thank you. this morning, our office filed a lawsuit with the superior court against the san francisco board of education and the san francisco unified school district for its failure to formulate a plan designed to get the 54,000 students in the san francisco unified school district back to in-class learning as quickly as possible. more specifically, the

california education code requires school districts across the state to adopt a learning continuity and attendance plan, lcap, describing the actions school districts will offer to take classroom-based instructions whenever possible. particularly for pupils who experienced significant learning loss due to school closures in the 2019-2020 school year. or are at greater risk of experiencing learning loss due to future school closures. the requirements under state law are detailed and specific. unfortunately, the plan prepared by the san francisco unified school district and adopted by the board of education is ambiguous empty rhetoric. it's a plan to make a plan. it's legally insufficient. the city is suing for a single cause of action at this point,

violation of duty, when government officials fail to perform their official duties. the city is seeking a court among that among other things, requires san francisco school district to fulfill under state law to "prepare to offer in-person instruction" now that it's possible to do so safely. we're asking the court to order the school board and school district to put in place a plan -- a viable plan to reopen safely. if that plan is followed, schools will reopen. san francisco schools have generally been allowed to reopen since september 2020. the san francisco department of public health, the california department of public health and u.s. center for disease and prevention all say schools can reopen safely. in san francisco, the overwhelming majority of private and parochial schools have done so. over the past several months,

113 private and parochial schools in san francisco have reopened and remain open. almost 16,000 students have returned to in-person schools. and less than five cases of in-class transmission have been reported. in [indiscernible] county 90% of schools resumed in-person instruction, including public schools which began opening classrooms last fall. there have been only nine cases of suspected in-class transmission there. various public schools opened in san mateo, santa clara and napa counties and the results were similar. undisputed scientific consensus is schools can reopen safely for teachers, staff and students with proper precaution. and that in-person instruction is not causing spikes in covid infections. but as of the date of this complaint, not a single san

francisco public school student has set foot in their classroom in 327 days. disturbingly, the school district and the board of education seem to have no plan for how or when in-person instruction will begin for any of its students. other than falsely proclaiming schools cannot be reopened safely and telling families that it is unlikely we'll be able to offer most middle and high school students the opportunity for in-person learning this school year, the district and the board have provided virtually no current information to the city or to the public. the leadership for both the school district and the educators union can't seem to get their act together. the board of education and the school district have had more than 10 months to roll out a concrete plan to get kids back in school. unfortunately, so farther's earning an "f". having a plan to make a plan, doesn't cut it, and is no plan

at all. the district's own data show the achievement gap is widening under san francisco school district's distant learning approach. black, latino and other students of color in san francisco, as well as those from low-income families, have lost significant academic ground compared with wealthier and white students during the pandemic. while research is increasingly showing that the mental and emotional health of many students is at greater risk during the pandemic as they struggle with distance learning, san francisco officials, children, and families do not know what steps have been taken, what remains to be done, or how they can help. this is not just shameful; it's also unlawful. it's regrettable we've had to take this decision that we filed today. suing the school district is not something we ever wanted to do. but something needs to change. the status quo is failing our

children. and we hope that this will move the district to do the right thing. i know that there are countless teachers doing heroic work to educate their students in these unprecedented times. ; to them, we say thank you. day after day, they're fighting the impossible battle against the tide of isolation and distance learning. we couldn't be more grate he have for their service and sacrifices they've made to educate our kids during this very difficult time. we want them to be able to return safely to the classroom. it is up to the district, the board of education, and their leadership to agree on a plan to do so. more than 54,000 san francisco school chirp are suffering. they are being turned into zombies by online schooling. enough is enough. getting kids back in school needs to be the only priority of school district leadership. and with that, i'd like to

introduce marilyn -- mayor breed who is supportive of the lawsuit. >> thank you to our city attorney herrera working with us to find a solution we know is not easy. i know, but i appreciate you are really stepping up to help meet what we know is an incredible, incredibly challenging time facing our city. nothing matters more than getting our kids back in school. as a city, we don't have control over this decision, which is really frustrating. but we've offered support and help for months. we've helped inspect schools and classrooms to get them ready. we work with the district to set up the testing necessary to monitor the virus when our educators he and students return. we've given $15 million to

support our schools. above what we already do through our normal budget process. and look, i know some of our educators have concerns. i understand those concerns. and i believe we should listen to them and work to address them. and i do support our teachers. in fact, i led a ballot measure last fall to support pay increases for teachers with the -- which the voters of this city supported overwhelmingly. the legitimate concern of our teachers cannot stand in the way of getting kids back in the classroom. when i was in the community the other day, i had a teacher approach me who said i want to go back into the classroom. what are we going to do? i believe we can do this safely. as we've seen in private schools and community hubs that we've been -- they've been open for months. as we've seen in other districts across the bay area and the state, that our city attorney

just talked about, our kids are suffering. the inequalities that existed before the pandemic have become more clear. the data is clear. students have lost ground in academic achievement. and that is a problem. health experts say that issues relating to mental health such as depression and eating disorders are on the rise. almost 1,000 of the school district's 53,000 students have missed over 60% of their classes. 70% of those students are from low-income families. and 3/4 of them are from black and latino families. the school district is failing to meet this most basic responsibility. and for all of the talk i hear from the board of education about equity, the data speaks for itself.

i'm hearing every day from parents, who are concerned that their kids are falling behind. mostly single parents. i'm hearing from parents who have had to leave their jobs to stay home and facilitate distance learning. and we know when this happens, it's almost always women, who bear the brunt of this responsibility. families right now aren't able to plan for their future. they can't decide whether to accept a job offer, because they don't know when they're going to be able to once again have their kids return to the classroom. i know that this is a drastic step. but i feel we're out of options at this point. the department of public health. the leading force around this pandemic, the department of public health that has been the most conservative putting out health orders, they issued guidance to this school district

will safety precautions needed to open schools last september. it's been five months since then. and there's not even an agreement or a plan in place to start reopening. in fact, there were a number of agreements put into place, and then, they changed. during that time, the school board has alienated parents and made national news for renaming 44 of our schools, all while there wasn't a plan to reopen those very same schools? all while even the children who are a part of these schools have not necessarily been able to participate in the discussion, which could be an incredible learning opportunity. look, i'm committed to working with the school district and the school board. we've been providing support for months. we've been prioritizing the schools and rolling up our sleeves in the city and doing everything we can. we're still here, ready to help. and while i don't control the

schools, i am the elected leader of this city, and i'm not going to stand by while our students and families continue to suffer with no end in sight. it's not acceptable to tell parents, who are already under unbelievable stress, and are seeing with their own eyes how their children are falling behind. that distance learn something not good enough. this is offensive. and completely unacceptable. this is san francisco. we have been a national leader in our response to covid. let's be a national leader in getting our kids back to school. i'm a proud graduate of san francisco's public schools. the only reason why i was able to grow up in public housing in a very challenging environment, in poverty, in this city, and go onto become mayor, was because of our public schools. but if i were in school today, i

would likely have been one of those very same students who today are falling behind because of distance learning. in fact, my niece and nephew are two of those san francisco students. so yes, i'm here as a mayor, but i'm also here as an aunt who is concerned about her family. every day we wait is another day we let our students fall behind. this is not the route i would have chosen five months ago. i'm not sure that -- this is not the route i would have chosen five months ago, but i don't see any other option. we're ready to help. but the school district needs a plan to reopen, and they need it now. our students and our families deserve nothing less. so once again, i want to thank our city attorney herrera and his team at the city attorney's office. i know in their hearts, all they want to do is see our schools reopen. people of san francisco want to

see our schools reopen. and i'm hopeful that we are one step closer to getting there today. let's not continue to let our children suffer in this city. thank you. >> thank you mayor breed, and thank you city attorney herrera. we will be taking a select number of comments from reporters. so if you do have any questions, please send them to myself, the host. and we will try and get in as many as we can. for mayor breed, we have a question from jim carlson. can the mayor speak more on the remaining controversy and why this is quote-unquote "the wrong

time"? >> mayor breed: i am sorry. i don't understand the question. >> jim, can you narrow that down a little bit. >> mayor breed: what media outlet? >> sorry. jim, can you cite your media outlet as well, thank you. for city attorney herrera from "the examiner", there are a few questions. i'll start with one. did the city offer to meet before filing suit? and if so, did they refuse so? >> let me put it this way: if the question did i, the city's attorney office, meet with the school district, the answer is no. but in terms of the city itself as an entity, going back for the

entirety of the time the school has been closed, there were numerous conversations between the city as an entity and the school district about how we could be of assistance in terms of giving them the resources they need to ensure that schools could reopen as safely as possible from discussions of testing, money, of other availability of resources. that's something that the city as an entity and my client's departments and the mayor's office has had numerous conversations, continual conversations. members of the board of supervisors with the district over the past several months. with respect with me filing this lawsuit, did i have a meeting and discussion with them? no. quite frankly, i didn't think it was worthwhile considering the lack of progress that has been made over the last several months, despite all of the

continual discussions that were happening with the city and the school district. >> thank you, city attorney herrera. the second part of the question is why isn't testing help offered, considering it's a major barrier, as school officials have said. maybe mayor breed can answer. >> i don't agree with the supposition of the question. i think there have been numerous conversations from the department of public health and other places in the city to say that they would be at assistance and try to be at assistance to try to deal with testing issues. i think that's been something that's been discussed quite often over the course of the last several months. >> mayor breed: in fact, we worked with the school district and had a plan to implement testing capacity to support the

request of the teachers' union, and unfortunately things changed after that. >> thank you, both. this comes from kathie novak. for city attorney herrera, what could happen in practical terms if the court rules the schools should reopen but the teachers refuse to return or strike? >> >> attorney herrera: i'm hopeful with the policy issues you've seen across the state. this is legal, and based on a failure of the school district to do what is required under the law. so we are not seeking a court order requiring schools to reopen exactly. we're asking the court to order the unified school district to prepare to offer in-person

instruction, file the appropriate plan to show they're ready to do so. and that is going to require that -- and hopefully provide a platform for the district and the board and the union to hammer out an agreement to get this done. so schools can reopen as quickly as possible according to the plans that the court will likely require -- the detail and specific plan the court will likely require the school district to file. so i think this is providing a platform and vehicle for everybody to come to the table and hammer out an agreement that will result in kids getting back to school as quickly as possible. >> thank you, can city attorney herrera. we've got another question from ktvu. if the district board and teachers' union comes up with a plan, would the city drop the

lawsuit? >> attorney herrera: i'm not going to speculate on what i would do or not do based on an agreement that hasn't occurred. we're going into court. i'm seeking a preliminary injunction next week. if that forces folks at the district and at the teachers' union to come to some kind of agreement, great. if that's embodied in the documents that we're asking the court to require the district to come up with, fabulous. but i want to see the details, concrete results, and then, i'll make my decision about where this lawsuit goes or doesn't go based on the circumstances at the time. >> thanks very much. we're waiting for just a few more questions to come in. for mayor breed, this comes from

kpix. for the schools closed in march 2020, how many times did you meet with superintendent matthews to discuss reopening and what city officials could do? how many times have you met with uess since schools closed? >> mayor breed: i meet with superintendent matthew quite frequently. we have a regular meeting on a monthly basis. we've had to increase the number of conversations we've had to focus on our reopening efforts. and -- what was the second part of the question? >> sure. the second part of the question is: how many times have you met with uess since schools closed? >> mayor breed: so i've talked individually to members of uesf on numerous occasions. i don't know the exact number of times i've met with either. but they've been over the course of the past year, there have been a few times.

thanks very much. sorry. just to clarify, you know, how many times have you met with superintendent matthews? and have you discussed reopening with him and what city officials could do to help? >> who is that question for? >> for mayor breed from kpix. >> okay. >> mayor breed: look, i can get back to you on the exact number of times. but i have a standing monthly meeting with the superintendent. and there have been increased in the number of meetings that i've had with him around the reopening efforts. so i don't know the specifics of how many times. but we definitely have a open

relationship. we constantly communicate with one another. we're definitely trying to work together. i know he's working very hard to get the elected board of directors for the school district on board with number of plans and initiatives. and this is what we discuss on a regular basis. so the specifics of the number of times, i do not know off the top of my head. >> thank you. and just a follow-up. we're going to take two more questions. this is from ken troth. what else will be done in the next couple of weeks by city officials such as yourself? you mentioned testing and money for schools. can we elaborate on that. >> that was for mayor breed,

correct? >> mayor breed: what else? >> what else could be done in the next couple of weeks by city officials? you mentioned testing, offering money to inspect schools. >> mayor breed: that as far as i'm concerned, we don't know what else we could do. president that's what the problem is. we've tried to meet every request that has been made. and there was actually just to clarify, an agreement for testing. and so we have provided the resources, the systems, the support. and we just need the school board and the superintendent to move in this direction. and so we're here. we're here to work with them. we're here to continue to provide whatever resources that are available to support them. but it doesn't -- we're not sure what else we could do to move this forward. and i think that's really why

we're here today, because now it's time for us to start using whatever tools we have, whether it's a lawsuit or legislation or what have you to address this issue. and sadly, you know, take matters into our own hands. >> thank you, mayor breed. one more. we're just sorting through. we've gotten quite a few. that's all we have time for today. i really appreciate everyone coming. and their interest in this issue. thank you to mayor breed for her time. and thank you of course to the city attorney herrera for speaking today. if you would like more additional information on the lawsuit filed today or anymore of city attorney herrera's comments visit www.sfcityattorney.org for our full press release.

commission. i do that because it's a two-day meeting. can you call the roll? >> secretary: yes, director borden? >> chair borden: here. >> director brinkman: present. >> vice chair eaken: here. >> director heminger: here. >> director hinze: present. >> director lai: present. >> commissioner yekutiel: present. >> secretary: and you do have a quorum. item 3 is the announcement of prohibition of sound producing devices during the meeting which we will not have because we're not in room 400. item 4, communications. >> chair borden: this is a side point. i saw that m.t.c. has a cool

video that has all the information and i don't know how high tech or the lack there of we are, they have that scroll at their meetings. i will read this. this is disclosure. due to the covid-19 health emergency this meeting is held virtually and members of the staff and the public are participating via teleconference. this will answer sure the safety of the public, the s.f. board of directors, sfmta staff. in the notice for the meeting, we ask the public to participate remotely. if your comments are received in advance of the meeting, particularly before today, we appreciate the comments. we thank you for honoring our request. you can still write the board at any time, day of night, or call us to leave a voice mail.

this technology enables us to hold the meetings via teleconference. it is not aligned with what you're looking at on tv. there is a little bit of a delay. sometimes the phone line goes down. but the bottom line, we will stop the meeting and try to regain where we are and we ask you to be patient as we're using more than one system. the phone line is quite different than the web system which is in it doesn't seem to always align. i want to thank the people on the call that make this possible. we have people working the phone line and sfgovtv and others. i want to thank everyone on the team who has been doing this -- gosh, we're nearly a year in. -- and for those of you watching live stream, there is a time lag between the actual meeting and what members of the public are

seeing on sfgovtv. if you are watching via sfgovtv and you wish to comment, please call the phone line when the item is called. for members of the public who wish to make -- [indiscernible] -- we ask that you are in a quiet location, turn off radio, tv, or if you're live streaming the meeting, you mute the sound. when prompted, dial 1-0 to be added to the speaker line. the auto prompt will indicate callers are entering the question and answer time. this is the public comment time. when prompted they'll have the two minutes to provide comment. i'm aware that some members of the public may join the meeting

late and may have not have heard the information. item 5 is the citizens advisory council report. welcome, please give us your c.a.c. report. >> good afternoon, directors. i appreciate having the chance to speak before you today at your board workshop. i like the format of the board workshops because i think it's very important to have grounded conversations about the big picture of the agency and the state of transportation in general in san francisco. so even more important this year than in years past. i hope that the format allows for a good productive conversation. before i get into my comments, i did want to share the bad news in case everyone has not heard it. the groundhog has seen his

shadow, which is exactly what we didn't need to 2021, but like everything else, we'll get through it together. car ownership is up and so is the frustration that comes with owning a car in san francisco. since we're not building any more car oriented infrastructure these days, parking and mode sharing is only going to increase if the trend of car ownership continues and transit service is not there. san francisco will be vaccinated and covid-19 will be behind us and we want to see an improved transit system when that happens. to get there, we need funding. and the c.a.c.'s administration committee met recently to discuss ways of securing funding and to establish priorities for spending. we'll be finalizing our

recommendations at the next meeting of the c.a.c. in two days, but to give you a heads-up before that, the administration committee ideas are restoring historical vehicle service, deferring maintenance, pursuing parking revenue and requesting funding from the federal government. with that, i look forward to presenting our forth coming recommendations at the next regular board meeting. i hope that you all have a productive board shop today and tomorrow. >> chair borden: thank you for your comments and leadership. board members, do you have any questions before i open up to public comment? seeing none, we'll open up to public comment. moderator, are there callers on the line? >> you have zero questions remaining. >> chair borden: with that, we'll close public comment. there is not someone who disappeared, right? i just saw a phone number pop up. we'll close public comment.

we can move on to the next item. >> secretary: item 6 is the presentation and discussion regarding the financial responsibilities of the sfmta. >> chair borden: beautiful. i know that director tumlin will introduce our first key note speaker. so i turn it over to the director. >> thank you, chair borden. so point of order question, are we going straight to ben, or am i introducing the larger workshop event right now? >> chair borden: in my notes, i have you introducing the day, the purpose and then introducing ben. >> good. good afternoon, happy black history month and congratulations to new secretary of transportation buttigieg.

as you know, and several of you are seeing for the first time, every winter we pause from our regular board experience of approving budget items and making decisions about legislating streets. in order to look at the big picture. this is a time to refocus on our values and user values in order to establish a direction for the agency. as all of you know, despite the fact that we have been successful in getting federal relief funding, these remain the worst financial times that this agency has ever experienced, including the great depression. and in addition to that, we're having to contend with a whole set of other related issues that are consuming staff time. this workshop is about helping us make hard choices. we want guidance on what are the critical things we need to do. one of the things, given our

resource constraints, we need to stop doing, delay doing or de-fund. this is also an opportunity for all of you, you're sitting together as a new board for the first time to go over all of the agency priorities and give us some direction as our leadership team. so we start this work with reminding you all about agency values. one of the things that we're going to introduce at the end of day 1, and focus on day 2, is how to relate our values to the difficult choices we have to make. we use values for prioritization and decision-making. here in san francisco, there is nearly infinite demand. and we have very limited and rapidly shrinking resources. so we use values to make the hard calls.

as you saw in the workshop last month, one of the things we've tried to do is synthesize all of the policy language for the last 40 years. everything from the transit-first policy has that been upheld by the voters three times to adopted policy language that you all and your predecessors have adopted. we instill that language in 10 key value statements for decision-making. in the budget decision-making exercise we'll be doing at the end of the day today, we score every single potential project that we're looking at according to how well those projects uphold our core values. let me remind of what they are. they're in no particular order. one of the questions we're asking you later today is how much should we weight each of those values against each other

so that we can make the best tradeoff decisions? so, of course, we value equity and correcting for the way our industry has stripped power and privilege and wealth away from people of color. we value community and the way that the transportation system not only provides functionality, but strengthens the social and cultural fabric of the city. we value transparency. making sure that we have clear communications with the public, that we reveal all of our data. and that we use that transparency and clarity for developing trust so that the voters will vote to tax themselves in order to invest in mobility. we value inclusivity, particularly in communities that have experienced disinvestment in the past. we need to hear from them to make wise decisions about

allocating our resources. we value delivery and the efficiency and effectiveness of how we spend public money on implementing the public good. we value safety, making sure that the streets and all forms of mobility are free from injury and harm. we value livability. making our neighborhoods delightful, but also reduce pollution. we are the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions and so we value climate action and implementing projects to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector. we value resiliency, particularly now since there is so much uncertain and the transit system needs to be prepared for change. and finally, we value our fundamental role in supporting the larger economy of san francisco particularly for small

businesses and people with the fewest mobility choices. so we'll talk more about the values later once we start getting into the choice exercises, but i wanted to refresh your memory about these values before we really get started. so, our current focus is, frankly, on survival. the federal funding we've been able to receive has allowed us to forestall layoffs for about another six months. we are completely dependent upon additional outside funding just to keep moving at the greatly diminished service levels that we're facing today. without substantial additional outside funding, we cannot even begin the conversation about recovery. and frankly, we're years if not decades away from a complete

recovery of our services. in the meantime, our priorities are continuing to carry essential workers so they can get to work supporting the city and county of san francisco's larger economic recovery. and building support and community trust so we can meet our longer term financial sustainability needs. the good news in all of this, sfmta has a history of collecting a lot of data about how we're doing. and both auditing ourselves and receiving audits from outside organizations about what we can do better. we know what it is going to take in order to not just recover, but to deliver the transportation system that san franciscans need. we know how to deliver in part because we've learned from our failures. during the past year, through covid, we have become

extraordinarily more efficient and we're looking forward to carrying these more efficient practices together into the future, but we also know that one of the things that has helped to make us more efficient is the emergency orders removed a lot of pointless bureaucracy that held us back. will we be able to legislate changes to allow us to continue the sort of efficiencies we've had during covid? we know another factor that made us more efficient, our entire agency is working ridiculously long hours. i cannot expect my staff to continue working 60-80 hour weeks every week for weeks on end. our staff -- and particularly our leadership team -- are getting burnt out and we need to make sure our people are taken care of. we also know what is needed to get us through these challenges. our biggest challenge, obviously, is financial sustainability. as i've spoken to you about

endlessly, our expenditures rise with cost of living. our expenses are driven overwhelmingly by labor and we must pay labor a living wage. so our expenses rise with the cost of labor, but our revenues rise at best with inflation and most of our revenue sources are in decline, like our parking revenue, which is being wiped out by über and lyft. so even last year, the peak of a boom economic cycle, the sfmta had a large and widening structural deficit. that deficit has only grown with covid and we're now trapped in a classic transit death spiral that we have no means of digging ourselves out of without substantial outside support and new sustained revenues that rise each year with costs. we also know we have a lot of internal work that still needs

to be done. we've spent a lot of time in the last year planning for the internal work, looking at succession planning, looking at workplace cultural issues. making plans to invest in our staff, that includes very importantly, but isn't constrained by, our racial equity action plan. so we've got the plans in place, but we're only beginning the work of implementing those plans in order to create a corporate culture that makes all of our employees feel welcome and supported because we need all of our employees to feel welcome and supported and like they all have a career path in order to keep them here and in order to get the most productivity out of our people. everything that we're doing as an agency starts with a welcoming productive engaged agency culture. the other thing, of course, we

have to do is continue to be a model civic institution. to learn from our success es that julie and tom will be talking about and capitalize upon what we've learned about effective project delivery over the next couple of years. we've learned from our failures, but we've also begun to capitalize upon the success of projects like our geary project or our subway task force that have had extraordinary success in the last several months. let me go over the next couple of days briefly. next up after me, you'll hear from the controller's office to give a backdrop of the city's economic conditions which are not great. my team will start with the agency strengths that we've learned about over the last year. and then have an honest assessment of the major challenges that we're facing over the next couple of years.

tomorrow then we will focus on our financial reality, engage tough conversation with all of you about how do we take our values, our fiscal reality and our priorities in order to make the difficult tradeoff decisions that are going to be necessary? what do we fund? and more importantly, what do we not fund or what do we delay? because we cannot do everything that is needed in order to fulfill our transportation vision quite yet. so over the next two days, we're expecting lots of questions from all of you. feel free to interrupt. i will try to keep staff on time so we can have lots of q&a and discussion with you. we need your guidance about whether we're headed in the right direction or whether we need a course correction. we particularly need your advice about the difficult tradeoff decisions we're going to be facing in the next two years. we need your advice about what

we must prioritize and what we can de-prioritize. we also need your help in honing how we define success so that we can measure our work and make course corrections as we go along because we know the next two years are filled with uncertainty. so, in addition to all those asks, i'm also asking for help from all of you to work harder in the next two days to help understand and internalize the agency's vision and values. and to use your voices for the agency's work in the san francisco communities. we know that there are a lot of stories that are being told about sfmta based on old information of muni of many years ago. we're not an inefficient organization. we're not lazy. our workers are dedicated, working hard and we have gained

extraordinary efficiencies and ability to deliver successful projects over the last year. we want to begin changing the page on the view that san francisco has of what the sfmta is capable of, where our strengths lie and where we need additional resources in order to deliver. so thank you in advance. this is going to be an intense two days. there is a lot of dense material here for you, but i've got my entire array of staff to help you on whatever questions you may have as you think about the hard tradeoff decisions we're going to be asking you to make at the end of the day tomorrow. so with that, i'm happy to turn it over to ben rosenfield, unless board members have questions about the overall agenda and scope for the day? >> chair borden: any questions from board members before we jump in?

thank you. we'll move on to mr. rosenfeld, because we have a lot of stuff on the agenda today. >> good morning, board members. thank you for having us back. i'm ben rosenfeld, city controller. i'm joined by ted eagan, the chief economist in the office for the city. i'm turning the floor over to ted. he's going to catch us up on things we're watching in terms of san francisco's economy and i'll close with a couple of high-level observations regarding the state budget looking ahead. >> good afternoon, directors. i'm going to share my screen now. we're going to summarize the city's current economic condition and what we're looking at over the next year. i want to start because

obviously the last year and this year the economic situation is going to be dominated by the course of the covid virus with some updates of what the virus situation looks like for california. these are projections done by the institute for health metrics and evaluation at the university of washington. they've done reputable projections over the past year. i have to say that when i began my presentation and got the data, i thought it would be a nice kickoff to the discussion about the city's economic recovery. however in the past couple of weeks, the forecast around the virus has gotten more pessimistic. the red line which is california's projected daily deaths from covid are not really dropping off very much through april. in contrast to other states. i don't want to step out of my lane and interpret this too much

because i'm not a public health expert. but i would emphasize that everything we're saying about the economic recovery and reopening and return to normal is hinging on successful virus outcomes. and that is still very much a matter for the public health people. the economic forecast at least at the national level have been improving since the shock of last spring. and this is a median forecast produced by the blue chip economic indicators. it's a panel of 60 professional forecasters and what we're showing is the median forecast for 2020 which ended around -3.5 for g.d.p. and 2021. since the summer, the forecasts have been getting better. most of the worries people had about long-term structural damage to the economy haven't materialized yet and we're now

looking at + 4% growth as a whole for the u.s. for 2021 and slightly reduced number for 2022, which would be a springboard for the city. the macro economic story is looking good. a little bit more context. just as is the case with the virus, different parts of the country have been affected in very different ways economically. this is a chart that one of our rating agencies prepared looking at different metros. both how much jobs they've lost from the pre-covid peak on the horizontal axis and how much they recovered on the vertical axis. i highlighted san francisco metro which includes the east bay with the big red dot. we've had a fairly big employment loss. worse than average. but our recovery has been one of

the slowest. only orlando's recovery among the major metros in the country has had fewer jobs gained back than san francisco. this comes out again in the data that san francisco in particular the city within the metro area has had an unusually struggling economy. not only that, there is of course been big disparities within different sectors of the city's economy. that is reinforcing patterns of inequality that preexisted in the city. this is just one look at it. the trends in employment in san francisco professional scientific, the blue bars, and then restaurants which are the orange bars. so professional services is now has more jobs at least based in san francisco than in january 2020. so over the year, that industry has actually grown jobs in san

francisco. restaurants is still down more than 40%. and there are not just -- this isn't just an aspect of economic inequality we're seeing here, although that is a big part of it, there is also a spatial sort of separation in the city economy that has happened as well. what i mean by that, these professional workers are not working in their offices. many cases not working in san francisco and even in the bay area. they're not there to provide the market or industries like restaurants. they haven't been nearly as affected by the public health constraints that some other industries have. another issue that san francisco is particularly struggling with compared to other places is out-migration. and the reason that we're particularly tracking residential rent is it's the best proxy for migration that we have on a month-to-month basis.

the people who do apartment rent trends in metro areas in cities across the country, are telling us that san francisco is seeing the biggest rent drop of any big city. 25-30% drop year over year by the end of the year. the good news is that it may be over. that january numbers look like a slight increase over december. at least rents are no longer falling. and as we'll see in a moment, the major reason that rents fall is because there are more people moving out than in. that's why i say it's a proxy for a migration trend that also appears to be pretty profound. we have finally direct information on migration in and out of san francisco since covid started through foia requests through the u.s. postal service. they've provided data on change

of address information for people moving out of san francisco location and also people moving to a san francisco location. this table is summariing that. essentially 124,000 people have left the san francisco location and about 76,000 people have moved to a san francisco location. about 35 of that is moves within the city. from the eight months we have data from march to october, at least 50,000 people have moved out. these are address requests and there could be more than one person associated with an address, so this is really a minimum of 50,000 people. if we assumed that just through december when the rent numbers were still dropping, that would be 62,000, or again at least 7% of the city's population, just by way of context. we do have census data on

out-migration for 2018. about 8,000 moved out of the city on a net basis. we're talking about something that could be seven or eight times as big, out-migration in 2020. so before i launch into my net topic, thinks one of the -- this is one of the hurdles that san francisco is going to have. this is not something other cities have experienced. lots of places have been hit hard by covid and everyone is in a recession. not everyone has this issue with out-migration which is contributing to a loss of consumer spending and the market for a lot of small businesses in the city. as a result of that and the fact that san franciscans are staying at home and avoiding the virus and our public health restrictions, a number of factors are leading us to have a weaker small business sector than other parts of the country. this is a chart showing the trends andle how many small businesses are closed in san francisco and other large cities

in california from the start of the pandemic. by the end of november -- this hasn't changed appreciateably -- san francisco small businesses were down about 40% or closed compared to the year before. so that's about the extent of the temporary closure. and that is considerably worse than other cities in california. the light at the end of the tunnel or the good news there, the census bureau surveys small businesses. it's been doing this on a biweekly basis since the pandemic started and kind of asking them what their plans are six months out. and one of the questions they ask is, are you planning to permanently close? and they report these questions at the metro level. so these are results for the san francisco metro. and really 5-10% of businesses each time they ask say they're permanently closing. so if there is good news in the

small business story in san francisco, it's that although there is 40% of small businesses closed at any given moment, less than 10% of them are planning to close permanently. and, again, if that was a bigger number, given the importance of the small business in the city economy, that would be a sign of a very, very slow economic recovery. i think if there is reason for optimism, it is that businesses are planning and hoping to reopen when public health conditions and economic conditions improve. lastly, i think an additional hurdle that the city is going to have to deal with as the virus abates and we enter a period of economic recovery, is in tourism. this is an indication of where people are buying plane tickets compared to a year previously. this is data from early december. it's showing basically san francisco and new york are very

hard-hit. i think the destination marketing people will basically say that cities like new york, san francisco, orlando, honolulu, washington, they're the ones seeing the biggest hits to the tourism because they rely on air travel and people are avoiding air travel. because they have a lot of international tourists and that market is almost gone. and also in particular, in san francisco's case, it's an expensive destination and there is a lot of cost sensitivity there. business conventions are big part of san francisco tourism. those are largely on hold and are unlikely to recover for at least two or three years. so i want to just conclude before i turn it over to ben, who will talk about the fiscal implications of this, what our recovery might look like. again, i'll reiterate this is all depending on an abatement of the virus that we hope happens in the first half of the year, but is not a certainty.

so first, the virus -- the vaccination process works and the virus stops being a dominating factor in people's economic lives. the rent drops should -- the rent market is to get apartments to be full. when apartments start being full again, people will be back. so that is a mechanism in the market to restore the city's population. and that will happen to the extent that rent starts -- that the rent markets are working. recovery in population should very much help small businesses. now small business -- a lot of small businesses are downtown. they're going to need commuters to come back. they're going to need tourists to come back. but in the neighborhoods where we're also seeing large declines in taxable sales, we need people to come back and spending to come back. later on we will need to see tourists and eventually conventions return. there is some evidence that at

least leisure tourists are concerned about the virus, particularly around air travel. if people feel safe again, that might come back relatively question. business conventions is more of a question mark when that will happen. the office scenario, the office is the largest source of employment and biggest driver of the city's g.d.p. and tax revenue, a lot depends on what employers and their workers decide about living and working in san francisco. in a post pandemic world, if there is a back to business as usual attitude for those companies, that would point to a fast recovery for the city. if instead, there is sort of a new normal or hybrid office that takes hold and despite the fact that people feel safe in the office, they don't want the hassle and they don't feel a productivity reason to make the trek into downtown san francisco, that would basically point to a slower reoccupancy of

downtown and slower recover for the whole city. while i think it's a low probability -- there are people talking about permanently working from home and a fully virtual office -- if that was the case, that would be a major economic shock to the city, not just downtown offices but the housing market and everything else. that would be a major economic reset. i think what this points to, at least in the early going, we're going to have a slower recovery than other places because of the number of things that our city is having to work through during the recovery that other cities don't have. and i think on that note, i will turn it over to ben. >> thank you, ted. i'll just end with a couple of high level observations. these comments are geared toward speaking to the city's general fund, which makes up half of the

city's budget. but i think in a lot of ways, these are concepts and experiences that directly relate to the m.t.a. budget preparation you're in the midst of and beginning here today. the first is just, of course, to acknowledge the historic shock to tax revenue base that san francisco has taken over the last year. certainly more significant than anything we've seen post world war ii. in three months of 19-20, so that's last fiscal year, revenues declined by $417 million. so a 7% loss of revenue for the year occurring in three months. so much more significant revenue shock, near complete of operation and certain revenue streams that the city depends upon, including the health tax, but also profound losses in sales tax. each of which were more profound

than we've seen in the last several recessions. if there is good news in the immediate shock, it is that some of the larger revenue sources for the city are paid on slower timing. so that kind of provided some initial buffer in the early of this, but it also means we can expect to see revenue losses lagging and impacting us even as the more immediately impacted recover. so we do expect to see lagging losses of property taxes and business taxes even as the economy reopens and business activity resumes. you'll have lingering impacts financially on the city budget. secondly, which is remarkable to me, a lot of the preparation work that the city did after the last recession to be better prepared for next one have really helped avoid hard choices during the last year across the government.

the general fund entered this recession with nearly three times the amount of money set aside in rainy day reserves. that should have been sufficient to carry us through a full normal recession. and that is certainly not going to be the case here, but that decade-long recovery really allowed a level of reserve that has avoided hard choices, frankly, across the government in the early innings of this from a budget perspective. that's been assisted by a very large support for state-local governments and transit agencies that were included in the carolinas act -- cares act. and then the city caught a couple of lucky breaks in the last 12 months with the city successfully defending two dedicated tax measures that the voters adopted in 2018 that allowed us to repay loans that we made to those programs.

then we found ourselves just 12 months before we began this recession in excess eraf country as a city, which is a unique space that the san francisco and five other counties find ourselves in, where we get the benefit of extra property tax money under california law. so losses mitigated in the cycle with long time solutions. looking ahead over the next 12 months for the general fund for the city, it's really going to be entirely dependent on two unknowns for us at the moment. the first is the shape of the pandemic in the coming year and what that translates to in terms of the local economic recovery. we have projections of what may occur from a covid perspective locally, nationally and at state level, but there is a huge amount of unknown there. as ted talked about, so much of

the local economic impact is directly related to the public health response to the pandemic. so what that picture looks like, we have estimates, we have projects, but we don't have certainty. secondly, for the general fund in particular, the outcome of the next federal stimulus package is critically important. the city faces a $650 million general fund short fall over the next couple of years given the most recent forecasts. the proposal that president biden has put forward that will begin hopefully moving through would potentially provide as much as half of that. and the uncertainty regarding what that final stimulus package is significant variable for us looking ahead. looking beyond the coming year into the years beyond it, years two, three, four, five, as we kind of find ourselves back in the new normal, there is really

two kind of unknowns for us that really will drive the structure of the city's finances. it really relates to the pace of the recovery of the hospitality industry here in san francisco. ted talked a little bit about that. and then secondly what the future of downtown looks like. and what demand for office space looks like downtown. we've gone from a moment -- we're in a moment of mass telecommuting. what the world looks like when that is no longer required is a key driver, not just for the city financially, but the larger economics of downtown and the city as a whole. so i will end with those high-level observations and ted or i will be happy to answer questions you have. >> chair borden: thank you for that. a lot of directors will have thoughts around this. i know me having worked for ibm for 10 years where i could work remotely, it was a mixed bag in terms of people wanting to be

around people and collaborate and it will be interesting to see how that shakes out. i'm going to transition to director hinze for the first question. >> director hinze: couple of questions. thank you for the presentation. i'm curious what sort of assumptions you made around percentages of people getting vaccinated and how that sort of fits into your economic assumptions that you've made? so is it going to operate on how the vaccination fits into your sort of assumptions? >> certainly. i can talk to what fits under our revenue forecast and ted may have things to add. the assumptions we're using here assume, as has been the case, that vaccination would begin early in 2021 and would reach

large-scale numbers by the middle of the calendar year to early fall. and so those are kind of the numbers that fit under our forecasts here. >> director hinze: thank you. and then i was just sort of curious around when the eviction moratorium is and everybody's rent starts coming due, what your thoughts are, the potential economic impact? >> i'll take a stab at that one. the residential rent debt and commercial rent debt of small businesses are two looming issues on the horizon at the end of this. there is going to be -- again,

all i can say at this point, it's a large number. it's a lot of people. people have been largely paying their rent, but dipping into savings and other assets and borrowing money in order to do so in many cases. it's going to largely depend on policy decisions that are made at the state and federal level about what to do with that money. and it's -- i'm hesitant to say what it means for our local economy until they've made those decisions, but it's certainly a big issue we're keeping our eye on. >> director hinze: then my last question might be for later, but i was curious if we had any data on shared spaces and the economic impact of that on small businesses specifically, but that might be for m.t.a. staff when they present later, so...

>> i'm actually working on that issue right now, but i have nothing to report at the moment. >> director hinze: all right. >> stay tuned. >> director hinze: i will stay tuned and hopefully get a briefing on it. all right. that was my last question. >> chair borden: thank you, director hinze. director hemminger? >> director heminger: thank you, madame chair. ben, i'm sure you heard before that have a somewhat gloomy effect on people sometimes [laughter]. and i guess i want to probe you about how gloomy we ought to be. i think ted laid out three scenarios and the worst one was major economic reset. and in light of the information he provided on out-migration, what we're seeing today in telework and, in my opinion, the really scary news about the variants and people getting reinfected, so that we just -- we don't see the end of this

pandemic in the near-term, should this major economic reset sort of be our default revenue assumption? >> i don't think that should be the default assumption that we have looking forward, but i certainly think it is a possibility that we should be thinking about and planning. talking to our own local public health experts about the year ahead and comparing what is sitting under some of the forecasts that other economists and moodies are preparing, and the consensus about the most-likely scenario at the moment is that vaccination will have a significant impact on transmission rates and deaths in the u.s. in california in san francisco and allow us to get the virus to a level where it can be controlled. which will allow a lot of

activity to get back to something approaching normal come the early 2022. i think all of those forecasters also acknowledge that you can -- there are viable scenarios looking ahead where either transmission of vaccinated individuals or more ominously variants that require modifications to vaccines. those are real possibilities that could stretch this into a multi-year event. i don't think it's the most likely scenario from what i'm hearing, but it's one we should be aware of. >> what about the other factors? there is a lot of -- i guess it's shot and freud. people are always trying to prematurely bury california and say they can't keep it up and we told you so. is this another one of those cycles? >> ted has a perspective on

that. i'll let him share. >> i actually don't think that is very likely. we do have some data on, for example, venture capital investment in the pandemic period. and the bay area is still getting upwards of 30% of all u.s. venture capital. california is getting upwards of 40%. so in terms of people based in the bay area, based in california wanting to start new tech businesses, i don't see that or that echo system moving away. i do think there is a question about what is the economic value to those people and their employees of sitting in an office in downtown san francisco? that's the kind of reset i'm more concerned about as a serious possibility that everybody moving to miami. and really, i'm actually

optimistic about that, too, because i just look at this as, at some point, and we don't know when the point is, but at some point we're going to be a post pandemic period and people are going to make decisions in a way that is similar to the way they made it before. they decided to start a business, move their business, move themselves to the most expensive place in the country and they did very well doing that the past 10 years. i really don't expect 180° shift in behavior after the pandemic. i don't see any serious reason to believe san francisco's competitiveness over the long-term is harmed by this. although, i do take your point. it's an uncertain road to get there. >> director heminger: chair? >> chair borden: did you want to say something? >> one last point, though, would

be even subtle changes related to the office environment in downtown san francisco has a pretty profound impact on the city's economic disposition. so it won't occur this way, but if you imagine the downtown office workers in san francisco were each permitted to telecommute one additional day per week -- which sounds like a fairly subtle shift -- that would translate to 20% fewer people in san francisco on a given day and it would cause a permanent reset of san francisco's business tax base, which is about -- which is our second largest revenue source of a comparable amount. so even subtle changes will have significant longer term implications i think. >> director heminger: as far as we're concerned, that is traffic changes, that is transit ridership. it's a lot of the things that we're here to worry about.

thank you, madame chair. >> chair borden: thank you. we're lucky that no other states close by are fighting on who gets the money fort workers, we're lucky we don't have that issue. director eaken? >> vice chair eaken: thank you so much. i had a question relating to the kind of out-migration slide as well. a lot of the big tech companies have kind of given their employees some certainty that you will not be returning to the office before this date. and i think some people have taken advantage of flexibility to relocate to more affordable markets, or move back in with family, whatever it is. but those twitter aside, many of those have an end date. they have a horizon date. i wonder as you look at these, you won't know the answer, but i wonder what you surmise, what percentage of that effect you're

seeing, the out-migration is more temporary based on the major tech company announcements and what do you see as more permanent and having more staying power? >> a couple of things we know about the out-migration, it suddenly happened in march. so that strongly lets you suspect it's associated with the pandemic. eight times the increase of 2019. and secondly, although it's too early to get real kind of census demographics on who moved out, if you look across california at localities that have seen rent reductions and san francisco is the largest, but by no means the only city in california with rent declines. there is a very strong correlation of how many tech workers live in that city and how much rent decline was. so it's not just a san francisco thing. it's a tech industry thing, which again makes me think it's tech workers taking advantage of

this policy during the pandemic. now there is a question of are they being productive working wherever they're working? is there a business reason for them to come back? and i don't want to minimize that transition or assume it's going to happen quickly. but as i was saying before, i just think at some point they're going to confront the same tradeoffs they've been confonting for the past -- confronting for the past 10 years. i think we're going to come out favorably as we have done for the past 10 years in that consideration. >> vice chair eaken: thank you. i know that mr. rosenfeld has to leave. >> chair borden: are there any questions specifically for him. i know we have director lai and

director yekutiel. we have ben for now. we will have ted, but if your question is more directed to ben -- you don't know. i'll go ahead. >> director lai: great, thank you, both for participating in the conversation, getting the city-wide context is so important in setting up our discussion. i'll try to ask what i think is a ben-question first. which is about the industry indicators that your office is using for scenario planning. i am guessing that you're probably internal to your office and maybe with the mayor's office doing, you know, more than one scenario right now. and i did hear that ted, you know, referenced money as an indicator, which i have my thoughts and feelings whether that is a reliable indicator.

i'm wondering what other indicators you're relying on as the top one or two? and in your scenario planning, what are you hinging your scenarios on? is it primarily on vaccine rollout and planning for 50% rollout, 75% rollout? to me that's relevant in our scenario planning as well, just wanted to make sure we're comparing apples to apples. thanks. >> great questions. we publish our forecast in a written document that is explicit about the assumptions we're making. i know staff at the m.t.a. has got those. speaking of the city's finances at the moment -- and we're always playing around with different levers on different revenues, trying to understand what different worlds would like like, what is striking me at the moment is how much is dependent on two things given the size of

different revenue streams in the city. and the key unknowns at the moment and they really do relate to the longer term telecommuting, which has a profound impact on our commercial tax base and property tax base. and secondly the pace at which the hospitality industry in san francisco begins to fill hotels up again. so we have assumptions built into our forecast on both of those points. those assumptions will be profound and looking ahead, there is not a lot of data yet, or advanced indicators that let you arrive at certainty regarding either one of those. the difference between the worst-case scenario and the best-case scenario over the next 18 months is largely about what one assumes. >> director lai: if you're relying on hospitality trends and also on, i guess, office,

i'm assuming leaseup is what you're looking at, not necessarily development. what are your sources to indicate? i guess start with that. >> in terms of office, the dynamic with the city tax base, which is a bit over the billion dollars, it's dependent on not where the business is located, but where the worker is working from. a downtown business paying $50 million a year in business taxes before may well be paying half of that this year, because most of their workers are working remotely and half of their workers are likely not working out of their san francisco homes. so that kind of -- the indicator that matters to us most there is how that is going to change over time. obviously, we're tracking lease and sublease markets. but that factor is -- [indiscernible]

on the city. >> director lai: thank you. that makes sense. i wanted to go back to the information ted shared. particularly around commercial vacancy rates. i'm curious if you had any indication about vacancy rates comparing downtown job core versus neighborhood commercial areas? >> i haven't directly looked at that mainly because the sources that we have don't have as much coverage in the neighborhoods. and then, again, it's largely office in the downtown and retail and other types of spaces and different types of neighborhoods. so i haven't done that direct comparison. what we've been able to do that is apples to apples, is look at sales tax scenario across the city as a measure of what businesses are able to -- as an

indicator what businesses are able to pay in rent. and the downturn is much deeper in downtown than the neighborhoods, but we've seen sales tax decline in every neighborhood of the city. >> director lai: i think that would be helpful for us to get more information on, because it impacts route planning. just curious, thinking back to the last recession, where do we stand in terms of vacancy rates like 2008, 2010 period? >> again, it seems to depend on land use types, although i would say i've seen office vacancy statistics as high as 17%, which is higher than in the great recession and around the most i saw 20 years ago in the dot com crash. office vacancy is not directly

plugging into things, because even an office space that is paid for but is empty is costing a business tax revenue. but i certainly think it's a sign of at least a cyclical tendency for businesses not to re-up their leases in san francisco or a lack of interest in new leases. so it's a worrying sign. i think the big question, is this a cyclical thing or something that is going to be with us for longer? >> director lai: right, right. i know you said that it's too early to really have demographic information about who is moving out, but you know, that is also something that i would be very interested in having some continued indicators on, particularly on, you know, the job industries we're seeing people leaving the city. other demographic factors such as whether it's families or individuals. and, of course, income level, because all of those things are

really important in our policy decision-making. i'm not sure how best to go about that, because you're basing it off u.s. p.s. relocation request, which i don't believe they collect that kind of information. i don't know if you have a plan to collect that. my open-ended question, curious to the controller's office attitude or feeling about san francisco's industry diversity and how that may or may not have impacted our current recovery? >> i'll speak to the migration data question. we relied on usps information mainly because it's timely, and, yes, not only do we not have demographics as i said in the presentation, we don't even know how many people are represented by the change of addresses. the next trench of information, administrative data that gives

us more information is irs tax returns. the irs compiles statistics about who is filing in 2020 from a different county than in 2019. and that's broken out by family adjusted gross income, so that will give you some look at demographics. late in 2021, we may get 2020 american survey from the census. unfortunately, the census week was exactly when the pandemic started, so i'm not sure that's going to give a full sense. so really it's 2022 before we really know who left in 2021 from people filling out their survey forms with all of their demographic information. i don't know, ben, if you want to offer a thought about the city's economic structure. i mean, one of the anomalies and this ties into the previous question in terms of who is moving -- we have one set of industries where clearly the economic pain is being

concentrated. that doesn't appear to be the industries whose employees are leaving the city. it's the industries where people are not losing their jobs where people are fleeing the city and that's the tech industry. coming -- of course, how the eviction moratorium and rent debt issue resolves itself, is going to have a lot to say about people who have been hit hard during the pandemic. but in terms of the post pandemic period, it's likely that the tech industry as it has been over the past year, will perform strongly and then i think the question for the city's economy as a whole is, how much does that industry still want to be in san francisco? it doesn't, it's not clear to me that another industry is going to kind of rush in and speed the city to an economic recovery. it will certainly nice to have a tourism industry as well, but

the tech industry has really taken over the city's office directly and indirectly, the city's office employment over the past 10 or 15 years. and if that industry is kind of making a different decision about the value of working in san francisco, that's why i say i think we're looking for a slower recovery. >> thank you for that. i'm going to get to director yekutiel. >> commissioner yekutiel: thank you, chair borden. yeah, for ben specifically and i guess also ted, you both were here during the last recession. i wanted historical context from your experience, being the controller and the chief economist back when the last time we had a steep economic downturn, what did the sfmta do in response to that downturn? i imagine you made a

presentation not too dissimilar to the one you made. maybe you can give us context on what was done ten years ago. >> i don't know that i can speak specifically from memory to the m.t.a.'s budget during that period, but just at a high level, i can say someone working for the city during each of the last two recessions, the dot com bust and the 2008, i think what is striking is how differently san francisco fared versus the refs of the country. -- rest of the country. we were lightly impacted during the recession which was heavily concentrated in real estate and not so heavily in the bay area or in san francisco. so the financial consequences for the city and the m.t.a. during that recession were less significant than they were

during the dot-com bust, which in some ways, the dot-com bust had lesser impacts on some of the same issues we're talking about today. really productions and -- steep productions. and in that case, very significant impacts on jobs in the city. so that budget reductions in the early 2000s were more profound than the last. that might be the better place to look for history lessons on how the m.t.a. and the city weathered the past cycles. i apologize that i need to run to the board of supervisors. ted can stay. but thanks for having me here today. i say that i'm only gloomy in the presentations because no one ever invites me to speak during better times. i look forward to being back in a few years when we're on track.

>> chair borden: [laughter] thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> chair borden: any other questions? i was going to say to both mr. rosenfeld and mr. eaken, whether you have plans to do any surveys of the largest employers around the intentions? i think that would be great to hear about what their plans are. what i've been hearing from reading the text, publications and my experience with various companies, some of them feel like companies heavily on the engineering side, they're losing out not having people collaborate and they want to do that. you see some of the big people who have made a lot of money leave town or say that their residence is elsewhere because of the more favorable tax benefits. and a lot of people have left for the short-term, but plan to return in the future. younger people who -- personally i know people in their 20s who

have gone back to live with their families who plan to come back. and those who moved back to hometown because of mom. i think it would be interesting if we could get data around intentions, because while many companies may declare headquarters or office in another city, moving your workforce is a different thing. we saw this when bowling made a big -- boeing made a big deal about moving from seattle to chicago. it was name-only thing. maybe we can talk about that because i think that is something we should be looking at as well. >> okay, to speak to the first part of your question, i am aware that the m.t.c. and the bay area council are doing focus groups with employers about has what the office looks like post pandemic. and we're chatting next week and will be following up with them to see if we can support them or

add on to the research they're doing. to your broader point of the resiliency of the city economy, i do think that the fact that businesses move here to really access the people who live here, the talent, the skills of the people who live here, and we have higher rates of entrepreneurship, higher rates of business success, that doesn't go away because a founder decides they want to move somewhere else, or people temporarily move away during the pandemic. i mean there is a whole echo system that supports business growth in the bay area. there isn't any sign of those institutions or those networks moving away. i think that is the reason for my long-term optimism. it's just getting to that place where we're in the long-term and the optimism kicks in is the question, the virus question and the -- you know, people experimenting with working at home for protracted periods of

time as ben was talking about. >> chair borden: i guess the other thing, you know, obviously the biggest thing, tourism. that's a big generator to the economy. i imagine you're working with muscone to figure out when we're seeing conventions come back. i know the tourism industry is thinking like 2023. i don't know if you have preliminary data on what muscone bookings are looking like to help project that. >> yeah, well they're telling us that. that there is nothing really on the horizon and the travel folks are basically planning for that to be the last piece of our travel industry that recovers. i mean realistically when people feel like air travel is a safe thing to do, and tourism starts picking up nationally, we're probably going to see a short-term shift in our tourism industry more towards leisure. hotel operators are going to want the hotels filled. we're not going to have the rate

compression we usually get from conventions and the hotel tax revenue will be less than it usually is, but there will be a strong economic incentive to fill those rooms at whatever rate. and at least some of the supporting industry from travel should benefit from that earlier than we see conventioning s dsh conventions come back. there are questions of safety, logistics. the thing about business travel, which is a third of our travel, if people are working at home, they're not going to be needing to do business travel. and i think there is a question about the impact of technologies like the ones we're using on business travel for the long-term anyway. and particularly in terms of business travel to a location where people haven't come back to the office. >> chair borden: great. >> director hinze: one question.

we talked a lot about industries going out and people migrating out. i'm curious, do you have any data on people coming in? any industries that are indeed thriving and expanding during the pandemic? i was just curious. >> i don't have any demographics on who is moving in, or even any postal service on that. the only sign i have that some people are moving in, we're starting to see stabilization in rent. something clearly happened last month in rent to make them stop falling. roughly the same number of people moving in and moving out. don't know anything about who that is. when we look at the employment data monthly, it is basically showing that industries like professional services are adding the most jobs.

and industries, restaurants, are the ones suffering. it's looking like -- i also look at help-wanted listings from big tech companies. those companies are hiring out of san francisco at the same rate they were before the pandemic. i think the question is what does hiring out of a san francisco office look like? when does that actually turn into sitting in a san francisco office is the big question. i'm not seeing a sign of a major structural change from the economy being based on tech to being based on something else. >> cool, thank you. >> chair borden: any more questions for mr. eaken before we go to public comment. seeing none, moderator, are there callers on the line? >> you have two questions

remaining. >> chair borden: first speaker. >> this is bob. i'm a senior with a life long mobility disability. so i'm transit dependent. i wanted to refer earlier to director tumlin's comments about data providing it and relying upon it. i want to dispute that in some situations. myself and one other person have asked more than once for data about how many muni buses will be on market street now and will be on market street as the subway opens. this has happened over months. we get no response. such lack of responsiveness raises questions. why should we trust staff? and because you're not asking the questions, why should we believe in you? i want to go further. when there was first the massive major shutdown of lines, nobody except me first question, what in the world happened to your thinking and awareness about the

city? st. mary's hospital was totally cut off from muni service. the lucky market was massively underserved by the cutout of the five line. and nobody until i started to raise questions, nobody made public any statement like you're not looking at the reality of who needs muni. it seems like you're looking at numbers of passengers and of survey responses. and those survey responses typically -- i'm going to say, well, that's the people who are really smart and responsive. those who don't have such information and technology that need to go to lucky's, they're left out in the cold trying to figure out how to get there. i'm saying that the data you say isn't necessarily something we trust rely upon. at some point, the directors have to look at the staff planning to see, do these responses really indicate an

awareness of the city in terms of population, in terms of services, in terms of needs? i'm saying not. [bell ringing] you have to -- do we really want to trust you, that you're going to come to us next year for ballot -- >> chair borden: thank you. so sorry. everybody gets equal time. next speaker, please. >> you have three questions remaining. >> hi. school crossing guard and member of the bargaining committee. i don't know if ben is still there, but i want to point out i understand the city's fiscal difficulty, but seen some slides that m.t.a. is dependent on ever dwindling labor market to fill craft positions. i hope all of us are specialized. so, my concerns are in order to recruit and maintain the best people, you have to pay top

dollar. so i'm hoping the m.t.a. board will urge the city the next negotiations not to take a hard line and not to rely on pay freezes or making us pay more for health care and insist on off-ramps, our pay raise. i think that creates ill will amongst the workers and many of the best leave for higher paying jobs. it's not a good atmosphere. i hope that you as a board can convince the mayor in the next bargaining to be generous with the employees and pay good salaries, because it's still very expensive to live here. thank you. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker, please. >> you have two questions

remaining. >> thank you, chair. my pronouns are she and her. it's good to be here. good presentation. certainly equity and finance are very, very important. equity i reiterate to you must not cling to the things of the past. but a low everybody to participate in whatever improvements the future has to hold. so forward not backward. and equity should not be rooted in definition because when you compartmentalize it into definitions and have people like myself who do not fit definitions, we're excluded by default. as far as finance, i read that seattle has a transit tax of 1.4%. i'm not sure what ours is.

i think it's 1%. i would support a higher transit sales tax, but will the population support it? and how can you make use of the new dollars, hopefully, without being tax and spend. it should be tax and invest to build new infrastructure, especially with an eye towards completing and continuing ada work. disabled folks like myself, who want to be able to fully participate in muni. i appreciate your ongoing commitment to ada. so this is good work, but we have to continue the efficiencies and think forward. thank you. >> thank you, mr. dupri.

>> hello. just wanted to talk about a few of the comments that director tumlin made in the beginning about agency culture and trust with the public. there is not any trust in m.t.a. management for members of the public or for members of the frontline staff. i talked to many bus operators, crossing guards, all of them feel like the management is out of touch and they don't understand what their job is. and you know, it's great that he goes out to take his photos with the front-line workers and posts them on twitter, but at the end of the day, the frontline staff still feel like management is out of touch. and the public, most of them do not understand all the roles that m.t.a. plays. they see it as muni and giving

them parking tickets. it's not a very good reputation. so we need to work on the reputation of m.t.a. with frontline staff and the public before we can really address all the big issues. you know, the financial picture, it's not good. and i don't pretend to have all the answers. but i also think it's a false narrative that the financial situation is preventing additional service from being added right now. it's been constrained in the past that having constraint sending the buses back to the yard every time to be can cleaned. i encourage you to continue mobile cleaning because right now there are operators sitting on their phones doing nothing. and it's a false narrative to say we don't have enough operators to be providing more service due to financial issues. that's not the truth. so you need to build more confidence in the public in your

frontline staff, because it's really lacking right now. and you're not going to be able to fix any of the other problems. [bell ringing] >> chair borden: thank you. are there any additional callers on the line? >> you have one question remaining. >> chair borden: next speaker, please. >> yes, hi. good afternoon. this is barry toronto. my comments are couched on the decision you made last week to destroy our cap business, especially not being able to cruise down market street. cab. and related to what the presentation we just heard, be great if you started pursuing more federal dollars for subsidized rides for the seniors and disabled. and to try and up the incentive or the compensation for serving the seniors and disabled, because right now they're actually financial losses for me. to be honest with you, i am

personally avoiding those trips, because actually, what you told me last week, you don't value my service. you don't value my ability to serve the seniors and disabled and that's the message that the industry got from last week's decision. related to this, i think it's important that we are able to serve the seniors and disabled and compensate us properly for that by at least giving us close to the wage that you pay the paratransit van drivers. so we don't -- it's at least going to be another year or two before we pick up the business clients and the convention goers, especially before the taxi industry recovers. so, i would have to say that it's not -- it's a bleak picture for the cab industry based upon what we heard today because our

normal and regular business is being destroyed and the office clients are not going to come back any time soon because people are going to be continuing to work from home. thank you very much. >> chair borden: wonderful. do we have any other speakers on the line? >> you have zero questions remaining. >> chair borden: okay. i think we can continue with the presentation from staff on accomplishments and challenges. >> moving on to item 7, presentation discussion regarding the status of sfmta accomplishments and challenges. >> chair borden: -- >> good afternoon. transit director. tom and i are going to give this

presentation together, both sharing with the board and taking a moment to find gratitude or to demonstrate gratitude to the staff that has really gotten us through this year. and also to lay out some of the key challenges that we think are going to underpin the difficult tradeoffs that you guys are going to be debating over the next two days, particularly at tomorrow's session. next slide. one of our biggest accomplishments for this year is truly been how the agency responded to the pandemic. a big part of this was the creation of the department center, led by george louie, who this time last year was leading our quality assurance program. and like so many staff, dropped what he was doing and worked

around the clock on so many issues, including setting up an employee hotline and developing our contact tracing protocols. i'm highlighting this accomplishment today, not only because the structure allowed us to quickly and comprehensively respond to the city's needs, but because i think it's going to have lasting benefits. it allowed us to break down silos across our different operating branches of the agency, which has long been a stated goal. and it provided essentially a new generation of staff leaders who not only understand their kind of core area of expertise, but now have a network of staff across the agency that they can rely on and partner with in the years to come. next slide.

because of rapidly declining staffing levels last spring, as the pandemic unfolded, we were not able to deliver all of our pre-covid service. and rather than trying and what would have been immediately failing to deliver everything, we made the hard choice to change the service network in response to changing travel patterns. and we reinvented the system multiple times to keep up with the trends to respond to community feedback like what mr. plant shared about not making grocery store connections and to work with partners and community leaders across the city as we work to stitch the service back together. we made these changes, but also worked extremely hard not to

leave people behind. for example, in the spring when we went to 17 core line service, we also in parallel created the city's e.t.c. program for seniors and people with disabilities, which provided significantly subsidized taxi service. we also partnered in golden gate and sam transusing our regional providers in ways we hadn't used city-wide travel. when we restructured the rail system, we made sure to build accessible boarding islands. this is an important year. we're celebrating 30 years of the americans with disabilities act and i think the success of that legislation is no better embodied than in the fact that these boarding islands were built in record time, out of wood, rather than our traditional concrete and steel

procedures, so as we changed the system, we could ensure it met the needs of all users. next slide. equity was our driving value in the temporary service restructuring. and it was needed more than ever because the demographics of the ridership shifted so quickly under covid. many people who enjoyed the privilege of a private automobile or being able to work from home, do so and our system really being needed more than ever by people that didn't have other choices. next slide. with the stay-at-home order in the spring, we also saw congestion evaporate from our city streets, essentially overnight. this helped us understand where traffic had been bogging down our service and provided insight into where we were going to be

vulnerable as traffic resumed. in a very short time period, we implemented 20 miles of temporary transit lanes. corridors like downtown geary -- sorry downtown mission and outer geary. and while also continuing the muni-forward capital program. we've been so busy we haven't had a chance to celebrate that ongoing work, but the geary rapid project, for example, between stanyan and downtown is already delivering a 20% travel-time savings and is a project that i'm really proud to say we're delivering on time and on budget. next slide. partnering with staff and union leaders, we reshaped how we delivered our service around safety. and implemented service management strategies like headway-based management that will continue into a post covid

era. we also listened to staff feedback and concerns related to discipline, which i know the board also has been very focused on as we talk about things like our race and equity action plan. one thing that i'm proud we were able to deliver in that vein under covid is a new program where our trainers do ride along with operators. this gives operators an opportunity to give constructive feedback, both positive and negative about their performance, without a problem already having occurred. and allows us to correct unsafe practices in a more mentoring environment. in august, we had to make the uncomfortable decision to stop rail service. but i'm proud that we used that time to make a down payment on

subway renewal. this time allowed us to address slow zones, replace and remove all the defective splices in the overhead system and address drainage and track issues at the eureka curve. our success in 2020 came from the incredible commitment and resilience of our staff. everyone at the agency pitched in and was willing to adapt to changing needs of the pandemic. it's really where muni showed up as a family. and it's something i'm so proud of. operators who took personal risk to keep the city moving. our car cleaners and custodians who showed up in force to clean vehicles and facilities. tom is going to be talking about our parking control officers and our shops who laid out the transit-only lanes and helped stand up a lot of the city's

emergency services. our communications team who mobilized staff for agency-wide to explain our service changes to customers. and the engineering and maintenance staff who came together to pilot a new model of tackling deferred projects in the subway are just some of the examples of the way staff showed up and continue to show up during this pandemic. next slide. >> directors, tom maguire. director of streets division. i'm going to present the next couple of slides. the efforts that we have been talking about for years, the values we've been talking about, equity access for users of all modes and visionary streets that could do more than just move cars, many of those visions came true in new programs that i

don't think we knew we'd be talking about when we met a year ago. but i'm proud to look back on what we accomplished. slow streets. streets we're able to use a very modest treatment of signs and barriers to create spaces where cars are -- and people who are work walking, biking, skating and learning to use the streets are the primary users. the fourth phase of slow streets, we've been taking a hard look at how to make sure we can build slow streets during this pandemic period. so look for more news about that in early '21, but what we accomplished in 2020 was remarkable. similarly, a program that we started this year was the shared spaces program.

right now as of midnight last night, we had 1,268 locations where businesses were able to use walk and/or parking lane, for dining and retail. it's so important as we start to see the reopening of retail just this month under our health restrictions. we have 86 locations where you can see on the top photo on this slide, the entire roadway is closed off to traffic for some part of the day and san franciscans get to experience public space again where pedestrians and people enjoying sunshine and meal, a drink, shopping experience, are the primary users. that's 86 locations around the city. almost 300 locations where we streamlined curb location where small businesses have had to pivot making a living through takeout and pickup orders. we pivoted the curb regulation

to make sure that the vehicle and the queued up pedestrians and cyclists who needed to get access to the buildings can do so in the parking lane. while those big numbers of slow streets and almost 2000 shared spaces are really exciting, there are certain locations around the city we'll look back on 2020 as real signature accomplishments. accomplishments that will not live out their challenges and those challenges remain, but things i don't think any of us thought we would have converted what we've known as the great highway to what we know as the great walkway or cycleway. the entirety of great highway now available strictly for nonmotorized transportation. and of course, that walkway connected to the rest of the city with the closure of -- with a connected car-free route through golden gate park all the

way from the ocean to the pan handling, opening up almost 5.5 miles for people that all ages and abilities are able to use. twin peaks closed for public safety and security reasons. when that happened, we discovered there was a huge amount of public space up there that works really well as a nonmotorized space and is beautiful. and san franciscans need to get out and see how beautiful their city is. none of these projects have been, as i said, without impacts. we've been working almost since twin peaks was closed and the great highway was closed with the neighbors who have serious concern about parking and illegal activity on their streets and diverted traffic.

or working with local supervisor's offices to rapidly install traffic-calming and in the case of twin peaks, come up with a management solution that is more sustainable than the simple closure that has been in effect since last spring. you'll be hearing more about that in the course of the spring. none of this would be possible if it hadn't been for the work of the shops. we have four fully integrated shops. sign, paint. these folks never stopped coming to work in 2020. these crews of workers who are the reason we're able to have a quick-build program, the reason we're able to be the city that other cities around north america look to for our ability to adapt our traffic engineering that the city demands, well, they really came through in

2020. they delivered quick build on the third street bridge, the embarcadero, the outer mission. i think 2020 is the year we're going to look back and say, maybe we broke down the silos than we have in our 20-year agency -- as a top priority in the work flow. next slide, please. if the shops were the ones who were out on the streets spear heading our attempts to redesign and re-imagine and reengineer the streets, our parking control officers are the ones who were there every day making sure that everyone could get around, safely and around extraordinary new public health guidance. everything from social distancing to who is an

essential worker. our parking control officers worked out of general hospital, laguna honda. all over the city, working on m.t.a. facilities and in other roles. safe sleeping sites. the stuff we don't talk about because of the sensitivity and the need to preserve the privacy and dignity of those suffering the most in the pandemic. those people who needed the city to come, looked up and it was a parking control officer from the m.t.a. who was making sure that traffic was flowing safely, the pedestrians had safe access to the services and employment centers they needed. just last week i was so pleased to hear a positive report back from the city's department of emergency management thanking us for the great work our parking control officers did to stand up the city's first high-volume vaccination site at city college. our officers will be working

throughout the spring, again, to get people in, shots in arms and get out. while many of us had our work days disrupted, there is one section that hasn't slowed down at all. that is our construction work. whether it is bringing central subway to the brink of completion, a milestone i'm looking forward to sharing with you later this year, but is only possible because of the hard work of our subway team and contractors got done in 2020. the beautiful red lanes on van ness avenue, which you see on the right side. lanes that are the backbone of the first true bus transit corridor. 20 was the year the streets looked like what it was going to be when it grows up. and finally, did you even notice

that this summer, we rebuilt the busiest and most congested freeway in san francisco. on the left side of the screen, you can see cal trans, the support from the traffic engineers and parking officers for a new deck on the u.s. 1 freeway. this is a point in the san francisco and regional freeway system in terms of the level of congestion, we've been spending almost two years working with cal translooking for a way to close the road down for a few weeks to do construction so it wouldn't abstract traffic. caltrans took the opportunities that the pandemic presented and found way to rebuild the entire six-lane deck with minimal impacts to traffic and to

transit service. this is a project that repaired a 50-year-old freeway. a freeway in danger of falling down. we're not going to have to do this for another 50, 60 years. while the pandemic, there were a lot of challenges for getting around, the construction, the down payment made in terms of construction and transit lanes an van ness, rebuilding the freeway, those are payoffs for a generation. finally, the work that i want to highlight and lift up, because it's not -- it wasn't all pandemic this year. we did have opportunities in 2020 to live up to the values and the challenges and the goals we talked about with the board on new year.

one was the community-based transportation plan. this was a multi-year plan that our staff worked on in partnership with the district 10 supervisor's office and a number of community organizations in the bayview. the premise of the plan, rather than coming in with a cooked set of ideas how the streets looked, we went to the community and said what are the goals you have for your streets? we heard loud and clear, making it safer. making better transit connections. safer environment for passengers who are waiting for transit vehicles. you'll be hearing over the course of 2021, more more about the -- quick build projects.

what seems a long time ago, a year ago, it was still okay to hop on a plane or director jeff tumlin was testifying before congress. so important in the ongoing federal policy. specifically there to make sure the voices of san francisco who value equity and safety goals like vision zero were heard loud and clear. as the new administration takes office, we're excited to continue that work and amplify that in the months ahead. we'll pause there now for -- are we going to pause there or move on to the challenges section? >> chair borden: i guess -- how much longer i guess? we have that public comment,

too. so i'm trying to figure out if directors -- you want to ask questions now or do we want to keep going? i know director hinze has a question. why don't we have her ask a question now? >> director hinze: it doesn't matter, but my question is actually -- well i have two questions. one for julie and one for tom. so i'll start with julie since that was in the order she presented. so my question for julie is, as we sort of -- i know our current budget situation necessitates that we don't bring back any new routes at the moment, but when we do, can you talk a little bit about your prioritization for which routes to bring back?

and also resolution -- [indiscernible] passed by the board of supervisors last week, your thoughts on that. >> thank you for that question. and that's a conversation that we're going to have throughout the next two days. and a lot of what the board lays out in terms of how much we continue the current austerity measures, i think is really going to influence that discussion. we believe that as we move towards herd immunity this summer into fall, and we have the opportunity to lift the current covid capacity

restrictions, that we will have, even in our current fiscal environment, the ability to add back some of the service and close service gaps. the hilltops, i think, need to be a high priority for basic access. and we plan to continue to take feedback from the board and take feedback from stakeholders to help shape the service restoration. >> thank you. and then for tom, i was curious, have you had any insights on the question i asked earlier about the economic impact of shared streets on small businesses? whether we had data on its effects that's not just

anecdotal? >> thank you, director. unfortunately, i probably have most anecdotal data. and i know our shared spaces teams, they talk to applicants and folks building the shared spaces. we heard from many, many people that felt that the shared space was the difference between being able to keep their business running through 2020 and not being able to make it. so that was really encouraging for us to hear. obviously, that's not the kind of data that can be supplied. over 2000 businesses have availed themselves of this. some of the busier business areas of the city, there are some -- there is almost not a single parking space that hasn't been modified in some way. converted to loading or temporary dining and retail

areas. so the investment people made, some made five-figure investment in structures, so that -- i guess that anecdotal data suggests that it's really important. >> director hinze: okay. all right. those are my questions for the moment. >> chair borden: great. director eaken? >> vice chair eaken: great. i'll be really quick. i just thank you for making the space to celebrate accomplishments. it's so important to do for morale. i just wanted to ask a question. do you all feel like you're doing enough to celebrate these accomplishments at the staff level, at the level of frontline staff, our staff recognized and valued for the accomplishments? and to director tumlin's point that so many people have been working overtime, solving for multiple challenges.

are you finding ways as managers to give people a little bit of a respite? a little bit of a break, or is it for the foreseeable at 60-80 hours which is a one-way pass to burnout? so reflections there on staff morale and care. >> i'll start, julie, and you can take it from there. first part of the question, are we doing enough? the answer is no, because i don't say thank you enough for all the work our teams have done. that's the answer. we have been -- we had the street divisions had a terrific year end recognition event in which we formally and informally thanked a huge number of people who attended, virtually at that.

i know julie and i are trying to get out and visit people on the front lines smch possible. but, it's not enough, because there is just not enough. >> we're doing our best to lead with compassion and meet staff. but that's often focused on the more negative aspects of the pandemic. and not enough about the true resiliency that staff has shown. even in our original version of this presentation, you know, tom and i started like straight with the challenges. and it wasn't until, you know, it got to jeff where he said,

like, i'm super proud of what we've accomplished this year. we need to start talking about it. we do have some programs like our operator of the month program, which roger and the union helped us to revitalize after what had been about a six or seven-month hold. not being able to convene is also putting some challenges on our traditional celebrations. so you know, we did the safe driver awards this year, but we didn't get to do the great banquet hall with all of the beautiful photos and speeches from staff. so it's kind of the theme last year was compassion, perhaps the theme this year is gratitude.

and we can practice every day the passion you're hearing from us today. >> i want to echo what julie just said. sfmta culture is really rooted -- keep in mind the vast majority of the workforce doesn't work in an office. so it's very much rooted in bringing people together around food and special events that honor people. it's a very touchy-feely culture. all of that has been forbidden. the entire foundation of every good thing about this agency's culture has been forbidden for nearly a year now. and folks are exhausted. and we get out into the yard regularly, but there are over 5,000 people in the agency. and we're not allowed to convene them. so this is actually one of the greatest fears i have as an agency, particularly now that we're starting to turn a corner, we have a new federal administration, a vaccine is on

the horizon. the entire agency has been operating in crisis mode because our agency's people believe this their mission, they believe in the city. they know that we're delivering essential workers to work. and i'm feeling like the exhaustion is going to hit and it's going to hit all at once. so it's actually one of those things where you all can actually be helpful. so when you're out in the field, when you go past the bus terminal, stop by and talk to the inspector and the handful of the operators. come with us to the bus yards when we're out in the field. we only have a chance to meet 50 people maybe, because you know, people sort of stream through as their shifts change. but it helps. it also -- you will also learn a lot from interacting with our workforce. they're very blunt. rest assured, we know exactly what is going on in the front

line, even though it is physically impossible for us to interact with all 5,000 of our crews. i would encourage you to join with us, because it's going to be a big part of our decision-making over the next year about how much we invest in culture and morale. >> well, i for one, have a very open calendar. i'd be happy to join you on any of the visits. i think we all these days have less scheduled events on the calendar. thank you for the invitation. >> thank you, director. i think that's right. when i take a muni bus, i go to the operator, saying thank you for your service. i think it's so important. i want this message to go out to the larger public. one of the things that happens, human nature is write the letter, register the concern when something goes wrong, but when people are doing the right things, when the bus actually

shows up and the driver is courteous, we don't actually go out of our way to acknowledge that. if we can remind members of the public to also let our staff, whether it's a p.c.o., operator, maintenance person that you see, just to say hello and thank you. it makes all the difference, because it is hard to be working during these difficult times. and, yes, on the one hand, people are thrilled to have employment. on the other hand, they're putting their lives at risk to be working. it's difficult because they can't do their jobs the way they used to do their jobs. when you were going through the list, i was thinking there are so many m.v.p.s in the agency and i wish there were more we could do and uplift and hold these people and tell them it would be over at a certain time. that's the hardest thing, there is no back to normal in the near term. we don't even know what it means for the long term.

i want to underscore that many of us on the board will take the opportunities to join you director tumlin, when there are opportunities, either through online meetings or live meetings to be present with staff and to greet them. i want to ask the public who is listening into the hearing. thank you your operator, thank the people who are working. thank all city workers that are working right now. it's the time people need to hear it the most. you don't know what day someone is having. your words of kindness can make all the difference. i will stop with that and see if there are other directors with questions. [please stand by] [please stand by]

>> do you want to start that? >> sure, i can start it. [indiscernible] that's an opportunity for people who are report to us to give

anonymous honest feedback to us. it's important for the employees to take the time to speak honestly about what is working and not working. the supervisors with give their feedback i think another area that's been really important to me, i'm spending lot more time -- [indiscernible] [phone ringing]

[indiscernible] >> we're also looking for ways to move beyond kind of the traditional focus on discipline to more performance-based planning. i think that is a work in progress and it's something that brent jones is going to be talking about later in the presentation today. we started a site on our operator portal that solicited feed back on peopleback. to make sure every comment and

question gets a response. another really valuable place that we found a tremendous amount of feedback this year is through our union partnerships. tom and jeff and i brent and others were meeting often weekly with our union partners to keep up with the pace of change. as a base of survival method but wanting to make sure that as we move forward with things that we're always testing and using a soundingboard. we don't want always agree on everything but we found a tremendous amount of shared objectives to tackle this year's challenges. >> i do want to point out that we're about 35 minutes behind

schedule now. as we think about how to manage the time, let's keep thing snappy. >> chair borden: are there any other questions from the directors? we'll go on to the next portion. this is all part of item 7. >> now, that was the good news. we got through a hard year. we're going to get through the next year. we do want to lay out some of the challenges that we see to inform the board conversations moving forward. the first challenge that i want to point out, it's something that the controller office presentation highlighted is the continued uncertainty with how covid will roll out. we have a lot of things that we

do like hiring and building schedules that have long lead times. we don't know when to initiate that work because covid doesn't have a playbook. we're learning things as we go. i'm optimistic that we may be able to see reduction in the covid capacity restrictions by late summer early fall. we also could see a change in trend in the virus and not be able to experience that recovery. we need to continue to plan for multiple scenarios. that's what's been able to make us successful to date and that is how we will get through that challenge.

the second challenge that i want to talk about is driving. lot of us got reintroduced to cars over the pandemic. what people probably discovered was that cars can be really comfortable and convenient. yet, they continue to be completely and geometrically impossible. dealing with that people driving, more people being used to driving while facing the reality that they put a tremendous negative extra on like walking, biking and transit, is a challenge we'll face as we head into recovery.

uncertain around regional travel will compound some of that auto dependency. sfmta relies on connections to regional transit partners. many of who have been as impacted or more impacted than we have by the financial crises that covid has created. the uncertainties of their service affects how people make connections to our service. that is something we have to continue to monitor. we have made amazing progress under covid to work really as a cohesive region around transit issues and i'm excited to see that as a positive trend that comes out of 2020 and 2021. but the fact remains that if the regional transit network doesn't

recover, it will have residual impacts to our own service. while we made tremendous progress in the subway, our work is far from done. another challenge that we will face, especially as we allocate scarce capital resources, is the need to continue to invest in a state of good repair for both our subways, facilities and a lot of our street infrastructure which tom will talk about in a moment. >> speaking of the infrastructure, we started to realize how much deferred maintenance has become an issue with our routine traffic safety infrastructure. we've been hyperfocused and with eyes open with our board.

we have not been spending as much money as we should on making sure we don't have deferred maintenance backlogs. with crosswalks and timing of traffic signals. it will be difficult to hire new staff or even purchase the material might be necessary to do that deferred maintenance. we are going to face tradeoffs. things can start to get less behind. one concrete example, we have been counting on money from the t.m.c. tax to pay for a retiming of large number of traffic signals, slow down the progression of speed vehicles.

that's just one small example of a tradeoff between preventing the deferred maintenance and delivering -- [indiscernible] >> i think perhaps, the biggest challenge that we face as an agency, has to do with workforce planning and hiring. coming into covid, sfmta had hundreds of vacancies. that reality helped us to survive the financial crises but it's also going to hinder our ability to quickly recover. we have not hired major positions in 9 or 10 months.

once we turn back on the hiring process, there's going to be complexities like creating lists, difficult to hire classifications like maintenance technicians, that are going to hinder our ability to grow and respond nimbly. >> another key question to ask is answer the question, what is the proper tradeoff between the thoroughness of our public outreach and communication with the project and the speed which we deliver projects. since we converted our vision zero program, we have reduced the amount of time it takes to actually get a safety improvement on the street from a matter of years to a matter of months or weeks some cases.

the delivery end of construction is no longer the factor that makes whattard for us to get all the change on the street we talk about all the time. in some cases it is going to be become level of communication that we expect of ourselves when we work with the public. covid constrained our ability to do the face-to-face outreach. particularly in neighborhood where is there is limited uptick in things like zoom meetings. we found some creative ways to gather feedback and cost effective but also robust

fashion. it is cost effective and if it's done right, it's more meaningful and more inclusive of voices who can't make it to face-to-face meetings and aren't going to want to for several years. you think about projects like rolling out sunday evening meters, which is critical to our management and important piece of our budget expectation -- [indiscernible] we've done good job informing people. we haven't gotten everyone's full buy-in. how far do we go with getting -- making sure we have a large number of people on board with the changes that we believe maybe necessary before we go ahead and make those changes. final thing that i see everyday, i know we're really -- we're

talking about lot of different ways -- i want to be clear what it is we're talking about. we're not just talking about people who are tired of doing their jobs. people who are doing this jobs, if you're directing traffic and just working the streets of san francisco, you spent the year warning worried about your personal health and safety. wondering whether the pandemic will end and whether you are safe and whether you have enough personal protective equipment, whether the public respect you enough to not do harm to you at a time when people are under stress. you worry about your family. i have heard so many heart breaking stories people who worked dedicated employees worked for us for so long who

have not found the balance they need between their personal responsibilities, family and children and elders they care for and their communities and show up for work everyday. they do show up everyday. the personal losses that people suffered. so many people in our agency, thank god we have not experience community spread in the sfmta. there are hundreds of lost love one they lost parents. they are really struggling. they continue to show up. if we don't find a way to provide some emotional relief for them, we will burn our staff out.

you can talk about this emotional, there's a quantitative side too. state of emergency has limited the need for process requirements. which we're able to invest new programs and try them out and implement things. we hit a limit of what we can do officially, however. there's a lot of issues around the city that are not resolved. there are shared spaces that when the rain come this week, will be revealed to cause problems with the drainage in the streets.

our ability to bend the rules and say yes to as many people as possible, that ends when the pandemic end as does our ability to push our staff at the pace we're going at. we need to map a path out of crises mode. people who work for us, everybody see on this call, we are absolutely 100% devoted to san francisco and public service. we want to be accountable for performance. we want to be accountable for fix things that goes wrong. we have got to find ways to make our workforce more resilient. we have got to stabilize the agency through all the difficult choices and priorities we'll be talking about over the rest of the workshop so that people see a focused stable agency emerging

from a crises, continuing to be a great place to work and serve san francisco everyday. >> these last slides, i won't spend lot of time on them. jonathan and tim will walk the board through this detail. i do want to flag a couple of things. one is that pre-coyed, -- pre-covid we faced a structural deficit. that means we didn't have a enough services to meet all of the safety and mobility needs of our transportation system. that budget has challenges has been compounded by a year of austerity measures. when we say that we've

identified almost $120 million of savings, that has come from reducing over time from doing very limited hiring to shifting staff to fill core needs. it has significantly reduced our ability to deliver programs and if we continue at the level of savings into 2021 and 2022, it will mean continuing with the current service levels. the challenge that i think that's going to create is that as mobility increases, as people finally get to leave their homes for something other than work or basic trip to the grocery store,

what now might be somewhat frustrating gap in the service is going to become intolerable. as we prepare for the city to reemerge without the resources to properly serve that, i think we face a tremendous challenge as an agency to continue for people to have faith in our service and what we can deliver. that doesn't mean that we're going to stop saving. at the board's direction, we will continue the austerity measure, at whatever level you deemed appropriate. we're also looking for as many creative ways as we can to expand on those savings. things like doing an early

retirement of our fleet so we can significantly save in parts, is an example of something that is in the works now. i recently consolidated management of our rail and rubber tire maintenance divisions both for shared learning as well as for some resource efficiencies. all of these challenges are things that we confront everyday and we succeed at everyday. they do, i think, define the landscape for which you're going to have to make some hard decisions moving forward. >> am i up, julie? >> yeah, i think it's important

that we lay out all of the challenges for the board. this is just a few more slides. then we can entertain all discussions. i want to flag for the board that we're going to pick up on some of these themes later in the workshop. we don't have to dissect all of these challenges up front because we're going to be revisiting them throughout the course of the two days. >> thank you. board members, jonathan rewers i'm the senior manager of budget financial planning analysis. we want to give you a sense of where we stand currently. you'll see we've kind of laid out what our total revenue losses are. we'll cover that more detail tomorrow. it's nearing $600 million, julie

just noted the austerity measures and reduction in expenditures that occurred in the current fiscal year. we have a projection what we think we will receive from federal relief, low end of about $230 million that should be positioned to close our budget deficit in the current fiscal that leaves about $86 million for the next fiscal year we will have discussions about what additional expenditure savings looks like. that discussion will occur in the session tomorrow. we'll be working to solve about $134 million budget deficit in fiscal year '22. the other thing that we done is in light of ben rosenfield, our city controller said, rather than just purely update our 5-year financial forecast, we developed a number of scenarios kind of considering some of the questions that the board members had today.

this is the part one that we're working to plan for. we will go through this as we look at our longer fiscal outlook. we'll look at the different alternatives that we have. this is the one that we're recommending that we plan for. you'll see that it show the roughly just over $100 million deficit close to $153 million. you'll see revenue recover but not enough over the 5-year forecast. we need to plan for a long-term measure for the agency to restore service to pre-pandemic level. but to make sure that we have the system is resilient and welfare the ability to provide a base level of service that people can expect with certainty. we will go into this more detail. we wanted to give you a sense of the short-term budget deficit,

$134 million and our longer term structural deficit that we will be working to close. that's all i have. >> if you could shift back to the board members for feedback. >> chair borden: great. director eaken has questions. >> vice chair eaken: director mcguire i want to speak to the question you raised around outreach and how much we want to balance outreach with getting things done. i was pleased to hear director tumlin say that the entire agency has gotten more efficient over the last year. what i sort of wonder from you, director mcguire, do you feel that your team has pushed the envelope on how to do outreach

in way that's respectful of the timely staff and it's respectful of the time of the public who participate in our meetings? it feels you can do just as much work to set up a public outreach process as you could citywide. it feels like based on the financial concerns of our agency, based on what we heard from you with staff burnout. i would recommend in we move toward the larger scope like maybe there's a minimum scope of a project that merits a really robust public outreach process. i just wonder if there's some efficiencies there in terms of looking at an entire network of protected bike lanes as opposed to looking at small projects that are intensive on staff's

time. other question i will ask, director rewers, i didn't see anything about the prospect for future federal stimulus. we all know biden administration made this top priority. i would have to assume that there's going to be something that comes in 2021. i wonder why we're not showing any prospect of the additional federal support? >> we're not showing that today. i think that is definitely up for discussion tomorrow as the board considers various options and scenarios to close the fiscal year '22 deficit. interesting thing is, the board has been through this two times already. with cares and with the additional federal funds that we're getting now from the fiscal year '21 bill. again, it is for all of you to consider the level of risks and

again, my advice to the board is that we always consider the tools that buy us the maximum amount of time to see if additional federal relief will come about. what we want to do again, create stability in service, maintain that relationship with our riders and see what timing brings. that will be up for discussion tomorrow. as we talk about different options. i just got asked that question by the board of supervisors. you are not the only one thinking of that. >> i like to add that our first priority should be protecting our staff. nothing would destroy everything we're trying to accomplish than being stuck in a situation of having to face layoffs. one of the baseline assumption we trying to build to is what do we need to cut in order to hold

on to our people who helped san francisco get through this crises, being out there everyday? >> does that number the refinancing of the bond money too? like the refinancing? >> the 134 is before the refinancing. we will -- we're in the process of making that happen. you can assume that as a potential solution to begin the process reducing the deficit. we didn't want to -- we have not officially included it in because we have not completed the transaction. we don't know yet until somebody buys the bonds how much savings we can realize. that's on the list bringing that budget deficit down.

>> director hinze: i saw that you have a slide about ability to push our staff during the pandemic and that those allowances, if you will, going away after the state of emergency ends. do you see that as a possible barrier to making this program, shared spaces permanent. how do you see that affecting the permanent and the possible permanent of those two programs in particular? >> they do require lot of time.

you're correct to draw that between them. making sure that we're able to rotate people who are on emergency response rotations back into the regular jobs to relieve the folks back in the office. it's up to us to provide that relief and manage the workload. reflect on what director eaken said a minute ago, looking at scale and scope of the outreach. we expect the same amount of -- same amount of time to move one parking space down the street to build a whole network of slow streets and shared spaces. without of the silver linings with covid, we found

technology-based tools, like crowd sourcing and mapping and virtual and houses like twine peaks. we need to explore more. that is a really important way to see it through what you just described. >> we're seeing the benefit of living experiments as an outreach tool. that is certainly something that we will continue as we think about outreach efficiency. sometimes having to get everything perfect on paper, overwhelming challenge. once it's actually implemented and then tweaked based on feedback and based on performance, we're able to get to a project that everybody is

satisfied with. >> chair borden: any other questions at this time? this presentation is part 7? is this still part of item 7 or the next item? do we have another presentation for this time? >> i believe it was supposed to be for item 8. >> chair borden: okay, perfect. if there are no other questions from board members. i like to open up to public comment. are there callers on the line at this time? >> you have four questions remaining. >> this bob i'm a senior with the lifelong disability. i was hoping at some point, you

board members would be somewhat questioning some of the statistics you just got in the beginning of this presentation. you were told about more wheelchair ramps being made. sounds good but 90% of those who have a mobility disability do not use wheelchairs. we don't always need wheelchair ramps. we need responsive service. i'm bringing that up as an example where at the church and market intersection, you taken out a stop that serves customers from safeway. people have to go across multiple lanes of two streets in order to get to the bus stop. that means pushing your grocery cart or carrying in your hand. all that is unnecessary, unless you're acting like being accountants.

you're having a hard time convincing passengers of that. it's not just that you're not really responding to. when you saw a map of the changes in on the 27 line. you ignored that has no service to the dental school. it has no service to the independent living resource research. months ago, about to deklein and taking away that stuff to staff. nobody responded. not a chart, just a simple map or look at the intersection say this does not serve people well. that's it for this session. >> thank you. next speaker please.

>> hello. hi everybody. this is trevor adam i'm the chapter president. i'm enjoying the presentation and everything you guys have offered. i think it's a big push. i think there's a lot that needs to be considered. as you can imagine, regulations of the city are more difficult now than ever. we really want our leadership and you all, the board to consider the means that we need to do our job. that's helping keeping us safe and covid safe and putting in safety measures we need to do our jobs effective. lot of p.c. o.s feel like it's falling on deaf ears to speak

about these measures and convince you how important it is we need your support. i will continue to do so. we need to see action for that way we want fall victim to complacency and that way they won't take it upon themselves to go ahead and self-colt. we need to make sure we have adequate staffing. we've seen an increase in covid pods case -- positive cases that's extremely staggering. it really is causing an uproar in morale. i want you all to consider really safeguarding this group you guys will be relying on so

much. i'm more than willing to work with anybody to come up with ideas to address the fierce issues. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> hi, can you hear me? >> chair borden: , yes, we can. >> thank you members of board. i'm the president of planners and environmentalist specialist chapter local 21. i'm so proud to work for the sfmta. i started out as an intern as an agency back in 2015.

i wanted to work for the sfmta since i learned what it can be a transportation planner. one of our key responsibilities is to secure the future of our community before tests, we built model, we prepare for the unexpected setbacks. the pandemic is one of the setbacks. we're asking the board to approach the budget the way the planner would. we know that the sfmta received $374 million in cares act funding last year. we know that among the second round of aid, the agency rainy fund and the city yearly $1 billion in in reserve, the

sfmta doesn't need to make reduction in services and staff. san francisco is used as a case study to access issues to innovative transportation policy and design. esteemed members of the board, you have the opportunity right now to carry this legacy forward and lead the nation. please continue to invest in city workers to make san francisco bolder. >> you have four questions remaining. >> thank you. i'm pleased with the accomplishment. i like to see more car police.

so i can give out my business. i appreciate the importance of fixing the subway. i want a better subway. the reason i talked about opening the subway. i usually use the subway. it's not academic. when i lear i would go -- leave i would go to van ness and the subway is real for me.

i want go get the subway fixed. i want to get the subway open because it's something that i actually use and it makes my life easier. i want things to be easier. subway gets me to places quickly. we have to prioritize turning the subway back on. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> you have four questions remaining. >> things go from bad to worse and m.t.a. is the agency of deficits and shortfalls. one way saving money is not going on these ridiculous projects as gary street, all that money was weared and should have been on new buses and

drivers. this should have been 20 years ago. now you're stuck with the bill. essential subway another you should stop these ridiculous plans and use that money to shore up your deficits. this is a very wasteful agency. it supposed to done realistic project and to the detriment of the public. your motto is we break it, you walk it and ride it. what's happening is that the -- the system has gotten worse. they are getting less ridership.

make transportation system work. thank you. >> chair borden: is that everything? thank you for your comment. next speaker please. >> you have three speakers remaining. >> good afternoon and directors. [indiscernible]

>> chair borden: are you still speaking? are you done? i don't know if you got cut off. your extension was not strong. ms. carter? maybe we'll go to the next speaker. if she got cut off, we can her back in. >> you have two questions

remaining. that financial >> i'm an engineer with the sfmta and the capital program construction division and member of local 21. i worked for the city for over 17 years. i'm proud to work for sfmta. in 2020 i along with staff has become more than an engineer. i alongside with others at sfmta staff became covid disaster service to getting from it seat and agency. we have to keep our passengers and operators difficult. we have worked in cleaning our businesses and i and others, we're working in it san francisco covid command center. in this great city, i i know the

board is asking scad to? up with -- federal relief knowledge just passed is going >> president breed: is calling for $20 billion for the relief ate aid. we have the fondling to asset fund -- now we'reasking you to t that support it. thank you very much. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> one second. hayden miller. i wanted to comment on sole of

the successes but also the failures of m.t.a. this year. somebody who rides the 38 everyday it's been great to see the temporary transit lanes implemented. one thing that the agency struggled with is the covid response. you will see in my letter, m.t.a. has said, they are not up to par like, people are not wearing their masks. there's no hand sanitizer on the buses. it's kind of like out-- outrageous. we should be investing in safety now during a pandemic.

you spoke about being grateful for the staff. i feel like as i mentioned earlier, the front line staff, i don't know they feel that way. they don't feel like they have been taken care of now. they've been coming to work everyday. it's a -- it's really dangerous. we need to take better care of our frontline workers and passengers. i think the m.t.a. really needs to work on that. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> you have one question remaining. >> yes. i would like to thank them for their presentations.

wasn't focused on where enforcement number efforts, the number and congregation where parse -- to take place. going forward, the issue is to help your bus operators with keeping the path clear for their moving of the people by as i exthere a 24th to mission, cars just parked wherever they want. and it block the bus going for review he goes. there's a problem with not sufficient parking for it food

delivery people or an yet they are blocking major bus line. it's very difficult to get -- docitations where they are warranted. also, somebody text messaging is very annoying when you're watching it online. thank you very much. >> chair borden: thank you.

reminder to anyone on the call, if you're not speaking, please yourself on mute. i see people are not on mute. your background sounds can be quite loud. next speaker please. >> you have zero questions remaining. >> chair borden: with that, this item is back before directors. are there any final comments before we move on to our next item? >> director lai: i want to make sure i understood the comments, i heard staff presenting that we have not had community spread within the agency but also heard one of our parking control officers calling in, stating that there is an increase in covid cases.

in >> in the cases of sfmta our staff are tracking lower than the local average. with one exception as well as central subway project, we have not been able to establish any workplace transmission based upon our extentive contact tracing. the cases have been random and attributable to community spread. that said, covid is terrifying to our front line personnel. we take it very seriously and we continue to emphasize not only all of the protective measures

that we ask people to do in workplace to keep that up but to also spread the word about that and maintain precautions at home. we continue to be very proud that we have one of the lowest covid transmission rates of any agency of our kind. >> director lai: then follow-up question about vaccination for workers. i believe i saw transportation service providers should be under phase 1b. my understanding was that was still the vaccination plan but there's been discussion at the state level about going to basically just an age-aced rollout and wondering what that means for our workers and then also if we've done any kind of anonymous polling within our own agency as to our members, our staff willingness to take the

vaccine if and when available. >> director tumlin: this has been in the press a lot last week. transport workers are in phase 1b tier 2. the state seem to have announced that after they complete phase 1b tier 1, they will be switching to age-based distribution center t which means transportation workers are no longer in the priority queue. other labor unions throughout the state of california are deeply concerned about this, particularly all of the frontline workers who have been working all through covid. that aid, the vaccine is in short supply, state has the control over it. we are pursuing all avenues in order to rectify that problem and get your frontline workers vaccinated if they want to. currently the position the city, vaccination will not be

mandatory. indeed, we have some evidence that there is a share of workforce who will not want to be vaccinated. but the majority very much do want to be vaccinated. we want to make sure those vaccines are provided. >> chair borden: director yekutiel has a question? >> director yekutiel: this is a question probably to you and director tumlin. i want to get a sense of kind of a larger question about this workshop. director tumlin, you mentioned you want this to be an opportunity to get some direction from the board on these big questions. seeing how the agenda is mainly presentations and questions on us, my question is, where do you want -- where the place that we

give you that direction? there's a lot coming in here. there's a public component of this. i worry that at the point of this to get some clear directives on these major questions. i'm wondering where you want that to happen. there's like a distinct place for that to happen? >> director tumlin: this is the information part. later this afternoon, there are some specifics that are built in the presentation. you will see those. then tonight, you'll have a homework assignment to come back to us at 1:00. that will help to reveal some of those. we got a lot more tradeoff questions for tomorrow. as we go along, if you want to express like this is more important than that or you better hold on to this and that

-- feel free to contribute those. we have whole team taking notes. if you want to just listen to get all the facts, that's also good. >> i presume, my colleagues and i reviewed the slides in advance. if there's new information that's not in the slide, maybe cover those. we got 80 slides for today. maybe we can just move quickly through those. thanks a lot. >> director tumlin: we were told to prepare and read them and look at them and think about them. i'm sure the other directors did. same with director eaken. trying to figure out what's the best use the staff's time. i'm not presume to be overly directive in my question. i'm trying to make sure do i this right. >> chair borden: we do have a

little bit of situation where apparently public comment was not working well and people were not able to get through. i'm going to open public comment for people weren't able to get through or dropped. you have to 10 if they want to speak. this is on item 7. this is for anyone who missed it or was dropped off the line or had their time cut short. >> the number is (888)-808-6929. the access code is 9961164 you do need to dial 1, 0 to be added to the speaker line. you will get a prompt that will tell you're entering question

and answer time. this is public comment period. >> you have three questions remaining. >> hi i'm nicole christian. i'm with seiu local 10. i have listened patiently waiting for public comment on some of the things. few of the items that i see particular problem is the safety and well-being of front line workers. lot of times people say frontline, they're thinking just muni drivers. there are many more frontline workers. we have p.t.o.s, car cleaners and we have customer service staff and street ambassadors, all of these are frontline workers that are being put at risk. one of the things that is most notable to me is the car cleaner

position. we supposed to hire 50 new car cleaners. those 25 are tempt exempt instead of a regular hire. which speaks to the disingenuous nature of having staff morale being number one importance. if those people are hired directly hired and not tempt exempt hired, they have a pathway to city employment. they have a pathway to retirement. they have a pathway to union wages. tempt exempt they can be let go at any time. that does not inspire confidence. going forward, you really need to look at the health and safety and car cleaners are number one this that aspect of health and safety.

>> chair borden: next speaker please. >> you have two questions remaining. >> greetings sfmta board members. my name is kimberly. i'm an active member of the seiu 1021 and union steward and on the seat committee. i want to clarify some items that i heard in item 7. jeff, you indicated that we had a culture of one that was -- that is not the case. by the way, we don't need food to be jolly or happy. we only need respect. we meet monthly only about 10%

grievances are acknowledged or followed through. we expressed in our last meeting that we are not being heard. we want the executive leadership to be more transparent when it comes to the needs of seiu issues. as far as the field operations, there are lot of issues going on and it's getting worse. director tumlin, tom mcguire, julie, we're all employee meeting on november 10th, whereas still operation staff poured their hearts to you about their grievances and e.e.o. issues they are experiencing now. they were initially happy when you took the time to hear them out. now all of sudden they are retaliated upon. at least three of the five that were on the call. the culture you have described is not what is occurring. the racial equity plan is no help to them as most of this

plan will not go into effect until 2023. our guys need assistance now we have a culture of racism and employees being passed up on promotional opportunity. whereas your number one you're woman latino you're being passed up. not to mention name calling -- [indiscernible] >> chair borden: thank you for sharing that. this is very important information. thank you. next speaker please. >> you have one question remaining. >> good afternoon, this is pete wilson. thank you for having me on. i want to say thank you for director tumlin and others for pointing out or saying and stating that avoiding it layoffs is number one.

we appreciate that. hope that continues to be so with the appointment of a new secretary of transportation pete buttigieg in washington d.c. one of our concerns is safety of our operators. did get notice that another operator was spat upon yesterday. that is a frequent occurrence. we have brought this up before. it is unfortunate that somebody brought up the idea more masks and sanitizer on the buses. we appreciate that. i don't know what is the answer more security on the buses or what. we never hear about people being caught for these types of issues and it's a major safety concern. i have a concern that i expressed before to jeff and julie and others. i'm hoping that the tokens do come back. we do have nice fancy new cash

receiving machines on those buses. they do serve some excellent purposes. they won't let people put in a $50 bill anymore. on the other hand, they only one nice crisp bills. people are standing there as we're getting more people pay cash again. they're breathing on the operators. please bring back the tokens. it's good for the environment so we can reuse them. as somebody from seiu pointed out, hiring of people, not making them union members, not give the benefits of a real job, i feel for you. we also have that with t.w.u. members or positions as well. t.w.u. represents the disease control investigators tracking covid throughout the city and county of san francisco. thank you very much.

>> chair borden: are there any additional callers on the line for item 7? >> you have zero questions remaining. >> chair borden: with that, we'll close public comment. unless there are any final comment. we'll move on to the next one. item number 8. >> presentation and discussion regarding post-covid recovery programs and projects, vision zero progress and plans, priority settings for transit service and delivery and capital investments. >> director tumlin: we are little behind time. as requested by the board member, we can cut straight to the point in order to focus on issues we're asking for guidance on. >> thank you director tumlin. my name is sarah jones. i'm the sfmta planning director.

it's really an honor and a pleasure to talk about recovery planning here with you today and for reasons that we all know well. what we need to do and what's before us is actively transitioning our emergency responses to support in the post-pandemic, those things that the last 10 months have shown us we very much need to prioritize. that is equity, economic recovery and something that's really crystalize with our sense and use of street of public space that supports the city. recovery planning feels to me like what we're doing is building a bridge across a gap to our post-pandemic future. of course, i know a bridge has features that you need to use on both sides such as a safe path of travel that's free of obstacles. much of what we're doing in this

emergency will be needed taken desired in the recovery and beyond like that safe path to travel. a bridge has been that you don't need on other side. you need it for the gap like suspension cables. where we're now, we will not always have the same limitations that we have now on muni service. we will not always have the same level of need to help businesses dig out of this very deep hole they have found themselves in. during our recovery, we very much do need to do so. in building our bridge, we're thinking about what might be on the other side. really, what we need to think about too now is a sound and stable way across this gap of recovery. we have great tools for that in this agency. of course during this pandemic, we've added more. we're going to need to be collaborative and wholistic. we need to be bold about taking action and trying things. we're going to need to be

iterative and make adjustments in what we do. we will need to stay focused on the objectives, the purposes and the values of what our multimode of transportation means for the city. recovery planning is something that we have to be thinking about on two levels now. first there's the practical matter of future listing of the emergency order and expiration of the emergency response approvals that will come 120 days after that. we don't know exactly when that will be. we really know that we need to get ahead of that. we. don't want to be scrambling. we have a need to start establishing a sense of stability and certainty. then there's also the level on the ground situation of increasing activity. it's definitely already happen since we first went into shelter-in-place. it's going to continue to happen and we need to be able to

support levels of reactivation and reopening as they go. in these next slides i will talk through both levels and go through our emergency programs and how we're going about making them stick. i'm not going to be going into in-depth. i want to give you a sense what you're going to be seeing over the next several months. let's start with our streets as public spaces. the shared spaces program is something that has been a multiagency collaborative from the start. the overall lead of the mayor's office but our agency lead is monica. looking ahead, we have been working with the mayor's office and our other agency partners to create a epermanent -- permanent

shared paces program. which will be an opportunity for businesses to engage with the street in another way than they did in the past. that's going to be coming to you. we're dealing with many critical considerations in that. that are spanning the practical and revenue side of it and also some big policy issues that are raised particularly around equity. now we'll move on to shared streets. this is a really good example of what i mean by bridging. slow streets was established within emergency response purpose of social distancing. it has a really important recovery purpose of being a part of a network for travel that will be needed to supplement limited muni service. then in the long-term, once we're out of all of this, slow

street has been a great way to advance many of our values here at sfmta. in looking at slow streets we have a dual effort. one is to create and ensure our recovery network that is not necessarily all will be permanent but also isn't depending on this time limited emergency authorization. then the second part of this effort is to start bringing forward streets for permanent slow street designation. you start hearing about those a couple of weeks ago. then we have kind of a street area that i think about as recreation streets, which is really a new definition of understanding of purpose of our streets and our spaces. this is about the three big car free areas that were established

for emergency purposes on upper bay highway and golden gate park. the first two of these are under the formal jurisdiction of the recreation parks department. we're working with them on those. first one is upper great highway. we are doing lot of traffic calming and diversion on the neighboring streets to deal with the current condition. we're working with rec park on what their recommendation is going to be for a post-emergency project that looks at how this might work in recovery. we're looking ahead to a joint hearing late they are spring on that between this board and recreation parks commission. golden gate park, the car free path opportunity spans the entirety of the park but of

course the real focus has been about j.f.k. drive east. again, in partnership with recreation and park department, we've been working with the museums in the park to support their need for access during this emergency period. looking ahead, we're participating in a working group that's been convened by the county transportation authority and the outcomes of that group as well as further outreach and lot of input on this issue is going to inform rec parks recommendations on j.f.k. drive. it's likely possible that process is going to identify complementary improvements that are under sfmta's jurisdiction to support access to golden gate park. you'll have a joint hearing on this what we're looking to later this spring. twin peaks it boulevard.

we got a preview of this couple of weeks ago. you will be considering the proposal in an upcoming hearing. the panhandle protected bike lane. that was a situation we in more spaces needed for cars. particularly in the social distancing situation, much space needed for bikes than for people walking and rolling. what this project did adjusted for that and rebalanced that allocation of space a little bit. while it was done for social distancing, it serves good purposes long-term. at this point, they are planning to bring that forward for action in the future. now moving on to transit. clearly, this has been a huge

focus of what we have needed to do to support people in this emergency. in the emergency and beyond, our transit riders need and deserve the very best that we have to offer in our multimodal system in the city. huge amount of focus making sure transit is available to support the essential business of the city during the pandemic and people conducting it. first the temporary emergency transit lanes are tetls. it was looking ahead what the need will be. we saw the travel time savingses that we were happening with shelter-in-place. we recognized right away that congestion was going to rise as activity increases.

it's essential preserve to travel time savings from that congestion. looking ahead to on the tetls, there's going to be some going forward. but really taking action on the evaluation and outreach support coming recommendations on permanent for the tetls. then the service changes, this has been just a heroic effort. amazing team, mostly women, what's happening with service changes, we are going to be coming up on a year since the service changes first went into effect. the tetl equity analysis will be coming before you. later on in the fall, really talking about a holistic and thoughtful approach to managing

service during the limitations that we have during recovery. some of our non-physical and yet, still really important meaningful programs, one of them is the essential card helping seniors use taxis as one way of filling the gap that we haven't been able to do with transit. annette williams it leading this. this is a really welcome addition. we need to figure out how it stays in the picture as we think about our whole picture of paratransit. our ambassadors, this was a new program created. we have evolved and leveraged

this and revamped approach to support and fare compliance that's under kim burris, the security chief. to give a shot out to the crossing guard who pivoted to supporting transit riders during this time when unfortunately, their services were not needed for schools. transportation demand management. this is not something a specific program as a broad and really critical area of engagement. this is led by john knox white. we have worked with other entities across the city who need and use transportation. basically everybody to really get a ahead of congestion and make sure that people aren't burdened by having no choice other than driving during this time. this is my conclusion. even though this slide talks

about challenges, i really want to end on a high note here. the reason that we have these challenges is because of our commitment to playing the role that we need to play in recovery. there are deep needs in the city. there's a lot of uncertainty. we are navigating it together. with that, i will wrap up. i don't know if you want to take questions or go straight into the next presentation. >> chair borden: are there any questions? i know director heminger has a question. >> director heminger: thank you madam chair. i've got couple of comments. maybe i can help us transition to little direction giving here. i want to talk about three of the strategies that were described here. i guess my answer to the three

is -- [indiscernible] i do believe making the shared spaces permanent makes a lot of sense. i think it's been a real silver lining in a very dark cloud that we have hovering over all of us. i do worry, though, long-term about the question of cost rory. -- recovery. we're giving up lot of spaces. i was encouraged to hear that issue is being considered. in terms of looking forward to a decision by our agency on that question, cost recovery is going to be uppermost in my mind. i'll note just parenthetically, right now, those shared spaces are allowing lot of restaurants, i think to stay open for business.

i think those shared spaces will be inevitably valuable. lot of people will want to eat outside even if it's allowable to eat inside. i do think there's a place for us to have a meeting of the minds. on the question of slow streets, i think it's been a another clear winner that we have improvised our way into during the pandemic. maybe my yes-but answer may sound trivial. we got these all over the city now. they sort of look like hell. i hope one of the questions that we're looking at is if we're going to make them permanent, can we avoid having a bunch of busted sandbags all over town?

finally the transit lanes, which we have been doing for some time. these are emergency lanes. what i would hope we can do is take advantage of the time timesavings they are providing y getting more rapid bus service on those transit lanes. that's rapid with a capital "r." i know we had to put that aside. now we're looking at a future where we can start bringing stuff back. can we bring more lanes back, lines back as rapid transit? my answer on all three is yes. i do think the details are going to matter on all three of these and more. thank you, madam chair. >> chair borden: thank you director heminger.

i see that director lai has a question. >> director lai: thank you. i'm going to state them as comments. two points one on the shared spaces. it's great that we're going to move towards looking at permanency. i see that as a great opportunity for us to take stock on the equity question around shared spaces. i just don't mean how we're distributing them citywide but balancing the private versus public interests. that will be very important to me. i agree with director heminger about the cost side. the equity side is equally important. just hoping that as staff

continue to try to be more efficient with your outreach efforts, this hearing perhaps leaning more heavily on virtual resources that were not forgetting to capture our community and those who have limited access to virtual meeting. i'm sure staff is going to be covering their basis. don't want to forget that it's really important that we're going fast but we're capturing the range of folks.

>> director yekutiel: being restaurant owner it saved lot of my peers spaces. there are lot of folks who are looking forward to investing in their shared spaces over the long-term post-pandemic. just to reiterate that this program i think could do lot to actually make small businesses in san francisco little bit less burdensome. it's very expensive to run a brick and mortar small business in this town. shared spaces program is a little bit of relief that people are taking advantage of once the pandemic is behind us. on the slow street front, i would love for the -- i believe it will be the planning department within the agency to come up with a proposal, what a city wide connected slow streets program would look like versus piecemeal, versus one by one. frankly, just from the perspective of advocacy and unity around what a big bold project would look like

post-pandemic. if we're looking at kind of how we think of a long-term impact, i think it will be a lot easier for advocates and folks just thinking about the city's long-term urban infrastructure to get behind what a citywide design and network would like like versus piecemeal one by one. would love to see what that looks like versus closed corridors the weekend. thank you so much. >> director hinze: i wanted to

say to director -- >> you're speaking my language on that. talking about a network and connecting with kind of the destinations that we really want to serve. i think that's a key piece of slow streets in recovery. it needs to be a network because it's serving to compliment other transportation options that we can offer. it really needs to work that way. thank you for that comment. >> director hinze: i have a follow-up question. to director yekutiel point, last week, we were sort of informed that there was 75% -- [indiscernible]

to be considered permanent. i want to make sure we're doing the appropriate level of outreach and taking everything into account. >> vice chair eaken: i want to align myself with director yekutiel's comments. please bring the board network connected protected streets

citywide. we had a workshop with activist asking for that. we were told we would see it at this workshop in february. in that regard, i see regularly both j.f.k. and great highway is part of transportation network. i see them as recreation streets. those are key parts of citywide transportation network. i want to make sure we're making that point. i think that's the right idea. i i can follow-up and have another conversation with john knox white on this. i want to know what more we're doing to encourage people and walk and bike during this time. it goes beyond infrastructure

and street piece. >> chair borden: let's move on to the next presentation. [indiscernible] >> good afternoon. i understand that we need to move through the slides quickly. i will work to get through this in under 10 minutes. this afternoon, i'll be sharing updates on trends in progress in 2020 as well as themes for moving forward in 2021.

our fatalities have been holding steady. this is the lowest year since 2014 with number of deaths and fatalities. we found increase in vehicle collisions and motorcycle fatalities. we had an overall decrease in injury collisions. all many cities and around the u.s. have seen an increase in fatalities this past year. we do know that we have much more to do.

we advanced systemwide upgrades through our programmatic work including leading pedestrians in the role of walking speed and upgrading intersections with daylighting and crosswalks. we launched air chinese language campaign. we heard from the board in october as well as from advocates and the public we need to improve our communications around the work that we're doing and our vision zero. we developed a dashboard highlighting our work, especially around the engineering improvement. the image you're seeing is a still snapshot of an interactive dashboard that's available live now on vision zero website for m.t.a. website. when you click on any one of

these icons you will get more information on the metrics this is an evolving product. there will be updates especially as we undate the strategy this year. we want to make sure that dashboard is reflecting those new commitments and reflecting new ways of measuring our progress that you are interested in. we would like your feedback on this dashboard to make sure that it is communicating our progress. also building on conversations from october workshop for vision zero with the board, we heard lot of feed back on our approach. i want to reflect back on some of the direction we're heading for 2021. through 2020, we had completed

or planned quarter level projects for over half of our network. through quick build, the we anticipate engineering to build out the remainder of the network that we have. looking ahead, we plan to continue expanding our program with 10 new corridors in the pipeline for 2021. we are going to be accelerating our program wide systemwide tool that we know are working. things like daylighting and pedestrian intervals and we'll looking to exhaust and innovate around authority to lower speeds.

our expanded quick build program reflects how our approach to safe streets evolved moving away from large capital projects and focusing on those cost effective approaches. even within the quick build program, i want to highlight that there are ranges of treatments that we can do. within our quick build program, we can deliver just paint and post, for very low cost per smile. deliver a more comprehensive quick build project that includes, paint post, signal and concrete. quick builds have been an effective tool to slow speeds and reduce conflicts. not every street can be redesigned because of the geometry of the streets. that's where lot of our systemwide tools come in play. we are continuing to expand in 2021 with the systemwide tools balancing costs and impact. we're kicking off daylighting

project on the -- we heard that you like more cost in trade-offs for the tools we're deploying. i'm sharing high level information. if you're looking officially, you can see with daylighting and upgrades, these are very low cost and effective tools that we're able to deploy systemwide across our hiin network. with red light cameras these are much more expensive tools than

like daylighting. unlike daylighting, red light cameras are intended for more target development. we move ahead, we will continue to focus our resources on these low cost proven tools but also using our more effective tools and targeted but more limited capacity. lastly, we're focusing being innovative. implementing our first 20 miles per hour neighborhood this spring in the tenderloin will be

reducing speed limit on market street. we're going to be pursuing these local changes while advancing state level work to support changing how speed limits are set. which will give us a lot more flexibility especially on the hiin street network. we'll continue to seek state authority. all of this work exists within a commitment to equity and we know that we have vulnerable populations, drug users and committees that are disproportionately burdened by traffic fatalities. we're looking to elevate this commitment in 2021. we made a commitment in our strategy that our work should

not exacerbate any unequities that we have. we want to think about that as we move to update our strategy. we'll be revisiting the strategy thinking about the commitment we want to carry forward, new ideas or strategies you like us to consider and evaluating gaps in areas that need to be address. we'll have a survey launched in few weeks. we're doing office hours, seeking input on questions, thinking what we eliminate and what we do differently.

looking ahead, we'll have a survey we'll launch in mid-february to get public input. we'll plan to revisit the board in the spring to gather your additional feedback and we're aiming to have a draft strategy to circulate in the summer with a release this fall. we still have a lot of work ahead of us. we do think that san francisco is making real progress in the investments we're making. as a city an an agency, we remain committed to the goal and appreciate the board support and also for the board leadership in

embracing innovative change. thank you. >> chair borden: do you have any questions at this time before public comment? >> vice chair eaken: thank you so much. i want to say the dashboard is look really good. thank you very much for being responsive to the request from the board vision zero team. really great to see that. i guess, i'm clicking around on the website as you invited us to do. i'm still not seeing where we need to go. i'm seeing like 7 miles of

protect bike lanes in 2020. i'm not seeing staff to get to vision zero. how many miles protective bike lanes we need. love to see that as you evolve and approve upon the dashboard. i'm totally disheartened, heart broken that this year we had more fatalities than in it previous year. i guess i was hoping against hope that with v.m.t. down and so many people working from home, we might have a better year. i just wander, the same way we need to set a trajectory for all these other pieces.

i sat here with my notes over the weekend. literally mapped out, we had 29 fatalities in 2020. in the year 2021, if we're on trajectory, 22. then 15 and then 8 and then zero. have we done that thinking about how these numbers need to move so we know we're on track to not take the numbers seriously. i don't know. that data belongs in your dashboard as well. the number of fatalities and injuries and trajectory towards what zero actually looks like. >> thank you director. we do want to reflect as we go through the update to the

strategy, really reflect some of the new goals and metrics within the dashboard. i do certainly expect that the metrics that you're seeing and the dashboard are going to evolve overtime. i think an important metric that we're expecting to be released soon is the severe injury data from 2019 and 2020. lot of the data that we're relying on now is from our police department. we know that our severe injure data which linked in the hospital record is more accurate reflection of injury severity.

>> director heminger: i know you've been doing a boat load of engineering especially in the last 5 to 10 years. we're not getting the output. we got plenty of input. we're not getting the outcome we want. i know that you're going to spend lot of time in sacramento trying to get automated enforcement. i realize that is a linchpin to maybe a quantum leap on this bar chart. i want to ask again, i think i raised this question the last time we talked about vision zero at length, what can we do in the

meantime? especially what can we do in the meantime on enforcement? i know the engineering efforts is going to continue. it's only going to take us so far. what will it take for this to be a priority with the san francisco police department? they are the guys who hand out the tickets. is there a partnership we can forge there. i know they got lots of other priorities. this is 20 people every year. can we get them interested in another effort? >> one thing that's changed over the last couple of years on the engineering side, we have tool box to throw everything we got. ryan talked about how we use every tool we got. it's little harder what the

equivalent that will be for enforcement. is we don't end up inadvertently that has something unintended and really bad racial inequities on certain neighborhoods. we start this in 2014 with a commitment from the police department to do something we call focus on the pod. that was a good goal. that was a goal to get the police to focus on the behaviors that our data, we found out from data, are actually killing

people, getting away from ticks and focusing on especially speeding and the other behaviors that kill people. however the overall pie of traffic tickets has shrunk since the number of tickets written in 2014. some of that's covid. it's a little hard to say we can get this level of commitment in calendar year 2021 for two reasons. number one the spreadsheet -- we want to be part of a larger

effort within the police department to reduce the racial equities actions. that's it. that's not the answer i would have expect to give to you in 2014. >> i know that's large in the legislative negotiations as well. i'm mindful of it. i'm not sure that should be used as an excuse not to mount any effort at all because there may well be racial disparities in the number of people being killed. we got to find a way to get to a better outcome. we're just treading water. i know it's a frustrating thing. i'm sure the staff and the advocates that we tried a lot of new ideas. you said, tom, we're sort at the bottom of the tool box.

i just worry that we're waiting for sacramento to save us. that's not great a strategy. they take a long time to do something even if it seems so obvious. i'm just looking for us to be able to do something to mount an effort before, assuming the best case scenario, we get legislation from sacramento. >> as we look at cities around the world, even here in the united states, san francisco results are as far as we can tell the best in the united states. all of our peer cities are experiencing significant and many cases record breaking ups in pedestrian and cyclist fatalities. that we're holding steady. it's miraculous, particularly

when we have the full power of the state and federal government working against us. the state government prioritizes motorists convenience over safety and has for the last seven years. -- we see the mass of vehicles are at record breaking early ins. elon musk is tweeting the dwight delight his new cars can go from 0 to 200 miles an hour in a matter of seconds. this is what our motor vehicles are being designed for. it's not even just the convenience of motor vehicles. a crazy aggressive behavior. that is celebrated in our streets and our culture. this is what we're up against.

we're all ready to go to sacramento and really fight for what matters we're going to continue struggling with our tiny budget. >> i know it's what we're up against. maybe you're of glass half full high. our vision is not to kill fewer people in new york. our vision is zero. i guess it doesn't offer me a whole lot of comfortable that in a lot of other cities -- >> director tumlin: nor it shouldn't. we know what is necessary to get to zero. the most critical things on that list are outside of our control. >> yes, agree again. i will stop here. what do we do in meantime? it has taken us a long time to

get to where we are in sacramento. which is no bill. it's probably going take us a longer time to get to a bill. even if we do so, we're talking about a lag of two, three, four, five years. seems we ought to put on our thinking cap, what can we do that doesn't rely on sacramento? >> director tumlin: we have some ideas for you. we're happy to about those ideas in more detail. next thing on the list will be extremely unpopular. downtown portland succeeds in its slow traffic fatality rate. all of its streets are timed for 11 or 12 miles per hour progression. >> chair borden: we have another question from director eaken. >> vice chair eaken: i wanted to

directly respond director mcguire put on the slide a question. investments in infrastructure, education and outreach. i think i heard you director mcguire earlier say, it's one of air value. we want to be inclusive of the community. i want to provide some direct guidance and feedback on that question. which is that if we know, statistically based on 15 years of data that director heminger referred to, if we know people will continue to be severely injured and die on these certain streets, i'm willing to move in the direction of more infrastructure less outreach.

>> chair borden: at this point, director lai will hole on to her comment. we can move on to the next one which is fast frequent service.

>> we'll keep this as short as possible. as we think about how to restore service, i think there's a lot of lessons that we can take from the core covid network. muni really shines when it's quick and customers can comfortably transfer from one route to the next. but the covid network had some difficult tradeoffs as we talked about. as we restore service, really think about how about restoration of downtown and the tourism industry. we think that service restoration is an opportunity to start a dialogue with san franciscans about the transit system of the future and what it looks like. how frequent would the core network need to be for people to make seemless transfers.

how we close budget gaps that compromise quality and rider's trust. i'm grateful as we head into this journey to have all of you and to be supported by incredible transit management

team. we had bunch of questions at the end of the presentation. they should serve to guide the conversation as we head into tomorrow. i will briefly turn it over next slide and slide after that to brent jones and then sean kennedy. >> good evening or good afternoon. one of the biggest things as pandemic taught us is how to be able to pivot and be flexible. one of the things that we discovered is, our previous way of lin