video conference and participate in the meeting to the same extent as if they were physically present. public comment will be available on each item on the agenda. the number is being streamed across the screen. opportunities to speak during public comment period are available via zoom using meeting id86793738048 or calling 1-669-900-6833. if you are using the zoom platform to speak, select raise hand option when it's time for public comment. if calling by phone, dial *9 to be added to the speaker line when your item of interest comes up. you'll be unmuted when it's your turn to speak. please call from a quiet location, speak clearly and slowly, and turn down your television or radio. alternatively, while we

recommend that you use the zoom audio or a telephone for public comment, you may submit a written public comment through the chat function on zoom. thank you to sf gov tv and media services for sharing this meeting with the public. we can start with the roll call. [role call]. >> don't forget me! >> i'm sorry, commissioner. >> here. >> okay, first order of business is public comment. is there any public comment for items not listed on the agenda? >> vice-president, i am checking the audience, and there are no hands raised and there are no

comments in the chat. >> okay, seeing none, public comment is closed. the next item on the agenda is item 2, approval of our minutes for the january 19, 2021 meeting. we have a motion on the approval of the minutes? >> so moved. >> second. >> commissioner thomas? >> aye. >> commissioner lee? >> aye. >> commissioner -- >> aye. >> commissioner perez? >> aye. >> commissioner wang? >> aye. >> commissioner binen? >> aye. did i just miss it? did we do public comment on the minutes? >> no, we didn't. so -- >> i think we should probably do public comment and then redo the vote just so everything's official. >> yeah. >> okay. is there any public comment on the minutes? >> i'm checking, and there are no hands raised in the audience, and there's no chat comments. >> okay.

seeing none, public comment is now closed. [roll call]. >> the meeting minutes have been approved. the next item on the agenda is item no. 3, report from the executive director presented by the executive director. >> thank you so much, vice-president camino. it's nice to have you running the meeting. it's a breath of fresh air, although missing your

[indiscernible]. this evening i want to share space for some updates relative to the shuddered venue operators program, so there will be a monthly update later in this evening's agenda, and the only other legislative item that i can update you on this evening is in regard to supervisor hainey's proposed venue fund. the commission voted 7-0 to recommend to the board of supervisors to support during our last hearing on january 19. so this item going to be at the board's budget and finance committee tomorrow. i'll go ahead and keep you all posted as we track this and any other relevant legislation. in regard to our standing item regarding the public health order and our role in implementing the jam program to support the mayor's shared spaces program, as you are all likely very aware, last wednesday, january 27, san francisco's health officer issued an updated version of the

main health order, along with updates to a large number of directives, all related to the city being removed from the state's regional stay-at-home order and returning to the purple tier. of greatest note for our group in this reopening update is the reopening of outdoor dining and the reopening of gym activation permit at outdoor locations. there are currently 126 approved permits for jam that are eligible for use, as well as 17 applications that are under staff review right now. so if you have any specific questions regarding the health order update, there were quite a few updates to it. feel free to ask at the end of my update to you all this evening and either the deputy director or i will answer to the best of our ability.

i wanted to thank you for a super-informative meeting when we last met at the end of january. overall we heard a call for our office and our commission to really prioritize what we want to work on and prepare for the rebuilding of san francisco's night life and entertainment industry after covid-19. so i spoke with both the president and the vice-president, and essentially our plan right now for the next few months is to monitor the rollout of both the second round of p.p.e. runs as well as the shuddered venue operators program funding to our live music venues. from there we're going to conduct another one of those surveys that we did last year that's been used many times over, but at this point is really outdated. it was in may, so we're going to do another survey to essentially capture more data that's hopefully informed around, you know, the funding that folks got relevant to the status of where

all of our permitholders are right now. and then we're hoping that that data and information can then better inform our commission's priorities, goals and next steps. so that brings me to say that that's going to tie nicely into another retreat for us. we're going to do it this time virtually on zoom. as you all know now, i sent out an email earlier, that's confirmed for friday march 26 from 1 to 4 p.m., and we'll go ahead and formalize that with a calendar invite soon dylan's going to be sending, and then we're going to start working on a draft agenda that i'll be sharing with the proom so that -- group so we can engage on what we want to work on at that retreat. so that's what i have for this evening. let me know if you have any questions and happy groundhog

day. >> no questions for me. >> okay, since there's no commission questions or comments, thank you, director weiland. is there any public comment on the report from the executive director? >> i am checking, and there are no hands raised in the participant's list and there are no chat comments. >> thank you. seeing none, public comment is now closed. the next item on the agenda is item no. 4, the presentation on office of the city administrator's racial equity action plan, which will be presented by office of cannabis protector marissa rodriguez, deputy director eugene hillsman and associate director nakesh patel. thank you all for joining us. >> they should all be coming in shortly. i think we've got everyone there.

>> good evening. >> i see a lot of familiar faces on tonight's call. how are you doing doing? >> better now that you are here. >> great to see that, and great to see that our industry folks are busy and on their way up to wherever they are on their way up to. happy to see that. >> director of the office of cannabis. happy to be here this evening and thank you very much for having us. we are here today to share with you a little bit about the work that we've been doing around racial equity and advancing that work throughout the adm, and when i say adm, i'm saying the city administrator family. it's over 25 divisions, programs, and you departments, and you are one of them, and so are we, the office of cannabis.

and it used to be that pre-covid we would -- our offices were really close to each other, so it was nice to see director weiland most days, and her staff most days. nice to see you, crystal. nice to see you, dylan. it's been a while. it is nice to be here. i'm joined today by my colleagues, the deputy director and associate director for oversight. we thought we would make this more interesting and present together so you could not just hear my voice the entire time but hear others as well. there's a lot of information. this report is very long, and very detailed, and we took a lot of time to get to where we are. if you were wondering, well, i -- this was the first time i'm hearing about this, i'm really curious about racial equity and what we're doing as a large department, today we're going to share with you where we've been, where we're going to give you a little context the report was completed the end of december,

december 30 to be exact is when we submitted our report to the office of racial equity. in 2019 mayor breed mandated that all city departments create a racial equity action plan. this is ours, and so today because we don't have several hours, it would take that for us to get into all the nuances of this report and to share all the initiatives as well as all the goals, we run through eventually all of the goals in each section of this report, and we're going to spend a little bit more time sharing the section on boards and commissions, because this is a board and commission. the office of cannabis also has one as well, and boards and commissions under adm are going to engage a little bit differently around racial equity. so we will spend more time on that. just to help frame this a little bit more, there are so far, as far as we know, two phases of this work. the first phase is phase one, which we just did, and that's

what this report is about. it's covering phase one. phase one is really internal facing. it's hr heavy, looking at what we can do around hiring, around recruiting, around promotion. you'll see all the sections in just a bit, and that was sort of a deep dive, which is why it felt a little internal and focused, the work was focused primarily with department heads, managers, the central office for city administrator as well as the budget and planning team. so that's what this work is focused on the rest of this year will be focused on implementing much of this, as well as featured years. phase two we hope will roll this out as well and be more outward facing. all of the staff of adm, community that we impact and the work that we do in that way. so just wanted to give that -- a bit of context so you understand sort of what we're looking at and what we mean when we talk about our racial equity plan phase one. so with that, let's get started.

so brief agenda, we're gonna do -- i already did the intro, so you know who you're hearing from today and a little bit of background. where have we come from and where we're going, you're gonna see what work went into developing this action plan. and then finally we're going to touch on basically every section of the racial equity action plan and their goals. so one of the exercises that we did with the city administrator's team is we brought together what we call our thought leaders working group, and it's comprised of all of the department heads from all of the 25 departments, divisions and programs that make up the city administrator family. every time we met we'd have individuals from all the different departments share out and share with us what their goals were, what they -- what their values were. there was a lot of similarities between departments, but there

were some differences as well. this crowd, this work crowd prepared by none other than samantha allen, who i believe is on this call today, really talks to all of these different values, and so you can see that what matters to us as a department in this word cloud, transparency, compassion, culture, diversity, workforce, sharing out, mentorship, our overall mission is that the city administrator's office is strongly committed to ensuring efficient and effective government services, increasing the city's safety and resiliency, strengthening the local economy, and supporting equity and inclusion and optimizing the city's capital planning and infrastructure. so all of that really embedded in what we are as departments and how we help -- we try to impact the community we serve. so one thing i'd also like to

let folks know on this call, there's -- like i said, there's a lot of information that you're gonna hear today. don't worry. you can easily navigate to the city administrator's website and go to our racial equity landing page. you just kind of navigate to the page, and there you're gonna find the report, the full report. you'll find some other resources. in the first few pages of the report, you'll find a process page and an executive summary. that alone really grounds you in the work and will provide you with additional information. if we cross a section today that you find really interesting, i really, really recommend going to that section in the report and reading up on it. you'll see most of your questions will be answered because we really tried to be very detailed and thorough in the report. the report is about 125 pages, including a couple appendixes, so it is a lot of reading, but very interesting, and i encourage everyone to take a look.

am i really echoey? navigate our slides. >> just one moment, everyone. director rodriguez, there is a good point here in which when these materials are made available to everyone, the top two buttons are links which i accidentally clicked, so give me one moment to readjust. >> okay. that's great, yeah. so everybody on this call will have access to these materials and you'll be able to link pretty easily. >> there we go. >> so a little bit about where we come from. it took about three months to get the report where it is today, and in that time, a very short time, we came together. we were, you know, probably wondering, the office of cannabis leading this conversation today, why is that, well, the work that we do day-to-day with the office of cannabis is really grounded in equity and equity work. we're very passionate about that work. it's a really, really important part of what we do every day, so

it made sense that we would lead this initial effort for phase one, and now that it's completed, you'll see kind of what the plan is moving forward. but we had in that time seven thought leaders working group meetings. those were the department heads that came together to share what we thought was important for this work. we broke up into different sub-working groups and talked about each of the sub-seven sections, and we split up based on what kind of made sense depending on the work that we do. we had over 15 executive leaders leadings, and who was the executive committee? the executive committee is comprised of the members on this call as well as the hr department, members from the hr department, as well as adm central and members from the dock. so that group met a number of times and continues to meet to keep this moving and the momentum moving forward. we met with the immigrants rights commission as well.

the immigrants rights commission has created a working group around equity, so it made sense that we would align our efforts with them. one of the mandates is that we would present this before the commission, so the first time we did was in front of the immigrants rights commission, and given the work that they do, it seemed like a natural alignment. then we had individual meetings with office of racial equity, about six -- over six of those to make sure that we were on the right track and we were getting the work done and we had the right idea as far as how to approach this work. and we attended four of their monthly convenings, all rolling up into this plan, which also went into informing this plan was a survey that was prepared by our budget and planning team. that survey went out to all of the employees of adms, that's over a thousand individuals. we had a very good participation rate and feel very confident in the results, and we used that -- those results to inform our

report. so here are the sections of the plan, and as you can see, it's very hr focused. we have hiring and recruitment, retention and promotion, discipline and separation, diverse and equitable leadership and management, mobility and professional development, organizational -- inclusion and belonging, boards and commissions, and then finally the report also talks about the narrative and the process, and it's those two that i highly recommend taking a look at at the end. so director patel will kick off hiring and recruitment. >> thank you, director rodriguez, and in the interests of time, i will be moving through these fairly quickly. we want to make sure that we leave time for questions at the very end, so if you have any questions, just hold on to them and we'll address them at the end. all right, so with that being said, the first goal for hiring and recruitment that adm identified was to commit to hiring more bipoc employees, especially those new to city government to achieve greater

representation within its workforce. this goal was very much born out of our analysis of the data, and the data for adm's hiring patterns over the last five years suggested two things to us. one, that of the new hires to adm, the majority were new applicants to city government. so they were not transferring in from another department. they were new applicants, and so that's why we wanted to focus on that particular group because it makes up the large share of hiring classes been adm. and then the second fact that the data told us is that over the last five years adm has been moving in the right direction in terms of increasing racial representation within its workforce. when we dug a little bit deeper, we saw that the distribution of hires across race were not necessarily even across the board, and so what we'd like to continue to do is keep focusing on increasing racial diversity within adm's workforce, especially within its city

workforce. the second goal is to commit to working with the san francisco department of human resources to increase the representation of black and hispanic employees to permanent civil service positions. again, looking at the data, what we realized is that over the last five years the majority -- more black and hispanic employees have been hired into temporary exempt positions whereas more asian employees have been hired into permanent civil service positions. what we'd like to see is greater racial diversity across hiring. two more goals that came out, the first was to bring speed and transparency to adm hiring timelines and opaque processes. many of the conversations we had were around this notion that hiring timelines take too long and not transparent, and in an effort to prevent us from losing employees, we want to bring greater speed and transparency to the hiring process, and the fourth goal we identified was to

develop more targeted recruitment strategies of bipoc employees to better facilitate professional advancement. this is an initiative that -- it's a goal and an initiative that we're very excited about, and it really is to ensure that when somebody applies to adm, they are applying with support and there are opportunities for advancement as an incentive to bring them into the adm family. >> here the primary idea is to improve communication to attract and retain employees. essentially to ensure that a diverse pipeline of employees really come to adm, so that's the first goal in thinking about retention, and for most in a lot of the things outlined here really complements some of the efforts in the first section. the second idea is through data analysis, adm will actively seek

to identify barriers through employee retention and promotion. the idea is once employees find themselves in adm that the department works very hard to keep them here. the third is to identify additional pathways to promotion, to essentially ensure in addition to providing professional development opportunities that employees have the skills necessary to access leadership positions once they become available, and as director rodriguez mentioned, if you have specific questions about any of the goals or initiatives in this section, we encourage you to read the report as we go into much greater detail. with that, i'll transition into the next section, which is discipline and separation. so in thinking about discipline and separation, sometimes a controversial topic, the core component of this work is really to implement clearer communication strategies in thinking about disciplinary actions and corrective behaviors, right, for all

levels, and really focus on the following goal. the first is to educate and engage employees to help resolve issues at the lowest level possible, right, without escalating to disciplinary action, right? the idea is to identify potential problems, take action before they actually become serious problems. the -- you can see that discipline here is broken out by race, and with that we'll transition to the next slide. so here some of the content that you see in this particular slide came from the survey that director rodriguez mentioned, so we asked all adm staff essentially questions about kind of opportunities within adm, but one of the questions that we asked specifically were around kind of expectations for disciplinary standards. one of the things that you can see in this data is that there is some room for improvement in thinking about employees' views on whether supervisors essentially hold all employees

to the same standard. there are kind of specific differences, particularly among our hispanic and black employees as they are least likely to strongly agree with the standard to suggest that supervisors are essentially implementing the same standard across races. so that's an area, and based on some of the survey results, we feel like there is a lot more that can be done. and then the next goal is essentially to collect better information and understand separation data for all employees, right? so thinking about opportunities like exit interviews to collect that feedback to make sure that we have a kind of thorough and firm understanding of why employees are deciding to separate from adm, it will essentially provide us with kind of additional clarity, and this is especially important for employees in exempt appointments, and with that i'll transition to the next section, which i believe is from director rodriguez. >> thank you so much.

yeah, so also, you know, when looking at this work, important to kind of think where leadership stands and where leadership reflects and certainly diversity's an important part of that. so the goals in this space is, you know, we really wanted to dive in and see kind of what is reflected, and so you know the good news is over the last five years the city administrator's office has done a really good job at ensuring that our leadership is a reflection of the communities we serve and continues to be diverse. so we want to keep moving in that direction certainly, because there is areas for improvement. we want to increase representation of bipoc, and when i speak about bipoc, i'm talking about black, indigenous people of color in management positions relative to the number of available positions within adm over the next five years. we want to continue to move in the same direction. additionally we want to improve our internal promotional culture to elevate bipoc employees into positions of leadership. director patel mentioned briefly

in his remarks, you know, this issue, what it means to be able to be advanced, to start in an organization and what opportunities are there to move up. similarly around leadership opportunities and wanting to make sure that we are doing our part to keep a diverse pool of leadership opportunities available. and support individuals. we want to increase equity and inclusion within adm central to work with adm hr to increase the diversity of candidates pool for positions. [please stand by]

>> can be difficult to ensure that feedback is getting translated and opportunities to grow are available, wanting to look at this and figure out ways to scale this or employees really do feel like they can grow and continue to work on

anything that they feel they need and have access to training and other resources. this is important part of this session. recommends taking a look at the report to see additional information in this area. thank you. >> here, we have the primary goal thinking about organizational culture of inclusion and belonging, is to really foster organizational culture committed to inclusion and belong. as director rodriguez mentioned, we issued a survey. there were number of responses. we were heartened by the things that came in to evaluate our progress. there's some additional work to be done. according to a.d.m. racial equity survey, 77% of employees

agree they felt valued as an individual at work. 70% agreed they felt comfortable expressing opinion, 58% supported feeling and thinking about pursuit of their career goals. however, there were some racial differences that emerged in the graph below really demonstrates that racial disparity. this variant in races really held across the questions that we posed to some of our staff. if you have additional question about that, in addition to racial equity, the survey is available online.

that's the first thing would we're committed to. you heard about some of these topics to create an equity and inclusion lead to improve transparency and sharing information to create additional opportunities for managers and staff. really support the division leaders as they're thinking about creating divisions specific racial equity plan which take into account the core service delivery and responsibility for each division in a.d.m. that will happen in phase 2 of the racial equity plan. that's something we wanted to highlight in this section. >> with this, we move to the final section boards and commissions. here, before we start, we want to take the opportunity to note mention, a.d.m. as numerous boards and commissions. there's the human rights

commission and cannabis commission, entertainment commission, treasure island development authority board. in preparing this section of the racial equity action plan, we had conversations with members of the advisory groups on many of these committees and what you'll hear next about the goals of the initiative very much informed based on those conversations. the goals for boards and commissions fall into three big buckets. the first is to increase the transparency over the appointment process. i'll speak more about that. transparency is important along two important lines. one to ensure that the interesting represented on the particular board or commission are reflected needs of the community. second part, those who are elected or appointed to those positions represent those

interests. diversity and representation along both those points is very important. there was a theme that came up during the conversation with the boards and commission subworking group numerous times. second big goal falls under the idea creating support systems within boards and commissions and committees to be able to be peer resources. you'll see little bit more how we're trying to facilitate opportunity business leveraging the resources that exist across the seven boards and commissions that a.d.m. has. the final goal, this is along the line of racial equity output. taking and making an effort to incorporate racial equity into the work that the boards and commissions are doing with their communities as well as internally. it's important here to note with the racial equity equity output, much of that comes from the template that was provided by

the office of racial equity. one of the measures that a.d.m. identified is addressing the issue of needs. many of the members the subworking groups identified there's a disconnect between identifying what the interests are that need to be represented onen a board commissioner committee and that actually being conveyed to the appointing entity. one of the goals that a.d.m. has is to identify ways to fill this particular need so there is transparency between the advisory group, the individual who support the advisory group, the members and the actual appointing agency. in the conversations we had for the seven different boards, commissions and that a.d.m. houses they have different agencies. it's important that these feedback mechanisms between the

numbers, the advisory groups and appointment agencies are clear and there's opportunity to have feed back there. second mauve that a.d.m. identified is encouraging advisory groups to appoint a racial equity lead. this was something that was highlighted by the office of racial equity. we've seen from committees and commissions already take this step. as an extension of this step, we would love to support each advisory groups racial equity lead to develop a.d.m. racial equity group, known as the racial equity group. the idea here is for a single group to form across seven different boards and commissions and committees to convene two or three times a year anidous the and discussthe racial equity wo.

there are hand full other initiative. ly go through -- i'll go through them. another initiative is racial equity groups will encourage participation from all advisory

group members to participate in implicit bias training. we believe it's really important that members of our boards and commissions have an opportunity to engage in training especially when part of the work will include racial equity. another initiative is that the racial equity group will discuss the role and presence of racial equity within group's work as i mentioned earlier. another initiative racial equity group will organize events across all a.d.m. groups to convene socially. this is really recognizing that across the seven different boards and committees within a.d.m., they themselves are tremendous resources. you all have a wealth of knowledge. one of most effective tools to leverage to ensure that all members whether they are new or more seasoned members, can learn from each other.

the final initiative the racial equity group will take a survey to better understand their role of racial equity within their work. this is an extension of the racial equity survey that a.d.m. took with its employees. we like to have a similar mechanism where the racial equity group is administering the survey to gauge the temperature of racial equity work within committees themselves. with that, i will believe we are at the end of the presentation. as director rodriguez mentioned, the racial equity work that a.d.m. fall into two phase. phase one is what you saw now. the fuller more, detailed plan is available on the website. we do encourage all of you to read it. phase one is internal and i

believe -- inward looking. what we tend to do is to identify what the next steps will be to implement some of the steps that have been identified within the racial equity plan. ensuring that we're carrying them through. at the same time, this group and with respect to racial equity work, we're waiting on additional guidance about what phase 2 would look like from office of racial equity. once that becomes available and we have a better sense what that work will look like, we'll tackle that as well. as director rodriguez mentioned that work will involve divisions specifically working to come up with plans as far as we understand to inject and infuse racial equity work into the services they provide with the communities then serve. as we wait for guidance, we'll continue to implement the steps we can now and lot of that work will require working with a.d.m.

human resources department. with that, we said a lot. we're happy to take questions at this point. >> commissioner perez: thank you for your presentation tonight. i have a quick question. you rendition -- referenced a.d.m. what does it stand for? >> that's the office of the city administrator. which all our departments are under. >> commissioner perez: my second question, the chart that you showed, showing the bipoc within the workforce and you saw different percentages on different ethnic groups. is the goal to match that with

the current population percentage or is goal to make that equalized? >> really good question. i can say that it's not exactly to make it a representation of the community. it's ever changing. certainly, will be very difficult to sort of reach equilibrium across all sections. i think it's really to make an effort to ensure that we're being mindful of this work. we're being mindful of including more people leadership positions and just giving people an opportunities to advance. making sure people feel included and belong, feel like they belong in the a.d.m. family. all that work i think, put in a good faith effort and we hope that we get a better result. >> commissioner perez: thank you.

>> thank you for doing all this work and presenting it to us. it's a huge amount to tackle and thank you for all of this. trying to focus on the commission part of it and i think it makes sense in terms of figuring out how to incorporate racial equity into the work we're doing. have you put together either draft language around how we incorporate that? especially for charter commission where some of the language around our work is in the charter and -- what are your recommendations in terms of charter commissions for how to adapt this and incorporate it into our work?

>> director rodriguez i can take part of this question. thank you for asking this question. it really does show the intention behind incorporating this immediately. we do appreciate that. one of the developments that happened with the racial equity template provided to the different departments was that it also was evolving overtime. one of the key areas was towards november, december with the board in commission section. specifically change around deactive around the racial equity output that commission, committees and boards can engage in. i'm providing that context saying, we are still working with the office of racial equity to better understand what a racial equity resolution might look like. that will be forthcoming. what we hope to do is with your advisory groups so that

departments that you work with to understand what the mechanisms might be to incorporate that into your charter. there are practical steps that committees can take in general. one of the areas racial equity plan speaks to is incorporating racial equity work into the agenda. if there is or opportunities where you can invite speakers or you can identify work that needs to be done ayou the racial equity framework to advance that work, we would encourage you to work with your advisory groups to better understand how to achieve that. it is relatively new even from the office of racial equity. as we get more clarity some of that information will be providing to your advisory groups so they can work with you. long-term vision is that as more material become available and more strategies become

available, how to implement racial equity into your work as we learn from other boards, commissions and committee, we can use the racial equity group as a convening mechanism to disseminate that information. the grand vision here is that, each board, commission and committee appointed racial equity lead. that racial equity lead then becomes a member of a larger racial equity group that includes members from all of the different boards, commissions and committees within a.d.m. that group in our ideal world would meet hand full time over the course of the year. that's a really good opportunity for the board, commission and committees to share best practices and provide information. as an example, the three of us here, director rodriguez and myself, we work close well the cannabis oversight committee. what we would love to do take what we've learned over the past

year about how to incorporate racial equity within our work and share that once it's convened. lot of of this work is forthcoming. the hope is that once we have the racial equity group in place, the information can be assimilated much more efficiently. >> commissioner wang: thank you. i done my part to ensure san francisco have racial equity frame around its cannabis work. i'm not in the cannabis policy space anymore, glad that is under way. i'm also proud that the entertainment commission is majority bipoc commission. which is great. i realized that i don't know much about the race ethnicity of

permit holders. there are probably ways to look at how places of entertainment. we know how they are distributed around the city geographically. we know a lot, i know a lot less about how they are distributed in terms of the race ethnicity permitholder. if that's something we should be considering or taking into account or creating different types of outreach in terms of particularly like the limited lives permit and so on and change the demographic representation of who is holding these permits. it might be useful to at least do some preliminary information

gathering to better understand kind of what racial equity looks like in terms of our permitholders. which are sort of our constituency as a regulatory body and what that looks like and do an assessment how that compares to the city as a whole. >> thank you, commissioner thomas. i echo everything that you are saying. i'm glad that you colleagues from office of cannabis has come in to provide the a.d.m. presentation for us to even proceed into phase 2. really important to see how everything is structured within phase 1. i do think that in terms of how we can do some preplanning, that

will be great to address during upcoming retreat in march. we can nominate a racial equity lead within our very small but mighty commission of seven. with that said, are there other commissioner comments or questions? >> good evening. first, i see this is a huge list. you guys actually covered a lot of material in them, compliments to the three of you to make it engaging. one thought i did have. lot of people in the city don't know what the city administrator's job does. maybe you guys can quickly touch on maybe some of the larger agencies you guys represent. there could be people watching tonight that see real opportunity here and make this some of those departments you guys represent. just a thought.

>> yeah, absolutely. we can all taking turn to remember all of them. >> i know there's a lot. >> medical examiner is one of them, office of cannabis, d.p.w. they have their own budget. they did make their own plans. i can keep going. if you want to get married at city hall, if you want to do anything at city hall, i'm going to have others -- [indiscernible] treasure island. >> project monitoring division.

they're all different and specialized. there's a lot of overlap. there was a lot of similarity around our core values what mattered to us. we touch all of san francisco. this work is so important that we dug in and engaged and reached out to work with the office of racial equity. this is super important. we are impacting lot of people. we'll continue to that as we start to lookout ward with respect to our staff.

we're going to take our time with it. i'm hearing lot of positive things on this call. thank you commissioner caminong for talking about a lead. any way that we can be helpful, certainly reach out. here you are. these are all by departments that fall under the city administrator's office. everything is highlighted in yellow is quite a lot. >> vice president caminong: than k you so much. great job. congratulations. >> thank you. >> president bleiman: are there any other questions? all right. if you want to do this again.

>> all of you will be famous. [laughter] thank you very much for having us today. we really appreciate it. >> bye everybody, stay safe. >> you too. >> president bleiman: let's open up for public comment. do we have anyone here for public comment? >> i'm checking now. there's nobody with their hand raised.

i'm going to stop the screen share. we don't have any one who wants to say anything. >> good-bye everyone. >> president bleiman: item number 5, update on nightlife, business assistance in response to covid-19 presented by ben van houten, the beard, business development manager for nightlife and entertainment sector within the office of economic workforce development. please bring up mr. ben. >> good evening commissioners. great to be here again. ben van houten, office of economic workforce development. i will try to bring up some

slides. it says i need to quit zoom. >> if you want help, e-mail my g-mail and then i can get it going.

>> i updated my mac operating it system, now i'm paying for years of procrastination. >> understood. >> my slides are generally not going to be too much of a surprise in most respects. i don't want to waste any more of the commission's time. i'm happy to present as is without the slides. we have a few updates to provide on a couple of items that i had updated you all on last commission hearing then also

have some new program materials as well to announce. the mayor in january announced a new $62 million plan for financial relief for small businesses. that includes relief grants totaling $12.4 million, proposed program to help stabilize small business operations, grants ranging from $5000 to $20,000 in amount. the goal here of this program, which will launch in february, is to reach businesses across the city and high need neighborhoods in particular. looking forward to the launch of that san francisco relief grants program. in addition, the mayor relief plan calls for a $50 million loan program. the sf community investment loan is the program aimed specifically at the supporting

businesses, especially those who have been left out of existing relief programs including businesses that earn above $2.5 million in gross receipts annually who have been left out of the existing relief programs to date. more information about both of those programs as they are developed and they are launched will be available on our website, oewd.org/covid-19 where you can find all the information there. the second update for all of you -- oh, thank you maggie. thank you team. the second update for all of you -- the california small business

covid-19 relief grants, we talked about this during the last presentation update. at that point, round one was open. round one closed and a number of businesses got updates but they have been wait listed for the relief grant. which is frustrating for small business owners who are challenged to look for relief across the board. that was frustrating. the second round of applications is open now. these are grants up to $25,000 for small business from the state. any business that was wait listed in the first round, country need to reapply this round. the second round, which is the final round, closes on february 8th with businesses to find out more updates to follow after that. the shutter venue operator

grants, that's the new name save our stages. i think it rolls off the tongue less well. we don't have a ton to update on in terms of the timing of the shutter venue operators it grant program. there's a lot of anxiety and concern among venue operators to make sure they're able to apply in a timely manner. one thing i do want to flag, the s.b.a. did publish an f.a.q document for the program. i would encourage businesses that want to know more about just where the informationing is, where the thinking is now for s.b.a. there's some useful tips about getting ready to apply and some

things you can do to register with the federal government, register your business or just be be ready to apply for the s.v.o. grants. we're all waiting for more information that we can share with the business community. on the local fee and tax waivers, previously i think we said that businesses that had already paid these taxes and fees that are eligible for refunds would need to submit an application to get a refund. they will get an automatic refund. businesses should have gotten a letter from the treasury and tax collector office, letting them know they'll be getting an automatic refund of any fees and taxes that they prepaid. that's good news that's on its

way. finally, this is really out of the conversation commissioners you had at the last hearing. in terms of business permits, i don't think we have discussed the rollout of proposition h. there's been some discussions. please do report that proposition h, save our small business -- initiative that's fully in effect. ton of credit for the planning department for implementing proposition h especially to all the business permitting and speeding up business permitting over the last couple of months. this is a high level bold point list some of the things that are possible now thanks to this ballot measure. part of which is around zoning reforms and emphasis on temporary uses and pop up retail

uses. expanding greater potential there. just as the business permitting process for businesses that are permitted in our neighborhoods. really should be much faster for good number of folks. that's really exciting. it's a successful effort that we're looking forward to educate the business community and time they can save, especially as we head toward recovery and i think it's they're in alignment with the discussions about thinking, building off successes like this. what more can be done around entertainment, permit process, entertainment code process, looking forward to continuing those conversations with all of you in the future. i think that's it. oewd.org/covid 19 has updates on

resources and grants and loans and other tools and resources for the business community but happy to answer any questions. my apologies for the technical delays, i promised that by march, this is going to be -- i'm not touching this computer except to solve some presentation problems. i'm looking forward to it. >> you did great. we figured it out. >> when the grants finally come in, who's going to be the clearinghouse? is there going to be another third party again that review these applications? somebody in your department going to be screening the application? when they them offered before, seem that the third party people distributing these are making

decisions. we're really explaining why we were either turned down or what. i'm just wondering, are they considering a more transparent situation or we're back to the same process. >> that's a really good question. i think highlights the challenges, some of the challenges that businesses are experiencing. you go to a site that is not a city site or a website that you know and you put in your information, i think that is helpful feedback. that is responsive to some of the challenges i heard folks express around the state grant process and other grant processes. i will definitely take that back to our team. this is stuff all still happening it in realtime. i think that to the extent, we

do use and rely upon a variety of community partners that we can all collectively work together to better improve clarity and transparency so it really feels like a meaningful use of business. >> the state obviously in the last round of money, already ran out. we're all on the waiting list. luckily, they're going for round two. that's encouraging. everybody was very discouraged. they thought that was it. they didn't realize there was a second round coming. we'll see. hopefully. cross our fingers. thank god for outdoor dining. that helps.

>> absolutely. >> any other comments or questions? one thing i would like to acknowledge, thank you for making time to make the monthly presentation on our agenda. i think it was a really great addition to have you. thank you for spending your tuesday night with us. >> thank you. it's really my pleasure. looking forward to continuing to work with allful you -- all of you on all of this important stuff. >> we appreciate you, ben. >> thank you. likewise. >> let's move on to public comment on item 5. >> there are no hands raised. there are no comments in the chat. >> there's a ben b. in the

attendee list now. that could be our ben v. who was on the call. >> that seems likely. [laughter] >> it's just a coincidence. >> thank you. seeing none, public comment is closed. the next item on the agenda is number 6, the report from the deputy director. presented by deputy director azevedo. >> good evening commissioners. the enforcement report that has been uploaded for your review has included three new complaints which is in conjunction with the new health order that came out on

january 25th. i didn't highlight any of them, there were really none of note. i want to mention that two of the three, one was unfounded, one is being handled by constituent attorney's office and the current one is under current enforcement review. i'm happy to answer any questions you may have. i do anticipate we'll see more complaints coming in now that outdoor dining and activities are allowed again. it was really quiet for the month of december and beginning of january. that's my high level update. we do have inspectors out in the field on the weekends and working late night. we do have coverage. >> commissioners are there any comments or questions for the

deputy director? kaitlyn, we look forward to hearing from you during the next meeting. let's move ton to public comment. is there any public comment to report from the deputy director? >> there are no hands raised and no comments in the chat. >> seeing none, the public comment is now closed. the next item on the agenda is item 7 is the election of vice president. this item allow the commissioners to nominate and elect the seat of the vice president of the entertainment commission to fill out the term from february 2, 2021 to july 6, 2021. >> did i miss something? are we suppose to take action?

>> are you interested in running again? >> i was going to nominate dori, i'll nominate her. >> second. >> to answer the question, yes, it has been an honor serving as vice president. i do think that -- i want to acknowledge mr. bleiman's leadership as president of the commission. just the work that we've been putting in together t especially during the pandemic and showing up for our community here. answer is yes. we have a first from commissioner falzon and second from commissioner thomas. please take a vote. >> did you forget to do public comment? >> we should ask if there's any other nominations.

>> okay. commissioners? are there any other nominations? doesn't look like it. okay, is there any public comment on this item? >> there are no public comments. >> thank you. please take a vote. [roll call vote]. >> thank you. congratulations. >> well done.

>> the next item on the agenda is item number 8, the election of the president of the entertainment commission. this item allows the commissioners to nominate and elect the seat of the president of the entertainment commission to fill out the term from february 2, 2021 to july 6, 2021. >> i would like to nominate ben bleiman to finish out term as president. >> second. >> i'm sorry i'm on the road. i want to say that serving as president of this commission has been a great joy and honor. especially during covid, there's a lot going on, kind of like the duck part where you see what's going on top of the water and under the water, incredible amount of action and movement.

just working with staff and working where all of you and vice president, maggie and ben. it's been really good work. i love this job, i appreciate your confidence in me. thank you. >> is there any public comment on this item? >> there are no hands raised. there are no comments in the chat. >> sorry, any other nominations? [laughter] >> i don't think there are any other nominations. >> [roll call vote]

>> thank you guys. great. congratulations. president bleiman. next item on the agenda is item 9. new business request for the future agenda items. is there any item you like to address? >> vice president caminong i had a thought. i like the equity manager. did you want to make that an

agenda item? >> vice president caminong: i think we can discuss that more during the retreat. this is within our upcoming session. >> no worries, perfect. >> just to agree with that to put the racial equity issue on our retreat agenda and just thinking how do we what our baseline is, how we go about setting goals around racial equity if we want to address any of the recommendations around internal resolution and a representative to the racial equity work group and so on. that does seem like that's a good topic for us to tackle at the retreat when we got a bit more time and space to dig into issues. i know what racial equity work looks like in other places. i got less of a sense of how to

measure or set goals related to the work that we do. i don't know if there are other entities around the country that look at entertainment with a racial equity lens that might learn something from. i have nothing in mind. i don't know if staff have any thoughts or any model we can borrow from. >> to say, though, at least with our most recent application, the jam application, we did collect racial demographic information for every applicant for that program. it's something we can consider trying to implement across existing permit holders. we can find a way for that. i wanted to add that in. >> obviously you get into -- i don't necessarily want to make

our application process more difficult or try to go back and collect data we haven't been collecting. that's also only way to get a baseline or sense of where the gap inequities might be. figuring out the best way to tackle that, that is not disruppive or burdensome to our permit holders but give useful information. >> i don't know if this is more of -- what can we do about -- when the health department says, you can do outdoor dining but you can't turn on your television to watch the super bowl game. they're not really dancing or anything. are we as commission to

challenge those or do we have to go along with it? it defeats the purpose in the sense. there's still limited capacity. i'm just curious is this something we allowed to do as a promotion or promoting entertainment, not really promoting entertainment, but it seems like the television thing. i get if you got a d.j. on tv and you're out there promoting. if you're eating and watching, even the news, even watching the election or something. are these kind of decisions made. we know it's based on safety. is it really good for business? i want to put that out there.

>> what the current role around outdoor tv with outdoor dining. >> it reads the same as prior outdoor dining allowances were. which is, it is permitted in the outdoor space. tvsare inside. permitted in the outdoor space and the way it was translated to the entertainment commission was that audio was being amplified. some businesses just take the tout having no volume. they just show a game or what have you in the background. that would not require a jam permit. >> that is still allowable per the health order. >> is there something else commissioner lee to relative?

are you talking about indoor tvs? >> i know that walnut creek i saw on the news, it gets confusing. every city is different. >> okay, we're allowing it. >> san francisco allowing it. walnut creek they're saying, turn off the tv. >> essentially the rules around allowing outdoor amplify sounds including tv, you have to prevent any gathering. that does happen. where businesses either encourage it or it gets out of hand and they have to mitigate any crowding that could happen even over watching a football game. especially the super bowl. luckily it's the 49ers around playing -- >> what about indoor? indoor you can't even turn on your tvs if you want to do indoor. >> yeah. that is right. with indoor dining, it's not

allowing tvs because of that gathering element. essentially they wanted to discourage indoor as well. the health officer was just allowing her indoor to be able to allow for more business expansion and economic growth. in terms of health, it was meeting halfway. i think tvs was something that would potentially encourage more gathering inside which is not good. >> i think, as entertainment commissioners, some tvs -- it's really the control of the venue itself, maybe law enforcement, how we all talking about law enforcement and stuff. any way this commission we can negotiate or try to work out to see how we can help? >> i would say for the specific

issue, it doesn't actually -- it's not relevant for commission when we're talking about indoor tv usage. that doesn't require a permit from us. >> i know, all around it's all about small business. it's nice to watch something while you're eating. >> i would defer to your colleague if they have any >> -- >> what do you think guys? not to have television is -- >> steve, are you suggesting that we would support urge letter to the department of public health? >> not just a letter, we got dome up with some suggestions. maybe some identify ideas how

these things can work. we're the industry experts, they're not. i'm not going to challenge them on health decisions. they should listen to us on entertainment decisions. we're the ones that promote safety and everything. make sure all small businesses do well in san francisco. i know that the health department seems to have the big pull. if we're talking about helping a new business idea and we're promoting entertainment or even business, i think we should think of some best practices that may be the health department hasn't even thought about. they're only thinking one way. i know there's a lot of struggling businesses that can use little bit of suggestion or best practices. i'm throwing it out there. i'm not saying we should do it.

i don't know if we can do it. i look around and see we're just happy that outdoor dining is there when we do partial indoor dining, it's going to help. there's nothing to do on the inside. certain restaurants is fine, but other places, it's kind of boring. just going to eat. i get it. i thought may be there's something we can do. >> i would say, i think that some of that depends on is it a health issue or is it an entertainment issue? it's like plenty of things that would help entertainment businesses but might create negative health interactions or increase risk for people. i feel like, that's the crux of this and the health department is looking at it through a

health lens. we can look at it through economic or business lens, we have to figure out what the health issues are and sort of what's the most business can do without creating health risk for their patrons. i don't know the answer to that. does tv draw people too close together or not. it might be that it doesn't. i think that's a conversation we'd have to have folks at the health department about what was behind their restrictions and what have we seen in practice. >> i tend to agree with commissioner thomas on this. i think that's the lens which we have to approach this. if you have like a list of industry best practices, you

don't think has been considered, we can look at them as a group >> there's not much best practices other than keeping everybody apart. it's obvious they don't want tvs that draws in the people. that's basically what the television does. if the food doesn't bring them in, what else brings them in. obviously gatherings and stuff. but if it's under control like they supposed to be, having a tv on with no sound may be would be better. that's at least a compromise. that's all i'm saying. the commission should be helping. whether they have a permit or not. small business is small business. we're all there to help small business in one way or another. it might not be our

jurisdiction. but we are industry experts. it will be nice to have conversation with the health department and talk about these things. other people are suing the government because there's no data before all that money was wasted money and all these lawsuits. maybe we can prevent some of that stuff. some people are desperate right now. it's something to think about. >> we are developing another survey for our permit holders for folks to take. i don't know where we're planning, when we're planning to launch the survey. maybe we can actually incorporate questions around issues like these. i'm sure there are other things that you're thinking about that could be also included in the survey. that way when we release this

data, we'll have the evidence to show this is the demand. >> that will be great. i don't have a clue either. i think it's something we as a group can talk about may be. i think it's not fair. we don't want to promote anybody getting sick. there's got to be a way. there's always some kind of solution. got to think positive you guys. >> thank you steven. is there any additional comments or questions from the commissioners? okay, let's move on to public comment on this item. >> there's nobody in the attendees list. there's no chats. >> moving on to the final item on our agenda, item number 10,

commissioner comments and questions. i would like to propose roll item 9 and 10 together. [laughter] just to keep us in single digits for agenda items. >> will do. >> okay. all right, thank you everybody. i got to take public comment. is there any public comment on item number 10? >> there are no hands raised. there are no comments in the chat. >> awesome. public comment is closed. we'll adjourn this meeting at 7:03 p.m. thank you everybody.

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. .

>> good afternoon, this meeting will cometo order. welcome to the 2021 regular meeting of the land use and transportation committee of the san francisco board of supervisors . i am visor melgar joined by vice chair supervisor dean preston and supervisor aaron pelkin. the clerk is erica major and i like to acknowledge sfgov tv forstabbing this meeting today. adam clerk, do you have any announcements ? >>erica major: due to the health emergency and to test board members, the board of supervisors legislative chambe and committee club , however members will be participating in the meeting remotely. cautions taken pursuant to the stay-at-home order and all localstate and federal orders and directives . committee members will attend the meeting through videoconference toparticipate to the same extent as if we were physically present . public