's going to be music and jazz, and we should look at closing the street. there'll be some great things for us to do here in this
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community and all over san francisco, but i want everyone to just remember, we are in a pandemic, we can still wear our masks with our costumes, even though it may not be the same. we can get creative because that's what we do in san francisco. but we should all definitely make sure we are safe. thank you all so much for joining me for the announcement of these incredible programs. i'm going to one of those restaurants that marjan mentioned. thank you all so much for being here today, and have a wonderful day and a wonderful halloween weekend. [applause]
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bayview. >> a lot discussion how residents in san francisco are displaced how businesses are displaced and there's not as much discussion how many nonprofits are displaced i think a general concern in the arts community is the testimony loss of performance spaces and venues no renderings for establishes when our lease is up you have to deal with what the market bears in terms of of rent. >> nonprofits can't afford to operate here. >> my name is bill henry the executive director of aids passage l lp provides services for people with hispanics and aids and 9 advertising that fight for the clients in housing
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insurance and migration in the last two years we negotiated a lease that saw 0 rent more than doubled. >> my name is ross the executive directors of current pulls for the last 10 years at 9 and mission we were known for the projection of sfwrath with taking art and moving both a experiment art our lease expired our rent went from 5 thousand dollars to $10,000 a most. >> and chad of the arts project pursue. >> the evolution of the orientation the focus on art education between children and patrol officer artist we offer a full range of rhythms and dance and theatre music theatre about in the last few years it is more and more difficult to find space
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for the program that we run. >> i'm the nonprofit manager for the mayor's office of economic workforce development one of the reasons why the mayor has invested in nonprofit displacement is because of the challenge and because nonprofits often commute technical assistance to understand the negotiate for a commercial lease. >> snooechlz is rob the executive director and co-founder of at the crossroads we want to reach the disconnected young people not streets of san francisco for young adults are kicked out of the services our building was sold no 2015 they let us know they'll not renew our lease the last year's the city with the nonprofit displacement litigation program held over 75
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nonprofits financial sanction and technical assistance. >> fortunate the city hesitate set aside funds for businesses facing increased rent we believable to get some relief in the form of a grant that helped us to cover the increase in rent our rent had been around $40,000 a year now $87,000 taylor's dollars a year we got a grant that covered 22 thousands of that but and came to the minnesota street project in two people that development in the better streets plan project they saved us space for a nonprofit organization national anthem and turned out the northern california fund they accepted us into the real estate program to see if we could withstand the
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stress and after the program was in full swinging skinning they brought up the litigation fund and the grants were made we applied for that we received a one thousand dollars granted and that grant allowed us to move in to the space to finish the space as we needed it to furniture is for classes the building opened on schedule on march 18, 2016 and by july we were teaching classed here. >> which we found out we were going to have to leave it was overwhelm didn't know anything about commercial real estate we suggested to a bunch of people to look at the nonprofits displacement mitigation program you have access to commercial real estate either city owned or city leased and a city lease space become available there is
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a $946,000 grant that is provided through the mayor's office of economic workforce development and that's going to go towards boulder the space covers a little bit less than half the cost it is critical. >> the purpose of the organization trust to stabilize the arts in san francisco working with local agency i go like the northern california platoon fund that helped to establish documents of our long track record of stvent and working to find the right partner with the organization of our size and budget the opportunity with the purchase of property we're sitting in the former disposal house theatre that expired 5 to 10 years ago we get to operate under the old lease and not receive a rent increase for the next 5 to 7 years we'll renting $10,000
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square feet for the next 5 to seven years we pay off the balance of the purpose of this and the cost of the renovation. >> the loophole will that is unfortunate fortunate we have buy out a reserve our organization not reduce the services found a way to send some of the reserves to be able to continue the serves we know our clients need them we were able to get relief when was needed the most as we were fortunate to arrive that he location at the time, we did in that regard the city has been - we've had tremendous support from the mayor's office of economic workforce development and apg and helped to roommate the facade of the building and complete the renovation inside of the building without the
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sport support. >> our lease is for 5 years with a 5 year onyx by the city has an 86 year lease that made that clear as long as we're doing the work we've been we should be able to stay there for decades and decades. >> the single most important thing we know that is that meaningful. >> it has been here 5 months and even better than that we could image. >> with the economic development have announced an initiative if ours is a nonprofit or know of a nonprofit looking for more resources they can go to the office of economic workforce development oewd.com slashing nonprofit and found out about the mayors nonprofit
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mitigation program and the sustainability initiative and find their information through technical assistance as much as how to get started with more fundraising or the real estate assistance and they can find my contact and reach out to me through the circles of the city through the >> we continue our celebration, our community celebration here for bubble upper yard. i would like to introduce our executive director from mission housing, and he's joining us via video. thank you so much. >> hello, everyone, i want to say thank you for letting us to share this fantastic day with the community. my name is sam moss, from mission housing development corporation. one of the developers for the balboa park upper yard. we're standing on the future site of 130 low-income family
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units for the community and throughout san francisco. i really want to thank supervisor safai, the board directors of mission housing, the bart board of directors as well. we're also standing on land that will eventually be a brand-new community center and new bart station and plaza. and it's things like these, collaborations like these, that are the most important work that we do in the affordable housing community. it's important to take advantage of sites like this. they don't come up very often. with the construction that is as expensive as it is and the uncertain times right now, i'm honored to personally to be able to say thank you for allowing to us help to deliver this vital community center. most importantly, cuhj and the community for sticking together and working together throughout the last five years to make this a reality. without the tireless work that cuhj has put forth since 2008, i don't believe that we'd be here. it's important for everyone that is watching to realize that the standard for affordable housing development and community organization has been set at the
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balboa park upper yard. this will be the new norm, engaging everyone that will benefit from the property, and not just those that live at the property, it's at the heart of mission housing's mission and i'm honored to stand here today and to say how awesome it's going to be. and, finally, i want to thank the mission housing deputy executive director. i know it looks like i run the company but without marcia, mission housing would not be where we are today. thank you, marcia. and i'm honored to welcome mayor london breed. >> thank you so much, sam. i'm mayor london breed. i'm so excited to be here with all of you today for the balboa park upper yard groundbreaking. now this is really a groundbreaking project for the lake view o.m.i. community. it's one of the second 100% affordable housing projects in the lake view community. and that has no small part to do
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with the people of this community who have fought for years and years for their fair share of not just housing, but 100% affordable housing. 131 units. right here at balboa park. and let me just talk a little bit about how amazing this project is. not only will there be an on-site child care, there will also be wrap around services for families. and what's so amazing about this project is that we will be using neighborhood preference. so the people of this community get the right for the units built in their community. it's time to change how we provide affordable housing in communities. it can't just be that we build this housing and then no one who grew up and was born and raise in regard this community has access. we have so many incredible leaders who are going to be working with us to make sure that the people of this community apply for the affordable housing and that they get in.
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it's going to be up to you. but let me also tell you about some of the great amenities of this project because this is how housing should be built. very close to transit corridors. and we're lucky to have a bart -- a partner in the sfmta, so i want to thank sfmta and i want to thank bart and thank all of our transit agencies for the work they have not only done to work so we could use this property for 100% affordable housing, but the work that's going to be provided around reimagining what this plaza looks like. there will be additional bart trains. there will be traditional resources. $30 million from the state invested in this project. which is just one of the many things that we know that we need to do as a city to make sure that we are building more housing along transit corridors. it's not only efficient for the people who rely on public transportation every single day
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but it's good for the environment also. and let me just take an opportunity to really thank mission housing and sam moss for the work they've done on this project. i want to thank bill white and related for what they have done and our sfmta department for working with us to transition this property for affordable housing. and i want to thank bart for their partnership. i want to thank our mayor's office of housing and the work that they have done. it really does take a village. these projects are so expensive. because it's not just about building housing, it's about building the infrastructure to maintain this housing for generations to come. it's about redoing the plazas and making it work. it's about the fact that there will be families moving into this particular development and we want to make sure that children have a safe place to play. so so many incredible things. such an amazing project. and let me also just give credit to where credit is due -- where
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credit is due. the leader of this community, supervisor safai, when he first stepped on the board of supervisors, he said that it is really unfortunate that no affordable housing has even been built in this community. and he wanted to change that. we are breaking ground on the second affordable housing development in district 11 since he's been in office and that's an absolute amazing accomplishment. we are so grateful for his leadership, his partnership, and the work that he has done, not only to provide affordable housing but the job center, the library, and the parks, everything that matters to people and families who actually live here. because of this supervisor, the lakeview community is no longer the forgotten community of san francisco. so, ladies and gentlemen, i would like to introduce supervisor safai.
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[applause] >> thank you, madam mayor. this is an historic day and we're really excited to be here. i want to start off by saying that rather than keeping this site and just as an empty parking lot or used as parking, we went -- she doesn't like when i say this -- but we marched into the mayor's office but we marched slowly and we said what can we do creatively on this site while we're waiting for affordable housing to be built. and we came up with a plan for safe parking. there are individuals in this city that are unhoused and that are living in their vehicles and she did not even hesitate. she supported us, myself and the supervisor brown at the time and we were able to create something that has never been done in san francisco. and that's safe parking for
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those that are unhoused, living in their vehicles. we're coming up on about a one-year anniversary of that work and it has been extremely successful. so i want to thank the mayor for supporting us and believing us and allowing us to do something positive with this site while we waited for the housing to get built. another thing that the mayor did when she was on the board of supervisors that i don't want to -- i want to underscore, is neighborhood preference. neighborhood preference says that if you live within proximity, if you live within the radius of this site, you will have first crack at getting into these apartments. that is something that had never been done in san francisco before, and that is extremely important to the lakeview community. about 20, 30 years ago this community was over 50% african american.
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today it's down to less than 20%. but the children and the families of those families that have grown here and been raised here and prospered here are still connected to this community. they will have the ability if they live in these homes and their families and other neighbors will have the ability to apply for these. and i want to give a special recognition to miss gwen brown who runs our job opportunity center, she's also going to be working on our employment opportunities for this site. she'll be someone that we work with at mission housing and the mayor's office works with to ensure that we do the outreach in this community so people apply. that's a very important thing. another thing again to thank the mayor, this project would have not been at the top of the pile. we came in and we made the argument that this district has never seen any family affordable housing built on any scale. mayor breed put us at the top. she listened to us and she heard the community and she heard our
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voices and filled that gap, an additional $20 million to $30 million, first out of the eraf funds and now out of the prop-a affordable housing bond fund. that is what closed the gap for this project and we're here celebrating today, a major grant, a transportation grant, that was awarded to this site. another $20 million. this site is special. this site is important for this community. and we would not have been able to be celebrating this without mayor breed and her leadership and support. so thank you, mayor breed. [applause] mission housing related have been wonderful partners. i don't know how many times i had to pick up the phone and call bill witty and work through problems to make sure that this project is going to stay on track, that it's going to be built, that it will be family. and then let me make one last point before i end. another thing that the mayor and i worked on together when she was board president and along
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with supervisor jane kim, along with supervisor aaron peskin, we updated the conversation about what is affordable. and affordable for whom. so many times in this city people are talking about housing and affordable housing just for extremely low-income families. and you know what, we do a pretty good job of that in san francisco. and we need to do more. but what we haven't done, and what this community has always been has been a community of working people, a community of working families. i'm talking about non-profit workers and i'm talking about teachers and i'm talking about muni drivers and educators and i'm talking about people that get up and to make this city run every day. and because of the work that we did, we have been able to expand the definition of affordable. we have been able to ensure that working families will also be included in this conversation. so that when a janitor applies or when a non-profit worker
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applies, they will also be able to qualify for this housing. now that's not at the exclusion of low-income families, because what we did -- we expanded the pie. instead of having 80 to 100 units we went up to 130, and we did that with a community process. so i'm very proud of the results here today. i'm very happy to be here. i want to thank again related mission housing, mayor breed, the mayor's office of housing and marion harris from the district 11 council, thank you for being here. phylicia thibedeau from one of the institutions in lakeview o.m.i. and i see the folks from community, united for health and justice. i want to recognize all of the community work that went into making this possible. this is years in the making. this is something that will be special and lasting and thank you very much, everyone. [applause]
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>> oh, sorry, and, yes, our other partner that is very important because we're sitting on their land is bart. bartd has been a partner -- bart has been a partner in helping us to solve the pusonl the puzzle n reimagining this plaza here. and sfmta was also a part of that, but i would like to bring up miss alicia trouse from bart. thank you. >> hello, welcome. i'm alicia trouse, i'm the bart communications officer, and welcome to our bart station. i love this station. i love how easy you can jump off a train and get on a muni bus. it's a great partnership. and our business is moving people, right, but it's also gaining lifetime riders. you do that by building housing right across the street from your station. i want to briefly talk about something that we're very
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concerned about at bart. it's the mobility divide. you've heard of the digital divide, right? well, there's a mobility divide. and it's perpetuating inequality and the way that you tackle is to build 100% affordable housing right next to transit, right next to bart and right next to muni and you make it easy to go to your job and health care appointment and school by doing that. and this partnership is going to tackle that divide. and next i toss it to our bart board of director bevin duffy, who represents district 9, so let's roll the tape. >> i'm proud to join you this morning virtually on behalf of the bart board of directors and my colleagues simon and director jantzidirectjanice lee. we are proud to be here to recognize the community leaders that i have known for so many years here in san francisco who had a vision for what could be
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done and that we could take this site and develop homes for families that need them and to create a vibrant meeting place that brings the community together and also to recognize the importance of transit oriented development. what we're trying to do at bart around the bay area, which is to build complete communities that have housing and retail and sometimes commercial and great bike and pedestrian access and public meeting and gathering places. and so i really want to congratulate the mayor's office of housing and community development and also mission housing development corporation. and related companies. and sfmta and our transit partner. and so many great things will come as a result of this that we'll have better seamless transit access and that individuals, including bart at balboa park, you will find a great community space where we may have farmers' markets and
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other things that really bring our community together. i really want to say that we are extremely grateful to the community and i also want to add to mayor london breed, supervisor safai, supervisor avalos, and the previous supervisor for this district, and really just to say that -- that the city has really come together to create an amazing t.o.d. project. thithis is an important milestoe and we're gratified to be part of it and to show the bay area that we can develop much-needed housing and help to have a more complete community. >> thanks. now i'd like to introduce bill witty, the chairman and c.e.o. of related california, one of the largest developers of affordable housing based here in this great city of san francisco. everyone, please welcome bill
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witty. [applause] >> thank you, alicia. you know, as the mayor and supervisor safai said, i have been working both in government and in the private sector in san francisco since the early 1980s. this is the first time -- the first year that i can remember a big push for affordable housing in this neighborhood, which has long been needed. and i think that what's really made this happen -- you have already heard is that we've gotten to work along with mission housing with two of the most effective advocates for affordable housing, not only in this city but in california. with mayor breed, if you mention affordable housing and are about to ask for something, she will typically say yes. now the answer is yes. now what's the question? you can't do any better than that. and supervisor safai who has become a friend and colleague
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over these years, working on this project, and every month i know that i'm going to get a call from him saying, what's going on. what can we do? oh, we have this technical problem. let's figure out a way to solve it. oh, we have to lobby the state to get funding, what can i do to help. he's really helped, along with our partners at mission housing, in bringing the community into this so that this is not just about bricks and mortar. this is about holistic housing, you know, and you've heard all of the components of that in working with the community. i would also like to thank our staff and silver berg and nick wilder here today for all of the technical work needed to work with our partners at bart to make this technically feasible. this is a very challenging site. we have to deal with bart's legitimate questions. we have to deal with issues of inaggress and egress to have the
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services and the site work and the child care, all on a very complicated site. we have a great architect in methune partners and a great partner in cayhill contractors and it's all come together to make it happen. and i would like also to acknowledge the mayor's office of housing who on behalf of the city has worked with us throughout to make sure that all of the funding works together and that as supervisor safai said to close the gap to make the financing feasible. so i look forward to the day when we open this development. in a few years from now we will welcome the residents of lakeview and others for whom this housing was intended. so thank you very much. and now i will bring back marcia
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contrares of mission housing. >> thank you, mr. witty, thank you for joining us and thank you for your kind words. i would like now to introduce jesse fernandez, the program manager with communities united for health and justice. jesse? >> buenos dias, good morning. i'm jesse fernandez, i'm with communities united for health and justice, we're a multi-reliant program across the district. we are celebrating affordable housing, community serving here at balboa park upper yard station. this project represents the very best in collaboration between the community and the decisionmakers. and i want to invoke all of the community planners who for 10 years have rolled up their sleeves and time and again made the case to make this project
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possible and have done so guided by a heartfelt community-led process. our success at the balboa park upper yard should set an example for people-focused planning for our ever changing city, to always keep people at the forefront of decision-making. i would like to acknowledge the hard work of our former supervisor john avalos for working with the community and advocating for necessary resources that are long overdue across our district. thank you very much. >> thank you, jesse. well, we are at the end of our community celebrations. thank you to all of the partners that joined us today and to everybody that joined us virtually. thank you to cuhj, for [speaking spanish] the ymca of san francisco, mayor london breed and supervisor
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safai, and all of the representatives from bart and their team for their support while coordinating this event. and, of course, our development partner, mr. bill witty from related company for their understanding and being able to work with us and identify the needs of this community and the families of district 11. we also want to thank our team at mission housing for reaching this milestone and a special thanks to our board of directors for always supporting us. last but not least i would like to send a special thank you to our senior communications manager for working on all of the logistics and to make sure that this event was a successful and safe one for everyone who participated. thank you again for joining us and until the next one. (♪)
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>> the time is 5:00 p.m. the ringing of cell phones, pagers, and similar devices can still have been virtually and is still prohibited. please turn your devices off. due to the covid-19 health emergency and to protect commissioners, staff and members of the public," commission on the environment's meeting room is closed. however, commissioners and department staff will be participating in the meeting remotely. this precaution is taken pursuant of the statewide stay at home order and all proceeding and preceding orders, declarations and directives. commissioners will attend the meeting during videoconference or by telephone if the meeting fails and participate into the meeting to the same extent as
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