>> this is the regular meeting of the small business commission held on july 12, 2021. this meeting is being called to order at 4:32 p.m. the small business commission thanks media services and sfgov which can be live streamed at sf

tv.gov. the number is 415-655-0001 and that should be scrolling on the screen. and the access code is 146 093 3562. when you call, press pound and pound again to be added to the line. when you are connected, you will hear the meeting discussion. but you will be muted and in listening mode only. when your item of interest comes up, dial star 3 to be added to the speaker line. if you dial star three before public comment is called, you will be added to the queue. mute the device that you are listening on and when it is your turn to speak, you will be prompted to do so. best practices are to call from a quiet location and to speak clearly and slowly and again,

turn down the device you are listening to the meeting item on. public comment during the meeting is limited to 3 minutes per speaker unless otherwise established by the presiding officer of the meeting. and an alarm will sound once it has finished. speakers are requested but not required to state their name. sfgov tv, please show the office of small business slide. force >> the small business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about the policies that effect the economic vitality of small businesses in san francisco. the office of small business is the best place to get answers about doing business in san francisco during the local emergency. if you need assistance with small business matter, particularly at this time, you can find us online or via telephone and as always, our services are free of charge. before item number one is called, i would like to start by thanking media services and

sfgov tv for coordinating the virtual hearing and live stream and special thanks to jason for assisting with the public comment line. please call item number one please. >> item one is call to order and roll call. commissioner adams. >> here. >> commissioner dickerson. >> here. >> commissioner dooley just let me know she is having difficulty getting into the meeting. commissioner huie. >> here. >> commissioner laguna. >> here. >> and commissioner zouzounis and commission ortiz-cartagena are gone. >> please read the land acknowledgment. [reading of land acknowledgment]

we wish to pay respect by acknowledging their an sestors, elder rs and relatives of the community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first people. >> great. item number two please. >> item number two, board of supervisors file 210741, waiver

of permit, license, and business registration fees for new small businesses. this is an ordinance waiving certain first-year permits, license and business registration fees for businesses that commence engaging in business with the city and county of san francisco from november 1, 2021 through october 31, 2022. and have estimated first-year gross receipts of $2 million or less, and have a registered business location that is for store front commercial use and not formula retail uses. and refunding any waived fees paid to the city. this is a discussion and action item. presenting today is amy beinart an aide to supervisor ronen. before amy start, i am going to share the screen for her for her

presentation. >> great. awesome to have you here. you have the floor. >> great. thank you so much. waiting for the slides to come up. >> good afternoon, president, commissioners. i am amy beinart, a legislative aide to supervisor ronen. thank you so much for making time to present first year free. we are excited to introduce and be working with the legislative process for this legislation to make it free to start a new store front small business in san francisco and we're grateful to have co-sponsors so far signed on who are supervisors haney and safai. next slide. >> an it is not something that i

need to tell you obviously, but san francisco small businesses with the life blood of the san francisco neighborhoods and thousands of immigrants, women, people of color, and are an alternative to minimum wage jobs and a unique path for building wealth for their families. we know that the past year has been brutal on them. while most small businesses have managed to stay afloat, there are many who did not make it. next slide. i know that you all know this very well. so there was a b.l.a. report that estimated that half of the

small retail jobs were find in rent. so what we need is a multi-year approach to include renegotiation and flexibility and how businesses operate to sustain the existing businesses. we need to activate the store front vacancy tax and that the voter supported in 2020. to be so what first year free does is removes the financial barriers that cities create even before they ever open their

doors. so let's stay on this one for now. and the businesses that will be eligible will be new businesses that are registering between november 1 and october 31, 2022. and businesses estimated first-year gross receipts maximum $2 million and ground floor commercial. and we have some amendments to that, and i'll explain them next up. next slide. so the office of tax collector is the first stop for business registration, and what they will be able to do is screen them and

enroll and work with the offers of small business to create an faq that explains to small businesses how they can utilize this program. in lieu of them directly paying one of the department, they will have a number or a code they can invoke to make it clear that the permit fee has been paid by the city. and then the officer and the office of tax collector and treasurer will reimburse the permitting department. and the controller has estimated the cost to backfill permitting department revenue for about $12 million and possibly going up to as much as $17 million for this particular fiscal year, so 21-22. and we have built in $12 in to

the 21-22 budget. in return for that investment, we will see increased tax revenue, new job opportunities, revitalized commercial corridors, and then the legislation includes the evaluation and report to the board by april 15, 2022, to re-assess the financial viability of it. next slide please. you can advance to the next slide. >> the effort is to encourage businesses to expand to a new location that is already successful to reactivate commercial corridors that are now seeing vacancies and to

encourage entrepreneurship among women and people of color and we are happy to have support of sf black wall street and of sf latina and renaissance budget entrepreneurs and to spur job creation and generate revenue from the city. next slide. we have -- we are going to be introducing some amendments at the budget and finance committee on wednesday. in addition to a brand-new small business, we want to make sure that there are existing small business of $2 million gross receipts or less that wants to open up a new location, that we're actually opening that opportunity for them as well. really encourage successful small business. we clarify the commercial uses to avoid the confusion over what

a store front is and just turn it into ground floor and then these specific commercial uses which pretty much cover anything that is going to be on the ground floor. it provides for a city recovery of waived fees if annual gross receipts reach $10 million within three years. and we wanted to make sure that there wasn't an opportunity for anyone to trick the system and really encourage the small businesses that this applies to. we are clarifying the process for the tax collector to determine the eligibility, and as i mentioned before, requiring this interim report back to the board. this is considered a pilot. and having to report back to the board of supervisors by april 15 will allow it to be considered in the next budget cycle, hopefully, for this to be something successful that would

continue on. next slide. as i mentioned, that is okay. and i apologize for the slide confusion. and the next budget committee on july 14 and we will, and i believe the amendment that we are introducing enough we won't have to come back to budget an finance and the goal is to get it to the board of supervisors for at least the first vote before the end of the legislative session. we are really thankful for the all the departments that played a huge part in this. and the office of economic and work development, and everyone pulled together on this. and the small business commission has been kind of the heart and soul of this. president laguana has participated in this as well as

former and current commissioner who is not here today, board zouzounis. and thanks to those who helped put this forward. we are ready for you, got your back, and the city is not putting up obsta l cans. so with that -- so the city is not putting up obstacles. with that, i am available for questions if there are any. and thank you for your time. >> commissioner: commissioner, do we have any questions? well, amy, i'll say in case somebody is taking time to think of a question, when can we realistically expect this to go into effect? >> the idea is that it would start with any business that is registering by november 1. that gives treasurer and tax collector some time to pull the program together. i would expect that the program

could be announced by october 1. and then live on -- sorry, not announced, but announced that it is taking applications and starting to screen, and then would be applying to anyone, to any small business entering the system on november 1. >> great. well, i am obviously severely biassed because i had the honor of helping to work on this, but i will say even if i hadn't, i think this is one of the smartest pieces of legislation i have seen on small business so far. just that it's so narrowly crafted in targeting revitalization and getting businesses to fill in vacant storefronts which is exactly

what we need. i think supervisor ronen has shown a lot of leadership in moving this forward. congratulations on getting it out of budget. okay, it doesn't seem like we have anyone else, so we will go to public comment. >> commissioner adam, you may need to change your chat to all panelists. i may also have the wrong chat. >> i only see hope and commissioners. >> you have to edit the chat to

enable that they can see to anyone but you, and that is under the participant tab at the bottom. you can also disable q&a there under options. and under event and options. and that is the housekeeping steps. only the host can do that, or i would do it for you. >> right. >> i will just keep a sharp eye on it. you're right. just send your question directly to me. go ahead, commissioner. >> you essentially asked my question. i was going to ask when this is going to go into effect. and i have to echo your sentiment. this is very well crafted and what we are going to need to spark a lot of entrepreneurials

who are ready to start businesses now, and there are a lot of them. you answered my question already, so we're good. that is why i kept quiet. >> commissioner dooley. >> i wanted to add that i am very excited about this also. i feel like during the covid outbreak, the retail environment has gotten as equally hit hard as many other areas. i am grateful and happy to see something specifically targeting retail because they really need help. we need to get the store fronts open. >> not seeing anybody else, we will go to public comment.

>> we currently have zero people calling in. >> okay. amy, i said it once and i will say it again. this is probably my favorite piece of legislation i've seen the whole way through. it's so great. we need more of this. we need more of this kind of thinking. i think most of all we need san francisco to be easy to open and operate a small business, and that should be a top goal. obviously is a top goal for the commission, but it should be a top goal for the board of supervisors as well because there is so many good things from jobs and opportunities as you laid out in your slides for women and minorities. it's just winner, winner, chicken dinner all day long.

thank you and thank you, supervisor, for pushing this forward. i think we need to make a motion here. anybody want to make a motion? >> i'll motion to approve this piece of legislation. >> definitely second. >> l to the yes. >> all right. we have a motion by commissioner adams to recommend approval to the board of supervisors on board of supervisors file numb 210741, seconded by commissioner dickerson. i will do roll call. commissioner adams. >> yes. >> commissioner dickerson. >> yes. >> commissioner dooley. >> yes. >> a commissioner huie. >> yes. >> and commissioner laguana.

>> that motion passes 5-0 with two absent. thank you, amy. >> bye, amy. awe thank you, amy. >> all right, commissioners. before we move on to item number three just for our housekeeping purposes, can you tell me if you see now the option to select all panelists? >> yep. >> clerk: and i think i successfully removed the q&a option. >> yes. great. sorry about that. i tried something new and obviously i overdid it. >> it's fine. no harm. >> a we can move on to item number three. shall i do that, mr. president? >> a please. >> clerk: item number three is a discussion. what do small businesses need in the post pandemic environment?

moving forward in the post pandemic environment t small business commission will discuss the continued needs of small businesses. from this discussion the sbc will establish priorities for the small business commission to work on for the next six to 12 months. and this also includes topics that can be moved forward to the annual retreat. this is a discussion item. and we have our president, sharky laguana who will be leading the discussion for you. >> great. so i think the thought is a simple one. we have been in crisis mode for a long time. delta variant notwithstanding,

hopefully we are coming out of that crisis, and we need to think about what our priorities are for moving forward with small business speaking with the director and the rest of the commissioner, we need to look at what to focus on for the year moving forward. so with that, commissioner adams. >> thank you. and i thought this was brilliant when i saw this on the agenda because this is something we need to start talking about. there is stuff on my mind that's

bothersome coming out of the pandemic, and i told myself i was going to be positive, but i want to start with the good. like the legislation we just heard. great. that's stuff we should be doing. past legislation that we have been doing has been great. stuff oewd and the mayor's office has been doing to assist restaurants and small business, great. all across the board. and business wise, we are doing everything right. however, in order for businesses to thrive, you need customers. and we are having another pandemic in this town with quality of life issue, crime,, and i'm back down in the financial district four days a week. i walk [inaudible]

into people. and do you know and [distorted audio] and do you know how many car break ins there were at fisherman's wharf over the weekend? thousands. people are parking in parking lots and they vow not to come back to san francisco. when i talk to small business owners, they say the city is doing everything right as far as helping us economically, but we're losing customers. it's in the neighborhoods and castro and nohe valley and clement street. we all see it. and i'm a very liberal person. but we have to get some control on these quality of life issues.

there's no consequences out there. what we saw at nieman marcus last week, that got publicity because it's a big retail store. that happens to small businesses all over towns every day. and i had small business owners say, well, i called the police. we have video footage, but nothing happens. source until we can get a grasp on that, people will quit shopping there. we have the people who live here and shop and eat and work here and i did the 30-day challenge where i shopped at small businesses for a month. it was very easy. and i was pleasantly surprised how easy that was. but this is a tourist town. and not only nationally, statewide, but regionally in a lot of people come here regionally. and they're -- they're not coming anymore because of the

issues. so i had to get that off my chest. the mayor had a press conference and said they made arrests. having people defecate in front of a storefront, i'm sorry, that is unacceptable. and as a city, we have to step up and figure out what to do. i don't want to point fingers and blame people, but we all kind of have to come together to kind of figure this one out. if we can't get people to come to the town to shop, eat, drink, and spend their money, then i feel like a lot of what we are seeing here and the hard work we have done and great legislation f we don't have the customers, that's a problem. so that's it. >> president: i appreciate that.

understood. we'll certainly circle back to that, but first, commissioner dickerson. >> commissioner: thank you, commissioner adams, for bringing that to the light, because i think that's probably the largest issue that many businesses are dealing with right now is customers. and the volume is definitely low. and it might seem minimal, but so many people talking about this path season, people couldn't get enough sleep because of the firework. i am not kidding you and people were coming in and cancelling sessions with me. it was just the morale seems to be low. but i know what it's been. but i wanted to agree and amen what you are saying because it

is a huge issue. one of the things that i have been thinking about and also talking to with many of the businesses in the bayview, and there is a lot of businesses on the bayview. we were down at 29% vacancies and if i am not mistaken, the last report from 6 to 10 percent. so there's been a huge increase in this small business on the third corridor and the board and are working extra hard and it's been significant. one of the highlighted areas the mayor just came to visit was the bayview makers kitchen which is an affordable kitchen for small businesses for people who don't

have the brick and mortar and is extremely reasonable and is a hub there and very successful. that is one of the things to celebrate. when we talk about what we passed in legislation with proposition h, i want to see how that is moving small businesses along. i, of course, represent and even so for it before i was a commissioner, i was adamant about this and thought it was a great opportunity. i have not seen it be so easy and i am sure it is early and getting kinks out and things of that nature and everything opens up and from city hall is one of the concerns of mine.

it is still challenging. although i am hopeful. that is one of the things weighing on me is one of the ways to get small businesses where it's not so difficult and complicated. so that is one of the things i would like to see more of. more efficiency with getting -- without going through all this riga-ma-role with the permits. that is kind of what was on my mind. >> great. those are all really good points. and i'll have a couple of things to say about prop h after we get through everybody. commissioner dooley, commissioner huie is next. as long as she needs. commissioner huie. >> i can't promise it will be one second. >> go ahead.

>> on this subject, i am kidding. i'm sorry. i was making a joke. it is commissioner huie's turn. >> that is okay. if she wants to say something in regards to that. okay. >> it is so much harder on zoom where there is a little bit of a delay. >> i definitely agree on the quality of life issues and every neighborhood is challenged by that and bringing people back. and the other thing i wanted to add is one, of course, equity issues and now that we have gone through the whole ban demmic and seen who needs help and where we can help best. hopefully that will continue and not just be something that we kind of do but something that is

inherent in the lens in which we look at things. going back to amy's -- sorry, i don't want to go back to anything that we have spoken about and i was excited to see how we can encourage entrepreneurship and i have not seen anything yet where it actually brings together all the things we do right. i would lover to see an analysis and white paper or even webpage or something that kind of starts us thinking about what san francisco actually does well. why would i want to come start a business here? why would this neighborhood be a great place to do business?

not just a p.r. piece, but analyze what are the things that we have to offer. if that feels really light and minimal right now, then we need to do better. and at least doing a real audit with the legislation that creates a positive impact. and it's this piece of legislation goes through, i would lover to see that added to it. and if we talk about making things easier and i would like to have a better sense of concrete things that we do really well. that is something that is unique to our city and we are engaged with the community at large. and small business owners here

are actually a really great group of people. who care a lot about the people around them. and to put the details together. and we can start to see some success and we can create a package that says this is why san francisco is a wonderful place to do business. i would love to tell entrepreneurial people confidently come to san francisco. and some of that may also be help with grants. san francisco does a great job of having a lot of services, community services. we should take a tally of that and audit of that and see are we doing exactly what we do that.

and in terms of some of the leaders that have emerged in the last year or two, thinking about how the small business community can really be well tapped in with everybody and continue this type of engagement and have a nice pipeline for people to continue to be engaged with the legislators and all these different things that we have been doing to learn through just kind of doing it. if there was a way to make it a true pipeline, i think that would help the small business community grow in advocacy. and then the the quality of life

issue. and i would love to tap in to the travel people. we are all working on this same thing. how do we make the city a place that the people want to come to. and the next step is how to be able to make it an experience where people walk through the neighborhoods and partner and the small business community. and i would like to see a stronger connection between the two of the industries. this is the short list. >> i apologize again. and my joke is don't ever tell jokes on zoom.

that is the lesson here. of course, i won't learn that lesson. commissioner dooley, please go ahead. and i have two things to bring up. one is i am in north beach and we have more shared spaces than any other neighborhood. and it's so great for the restaurants and bars. but the retailers and is not great at all. no place to park at all in north beach. nowhere. this is all shared spaces and moving further away from covid. the next thing i have to tell you a quick story and yesterday i went out and with two

backpacks thrown in the street. i picked them up, looked at them and they were tourists from out of state. then i put them behind my gate. and then i walked half a block more. two more suitcases on the street. all of the possessions scattered. then i walked another block and found a huge pile of suitcases and backpacks and bags. i walked to the parking lot on the embarcadero and there were so many distraught tourist who is showed me all their vehicles had been smashed. all the windows were broken on rental cars and i have to echo, i took them to where i seen all

this stuff thrown. and luckily, most of them got back some of their own stuff. i called the police. they didn't call me back until 2:00 in the morning. to take them to where their stuff was scattered and they were so grateful and they still said, we are never coming back to san francisco. this quality of life thing is enormous. which is a short walk and people are getting mugged. right in the commercial district. this is just keeping people

away. that should be the major focus right now because it is hurting all the merchants. it is hurting everyone to no longer be able to even be outside at dark, after dark. that's just terrible. i found myself apologizing over and over to these tourists yesterday. and they were just like, we are so grateful you are so nice. i would hope to say that any normal san francisco would have done exactly what i did, but they're not coming back. so that is my two comments from yesterday. >> an i appreciate it. so i think i am on the same page as all of you. i think how can i not be? let me start with a couple of the easy one.

commissioner dickerson, it is true, we haven't really seen much impact from prop h yet. i think some of that opportunity for businesses to avail themselves of the program. and some aspects narrowly targeted. and to that, i will add that the land use going to the board of supes one week from tomorrow is the small business recovery act. with prop h with the conditional uses. and as being something to

continue with. with what is the main page and san francisco an attractive place to visit. and it will be difficult for a small business to operate in this town. and i think that we are all familiar with the fact that perception is reality with the to say that violent crime is down. the reality is the perception is up.

to think about rely on data. and crime and san francisco is a place where data is not super useful because so many of us don't report crimes when they happen. we all had cars broken into. i don't think i have bothered to call the last three or four times my car is broken into. what is the point? it is sort of sad that we don't feel supported on these issues. i think you brought up a really important issue. i don't think as the city have spent enough time talking about which is fireworks. i can hear them. fortunately, they are not too bad in my neighborhood, but you can hear them and they are louder than thunder.

so whoever is living near there, the house was shaking and it was impossible to sleep. so that is another sort of thing i had a house and it was 1998, 1999, and just left the house and all the stuff was there. i moved in with my wife and the house was literally blown off the foundation because of an illegal store of fireworks at our apartment building next door. google 19th avenue explosion on google, you will see a picture of my house. neighbor's house is at an angle like that and our house is right there and they had to take the

whole block down, so the things are incredibly dangerous. you may have seen what happened in l.a. where they detonated fireworks in a truck and it wound up damaging a number of houses and injuring people. so i think this all and the unhoused issue doesn't fall squarely under this category, but most of this falls under crime and is fundamentally about crime. and i think that it is appropriate for the small business community to weigh in on this issue. it is incumbent to speak up on behalf of the shop owners that

are victims and is independent on the ecosystem. with that being aid, i want to share with you and i don't want to drag this meeting on too long, but i have been focused on the issue of car break ins for close to four to five years now. that is how u first met the mayor and supervisor yee. some of you may know or may recall, i am also president of the american car rental association. so when we talk about rental cars being broken into, those are my members. my fellow members are very upset. when the rental cars are broken into, it is also expensive for

us and doesn't meet the deductible, the customer disappears, and we also have problems with rental cars being stolen and used to commit other crimes. sometimes with fake i.d.'s, and again, this is very sort of difficult problem to unwind. so here are the constraints. and what i want to share with you are my observations from having worked on this for a long time. i'll share the observations to make you better better informed about what i have seen and better informed throughout small business and to make the commission better informed. the first issue the statewide

level and no working interest or appetite for putting more people in prison. and i have to say that i know from doing the research in december, november, that mass incarceration and lengthy incarceration are ineffective at reducing crime levels. it is the thing that people want to go to as a knee jerk solution but it doesn't actually work. regardless of whether it works or doesn't work, there is no appetite in the state of california for putting more people in prison. you will not get governor newsom to sign anything that will lead to more people being in prison. you can suggest as many policies as you want, but that's going to be the outcome, it won't get a signature. so that is a practical reality.

the second reality is currently among our elected official, particularly the d.a.'s office there is a focus on diversion programs and not an interest in putting people in jail, so as a practical matter, that is not the focus of the current elected d.a.. and when we think and engage on this issue, we need to think constructively and realistically about what kinds of policies would be -- would work for the d.a. given that constraint. and how can we materially make a difference on this issue. because if we just say to the d.a. we want you to put more people in jail, that's never

going to work. we can say it. but it won't result in any change. so the next aspect is even when -- anybody that has seen the car break-ins, they happen in like 13 seconds, 10 seconds. they're in, they're out, they're gone. it is very difficult for the police to catch them. but even if they do catch them, there is all these sort of loopholes in the law, like, for instance, the doors have to be locked. the renter or owner has to be able to testify against them. we get the outrageous stats where out of 35,000 break-in, in 2019, seven people were successfully prosecuted. and it just seems to me and we're obviously never going to

get anywhere if we don't find some way to materially address the issues. and then the third constraint is the court system where is it can take a really long time for cases to be heard. sometimes over a year. and there, too, the court system doesn't have much of an interest in jailing folks, so we need to start thinking, at least from my perspective, we need to start thinking about attacking the economic causes of crime, and i think we need to get at some of these economic benefits so crime doesn't pay. and we're going to be creative because san francisco is a unique city and we have a unique

outlook. force i think my observation is there are some things that we can do that would economic make a difference and could adult in different outcomes and produce results. and there's other things that we can do that is more of the same and will be disregarded and ignored. so i'm very curious to hear from you all. i just totally agree. we need to focus on tourism, on crime, on getting the streets clean. so that people -- even just as a health matter. one of the tents caught on fire, i think it was in the mission, just yesterday, and it led to the building catching on fire. so this is a public health

issue. this is a business issue. i think we should engage. i don't think we should be afraid of engaging, but i think we need to be smart about how we engage so we actually make a difference, because otherwise we're just going to be ignored. so what do you guys think about all of that? >> can i go? >> i think it's open floor alt this point. >> an i agree about thinking out of the box. and commissioner huie got me thinking about tourism and i am at stas person, too, and i like reading stats and that. tourism in san francisco. san francisco is the number one -- or it was before the pandemic -- the number one tourist city

in the united states, and it's either number one, two, or three in the world and it goes between san francisco, sydney, and i believe the third one was rome. so tourist-wise, it's there. but commissioner huie got me thinking, too, about what we can do about with that. and prior to pandemic, districts on the east side of town where you saw most of the tourists were connected with the tourist industry. astro, filmore, the mission, and we are connected because the tourist come to our districts. i appreciate what you said because one of the things that we started to focus on years ago as a council is to get them to

go to clement street and west portal and into the other neighborhood. i really appreciate your comment, commissioner huie on that, because there's more to san francisco than just the east side. and back to president laguana, we have to think outside of the box because they are not going to throw them in jail, but a consequence or something to just -- i don't know. and we're not going to figure it out in this meeting. but we have to keep -- the reason why i threw the stats out there is because we got to keep these people coming. that is what at least a lot of builders on this side of town, that is what fuels our business. in the castro, when -- when

peter kean and director remember, 60% of bobby's business and a retail clothing store who sold sporting goods stuff, tennis shoes and stuff. [please stand by]

>> you've got to admit we live in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. i leave my house and i'm like i can't believe i live here so we've just got to continue that and i just thought i'd say we've got to get these people into the other vabds and get things moving. we need to get people to come out. sounds pretty capitalistic but open up their wallets and start spending money in our neighborhoods again.

>> president: we really need to get our transit system firing on all cylinders. >> yes. in the financial district i'm hearing this at lunch. but the buses aren't quite there yet and that opened up the xhernl done and a lot of people say they don't want to go back to their offices. i'm down there and it takes me over an hour. and i live on twin peaks and there are no buses other than the market street railway, but

the commuter bussings from the west side to the east side just aren't there yet. but all those retail 0 shops those are mom and pops businesses. and i know you're hearing that and we're all you know. manhattan hub. >> president: commissioner huie. >> commissioner huie: i just wanted to make a couple they've

let their attendants go. there always used to be someone in the little booth, but that person is no longer there after the pandemic, they fired all those people. so, it is really enticing to people who are going to steal things when there's no one there. i just think more walking street patrol. but just the physical presence of police on our commercial streets. they don't have to be arresting

people. i was informed that all of our break-ins are done by one gang that comes from oakland every single day and targets that area so it just seems like if we can number one get attendance back in the parking lot, that would be helpful and just to have police walking by so people see that there is some interest in what's going on. >> thank you, mr. president and through the president. i just wanted to share with you, i had and while the

webinar was targeted towards what the individual retailer that was talked about was retailers providing an experience. so i'm throwing this out as kind of an idea is that when you've talked about connecting tourism. is there a way in which the city can support the larger shopping area and help our

merchants establish experiences that then draw in and bring people in. somewhat like the closed shared spaces that draws people in to the area during those times. so it's just a concept that i'm sort of putting out there. i'm also going, i want to kind of go back to something that commissioner huie said. we don't have to get into great discussion about this, but you talked about working with the leaders. and so just wanted to kind of put it back out to you, like where do you see your role in addition to things that the city needs to do? how do you see your role also

in the topics that you've discussed and how do you want to use your position as the small business commission to help deal with some of the issues you've identified or expand on the good things and the creative things and what do you see that you need as the commission. so for commissioner huie, it's the marketing and the promotion of all the great things the city is doing, but, do you want for your role too, do you want to have presentations? do you want to have -- i don't know and some of these thoughts and ideas can carry forward when we're able to have the retreat. but, i just want to have you think about what, you know, where do you fit in with this

and can help move things along in terms of our rebuilding and facilitating what our businesses need maving into the rebuilding and recovery phase. so i will leave it at that. >> president laguana: thank you, director. two things real quick, commissioner huie, bear with me for just a second. i just want to respond real quick before i forget. one, you're exactly right about experienceal retail. and i think we saw saw activity around the vangough live experiment. i'm not saying they should have projector screens and doing them but rather it's just if we

can find ways to encourage retail to be more experiential, then i think those shared spaces, there's not going to be as much tension there because i think they'll be reasons for people to go in. and then on the other part, how should we position ourselves and what should we do going forward? i mean, i can just give you my take on it and i'm interested in everybody else's take and commissioner huie, thank you for humoring me on this. it seems to me we have several core levers. like one is we have our personal networks that include policy makers and legislators and whatnot and so, you know,

so those are all things we can do. director, i think we should look at presentations that make this commission smarter about these issues so that we can be better informed and make better suggestions and i'm hearing a lot of great ideas here. so commissioner huie, thank you for allowing me the time. >> you know, speaking

specifically about the experiential retail. i owned a retail business for 10 years and it was a resell business. we sold contemporary mens and womens clothing and i've kind of watched from where you can have a brick and mortar store and live off of that to now where it's economically unfeasible to own a retail store. i think if you have a retail store and you have a certain level of customers and income, it stays pretty steady, but it requires a lot of work to keep it at that level and i would have to say that i experienced

for myself kind of going through that trajectory going from traditional retail to now, this experiential retail expectation. it can be incredibly expensive. you have to educate yourself on how to do these things. i've had to be myself on how to utilize social media and learning how to throw a great party. learning to have shows and now it's beyond that. i just kind of wonder this

expectation of having retail experience. in my experience, those things don't actually translate to sales. maybe one if you have one once a month or six months. it may translate into a boost of sales. so like the economic feasibility of doing this for small mom and i don't know if that's real because you need a lot because looking at a community, you can leverage some of those things for communities. you can leverage for merchants association. >> you can leverage other types of industry associations to be able to plan larger events and that's kind of what we did on

clement street and more things to drive customers in so each individual store didn't have to rely on that experience and i think some opportunities where we can partner stronger, have stronger partnerships with the travel industry. traditionally chinatown has been a well attended tourist destination for san francisco and prior to ped we were given an sf travel grant. because i think san francisco wanted to bring visitors into our other neighborhood given that most people had come to san francisco before and seen fisherman's wharf. so, you know, chinatown, i think in its development has

now during this pandemic period has now seen some of the areas of opportunity. i think like i feel like somebody who doesn't. i don't do business in chinatown, but i go there for dinners or for things and i generally go to that one specific like if i showed up. like certain neighborhoods are

easier. if you have retail businesses that are on offshoots too. i think we do have that opportunity to create more walkable paths or to create more sign adjust or something, you know, to be able to help visitors even of different neighborhoods navigate better, because i think if you really think about, like if i visit a neighborhood i'm not familiar with, where do i go beyond that one business. so that's my thinking in terms of travel. and in terms of the other questions of do i fit in, i feel like that is a perfect way to kind of frame our thinking around during our retreat and i know you mentioned that and, you know, i hope that we can hold that for that period because i feel like we could use that as a lens for every

single kind of issue. >> president laguana: yeah. commissioner dooley. >> commissioner dooley: i would just like to make what i think is the most logical, helpful thing, we need to invite the chief of police to our commission, because it affects the world of small business so much and i think it's time for us to just invite that person and talk to them about what's going on, you know, in terms of what we're observing i think it just might be helpful to bring it out. it brings it out more to the public so they see it and go yeah. so that's my request. my number one requests today is that we invite the police to our meeting to discuss quality of life. >> president laguana: you know, i think we do need to be having more conversations with law enforcement.

really, at every see what the world looks like from their perspective. i will always refer to you, commissioner huie. with the caveat that i have no idea that i know what the hell i'm talking about. so, you know, trying to be helpful, but certainly not trying to be pedantic.

if you had any idea. that's a really great suggestion. that's like the most obvious thing and yeah, of course, we thought of it because it's the most obvious thing. so but you did bring up an interesting point about or you know a thought that came up for me as you were talking, you were talking about chinatown and sort of the impact it has on travel and i was thinking about how we bring tourists from the east side of town to these outer neighborhoods whether it's sunset or west portal or excelsior or bayview. i mean, really, it's a challenge. i'm not saying i know the answer. but fundamentally, you have to have a reason to want to go. you've got to have a pitch. i've just arrived into town. why would i go out to wherever

unless there's something there i want to see or i want to do and i think the golden gate bridge gets a lot of visitors because the quintessential just pretend i said it right, san francisco, and, you know, i is kind of its own site. chinatown has. but, you know, and this is what i was thinking was interesting about chinatown, so chinatown is the oldest chinatown in america and it was sort of this very intentional effort to make a neighborhood have a distinct

look and feel and as a result, people want to go see it because it has this distinct look and feel. and i think the closest modern analog that i can think of in san francisco, something that's been created recently that isn't actually connected to culture is like what hayes valley has done with that neighborhood corridor and they've really just kind of created a vibe and i can almost see the inkings of that happening on 3rd street to and so it's like how do you give -- you know, like interrupting myself, but i was a professional musician, i toured all over the u.s. and i saw somebody say this yesterday and i couldn't agree more. you travel all over america, you do these cross country trips and you get these little moments of isolated beauty like

an incredible sight. maybe it's the achs in utah or the arch in st. louis. 90% of the time it's a strip mall. a travel mart gas station, you can't tell any of it apart. so the only reason, the reason san francisco's such an incredible attraction to tourists because we have unique neighborhoods and so maybe part of the work this commission can be how do we help our neighborhoods define themselves in ways that stand out visually? you know, the mission with its latin history. i mean it's like you walk through the mission, you know you're walking through a latin neighborhood. you know, what does that look

like. how do we give the ability to develop its own source of identity and what kinds of businesses or what help do the existing businesses need to lean into that so that they can become more of who they already are and, you know, i don't know, that's what was coming up for me. i think there's a lot of interesting work to do around that. you know, i mentioned at the start of this, we need some out of the box ideas for dealing with crime. i do have one that i'll share with you guys that i've started working on through the car rental association. i had some phone conversations with our d.a. as well as deputy chief lizar.

we know when we're talking about crime, the best way to deal with crime is making sure it never happens again. so, there are three components to detouring crime. and the first is that you have to make it so crime doesn't pay. the economic consequences is more expensive than the benefit. the second is that there has to be a high likelihood of getting caught so, you know, if somebody commits a crime, they have to be seriously worried they're going to get caught doing it. and number three, the general public needs to be aware of number one and number two and if you have all three of those elements in place, you're going to see your crime go down.

it will never go to zero of course. and it seems to me like what we're kind of getting wrong and all three basically. the one thing a number of people are responsible for the overwhelming number of crimes committed in san francisco. we know this. so, if we want to have a material impact on the amount of crime that's being committed, the good news is we have a pretty small universe of people that we need to deal with and these people are organized into criminal theft

rings. so if we could take one or two or three major rings off, you know, the playing field, we could potentially see our crime stats or car break-ins drop down substantially. these are people that will just -- they wake up in the morning and they go to work. they break into cars and they do it eight hours a day and they're taking all these item that is are being stolen, they're going into shipping containers, these shipping containers are going oversees to other countries. that's the business model. so my thought was what if we can somehow incentivize somebody to, you know, kind of like the mafia, right. what if we can somehow incentivize folks to turn on the ring that they're apart of if we can offer a reward and would make them provide information leading to an

arrest and conviction of a ring. and so i've started to have that conversation with the folks from the business communities there are people i will be straight with you that are skeptical about this idea but the reaction from law enforcement and our district attorney was interesting. it's never been tried before for lower level crimes and what's the harm in trying? and so i already have a couple partners that are interested in participating in this from the business community, but i think i'll be looking for more certainly. but one thought i had was, i mean, geeze, we have over 100,000 small businesses in san francisco. if everybody said, all right. i'll contribute $100 to see if we can have a material impact on something pretty straight

forward like car break-ins, that's over a million dollars, that's $10 million of money that would be available for rewards to convince people to provide information leading to the arrest and conviction of folks engaged in crime. that was my out-of-the-box idea. i know the d.a. is willing to prosecute people at the top of the criminal ladder, so how do we get to those people. the other thing i know is that they are willing to seize the assets of people caught in these rings and so that cuts to that economic benefit of losing crimes. you lose all your assets. that will make you think of that. so that was one idea. i'm always open for more. commissioner huie. >> commissioner huie: i like your idea. while you were talking about

your idea, i was thinking about like i was listening and i was thinking about like i don't know if you know -- i feel like you would know this. like how much are people making in terms of like thinking about crime as a job. how much is an average criminal making who's the person breaking the window. if you think about the entire business model of the crime, how much is each step making and then how do we provide work that would offset those salaries? >> i don't actually know what their, you know, for example, their 401k plan is. >> commissioner huie: the benefits is my question. because one thing -- >> president laguana: well, i was just going to say, i can sort of hypothesize it's

obviously decent enough to be worth doing. i don't think it's off the charts though because i remember there was a ring that was busted, i think it was early 2020 and they found a warehouse and in the warehouse there was about a million dollars in goods and assets and i want to say there was about ten or twelve people associated with the ring, so i'm going to, you know, i think it's like you get in the thing and somebody at the top is probably clearing $300,000, $400,000 a year and the lower level guys are making $50,000, $60,000 a year is my guess. but i don't have any way of knowing whether those numbers are correct, but it seems to me if you could offer people on the bottom or people just happen to know them socially, right.

and if you could offer those folks enough incentives to want to provide information, you know, i think there are people. i mean, look, they're thieves. >> commissioner huie: i'm thinking, like, you know, given my work also being in health cares, right, like i run an oral surgery practice and one of the biggest things in dentistry is we are always short staffed. we are always looking for dental assistants, surgical assistants, and over the years that staffing issue has grown where we just don't have enough, you know, trained people and it's a great profession. it's like you don't need -- you could just have like a high school diploma and sometimes people don't even require that to become a dental assistant and i know that's very specific, but i'm sure this translates into other industries too where i think in san francisco, we don't have a ton of training programs for

technical jobs and i think that's really a loss for many people i think thinking about that segment of the population, but thinking about having something positive for them to do and because i really see in kind of like the distant franchisement of this particular segment, there just aren't enough opportunities, you know, they don't have as college either. like they don't have these things this is what you could do. i think not having that viable kind of like future i think

then puts people at a point where it's kind of like this is what i have offered to me. >> president laguana: well, you're right. and that's a real thing that they studied in criminology which is obviously if you're trying to redirect and i know that the d.a.'s office on that question. and there's a lot of programs getting these lower level people looking at doing a new line of work. i did find that ring that i was talking about. it was actually 2018. they had $2 million of goods. they were link today more than $2 million of goods over a few years. it was a smash and grab ring.

they were shipping electronic devices overseas to vietnam. there was eight people caught in that ring with $2 million stolen from cars. so it doesn't take long for people to have a pretty big impact. so, you know, i think we've got to -- we have to look at the whole picture and i think this is like something constructive and helpful that the commission could do to engage in this in a non finger pointing kind of way which, you know, i think isn't really getting us anywhere. >> commissioner huie: i think the reason why we're good at this though is because we're small business owners. we're thinking about it in a way that's very pragmatic, it's very how do we get to the solution and it requires

resourcefulness and i think that's actually one of the most awesome things about small business commission as well as small business community is that it's not able, you know, the stuff that we do, but the way we think and i think that is really the biggest thing that we can bring as an asset to city hall and to the city itself. >> president laguana: yeah. i agree. i think we're just problem solvers, that's it. i tell people all the time, i don't care who gets credit. i'm not here to -- as far as i'm concerned, if we're doing our job, everybody gets re-elected. i'm not here to stick a knife in everybody's back, i just want san francisco to be great and i'll do whatever it takes. whatever the constraint are. it's fine, i get it. how do we work with that to make it successful. i guess we should check in on

public comment. i have a laundry list of notes here just from everybody. we spoke about tourism, cars, crime, we spoke about quality of life and clean streets. we spoke about fireworks, transit, the challenges specifically around retail. i think there was a lot of interesting points and counter points made about that. marketing, our outer neighborhoods, commissioner dooley brought up some very straight forward, again, very pragmatic suggestions on how we could help bring some of our crime rates down. so, you know, i think maybe we take another session or two to like let this stew in our minds and then to commissioner dooley's point, i think we start bringing in some folks from the law enforcement community, from the justice

side of the law enforcement, you know, hopefully from the court system. director dick endrizzi, it seems like the court system feels different from the rest of the city. would it be -- has there ever been a case where the small business commission brought in somebody from the court system and do you think that that might even be practically possible? >> i -- it's likely to be practically impossible as rarely seen. the courts where judges come, you know, before a body to really speak about things that are specific in relationship to

what they might be presiding over. that's not to say that we can't check in but i have yet really seen in a public forum that conversation happening. >> president laguana: you know, it's interesting because they're elected officials and one would think that there should be some mechanism for them to at least educate us about, you know, i know they're facing challenges. well -- >> director: apologies, president laguana. i think we can try. it may have to be constructed in a specific way or the lane of discussion is going to be very specific. >> president laguana: okay. great. well we'll explore that and if we can get anywhere we will, and if we can't, we tried.

okay. i don't see any other comments. if i did, if i'm missing anybody, please correct me. and, with that, i think we'll check in on public comment. >> clerk: right now, we have nobody on the line. >> president laguana: okay. we either wore them out or they all agree. seeing none. public comment is closed. next item, please. minutes, director. you're muted. >> director: apologies. so item number four is approval of the march 8th, 2021, draft meeting minutes. this is an action item. >> president laguana: okay. are there any members of the public who'd like to make

comment on the minutes? >> clerk: nobody in queue. >> president laguana: okay. seeing none. public comment is closed. commissioners, do we have a motion? >> so moved. >> president laguana: i think we'll say commissioner dooley made the motion. i saw her lips moving. i'm a lip reader. >> director: and commissioner adams, do you want to second it? >> commissioner adams: i'll second it. >> director: and the meeting minutes were moved by commissioner dooley and seconded by commissioner adams. [roll call]

that motion passes five-zero with two absent. so we will move on to item number five, which is general public comment. this allows members of the public to comment on matters within the small business commission's jurisdiction, but not on today's calendar and just new agenda items for the commission's future consideration. this is a discussion item. >> president laguana: are there any members of the public that would like to make comments on any items that are not on today's agenda? >> clerk: nobody has called in. >> president laguana: seeing none. public comment is closed. next item, please. >> director: item number six is director's report. this is an update and report on the office of small business and the small business assistance center, department program, policy and legislative matters, announcements from the mayor and announcements regarding small business activities. this is a discussion item.

so, commissioners, i am going to attempt to share my screen to review some of the key items that i want to take an opportunity to share with you. let's see. here we have it. so the first item i want to provide for you is you've seen the announcement for the mayor announcing small business recoffery loan fund, but is -- there's $12 million in the new

loan program that's designed to help -- that will provide a 0% interest to small business loans targeting businesses that have been left out of current relief program. though this fund is being administered by the cal loan fund as part of the california rebuilding program and so, there is an online application. there were a couple of glitches that are still being worked out, but if businesses need any support, they can of course call our office, office of small business, but also the small business development center, main street launch, mission economic development agency, pacific community venture and national american coalition are also some of our nonprofit organizations that had been set up to assist businesses and applying for these loans.

i want to move -- then moving on to the office of small business budget for fiscal year '21-'22. so our overall budget has stayed in tact in terms of not very minimal, sort of the cuts we had discussed earlier in the year, those we, of course, did not have to incur much of that so our budget has stayed in tact and then we have three budget enhancements that we were able to secure for this year. so the first is two additional business counselor positions and this was part of the mayor's budget and this was to add business counselor position so that we can staff the budget center so many of you in

december were able to do a tour of the permit center and your tour guide showed you where our staff will sit in the permit center. so going back to i think something that you talked about, commissioner huie, you know, our staff will be expanding so that we can assist more businesses getting through this process and then, being able to open their business and understand all the benefits that are there for them to help them and, you know, with the, you know, the legislation that you heard, we, of course be working with the tax and treasurer's office so that we are identifying some of those businesses when they come in and council us to ensure that they drive the benefit of the permit fee which is the

application fee and the license and the first the business registration, the waiver. so as part of the add back process with the board of supervisors, an additional 200,000 was added back or is added to our budget for the neighborhood anchoring business and thank you for your support when discussing this legislation with supervisor chan making it clear we really needed a position for this. so it funds one position for the first year. for the first year $200,zero will fund the one position and approximately helping with start up operating costs and then the this looks like i forgot to put it here and then i estimated for annual cost

moving forward having one position in our office and funding a part-time position in the small business development center to help our neighborhood anchoring businesses access technical resources for those who want it. that's about 100, i mean 260 something dollar budget and so that was also secured for fiscal year '22-'23. and the third add backed item is a $500,000 back for the legacy business program. these funds are allocated only in this up coming or this current fiscal year that we're in. the use of these funds are to help boost and process facilitate legacy business applications in a faster and more timely manner and then also to help increase equity

representation in the industry. so supervisor peskin, chan, and ronan were very instrumental in providing that add-back. and then rick and i will be developing a plan for these expenditures. this add-back was not something that our office specifically asked for, so it is something that those three supervisors determined was something that they wanted to provide the office to give the boost to the legacy business program. and i do as -- i'll get into this when we get into the office of small business and business assistance center. then to provide you with an update for the small business commission, the commission secretary policy analysis, a conditional offer letter has been sent and there's certain steps that need to be taken and

so i anticipate the earliest start date for this position would be august 9th, but the official start date hasn't been finalized, yet. but it is soon on the horizon and seems like it's just a few days away compared to the amount of time that the position has been vacant. in regards to the small business assistance center and the office, so last week, we opened for walk-ins since the social distancing requirements were lifted for having staff in the office for walk-in services and we've been relatively busy with a high number of in-person services and a high -- a good number of those are being provided in a second language with the highest percentage being spanish. also, just wanted to highlight that ria aldanada who was

placed on d.s.w. assignment in i think it was february will continue to be on d.s.w. which is, you know, disaster emergency work until august 11th. so she is working on. her d.s.w. assignment is dealing with the certificate team. you received a presentation awhile back, early on from maggie wheelen to oversell the 13 which is the community emergency response team which is doing business engagement and so it's wrapping up its business engagement with small businesses, but continuing to do some outreach. there's changes in sign adjust and so just making sure doing one last kind of sweep to help

businesses deal in the final transition. one thing i do want to share with you in terms of the value of our office and the importance of having these two gigsal business counselors and having them at the permit center. so just today as a very good example, two young women came in one could go through cottage foods. so they came in for information and that's an over an hour conversation having that conversation with those businesses about what are the regulatory, you know, if you're going to go down the lane in

mobile foods, what is the regulations, what are the regulations? what are the requirements in if you're going cottage foods what are the limitations and so it just, the ability to have that in-person conversation with new businesses is so extraordinarily important because this is the information that they need to be able to then go and start developing their business plans and really giving serious consideration in terms of what's their start-up funding and, you know, just where do they want to start, how do they want to grow and so i'm just, i wanted to share that with you because as we talk about how do businesses know, the unfortunate thing is that at this particular point, our office can't facilitate

conversations with every new business twhants to start. we don't have the capacity. so adding two new businesses and having them located in the permit center, we know that new businesses are going to go, they're going to hear about the one-stopper mitt center and go there, and we will be placed to be able to have these conversations because if they go to a certain regulatory department, that regulatory department isn't going to deal with them in a wholistic manner. they're going to answer questions about what the regulations are and what they need to do if they want x type ith them, but not taking a look at the whole idea and having a conversation with the business, what are you trying to do, what are you trying to accomplish and then also connecting them with the resources that are there through our business tekt cal support nonprofits.

our cbos and connecting them with the best one that we'll kind of help them through getting their business up and going. and then the other one i wanted to bring to your attention is last week, it was a service in spanish for a business in the mission that went to open a second location and so, again, having to research some of the land use regulations and in this case, the prop h doesn't work for them because they are in the mission and so that the mission was not included in the prop h. so and then, there were certain ideas that they had that martha is researching to see, you know, if it is something that they can do in the manner of

which they want to do it. so, you know, this is what i'm extraordinarily proud of of the services that our office is providing is just that really individual hand holding and being there for a resource for businesses can't afford an expediter and have a conversation with somebody who knows. rick is finalizing this month, the venue applications for that

grant will be the september 27th meeting. then, moving on to the venue fund, again, that venue fund $3 million behind it. we have 58 businesses that have been approved. nine of them have been processed and there's still some businesses that have been and we will know and, if you do

want to take a look at what businesses have been approved from those that have applied on the o.s.b. website, we do have a tab at the top called venue funds and so as rick is approving those grant applications, he is listing them on the website. so that's there for you to see and he keeps up with it pretty much every day. so as there's new information to add, he adds it on a daily basis. and then for your information

the small business meeting so returning to city hall, those are projected to resume mid september. so just so that you're prepared to know that we will continue to have these virtual commission meetings until mid september and if anything is to change, i'll be sure to let you know i want you to be aware that ted eagan will provide us and to track our economic recovery and he will be providing you with that information and then director

kate sofis is just waiting and just like your conversation tonight what she's very interested in making sure there's close alignment with the work that o.e.w.d. is doing and the work that the commission is doing. and then we likely have some honoree recognition. so i would like to take the opportunity to talk about our honoree program. it's been a little dorment for awhile. but just to give a little

history and context, commissioner dooley is credited for establishing this program in the early between late 2008 to 2013, 2014, the commission did have sub committees and one of the sub committees was outreach and the outreach committee established an honoree program for one for recognizing city employees and develops a criteria which i have listed and then one is also for recognizing small businesses, small business leaders and those that are involved with the small business community and so there was criteria that was also established for that as well.

so i won't take the time to go over it, but you can see it, but this is likely one thing we can add to the retreat is to talk about these two programs and reviving it, how did they fit into your meetings and, so, but i do want you to know that there is a program that's there to support it and, you know, so we will try our -- we've done it a bit here and there with i think the last honoree may have been either peter kane the owner of body or tim lazurus from the chamber. >> i think it was peter.

>> director: yeah. i think it was peter. so and then, lative update. so the -- there were some updates to the administration of the vacancy tax. this is all part of just more of the administration of the program, but it -- this legislation establishes the requirement for those that are subject to the vacancy tax to file annual tax returns and to make annual tax remittence to the tax collector that are due in february. this is just for those that are subject to the evacuee tax. this will be a requirement. but these property owners will need to follow. so it's an administrative program requirement that had to

be established through legislation. then supervisor peskin third party food delivery services. so he amended the legislation so that he removed the sunset clause that the 15% delivery cap with sunset at the end of the shelter-in-place order when that's lifted and so it no longer sun sets at that time. it is in place. this file has been divided and there likely will be some additional amendments because now some of these delivery apps are delivering more than just food and this is -- the delivery cap is just for food. and then also there are working with the golden gate restaurant association, there are restaurants that wok like to

have the opportunity to be able to pay the delivery apps more and part of as i understand it, is a derive kind of marketing promotions benefit from that additional funds or additional fee, and so they do want that option. so that is being currently worked on. that file has been -- this file has been split and so that's to come. and then scheduled in land use committee as president laguana today has reported on that z both shared spaces and small business recovery act passed out of committee. i wasn't able to catch it. i don't know if you know it's a committee report and they will be heard tomorrow or if it's the following week. >> president laguana: shared spaces is a committee report

and will be heard tomorrow. small business recovery act is not and will be heard on the 20th. >> director: great. thank you. and then also just to confirm that for the shared spaces it retains as a primary permitting, agency overseeing the program stays with planning, is that correct? >> so when it's left the committee, it's still with the from supervisor peskin with the d.p.w. and there wasn't really any substantive changes. i don't think any were expected. i think it was just let's get it out of committee and get it in front of the city. so we'll see what happens tomorrow. >> director: all right. and then, commissioners, i do want to be aware of, supervisor haney has called for a hearing about starting a small business. he has decided to extend it to

july 22nd. it could be a little bit later. but this goes to both commissioner huie and dickerson under item number three about, you know, how is, you know, the implementation of prop h going. what's some of the data and information? the planning department will report on that. our office has been requested to report on how we work with small businesses to help them engage in all the opportunities and/or to help demystify the process so they're better informed. so, again, if they're informed when it's time to go engage with the different regulatory age it saves time and it saves our agency time as well. and, then lastly, not scheduled in the committee, but are small business items, you heard this

massage legislation. so that is likely to be scheduled end of july, early august. i didn't complete that sentence. supervisor mandelman's reimbursement for broken windows due to vandalism, you did hear that. it has been scheduled in committee. i don't think it's -- i didn't see an ad back for it so it may not move forward as i don't think that there's funding for that. i could be wrong, but i've reached out to supervisor mandelman's office and i wasn't able to get a response in time or before this meeting to just get firm status on where that is. and then supervisor peskin has zoning controls for chinatown and north beach, those have not moved forward. i've requested from his office

to it's been referred to his office to come forward and present the item. and you did hear supervisor preston's commercial lease and the file for the third party delivery act. and since this is small business related at a positive and, again, the mayor taking small efforts which are impactful to very small businesses, so reducing the street artist fee from a quarterly fee where street artists can get a quarterly permit, it was $166, it's now $20 for a yearly permit which is now $80. and before it was $664.

again, that has significant implications for our very small businesses. and then, before i one last thing just before the meeting started, i did get notice from lori thomas from the but ricology has sent out a notice for some businesses for their overcharges for the collection. so this has the refunds can have a significant financial

impact or, you know, the refund can be substantially, probably d. for restaurants. so i think it's very important that we -- we're going to work as much as we possibly can, but definitely want to make sure that you let businesses know about this rebate. you have to do it by july 30th and it can result in some meaningful amounts of funding back to businesses. so that's, again, another small thing to help deal with cash flow for our businesses and then lastly, i would just like to close our meeting tonight in honor of jean feilmoser who was a long-term member of the council of district merchants. she was part of the mission

merchants. she was a taxi driver and in her last, you know, part of her career was dealing with tourism and always making sure that the council of district merchants had a table at the concierge so educating the concierge at the hotels about the different merchants associations. so sad news, but she passed away on june 12th. so i do want to close the meeting in her honor and, with that, that concludes my report and i'm happy to take any questions. >> president laguana: are there any questions for the director?

is there any public comment? >> clerk: there is no one on the line to speak. >> president laguana: seeing none. public comment is closed. next item. >> director: next item. next item is item number seven, which is commissioner discussions and new business. this allows the president, vice president, and commissioners to report on recent small business activities, make announcements that are of interest to the small business community and make inquiries of staff and allows commissioners to introduce new agenda items for future consideration. this is a discussion item. >> president laguana: are there any commissioner reports? commissioner huie. >> commissioner huie: just two items. one is, i was curious about

whether anybody had anything new with the a.d.a. kind of drive-by lawsuits? i've heard recently that that's cropped up again. i know on clement street, we've dealt with that in at least two ways when i was president and so i kind of wanted to see if there was any support we could give the businesses that are dealing with that right now and then second piece was, again, i'd like to dig deeper into dijal infrastructure for our city and kind of and see if we can bring the people who i think there's a department for that in the city and they created a strategic plan and i'd like to kind of find out where that plan is that given during the pandemic, that was a huge issue for our students, our residents, our small businesses.

not every small business and as many of our small businesses that we hear about and we see who are connected to delivery services and p.o.s. systems and all these other things are doing well, but the businesses i worry about are the cash businesses ones who do not currently have infrastructure in place. so i'd like to, again, ask when that could be either a point of conversation in our general meeting here or in the meeting that i'm in with the commissioners on racial equity. >> president laguana: on the infrastructure point, who would be the right person to invite? >> commissioner huie: there's a strategic plan that the city put out. i can put that in the chat. i don't know. i'll find it and give it to director dick endrizzi and we can track down who put that out and who might be the best

person to talk to. >> director: and, it will be somebody with our department of technology whether it's the director or someone else within that team. >> commissioner huie: it was published i think 2019. it's supposed to be a digital equity plan 2019 to 2024. >> director: okay. >> commissioner huie: given that we just kind of published it and went into pandemic, i'm kind of curious as to where they will -- what are their plans? and it's the committee on information technology 362. >> director: right. >> president laguana: okay. let's talk to them. >> director: and then, commissioner huie, i'm happy to elaborate or not elaborate, but just take a moment if at the end of any other commissioner comments to talk about a.d.a.,

otherwise, i'm happy to talk to you one-on-one, but we are seeing an uptick in the lawsuits. so um, i'm happy to go into it now or wait until after other commissioners speak. >> commissioner huie: thank you. >> president laguana: is there any other commissioner reports? i don't zee any, so, director, if you want to go into it. >> director: yeah. so we are seeing an uptick in the a.d.a. lawsuit. and we are noticing we've had a few businesses from north beach, one in the mission contact our office and i understand that in chinatown, chinatown has had quite a few and there might be a press conference happening on wednesday in relationship to

it. it's complicated as always between building codes and the civil, all the civil laws around it and so without knowing sort of what's in the lawsuit, we in the past, the city has done some extensive effort in doing outreach particularly in chinatown, working with north beach federal credit union to reach out to the businesses and we subsidize businesses getting certified access inspection. so that deals for -- that helps with small business and it deals predominantly with the internal environment and helps with the entryway. so we're trying to get a little more information as to what

these and also the overlay of the accessible business program as well and so which deals with the entryway and property owners have been slow in meeting their obligations in submitting their checklist and making remediations. they were to complete that process in march this year and i think we're at about half of the so that adds, you know, sort of a complicated overlay in relationship to the understanding of how accessibility and who's responsibility is the law, but both the property owner and the

businesses are equally liable to ensure that the space is accessible. the, of course, what's readily achievable for a business is going to be very different in terms of a property owner because the, you know, the amount of money or the assets. so we do have support for businesses and helping them understand helping them sort of understand and navigate. rhea, had she not been deployed, we would have a grant program established to help deal with it was going to be focused on remediating entryway should a property owner not take action or require their business to do it. so that program is not up and

going or would help subsidize i shouldn't say subsidize, but pay for a certified access inspection for existing businesses. so there are funds that are there, but they're not immediately available to help businesses and hopefully within four months, we may have something. >> president laguana: okay. well that's good news. >> commissioner huie: thank you. >> president laguana: all right. well, is that it for commissioner comments? looks like it is. is there any public comment on item number seven? >> clerk: there is nobody on the line to speak. >> president laguana: seeing none. public comment is closed. next item, please. >> director: sfgov tv please show the office of small

business slide. >> president laguana: we will end with the reminder that the small business commission is the official public forum to voice your position and concerns about the economic vitality of small businesses in san francisco and that the office of small business is the best place to get answers about doing business in san francisco during the local emergency. if you need assistance with small business matters, continue to reach out to the office of small business. >> director: item number eight is adjournment. this is an action item and so for those for whoever's going to make the motion, i'd appreciate the motion would include in the adjournment in honor of jean. >> commissioner: i'll make the motion since i knew jean pretty well and i'm actually shocked because i didn't know about this. so i'd like to motion and i think it's very appropriate that we honor jean and close

our meeting today in honor of jean foilmoser. >> commissioner: i second. >> director: okay. so we have a motion by commissioner adams to adjourn in honor of jean fielmoser and seconded by commissioner dooley. and roll call. [roll call] all right. and then commissioner ortiz-cartagena and commissioner zouzounis are absent and the meeting is

adjourned at 6:53 p.m. >> president laguana: thanks everybody. >> director: thank you. port

i'm san francisco mayor london breed and i'm so excited to be here at the port today. we were just here celebrating juneteenth. every weekend there are some incredible markets and it was so crowded. the waterfront was alive and well. and, in fact, last weekend i think it was, these days go by so fast, i was at the giants game celebrating with roscoe. a full -- almost a full house,

but it was amazing. amazing to see the waterfront active, to see it alive, to see the excitement and now we have a couple other things to add to our re-opening efforts. in fact, ferry service started today. additional ferry service around the bay area. and, we also have opening this weekend the exploretorium and for tours the s.s. brian. and we even have more common includes fireworks on the northern waterfront for the 4th of july. and, finally, to top it all off as we get ready to re-open our city, it just wouldn't be the same unless we had fleet week returning in october.

so a number of incredible milestones. a lot of great activities. san francisco has been through so much this past 15 months and i want to take this opportunity as i always do to really thank the people of the city for complying with the very challenging orders to shelter-in-place to wear a mask, to get vaccinated. over 82% of san franciscans have been vaccinated and we just saw the announcement from the cdc that people were vaccinated don't necessarily need to wear a mask, however, we know there are still a lot of people that are not vaccinated and just because san francisco is doing a great job, doesn't mean there are others out there that aren't. we want to ask you because the cdc talked about today the variants and how the vaccine protects you from the variants

and those who are vaccinated and we don't want to go backwards. we don't want to go back to that place where we're shutting our city down. i hope we don't have to go back to that place. in the meantime, it's so important that we enjoy our city. we enjoy all these great attractions. we support one another, we have a great time. and what i've also consistently said, it is so important that when you are out in the streets now that our city is re-open that you keep a smile on your face because, right now, this is a privilege. and we have to remember, we were on lockdown for over 15 months in san francisco in the bay area and other parts of the country and so how much do we really appreciate being out here, being able to see faces without masks, being able to enjoy this cloudy, beautiful san francisco day. i will tell you that i am

showing up to everything i'm invited to if i'm available. i've been to baby showers already, and birthday parties and other activities. openings. block parties. i even crashed a block party before when i was just driving by. i said you know what, i'm going to say hi to a couple of neighbors because it feels good to see people again. because it feels good to be out again. keep that same positive spirit as we re-open and as activities begin and as folks are out doing and eating and drinking and being merry and having a good time because san francisco's coming back and we've got a lot of making up to do with the activities that we want to do that we missed out on the past year. thank you all so much for being here. enjoy the waterfront this weekend and some great activities and at this point, i want to introduce the director of the port of san francisco, elaine forbes.

[applause] >> welcome everyone. i have a smile on my face. it's great to see everyone here at the waterfront not wearing a mask. we're welcoming back 4th of july fireworks and fleet week. two cornerstone events for the waterfront. today we're celebrating the re-opening of the exploretorium and the s.s. jeremiah. increased ferry service starts today with 30% more ferries running. the ferries are here to enjoy the beautiful bay while commuting or just having some fun. next month, we have the return of cable cars and meanwhile we have the f-line running up and down the embarcadero. summer on the waterfront is here. there are so many adventures to be had. the port is proud to be home to really an amazing seven and a

half miles of bayside waterfront in the city. our water front includes peer 39, fisherman's wharf, and amazing parks and opens and heron's head park in the southern waterfront and more than 10 installations of public art. i want to thank our mayor, mayor breed for her incredible support of this waterfront and bringing back events like the 4th of july and fleet week. and of course, for her stellar leadership in navigating the pandemic and getting us safely to today as she re-opens and oversees the comeback of our city. the port welcomes more than 24 million visitors a year. economic activity here supports $4 billion in economic annual output for the city and more than 16,000 jobs. that is why we're excited to welcome back cruises this fall which brings about 300,000

visitors to the waterfront each year. our cruises will follow the cdc guidelines and we'll have vaccinated passengers and crews and we're expecting our first cruise ship in september. this fall, we're partnering with small businesses and local artists. we want to show case our local talent and create tailor made experiences for fun and enjoyment. from crane cove park to pier 29, activities draw people to the waterfront supporting economic recorpse. these will happen as we welcome cruises, cable cars, fleet week, and hopefully a giants playoff season. thank you all for coming out today supporting our waterfront, a prosperous waterfront is a prosperous city. we welcome you to come down and enjoy some of the world's best

views, best food, and best experiences. and now, please join me in welcoming phoebe white. this museum brings hundreds and hundreds of children and adults to our water front for learning fun. following phoebe white, we'll hear from louis lovan and rear admiral wayne bays. thank you so much for being here today. [applause] >> thank you, elaine, and thank you, madam mayor, for your remarks today and more importantly for your leadership. we're so proud to be part of the san francisco community. i'm absolutely thrilled to see the progress we have made against the pandemic. it's an absolute honor to be

here today and with our colleagues and neighbors on the waterfront of this wonderful city. i am delighted to share and you already know that after 15 months of closure, the exploretorium opened today. it is wonderful to see our community re-opening fully and to be part of the collective energy that is reemerging and gaining momentum in the bay area. i would also like to personally take the opportunity to thank elaine forbes and the port for their support and partnership since we first moved to the waterfront in 2013 the exploratorium is a learning

organization. we as a community have also learning and experienced more directly than ever the critical role that science plays in all of our lives. whether it's the science behind the pandemic or vaccines or climate change or the role of technology in our lives today. some of the defining issues of our time have all highlighted how important it is for everyone to engage in topics of science. our vision is a world where people think for themselves and can confidently ask questions, questions answered and understand the world around them. at the exploretor yum and explore topics of science and ways that work for them. we don't tell people what to think, where to go, what to do. there are no right or wrong answers when you're exploring

and learning. so come on down. go online, purchase tickets yes, we're managing capacity and we honor all e.b.t. and museums for all card holders at the door but most of all, have fun. thank you madam mayor for the privilege of speaking today and

i'd like to introduce louis lovan executive director of san francisco fleet week. thank you. >> let me take off my super cool san francisco fleet week mask. thank you very much, phoebe. by the way the exploratorium rocks. do you guys still have the tactile dome? okay. that's the thing to do. it's true, we have all these events that are going to take place out on the waterfront. i have commander of strike group 3. admiral bays' assets are what will be coming up to san francisco and he'll talk to you about that. i'm very excited to bring back the live fleet week events including the fleet week air show presented by united. if you don't know it, you'll

know when it arrives. it comes big and loud and it's a wonderful thing to do down on the marina green throughout the city and the bay. most of our events are outdoors. we'll have neighborhood concerts. the parade of ships, of course. and a number of other things that you can find out about by looking at our website fleetweeksf.org or follow us@fleetweeksf. get the up to date information. right now, it's a full complement of fleet week events and, with that, i'm going to introduce admiral bays. >> wow. what a pleasure it is to be out here live in person without a mask on. thank you, mayor, for including me in today. yes, admiral wayne bays. i'm honored and excited to be with you today on behalf of your navy corps and coast guard

team. as you all know, we could not do a fleet week in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. but i'm really happy to say we're going to bring service members from the navy, marine corps and coast guard to be here with you in person for fleet week 2021 to celebrate the strong, long-lasting bonds that exist between the military and this community which is a wonderful place. we're bringing ships, we're bringing aircraft, we're bringing equipment. we're going to bring the navy blue angels. i'm going to bring bands from the navy and marine corps. but the best thing we're going to bring -- yeah, that's okay. bring the hands. but the best thing we're going to bring is young sailors and marines and coast guard men and women to be part of this city and to meet you. [applause] yeah. so the last 15 months, we couldn't get out and about. but because of the change conditions, i want these

sailors and coast guard men and women to come outlet amongst the community and meet you in person. i was here last time in 2014 when u.s.s commissioned. you're going to be as proud of them as i am. now, fleet week is fun, but it's not just all about a port call. we also do training while we're here. we take advantage of all these ships and equipment and people getting together and we work to do training on things like disaster recovery efforts with local experts here. so i'm talking about emergency management, police, fire and medical professionals and other recovery people. this is about practicing our skill sets so that during times of emergencies or crisis, the military can support military authority its effectively and efficiently. it's really important training

i think when you look back at the pandemic, it kind of puts an accent on the importance of that continued effort. so we cannot be with you in person in 2020, but i do believe that absence makes the heart grow fonder. so we're super energized to bring everything we've got to make this the best fleet week possible in 2021. i thank you so much for the hospitality of this city. i look forward to meeting you all and my wife and i sincerely thank you if from the bottom of our hearts for celebrating our men and women that serve the military on behalf of this great nation. thank you so much and i hope to meet everybody in october. >> thank you, admiral bays and we really appreciate having you here and just touching a little bit about fleet week and our plans around emergency preparedness and our director of the department of emergency management is here. mary ellen carol. thank you so much for being here. she did an incredible job

leading the efforts around covid here in san francisco. and so we will definitely take full advantage of the opportunity during fleet week to make sure that our emergency personnel are working with federal officials to take advantage of the opportunities to train, to learn, to grow, and to be prepared for any situation for each and every one of you. when i look out into the waterfront and this area, again, i tell you all to keep a smile on your face. when this waterfront had the freeway before the '89 earthquake. and i remember when i was at galleleo high school. they would fly over at practice when we were out at lunch. it was incredible to have these

planes fly directly over our schools and i think about those times and i think about where we are now as a city today. we've experienced challenging times before, but like this beautiful waterfront that's now open with no freeway in sight and if you didn't know about the history, and you probably would never imagine how our freeway could block such a beautiful place. san francisco is a beautiful place and we celebrate our history and our diversity, but more importantly, as we come out of this pandemic, we celebrate our resilience to survive another situation that could have knocked us down. it set us back just a tad bit and as a result of that, we're coming back stronger. the phoenix will rise again. san francisco is rising again as we begin to re-open and having these incredible spaces, all these wonderful activities along our waterfront is going

to make re-opening so much better. so i hope you will take advantage of these great opportunities to enjoy san francisco, to welcome your friends and family members from around the world, an the united states, around the bay area. there will continue to be activities and always great food and wonderful views that will just continue to put a smile on your face. so thank you all so much for being here and thank you all for helping us get through this pandemic. san francisco is back. thank you. [applause]

>> san francisco parks, golden gate park transforms into one of the greatest music festivals of all time, let's journey, inside, outside land. ♪♪ >> to this, our 6th year doing the outside lands and our relationship with san francisco, rec and park. and we work very closely with them in the planning and working very closely with the neighborhood organizations and with the city supervisors and with the city organizations and with the local police department, and i think that the outside lands is one of the unique festivals in the world and we have san francisco and we have golden gate park and we have the greatest oasis, in the world. and it has the people hiking up hills and down hills and a lot of people between stages. >> i love that it is all outside, the fresh air is great.

>> they have the providers out here that are 72 local restaurants out here. >> celebrating, and that is really hot. >> 36 local winerries in northern california and 16 brewers out here. >> and you have seen a lot of people out here having a good time and we have no idea, how much work and planning has gone into this to make it the most sustainable festival in the united states. >> and literally, in the force, and yeah, unlike any other concept. and come and follow, and the field make-up the blueprint of the outside land here in golden

gate park and in the future events and please visit sffresh parks.org.

>> in 201,755.7 million passengers traveled through san francisco international airport. we have on average 150,000 people traveling through the airport every day. flying can be stressful so we have introduced therapy dogs to make flying more enjoyable. the wag brigade is a partnership between the airport and the san francisco therapy animal assistant program to bring therapy animals into the airport, into the terminals to make passenger travel more enjoyable. i amgen fer casarian and i work

here at san francisco international airport. the idea for therapy dogs got started the day after 9/11. an employee brought his therapy dog to work after 9/11 and he was able to see how his dog was able to relieve passenger's jitter. when we first launched the program back in 2013, our main goal was to destress our passengers however what we quickly found is that our animals were helping us find a way to connect with our pang. passengers. we find there are a lot of people traveling through the airport who are missing their pets and who are on their road a lot and can't have pets and we have come in contact with a lot of people recently who have lost pet. >> i love the wag brigade.

>> one of my favorite parts is walking into the terminals and seeing everybody look up from their device, today everybody is interacting on their cell phone or laptop and we can walk into the terminal with a dog or a pig and people start to interact with each other again and it's on a different level. more of an emotional level. >> i just got off an 11.5 hour flight and nice to have this distraction in the middle of it. >> we look for wag brigade handlers who are comfortable in stressful situations. >> i like coming to airport it's a lot of fun and the people you talk to are generally people who are missing their dogs. >> they are required to compete a certification process.

and they are also required to complete a k9 good citizen test and we look for animals who have experienced working with other organizations such as hospitals and pediatric units and we want to be sure that the animals we are bringing into the airport are good with children and also good with some of our senior travelers. i think toby really likes meeting kids. that is his favorite thing. he likes to have them pet him and come up to him and he really loves the kids. >> our wag brigade animals can be spotted wearing custom vets and they have custom patches. >> there is never a day that repeats itself and there is never and encounter that repeats itself. we get to do maximum good in a

small stretch of time and i have met amazing people who have been thrilled to have the interaction. >> the dogs are here seven days a week, we have 20 dogs and they each come for a two hour shift. >> there is a lot of stress when people have traveling so to from these animals around to ease the stress and help people relax a little bit. i think it's great. >> one of our dogs has special need and that is tristine. he wears a wheel around. >> he has special shoes and a harness and we get it together in the parking lot and then we get on the air train. he loves it. little kids love him because he is a little lower to the ground so easy to reach and he has this

big furry head they get to pet and he loves that. >> he doesn't seem to mind at all. probably one of the happiest dogs in the world. >> many people are nervous when they travel but seeing the dogs is just a wonderful relief. >> what i absolutely love most about it is the look on people's faces, so whenever they are stressed and flying is stressful these days you get these wonderful smile. >> i am the mom of lilo the pig and she is san francisco's first therapy pig. >> lilo joined the wag brigade as our first pig. >> wag brigade invited us to

join the program here and we have done it about a year-and-a-half ago. our visits last 1.5 to 2 hours and it does take a little bit longer to get out of the terminal because we still get a lot of attention and a lot of people that want to interact with lilo. >> i feel honored to be part of the wag brigade. it's very special to meet so many people and make so many feel happy and people that work here. it's been a great experience for me and a great experience for to toby. >> it's been an extremely successful program, so the next time you are here, stop by and say hi.

>> i went through a lot of struggles in my life, and i am blessed to be part of this. i am familiar with what people are going through to relate and empathy and compassion to their struggle so they can see i came out of the struggle, it gives them hope to come up and do something positive. ♪ ♪ i am a community ambassador.

we work a lot with homeless, visitors, a lot of people in the area. >> what i like doing is posting up at hotspots to let people see visibility. they ask you questions, ask you directions, they might have a question about what services are available. checking in, you guys. >> wellness check. we walk by to see any individual, you know may be sitting on the sidewalk, we make sure they are okay, alive. you never know. somebody might walk by and they are laying there for hours. you never know if they are alive.

we let them know we are in the area and we are here to promote safety, and if they have somebody that is, you know, hanging around that they don't want to call the police on, they don't have to call the police. they can call us. we can direct them to the services they might need. >> we do the three one one to keep the city neighborhoods clean. there are people dumping, waste on the ground and needles on the ground. it is unsafe for children and adults to commute through the streets. when we see them we take a picture dispatch to 311. they give us a tracking number and they come later on to pick it up. we take pride. when we come back later in the day and we see the loose trash or debris is picked up it makes you feel good about what you are doing. >> it makes you feel did about

escorting kids and having them feel safe walking to the play area and back. the stuff we do as ambassadors makes us feel proud to help keep the city clean, helping the residents. >> you can see the community ambassadors. i used to be on the streets. i didn't think i could become a community ambassador. it was too far out there for me to grab, you know. doing this job makes me feel good. because i came from where a lot of them are, homeless and on the street, i feel like i can give them hope because i was once there. i am not afraid to tell them i used to be here. i used to be like this, you know. i have compassion for people that are on the streets like the

homeless and people that are caught up with their addiction because now, i feel like i can give them hope. it reminds you every day of where i used to be and where i am at now.

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