people in any way we can. 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]