today is friday, july 16th, 2021. i would ask the clerk to do a roll call. >> clerk: okay. my name is deborah caplan deputy director of the mayor's office on disability and i will proceed with some opening remarks and then take its roll

call. this meeting is broadcast to the public on sfgov tv it is captioned and sign language interpreted. this m.d.c. meeting is open to the public using webinar also. this is an alternative to watching on tv or going to sfgov tv. members of the public can observe with a computer or have a smartphone by following the link httpf:/j/85419550368.

you can also join the webinar by phone or dialling in (669) 900-6833. and the webinar i.d. is 85419550368. during this meeting, public comment can be made in several ways click on the horizontal dot icon. you can also use the q&a feature to be recognized or to make a comment.

if you wish to be recognized, type in the q&a box that you want to make a comment you can also type your comment into the q&a box if you want the clerk to read it to you. if you join my phone, dial star 9 when you want to be recognized and then you'll be prompted when it's your time to make comments. the mayor's disability are generally held on the third friday of the month. please call the mayor's office on disability for further infection or to request accommodations at (415) 554-6789 or by e-mail at

mod@sfgov.org. our next regular meeting will be on friday, september 17th, 2021, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. the council will be using this time during the month of august for a regularly scheduled strategic planning meeting >> thank you for that. and now -- i'm sorry. >> go ahead, alex. >> so i'll be moving to item number two which is reading and approval of the agenda.

>> first, i'll do the roll call. sorry. having a computer issue. [roll call]

okay. thank you. >> we are now on item number two which is reading and approval of the agenda. >> clerk: okay. the next item we've already done. welcome introductions and we're now doing reading and approval of the agenda. and, after that comes public comment. after that, a presentation regarding the slow streets

program an overview after that there will be a fifteen minute break and item five will be a presentation on the vision zero action strategy. after that, there will be a report from the mayor's office on disability and then general public comment and then correspondence and other information. after that, any discussion items, comments and announcement and then adjournment. >> chairman: thank you. right now, we are on number

three, public comment. are there any public comment at this time? >> this is iman. yes. there are members of the public who have indicated they want to make public comment and i also want to make sure we get the timer on the screen and the first public commenter. you have been unmuted. >> hi, my timer's supposed to start after i begin speaking so please add four seconds to my

time. i'm a disability advocate and wheelchair user i'm here today with the sad news that the mayor's disability council does not care for the safety and safety of well being. i've been begging these offices to get access to the covid-19 vaccine. by being required to answer a plethora of questions including my sexual orientation and having to provide insurance information and other obstacles that able body people do not have to provide. i apologize for using that phrase. m.o.d. would not help with and

i was one of the last people to get the vaccine. we were some of the last folks. the vaccine roll-out did not even begin for us until may or april after i protested numerous times to this body. the mayor's office of disability broke the law. there's a finding of 10-0 a unanimous verdict from the sunshine ordinance that this department broke the law and took 11 months to satisfy a public request i made for my own disability records and deborah caplan to the left blamed me even in the committee meetings as long as she could until the taskforce themselves found her at fault and so that's what this body does. you blame disabled people. you place the blame on us instead of being advocates. when i brought up questions around vaccine access and you won't even do anything about it.

this body was set up to go beyond the a.d.a., not to stop at the a.d.a.. it was set up to protect and defend people. and, additionally, orkid sassouni and alex madrid had the audacity to e-mail and is and said "stop e-mailing me about the vaccine. i can't do anything about it." it's ridiculous. you have blood on your hands. people are dying and they're getting sick because they're not getting access to this vaccine. you're breaking the law when it comes to public record access. you don't even follow your own rules and procedures. i mentioned that at the last meeting two months. i don't even know where to

begin. i don't even know. >> thank you for your comment. are there any other public comments at this time? >> yes. there's another public comment. caller ending in 1003 is being allowed to speak. >> good morning everybody. my name is will railing and i participate through a small accessibility organization, accessible san francisco, and i wanted to talk to you for a minute about the shared spaces program which is not on the agenda today, so now's the time for me to talk about that. many of you probably already know that on tuesday, a few days ago, the board of supervisors approved the program to become permanent. it's something like 100 pages

of legislation total. the mayor's office of disability staff was very involved with this. i can see that they've spent many hours reviewing some public records that were obtained by another advocate and i appreciate the methods and the efforts in the time that's been taken i would like to ask the mayor's disability counsel are not accessible today. we're not talking speculative future problems, but problems today, places that are open today. public accommodations that are open today and you can't go to because it's not accessible. the city has set up program enforcement. there's been meetings set up with this council. but the fact remains it's simply not working currently. regardless of the good

intentions. enforcement through 311 calls is not really working in my opinion, but i would just like to see this council proactively schedule followup discussion on implementation of their accessibility in this program. these are -- it's a program for outdoor dining, you know, facilitated by the city on city property and this clearly titled to aatitle two obligation here to make program service or activity accessible. furthermore, each of these are being sponsored by a private business and each one of those has an a.d.a. title three obligation to make their public accomodation accessible and especially so when they are adding space to their existing

business. it's new construction, the ones that aren't construction and there are new additional spaces. ideally, we can all work together going forward to encourage the city to put more thank you very much, i really appreciate your time. >> chairman: thank you for your comments. are there any more public comment at this time? >> there are no other people who currently have indicated that they want to make public comment, but i want to remind the public that they can make public comment by clicking on the raised hand icon in the zoom platform or call in by

phone by dialling star nine. with those instructions we can see if anybody else would like to make public comment. >> chairman: item number four, cochair report. at this time, i don't have any important at this time. helen, do you have any reports? okay. hearing none. we're going to proceed to item

number five which is overview of the slow streets program: what is the slow street? and we have a presentation from shannon hake, slow streets program. manager sfmta. >> yes. i'm here. thank you so much. let me see if i can share my

screen. it says i'm unable to share my screen. >> you should be able to see it now. >> i see it now. i am shannon hake and i'm here today to provide a brief update on where we are with the slow streets program thus far. slow streets was initially a covid response back in april of two thousand twenty during two things that were happening at the same time. the first was the state of emergency that we found ourselves in and the idea of social distancing and the second was the drastic reduction in muni service. these two events caused a lot of stress on the existing transportation network so we created the slow streets

program to create more space in the roadway for people walking or biking during the covid crisis. this has been a program that has slowly grown over the past year and now some of the first streets that were implemented are being considered to extend beyond the pandemic. the current slow streets network includes about 30 streets all across the city. we've expanded the program very slowly, but all slow streets are low volume low residential streets that we installed barriers on so that the roadway can be used for other people to use it as a transportation

facility. this was necessary to begin with the pandemic because of the narrow sidewalks in san francisco and the need to provide more space for people to maintain the social distancing, but many of these slow streets have evolved to really take on a life of their own over the past year and a half. the original materials we used were these barricades and we used them starting in april of 2020 because it's what we had in stock. it's what we had in our rare houses, be you these were not the best materials to use. they're just not sustainable. they require quite a bit of maintenance for our crews to go out. they're easily moved or removed. they're easily blown over. they need sandbags to be held down. they can be easily damaged and they have no program specific information.

if you come across a street like this unless you are already familiar with the slow streets program, you would likely not understand why this road was closed to through traffic. so we've moved to new materials. some of which we are just deploying now. these new materials are much more durable. they are much lower maintenance and they're more predictable. they're affixed to the roadway. so they can't blow over. they stay exactly where we placed them. so these are the materials that we will be transitioning slow streets towards throughout the summer on a rolling basis. slow streets are not your typical street closure because there's something that we call soft closures. soft closures are essentially traffic restrictions to through vehicles that allow the roadway

spaced to be a shared space between people walking, people biking, people rolling, people driving, all different types of transportation can be happening in the roadway at one time. so for the slow streets program, that means that local residents or visitors are still able to park along their street. are still able to access their properties. delivery vehicles can still make it to homes. city service vehicles, trash pick up and parking is unchanged and it's really just a restriction on through traffic so that's vehicle traffic that does not need to access a particular block, but could go on an adjacent street. so this is significantly different than what you see in golden gate park which

confusing 3 is also called a slow street, but that's managed by the department of recreation and parks, but that's not what we're talking about. slow streets are really these shared spaces. those are full street closures. as i mentioned, at the beginning of the program, there was one clear goal for the slow streets program and that was just to provide more people to safely get outside and maintain social distance, but over the past year and a half, the goals of the program have changed. we realize that many of these places became important places in the neighborhoods that they serve, they create a community gathering space for people to get together during the covid-19 pandemic. we also found these really became part of our low-stress network of transportation

facilities for all ages and abilities. many kids were learning how to ride bikes on slow streets. many neighbors got to get to know one another walking along the slow street. and, finally, one of the most important things that we've been able to do during this era is gather data on how slow streets are working. this has been a really wonderful experiment to try out how this program and how residential traffic restrictions can really create new public space and what impacts they have on adjacent streets and the overall transportation network. so we are gathering quite a bit of data, we have traffic counts for all of our slow streets and streets parallel to our slow streets to understand how they're affecting the transportation net work and

some of these are really growing into post-pandemic slow streets and part of our evaluation of slow streets, we issued community within a quarter mile of a slow street and that really helped us so we started out a pilot project to figure out what these could look like post-pandemic and while we've looked at the overall slow streets program as an entire network, we're really looking corridor by corridor when we look at specific slow streets and how they're working for our communities. we have developed a four-month process that we've tried out on 2 slow streets so far. sanchez streets in noey valley and we have this four-month

process on how the slow street is working. how it's being experienced, what issues there are and we're able to make adjustments on what exactly the slow street, how it's functioning and what the slow street entails. as i mentioned at the beginning of the program, we had one tool, it was that barricade and it was a tool that we didn't like very much, but now that we're going back and having this community outreach and really understanding how these could work better on a corridor by corridor basis, we're able to change the tools and we're anal to add and use different tools now that we're looking at more longer term changes rather than just what can we get out in the state of emergency very quickly. so we went through this process for two streets. this is just a brief example of how one tool kit to have very

different results on 2 different streets. we did these 2 different streets. we had the outreach project and came up with two very different designs. on sanchez street, the street was already working very well as a slow street, but we heard from the community that there was a need for better pedestrian and safety and visibility improvements. so instead of making it anymore difficult for people to access the street by car, we focused the design mostly on adding continental crosswalks and high visibility improvements. however, on shotwell street, it was very different. shotwell street still had a lot of vehicle traffic on it and it was a very narrow street and

many people didn't feel comfortable so we worked with the community and the mission and really heard that what we focused on in that area was turn restrictions and really operational changes like we would see that would really affect how vehicle traffic uses the slow street and how to really encourage vehicles to find an alternate route. so even with the same tool kit in both of these instances we ended up with very different designs and we believe if we did this with additional slow streets, we would also come up with very different needs, different design features because each slow street is unique. each one has a little bit of its own culture and issues and concerns that we can address

through some of these expanded tools. so, with that, i would absolutely love to hear from this group to hear more about with various communities through the design process that we'd be doing on a corridor by corridor basis in the future. but for right now just happy to answer any questions or take any comments. >> chairman: thank you, shannon, for the overview. it sounds great. i'm going to open up to members

and see if or see if you have any questions. >> yes. thank you alex, and thank you for today's presentation on slow streets. you referenced that i think when you were talking about shotwell that it was performing well or you thought it was performing well. i can't remember your exact terminology. what is the criteria that you use to determine both the function alternate and the lack of function alternate of slow streets and i do have another follow-up question to that. >> yes. absolutely. i think that sanchez street is functioning well at the slow street, but i think that shotwell is the one that we could really better design.

we look at several things when we're evaluating slow streets. first, we want to make sure that it's being used and that residents have really taken ownership over it. we also want to make sure that it's a slow street and doesn't have major impact. that's why our data collection has been important to better understand how these have been working and we've been able to remove them in the cases they're not working. we're also looking at streets that are already low volume residential streets with 3,000 vehicles a day or fewer. those are the types of streets that make ideal. >> did you say 3,000? >> 3,000 vehicles per day. >> under 3,000 vehicles a day would be considered a slow

street. classified a low volume street. >> wow. thank you. >> chairman: do you have anymore questions? >> oh, yeah. so this is just an idea that occurred to me. i understand i believe it's park and rec is providing accessible cycles for those of us with mobility issues. and i was just wondering if you could work with them and possibly have some of those bicycles available for use for some of the members of our community. i think that would be awesome. so it's just a suggestion, but i mean, i would love to be riding a bike down in the mission somewhere.

i don't know if you considered it. >> i have not heard that before. i haven't heard that the department of recreation and parks was doing that but i'm absolutely behind that idea. could you just reach out to me and i'd be happy to see if i can help make that happen? all right. thank you. >> through the chair, that program is actually sfmta program primarily. so accessible services is where you'd want to start. sfmta accessible services and then they can give you information should you choose to pursue that suggestion. thank you. >> chairman: thank you. questions? >> yes. hello. this is orkid sassouni here.

okay. i just wanted to let you know that in the slow streets, my neighborhood is actually near sanchez street. so that foot traffic has been impacted since this program began. in my experience, it typically is heavier on the weekends. during the week it's not so bad so i don't think the closure necessarily impacts it's important to look at weekends and see where family or children typically gather because i think that this is an that's impacting our space. sometimes there's events or there's spontaneous gatherings around music or other types of activities, bicycles and so i think it's definitely impacted our family.

we've definitely was focused on cars and so the emphasis was allowing for pedestrian use to be used with ease. so i'm seeing bicycles and other people typically move on motorized spaces and typically move fast. so when you're looking at people specifically pedestrians and how bikes use that space, probably to get away from cars for those who are deaf, it specifically creates a safety issue. i think the best thing to do there would be to keep sidewalks really just for those of us who are walking or moving at slower i don't know how to

create that design or create a balance within the people using it created an issue about surrounding it for access. on jfk drive for those closure dates. and there are several weekday programs for example at the museum or other areas in the park that are no longer accessible for those of us who are using cars to get there who rely on vehicle transportation to get there. so i think these are some of the issues. i know that's a rec and park issue specifically, but i also think there's some concern about these places becoming permanent and so i think that, you know, as we move towards green spaces and look towards european designs i think it's also important to think about how we create spaces that are still accessible for those who

depend on vehicle transportation or other means. thank you so much. >> thank you. that's an excellent comment. and following up on sanchez street. it is by far our most active slow street particularly on weekends. so our data is proving exactly what you were saying. we have thousands of pedestrians using it every weekend. >> definitely. >> chairman: do we have any more questions? >> nope. that's it. thank you so much. >> chairman: thank you. tiffany, do you have any more questions? >> hi, this is tiffany. i live in soma so we don't have much space here, but i was curious if you had heard any feedback from the disability community so far or if this is

kind of your first 4a into interacting with the community? >> well, tiffany, i'm glad to sell you we have our 1 slow street in soma, we just installed it last week and it's already working pretty well. the group of streets between harrison and folsom i believe. so soma's finally getting its slow street. we have been hearing from the disability community throughout the program and we've been hearing community feedback in a variety of different ways since the beginning of the program, we have a slow streets e-mail address that gets thousands of e-mails and suggestions. we've had a number of meetings about how to make slow streets better and how to improve the design of them and we're hoping that our new materials make it

a lot more predictable and a lot easier for people to use slow streets. but there hasn't been as much of a concerted effort truly to reach any members of the public since this was an emergency program at least at the beginning, we were deploying streets with very limited community outreach. but now that we're looking at post pandemic designs and designs that could last beyond in the immediate state of that's really where i'm hoping to engage and just hear from more folks about how slow streets are working and how to make them better.

>> got it. thank you so much. >> chairman: if you have anymore questions? do you have a question, denise? seeing none. before i go, i have a question for you, shannon. i know i saw the sign for slow streets. it's a little bit tiny. i am thinking of changing that

to more visible and there are some people in the community that do not ever see that and that's why i think i would ask is that do you have any on the table. so a couple of things, kind of tiffany's question. that if more kind of complaints

in the community people with disabilities can you tell us a little bit about that? >> absolutely. first off, i definitely hear you on the need for a larger sign. we are -- there was no rule book before this before the covid pandemic, so we've really been learning as we go and figuring out how we can make these slow streets work and so i am absolutely all ears if you have better just ideas about how to make them more visible for people with low vision and how to mark slow streets in an even more clear way. in terms of the complaints or concerns that we've heard regarding slow streets particularly from the disability community, we've heard truly that there's been

just confusion about what the program is because we haven't been able to program this organically. this was absolutely an emergency quick program where we were deploying materials so quickly that we didn't do adequate notice even to neighbors and there were many people who once they saw barricades on their street and they weren't really sure what was happening with the slow street program, they thought that maybe they are no longer allowed to be picked up on their block or they can no longer park on their block. so there's a lot of that because this is something that there isn't a great guide for, there aren't a lot of other slow streets or there haven't been shared spaces like this before the pandemic, it was hard to communicate and let people know how these could be used. so a lot of it was just clearing up what's okay on a slow street and what isn't and

getting people to share can be really challenging especially when we're not all on an equal playing field and some some people have giant vehicles. so having them, it kind of feels -- it's challenging. >> chairman: thank you for that. my last question is do you have any people with disabilities right now or, if not, to going

to be permanent. so i think it would be wise to. >> absolutely. i think that's an excellent suggestion. as we're growing this into a real program and not just an emergency response, i think a working group that can help guide some of our work with representation from the disability community would be wonderful. >> chairman: right now there's no working group. >> no. it's truly five of us at sfmta working on this program. we were all pulled the off different projects to do this really quick two-week experiment last april and here we are. >> chairman: thank you. i know that i saw orkid raise

her hand? >> yes. and this will just be a quick thing. slow streets, if you were to host an event like for example kids under twelve, some sort of outdoor activities, those might be helpful ways to get the word out. also to not make it feel like the street only belongs to those who live there. i also notice slow streets, something that it's lacking is cleaning. i don't know how often they're cleaned. are they cleaned on a regular schedule because i'm walking across them, i'm finding i'm getting more dirt and seeing blown on me in the wind and otherwise. that seems to be an issue for me. i don't know if others have that. it seems to be an allergy issue for me. >> chairman: thank you, orkid.

the staff, do you have any questions for shannon. >> hi, everyone. this is nicole speaking. thank you, shannon, for being here and, can you hear me so thanks again for being here. my questions are these and i know there's been some work done through the senior and disability working group of the visionzero collision around the slow streets and i know they did collect some feedback around the disability experience and also senior disability action hosted a listening session specifically with members of the deaf community about slow streets and i'm just wondering if you've had opportunity to

review any of that feedback and if you've had a chance to incorporate that. if you have, if you can speak to that. and then, secondly, i know also, that there's a website around explaining if you could share that information with the council and members of the public and people who are watching, that would be great. >> thank you, nicole. yes, we have been working with i believe the senior disability working group. they have done a number of walk audits on our slow streets. i actually just sent that material about 10 minutes before this meeting, so i haven't had a chance to review it so i don't have any big findings on that but we will continue to understand how to

make slow streets work better and how they could work better. so we're still in kind of the data collection phase of all of this rather than, i don't have any big findings to share, but i'm happy to come back once all of this coalesces and really share what i've found and, yes, there is a sfmta.com/slowstreets. and on that, you can find a map of all of the slow streets, the analysis, the traffic counts, all sorts of reference information and you can reach me or anyone on my team at slow streets at sfmta.com via e-mail

any time and we're also always happy to come and present at different community groups to talk about what's going on on the slow streets. >> it sounds like we've got several things in pilot. and so if these streets become permanent opportunities. what is the time line on that? are you able to speak to that? >> i can certainly talk about the first few. sanchez and shotwell, we have draft designs that we're circulating through internal review now. and those would go to a public hearing later this probably end of summer, beginning of fall

time 30 some that have the strongest community support that we'd like to recommend as a pilot street to extend beyond the pandemic. sanchez and shotwell are in that group, but we're still finalizing the other 2 slow streets that would be included in that group. but we anticipate potentially going back multiple times to the board once we have more findings and more data and additional slow streets to extend. >> okay. thank you very much for being here and for that additional clarification information. as always, m.o.d. is happy to help in whatever way we can with additional community engagement on this issue. thanks again, shannon.

>> thank you. >> chairman: are there any other staff who have questions at this time? shannon, if you don't mind other people have been seeing. at this time, i'm going to ask if there is any public comment at this time. at this time, are there any public comment? >> i currently do not see any members of the public indicating they want to make public comment. however, as a reminder, if you

are a member of the public and would like to make public comment, you can do so by clicking on the raised hand icon and zoom or by dialling star nine on the phone. and i see now that we do have a public comment. ms. waterman, you've been allowed to unmute. >> is this my time -- >> chairman: yes. go ahead with your comment. >> all right. is this an appropriate time to comment about the challenges faced by members of the public with respect to the closure of the jfk drive? is this the time? >> chairman: no. it's not. this time is the slow streets

program section. >> okay. so is there any time when people who have mobility impairments can comment about the challenges and impossibility that's being faced by physically disabled people with respect to accessing the young museum for example because of the closure to vehicle traffic on jfk drive. is this not the correct time for that? >> chairman: no. it's not. you would notify public comments for jfk. >> i'm not sure i understand.

so are you saying that this is not the time for that comment? >> can i help to clarify, please. this is deborah caplan. jfk drive closure is a street closure and it's not part of the slow streets program. and so the time for commenting about the jfk drive issue would be later in the agenda when there's another opportunity for general public comment. >> okay. all right. so can somebody give me a nudge, at that point, please, because i would like to bring tremendous problems are being faced by physically disabled people with respect to that area. >> chairman: yes. we will notify you. >> okay. i'll sit tight and wait. thank you so much for your patience and for your

understanding. >> chairman: thank you. are there any other public comments for slow streets program at this time? >> yes. we have one other public commenter. walksf, you've been allowed to unmute. >> thank you. this is brian hogson from walk san francisco and, yes, nicole alluded to i'm the facilitator for the senior and the pedestrian work group. we just finalized and shared our report on slow streets with the sfmta staff, along with the other groups within the work group who took on these surveys and shared sessions. if it is okay, i'm happy to put a link in the chat as well.

thank you all. >> chairman: thank you for your comments. are there any more public comments at this time? >> there does not appear to be any other public comments at this time? >> chairman: thank you. once again, shannon. thank you very much for coming today and telling us about the slow streets program and i'm going to ask you to let us know if there are any more updates, please do not hesitate to reach out to us if there's anything we can do to support this

program. >> absolutely. thank you very much and i look forward to continuing to work with you all. >> chairman: thank you. now, we will take a 15 minute break and right now it is 1:58 so we're going to take like i said, 15 minutes break and i . >> chairman: today is

july 16th and we are coming back from break. so still presenting. hear your name. >> i think, through the chair, it's ryan reeves today.

>> chairman: sorry. we're getting a presentation from ryan reeves from vision zero. ryan, go ahead. >> hi. good afternoon. thank you so much for having us. i'm actually joined by my colleagues today from d.t.a. and d.p.h.. so i'm going to hand it over to them to do the presentation. >> so you should be able to share slides. >> deborah, you read my mind? do you mind providing access to i can share my screen. >> i will do that. >> thank you.

>> is that viewable for everyone? >> if you can make it full screen, that would be great. >> great. thank you everyone for your time today and an opportunity to speak on vision zero. i'm a health program planner with the department of public health and i will be co-presenting with my co-worker. and i'm going to turn it over to michael to review the action update. at the end -- >> through the chair, mimi, if you can slow down to about half speed for the interpreters,

that would be great and also, mike, if you could do -- if you have a way to do a full screen view on your slide deck, we're still only seeing kind of a preview mode, i think. >> it's full screen on my screen. >> okay. >> i have a display settings here. let's see if i can swap -- duplicate slide show. how about this? >> perfect. >> wonderful. >> and then if we can just for interpreters slow down just a little bit, that would be fantastic. okay. thanks everybody. go ahead. >> thanks, nicole for that feedback. as i was saying, today, i will be starting with an overview about vision zero and specifically talking about how

i focus on seniors and people with disability and then i'll turn over the presentation to mike to review action strategy update. at the end of our presentation, we'd like to hear feedback from the council and please let me know if i'm confused. creating the goal of eliminating all traffic dense by 2024. our visionzero core principals are data driven with a focus on reducing speeds which we do not only our engineering work, but also our education and enforcement work. also, core to our work is implementing activity through.

vision zero is still on the safe systems approach. it moves away from the idea that traffic deaths. acknowledging that mistakes will happen, but no one should be denied as a result of that. vision zero is a multi-department and citywide commitment. we work with our partners across key city areas. which is focused on designing safer streets especially for slower streets. two, are safe people for focused on creating. we also have a daily system

team which is managed by the department of public health and also a legislative and policy team led by mta discoverment affairs. we have is the visionzero network. this network visualizes where the majority of injuries and fatalities occur. that's 75% of all severe and fatal injuries that occur only on 17% of our city streets. unique to san francisco is that our high injury network is based on not just police records, but also hospital data. this helps ensure accurate information on the severity of the injury and also injuries that are not reported to the police department. based on our data, we also know that speeding is the leading cause of our traffic deaths and severe injury collision and that speed is a fundamental predictor of crash survival.

so our transportation system should be designed for speed technical. sfdph has often invested announcing to people with disables. on this slide, is a summary of the results for that analysis. that seniors and people with disabilities frequent and, in turn, this has helped to identify priority areas and improve traffic safety for people with disabilities and seniors. we've also looked at traffic injury data specific to people with disabilities and we've

seen that approximately 6% of pedestrians admitted to sftrauma center for transportation related injury or reported having a mobility, visual, or hearing disability. we've also conducted policy research and heard concerns around limited mobility, vision, hearing, and the concerns that limited visibility when it comes to people in wheelchairs. at this time, i'll turn it over to michael to provide an update on the action and how parts of it focus on or, sorry. how the action strategy addresses accessibility. and a large portion of my job is focused on vision zero.

so i'm very excited to provide an update for our visionzero action strategy. and i'm going to use the next couple of minutes to kind of go over how we got here today. i'm also going to provide an overview of our actions and the draft actions i selected pertain i think pertain directly to the experiences of seniors and people with disabilities. following that up shlgs i have a few discussion questions. if we want to use those to have a conversation. i can answer any questions. as mimi shared earlier, visionzero was adopted in san francisco in 2014. starting in 2015 and every other year since, we've released a two-year action strategy. the action strategy has evolved

overtime. but one of the key kind of the everyday work that the cities across the city family, agencies across the city family, rather work on every day to promote traffic safety all in the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and reducing severe injuries. this 2021 vision zero strategy update unlike the previous three versions is going to be a three-year strategy. so it will bring us through the end of 2024. and, before i discuss the draft actions, i just want to take a moment that all fed into the actions that i'll be discussing in a few minutes.

we received several letters. we held community presentations. we held office hours. we created an online survey and story map that was translated into several languages and made it acceptable and through all of these means, i think we were all able to receive a lot of valuable feedback specifically from seniors and people with disabilities. and, our outreach was really kind of structured around three main questions. first, where people think we should be continuing the focus our resources. we're interested in knowing what new strategies should be considered specifically to slow vehicle speeds, to change traffic safety culture and to ensure that city vehicles are

safer. i think it was really most important to the work we do is to make sure that we are even more fine tuned, i would say in the last strategy and how could we elevate it even more including certain groups and in certain areas, geographic areas. and so, on the slide, i'll go through each of them individually, but i just wanted to share some of the key themes from our outreach and these are directly from seniors and people with disabilities. i think generally what we've heard from across the city, there's a lot of agreement, but i think it's important that we pull out the fees that we've heard from seniors.

so first, is the concept of slowing speeds, it's a universal desire i would say from san franciscans and really the key here is to slow speeds through the physical redesign of our streets. this could be the quick build and also through our neighborhood traffic calming program. there's also a desire to make sure we are lowering speed limits whenever and wherever we can across the city and especially where seniors with disabilities live, work, and play. we also continue to hear the desdier to have more time for people for residents, have more time to cross the street at intersections especially for

vulnerable road users. we can do this through signal retiming or other needs. next, it's related to traffic enforcement and as it relates to what i call traditional traffic enforcement, this is the human being with the badge writing citations handed directly to a driver or road user. results were mixed. i think that some people are supportive of traditional traffic enforcement others, i think recognize some of the disproportionate harm may present to certain groups. although there wasn't consensus there, we did see it as it relates to speed dedeck systems.

also, speed safety cameras. to site drivers who are exceeding the speed limit by a significant amount. we also heard a lot about our education programs and to make sure that as we create and execute our education programs that we're focusing it on dangerous driving behavior and not other kinds of activities. lastly, that we heard that we should continue to prioritize working in communities of concern. in the high injury network which we introduced earlier. we know communities in high injury network are concern and there's an overlap in between those. and lastly, we need to continue to do to increase traffic safety where seniors live.

so understanding the outreach, the process, the themes, i'd like to present some of the draft actions from the strategy. i think a theme that i didn't bring up earlier, but we heard loud and clear was our last action strategy had upwards of 60 strategic actions. i think there were 57. it's a long list to keep track of and we heard focus on what's most important. and so you're going to see on the next few slides as i go through them that we are really focusing on what we think are the most impactful strategies. i'm going to start with our safe street actions. our program is generally divided up between streets, people, vehicles, and data

systems. our safe streets actions are related mostly to street. this slide presents three strategic actions that pertain to slow vehicle streets. the first is that we're going to continue with our quick build program. in terms of our funding. we have funds available to continue at our current rate of ten quick builds per year. we heard from the community there's a desire to do more and i think there's a desire within the agency to do more as well. traditionally our strategy has been constrained but this time around we decided to include

some unfunds indeed. from 10 to 20 quick builds annually would require additional funding. a new strategic action for slowing speeds is the development of a spre hencive speed plan next year the goal is to look for any and all opportunities to where there is the last action relating to specifically slowing vehicle speeds is each year installing 100 traffic devices and these speed cushions raised crosswalks for example. there's a whole tool box of

traffic calming that these hundred devices we're going to focus on installing these with high concentration of seniors, people with disabilities, and near schools i think it's going to be an essential tool in where we decide additional traffic measures. still discussing safe streets engineering actions. these actions the next set of actions pertain to improving visibility between road users and reducing conflicts at intersections specifically for vulnerable users and really anyone that's using the streets of san francisco. so, first, we are going to

complete the following intersection upgrade at all high injury network intersections. this includes high visibility, continental crosswalk upgrades. it includes daylighting which increasing visibility at intersections. retiming our signals for our slower walk speed standard. which providing more time for people to cross the street, and also installing pedestrian intervals or pedestrian head starts at all signalized intersections on the high injury network. the next action relates more to it pertains to calming interactions which we are still in the pilot phase.

and then also a new approach for us in the past year, we installed no turn on red signs at 54 intersections in the tenderloin and we are planning to evaluate the effectiveness of the no turn on red and pending the effectiveness and what the evaluation, what the data tells us will look to expand no turn on red to other parts of the city where we see where the data kind of shows that there's a concentration of turn related crashes on red. next pertains to our signals and we have a commitment on by the end of 2024 on the high injury network to upgrade -- to have 40% of our traffic signals have accessible pedestrian

signals or aps. right now, there's about 25% of the high injury network. and 95% of traffic signals to include pedestrian countdown signals or p.c.s. now, we're going to move to our safe people action. it's really about traffic safety. so the work that we do in partnership with the san francisco police department to ensure that motorists are traveling at safe speeds and are doing what they should be doing when driving a car. so as it relates to enforcement and compliance. we're continuing with our fifty% focused on the five goals. this simply means that the police department has a goal of issuing traffic at least 50% of

traffic tickets that are issued are issued for the five most dangerous driving behaviors. we're going to continue conducting what we call high visibility traffic safety events and safe speeds enforcement on the high injury network. this simply means that we'll have police on a particular high speed corridor that will couple education and enforcement and new to this strategy is looking at a report and to develop any recommendations to reduce the

disproportionate harm to communities as a result of the traffic stop. moving to our education so what we call culture and which i think is an engaged community member that supports traffic safety goals and will profittize to neighbors and friends of how important it is that we all travel safely. so we're going to continue to develop education campaigns and highlight the top factors: we do this work in multiple languages with a variety of partners. and through our department of public health, we're going to provide grants to community based providers and to learn

more about traffic safety. next, is our safe vehicles action. we're referring to making sure that the vehicle itself is as safe as possible and we all know that. we live at ground zero. so we have a team at sfmta that works across the state federally to ensure that any new autonomous vehicle policy works across all roads they

lead many of these actions and they're excellent partnership with the and so our data systems actions inform a lot of the work that we do so transbased was maintained by the department of public health both for the public and city

staff that will cover 2019 and 2020. and lastly. we commit to updating the high. so we've gone through the outreach. i just want to briefly discuss the next steps. so said outreach began in earnest kind of early this year 2021, we synthesize all of this

information and we'll continue to we'll continue to share. so, for example, who's coming tuesday. this coming tuesday, we'll be presenting in front of the sfmta board of directors and the following week will be presenting in front of the san francisco county transportation authority board. we will then be spending the rest of the summer and fall. creating the actual lay-out and content with a fall release of the three-year action strategy so, i want to segway to a

couple i want to see where this conversation goes and we can stick to these questions and see if anyone's interested. any discussions or questions for the group? for the council. first, does the graeming and the messaging resinate with you. going over these draft actions, are they reflective of your priorities. and, can you identify and share so i can stop sharing my screen so we can all see each other and, mimi, do you mind typing

these pasting these into the chat. that would be helpful. so that's the presentation. mimi tal@sfdph.org. you can also reach out to the whole vision zero team at visionzeross@sfmta.com. so that does it for my presentation. i can stop sharing my screen now. >> chairman: michael, thank you for that wonderful

presentation. it's one of the members. >> yes. hi there. i'm helen pelzman. i'm the other cochair of the m.d.c. and thank you for that presentation it was really informative and easy to follow. forgive me, i'm not familiar with what the current status of visionzero is in the city. how do you measure it to date in terms of what you've been

doing for the past two years. >> sure. thank you so much for the question. the overall goal is to eliminate traffic fatalities and i think in the plainest language, it's a challenge. even last year with fewer so that's concerning. that being said. we have we will have our safe streets program. which they will release an annual report which they look at our corridor length. they look at kind of interwe have found that where we implement this type of work

that we see positive results and i think that our program should be expanded and that we should double down. where we do the work, it has been effective, but there's a lot of work to be done but we have another whole group that works at the policy level and to use things like speed radar, cameras, to increase safety. >> thank you, i appreciate that. this isn't a finger pointing exercise. it's just an information

gathering exercise but hence vision zero we want to see the number go down dramatically. ma'am there is a volatile number. so we use other indicators as well to measure progress as well it's still been a

challenge for us pre, vision zero when you look at our fatality numbers were much higher. >> that's what i was kind of hoping i would hear. so i appreciate that. i do have a suggestion for what you should add to your action plan. i don't know if this is your purview, but a lot of street signage like stop signs or yield signs or even street yield signs are not visibility. there have been multiple times when i've approached a four-way stop in a i know it's a residential area and a four-way stop, i will stop or slow down, but i didn't see the stop sign. and i think that would be a

critical improvement. so that's my suggestion. >> chairman: next, we have orkid. orkid, go ahead with your questions. >> yes. hi. i'm hoping everyone can see me okay. let me take my scarf off. my name is orkid sassouni. i am deaf. the last question was a perfect segway into my i was hit when i was a child so i know what that experience is like being hit by a car. it's very traumatic. i still think about it today and it still gets to me when hitting an intersection. it's the feeling that something, you know, doesn't ever leave you. so i want to talk about some challenges with hearing loss. often types, for example, my son and his classmates, his classmate was hit and he was

only 12 years old and it was simply a just an issue with the driver not being aware. but that's happened with a couple of children in my son's school. so i keep hearing about these stories and they're so frequent where someone is going fast and they weren't able to see a child and they're making a quick turn and the turn because the child is not in view, is not visible that becomes the issue that the driver's using as an excuse, but really, this is about speed. speed is what causes injury and so i -- you know, when you're talking about the impacts, whether there's a fatality or a survivor, it's always an issue with speed. people run red lights all the time and, you know, there is

such a risk there, but how do we improve these situations where people are at red lights. i think sometimes people are feeling like it's okay for me to walk. i typically wave a car through if they look like they're in a rush. and often times, people don't pay attention. they're very distracted. and, you know, i would rather prioritize my safety in crossing the street and make sure that someone can see me and even flag them forward or gesture them forward because i think this makes the most sense. until i can see very clearly that a driver that's first of all not distracted and going to make an actual stop. so i wonder what the tools are that can help drivers in this situation to deal with people who are pedestrians. i think this is a very car driven culture in this country. i think it's a car obsessed culture and people in the car do not think about what public -- they're not thinking of

those of us who use public transportation. i think public transportation is often second choice for people with the option to drive a car and i think, you know, i also hate the bus, so, you know, i think that red lights when people especially run them, that is such a nerve racking situation and i really want to -- i think that should be something that we look at. there's no penalty for someone who does that. am i right? yeah. there's very little penalty that's enforced there. >> thank you very much for that question. i think that we could spend a whole hour just discussing this topic. and, so in terms of, yes, in the california vehicle code, it is illegal to violate a red signal. so if a police officer is there or if a red light camera is present at that intersection, that motorist will be cited.

so it is illegal. in terms of how to address red light running or people just respecting the red signal. first, this relates back to the first comment about visibility is making sure that that driver can see the signal and that it's clear. so we use our tool kit, i would say is vast as it relates to signal visibility. something that we are endeavoring upon citywide is increasing the size of the traffic signal itself. so what we call our 12" signal head upgrade which data has shown has in those locations red light running has dramatically decreased. another way that we do this is by installing what we call mast arms which are the kind of polls that put the signal right on top of the street as opposed

to off to the side which could be covered up by tree limbs. so those are two major methods that we use. we also have upgraded our crosswalks to be high visibility so drivers see the crosswalks and adding what we call advanced limit lines. so, again, in plain english, a white bar 10' from the intersection. so if there is a red light, a motorist should be stopped 10' from the intersection on a wider street. so i mentioned how we're piloting and kind of evaluating our no turn on red which i think is another way to kind of calm and reduce conflict at the intersection between motorists and pedestrians if that motorist knows that that person has to kind of stand still and wait and take a breath, the pedestrian is that much safer

while crossing the street. we also employ what we call all red phases. so the whole intersection will have red for a few seconds. so if anyone's late to go through the intersection, no one will be in the crosswalk. leading pedestrian intervals. the head starts are another way to kind of separate the vehicle movement from the pedestrian movement. those are just a few. and also outside of even signal related, something like a road diet like our quick builds where we remove travel lanes for let's say a transit lane or a bike lane or a wider sidewalk. simply by removing a travel lane, as a pedestrian, you have a shorter distance to cross the street which lessens your exposure and risk with being around a vehicle and will increase safety. so that's the short answer to

probably a two-hour long discussion that we could have. >> i'm sorry. i just want to thank you for all the work that you're doing. i really appreciate it. i know this is hard work. i know there's a lot involved and i know there's a lot happening. so i'm very much looking forward to improved street safety in the future and further reports. this city is just nuts with the way people speed around town. even 25 miles per hour over a speed limit and that's what causes, you know, severe injury and fatality. so thank you so much for your work. i appreciate it. >> thank you. and, ryan, really quickly before you jump in and i don't want to sound like i'm making excuses or saying you're perfect. there's a lot of work to be done. we have the tool kit and the data to show ha what we're doing has been proven effective nationally and internationally. ryan, i don't know if you have anything to add. >> yeah.

my name's ryan reeves and i just wanted to add one thing to the question that you asked or the comments common i really appreciate the framing that you shared also. mike described a lot of engineering in the tool kit and within visionzero we've made a really concerted effort to link engineering to our education outreach as well and so when you asked what else could be down with drivers, our education outreach does a lot of work with drivers. i don't know if we have any photos in our slides, but if we can share some afterward of the campaigns that we do. so we have our left turn campaign out right now that you might of seen in the news or and basically is emphasizing the importance of slowing down on your turn and that's sort of

paired with these engineering tools that will also slow down physically a car in the street turning left. so we've done similar things with our safe speeds campaign emphasizing that speeding kills as you sort of shared with your messaging as well and the other piece i want to mention is that we also incorporate enforcement when appropriate. so with our safe speeds campaign, we did high visibility enforcement events where the police officers are handing out warnings and tickets and they had these big variable message signs out in the street that communicated to people who were driving by that speeding is ticketed here and speeding kills. so we are also trying to use the safe systems approach and blend all of these strategies together as well. >> great. thank you so much for the feedback. thank you so much.

>> chairman: denise, did you have your hand up? >> yes. thank you. i'll make my comments short. i want to just piggy back on some of the points that my fellow council members brought out. first of all, i want to thank you both for your presentation. i thought it was excellent some of the points that you brought out under you just talked about your engineering tools and your outreach tools and so i thank you very much for that because education and awareness for pedestrians and for drivers putting my face on here is very crucial. i want to talk about what you talked about under accessibility as far as your p.c.s. traffic signals and p.c.a.. i think that's excellent because i'm visually impaired and these are stepful tools.

one thing i want to stress upon, that's a top inc. that needs to be discussed in more detail and i appreciate it's already been acknowledged is i think enforcement once you've educated the drivers from an outreach perception and then reneging tools. and you still have drivers that just don't comply. i think there needs to be some enforcement around that because i think drivers won't change behavior if they don't see that there is some consequences to your actions. now, for me, when i'm crossing the street, i cannot see the face of a driver. i'll wave and say i'm crossing the street, you know, or something to let them know because i can't see them if they do a hand gesture and there's been times identify been crossing and if i see them, i know they can see me and they've almost hit me where i have to literally stand in

spot and they just drive by and yell at me like i'm sorry. i almost hit you. forgive me. and i think drivers need enforcement. i think that's a key component in driving down fatalities. not to minimize the excellent work you're doing. that's not the only thing enforcement, these other things you touched upon are important. i think that's really a key component and i said from the very beginning, unless drivers are held accountable for their actions, they'll continue to think i'll get a ticket which is very important for them to know and educate them, but after that, once you've been educated you still continue bad driving behaviors, then it's up to the legal system or court system to find a way. so, thank you. >> chairman: very good, denise. tiffany, do you have any

questions for the presenters? >> this is tiffany. yeah. first of all, i wanted to say thank you for the presentation and the broad outreach that you've been doing within the community with different disability organizations. i saw diversebility on there which is us but also with organizations like senior and disability action. so i know this is tough like no one wants to die. i live in soma right by the entrance of the bay bridge and literally almost, you know, i want to say like every other day or something, there is i guess there's not -- it just doesn't seem like there's that much surveillance there. but there's a new hit and run and i think again, just being very cognizant and one of the things i think a lot about is if we want to make the city better for disabled people or bikers or pedestrians, you know, because we are in the

seven bike seven grid, you know, how can we better incentivize our cars that it's okay to go slow. again, i think it's just a huge rush and especially like at rush hour, this area's so packed. everyone's just like trying to rush into their moment to get on to the bridge. so it was a good thing to see that map that you put on where you were trying to call the census data because i was trying to figure out like is there and a lot of the incidents it looks like are happening in the soma area where you do have high volume of pedestrians, but also just a lot of traffic as well and people i think trying to rush to get on to the bridge or trying to rush to get home. so keep doing the great work. i'm excited to see how, i think all of us who are listening are aligned in terms of wanting to reduce those numbers. if you've seen the numbers

decrease and the fact it's relatively stable is not incentiveizing our drivers to, yeah, we're just not really seeing behavior teams from the driver's front. >> chairman: thank you, tiffany. i see helen. you're muted helen. >> i think, through the chair, alex. i think ryan wanted to respond to that comment. >> yes. thank you. i just wanted to clarify one thing and i think it speaks to helen's earlier question as well or comments to like mike said, the numbers have not shifted in the way that we need to see them shift. that being said, the trends have been changing and we don't know how much of that is due to covid with changes in travel behaviors, but last year's

fatalities, we had an increase in motorcycle fatalities. an increase in people who killed driving a solo vooeblg. they crashed their own vehicle. we had a decrease in pedestrian fatalities. again, we don't know how much of it's linked to covid travel pattern changes, but i just want to share that piece as well as we talk about the larger question of what is changing over time with our fatality numbers which of course we agree even one is too many. >> chairman: thank you. helen. >> hi. this is for all of you. it just occurred to me and i was listening to my other council member's stories about their experiences walking and traveling around the city. if you're doing outreach, i would really encourage you to do outreach to pedestrians as

well in terms of at least in my experience, so many people will just walk right into me and we all know the story about, you know, people just on their phone not paying attention to anything that's going on and just walking into the middle of the street. i'm speaking both as somebody who's a driver and somebody who uses a power chair to get around my neighborhood quite a bit. so i would really encourage you to do some outreach around awareness to the people on the street as well. especially with the additional populations and park lites because that's going to be really challenging for you guys. >> chairman: thank you, helen. i have a question for all of

you before i take other questions. i just want to clarify, ryan, vision zero came about because of people with disabilities and san francisco when vision zero came about. >> yeah. there was a spate of fatalities that pushed the mayor to really make a change including several people with disabilities that occurred around that time. yes. >> chairman: so my question is

when people with disabilities, are there any changes or shifts of the drivers that is when you do analysis of how many people are dying or had died after the analysis to do this specifically people with disabilities. and the second thing is that going forward, i see

specifically aren't some ideas and specifically on people with disabilities and on the street. or the crazy accidents. can one of you respond to that? >> so to answer the first question about the changes in people with disabilities that are involved in crashes, i'm pulling up our 2020 report and i don't know, mimi, if you have the data point offhand for fatalities, but if it we don't have it, we can follow up with you. i think the thing that's really

difficult around the severe injuries is that that data is about people with disabilities that are injured is severely undercounted and underreported for a variety of reasons and that's a real data issue that we're concerned about that we know is a gap. we do a 20 -- we're doing a 2019 and 2020 severe injury report that's going to use hospital data which is much more reliable about a person's disability, status than a police officer's report from a crash. and so using that data will help us get a better answer on that question you're asking and so we can share that report. it's going to be released this summer, so we can share that back with the council. is there anything, mimi or mike, you would want to add to

that first question? >> i think the only thing that i would add echoing ryan is that i don't have the exact data point in front of me. but we know that people with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by traffic fatalities. so in terms of our traffic calming action being kind of hyperfocused on adding traffic calming to very people with disabilities live and travel and kind of where those trip generators are, that's a focus of one of our safe streets actions so we do know that there's a serious issue, but i just don't have those exact numbers in front of me. >> it would be great.

the second question on the last comment was michael mentioned other ideas on but for specifically disability issue. >> yeah. i can take this question first and then, mike and mimi, if you'd like to add in, then please do. i think what mike laid out in his overview were a series of actions that we know are going to slow traffic and improve visibility for people with disabilities. those are not called out specifically as actions that are solely focused on people with disabilities because they

also will improve safety for other populations and road users as well. that being said, there are some very specific actions around people with disabilities. that's highlighted in the slides including the traffic calming commitment which is focused on areas that are frequented whether for services or where people live for seniors and people with disabilities. we also currently have it's not in this current strategy, but it was in the last one and the work is still ongoing that mimi led around outreach and education with seniors and people with disabilities. i don't know, mimi, if there's anything you want to say about that. being a targeted action focused on people with disabilities.

>> i think you summed it up, ryan, that a lot of my work this past year has been focused on people with disabilities at a high level. that's what i have been focused on. >> i'd like to add a no pun intended a concrete example talking about how several of our actions while maybe not directly addressed to people with disabilities have components that benefit people with disabilities. i think also provide co-benefits to anyone using the street. so one real kind of real world example is our quick build program and married into our quick build program is the installation of our a.d.a. curb

ramps in the life of our near term project. curb ramps weren't built into the design or if there's a protected bike lane, like a parking protected bike lane included in the project to make sure that we have curb ramps near white zones, blue zones or even long stretches of general parking with safe crossings across the bike way to connect the road user to the curb ramp. so i think that's an example where curb ramps aren't necessarily written into the strategy, but they are included in our quick builds. >> chairman: thank you for that. i just want to remind folks

that is that people would devices e.i. specifically wheelchair users in the area. that's one of the ways i believe it's emphasizing all people with disabilities e.i. specifically power chair users. i think it would be good for the growth to identify those issues and fatality on

specifically people with disabilities and all kinds of people with disabilities and people. with that, i'm going to ask the staff if any questions or comments that you have. >> this is nicole speaking. office of disability. i'll go first. hi, everyone. mike, mimi, and ryan, thank you for your presentation today. in listening to this conversation, a few things come to mind that i just wanted to elevate again. one is i think if we can figure out a way to really talk about

and think through the disability data problems and something that we could really make more concrete within the action strategy itself. somehow i think that would be helpful because i know the data issue is very complex and we don't need to get into it here. but i think if we can think through a way to more specifically address the data issue, i think that is a step. and then, another thing that strikes me i wonder if there's a way we're working through our draft as an inspection strategy to make more explicitly visible, the action that directly impacts people with disabilities who use wheelchairs, people who are

deaf. people who are blind or no vision if we can specifically delineate some of these things, i think that would be great. i think sometimes we get lost in our own lingo and mike's example of the curb ramps is a great one. you know, i know what daylighting is now but it took me awhile to understand how daylighting impacted my safety as a wheelchair user. so maybe some work that can get at helping the general public understand what some of these actions how they translate into safety for specific individuals. i think that will be great and thirdly, i was struck towards in thinking through this ongoing challenge we have around education. i'm struck by the personal stories that the council members shared around their own safety concerns and i'm

wondering if as we're thinking through, the way that we do outreach given that we have data challenges and we don't want to just focus on fatalities, i wonder if there's a way we can think through how can we use the personal stories of people with disabilities who have been impacted as part of an education campaign perhaps that might help with educating folks maybe wouldn't know any differently until they hear a personal story like orkid's or denise's or something like this. the personal stories are very powerful. i guess those are just some suggestions that i have moving forward that i'd be happy to speak with you all about more and, again, thank you for intentionally taking time to present this information for us. it's so critically important.

thank you very much. >> this is debbie caplan. i have a couple things. i would ambiguous just like to add and i would like the council to think about this issue. it's sort of academic, but it's not just with respect to visionzero and traffic that the issue of data collection and people with disabilities comes up and where it's difficult to truly understand the impact of the policies that the city has and/or measure progress with respect to people with disabilities because of some of the barriers and obstacles that

exist around how data is collected and it's an issue that many people across the country are paying attention to and so the council might want to look at that more broadly. and then, on the interesting issue of tying existence of cuts to pedestrian safety, i think it's not just from my own experience and what i know of other people with mobility. it's i think -- visionzero is looking at it from the perspective of how to prevent accidents. but i think from the perspective of person with the mobility device, safety is definitely tied to how easy it

is to cross the street in general. that means it's not just whether there's a curb cut, but the quality of the curb cut. the angle at which the curb cut comes down into the street and the angle of the there's a word for it but the angle of the pavement as it's coming down towards the curb. how many of us have had real problems because of the "v" that gets created there and then that makes it much more difficult to get into the crosswalk and then once you're crossing with the quality of the street, other barriers and obstacles because the paving is bad and all of that can slow you down and make crossing the

street much more hazardous. and so i think it all depends on sort of how you're framing what the issue and what the question is so i just wanted to add that. >> chairman: thank you, deborah. thank you. any questions or comments? is there any other comments or questions? okay. thank you. we are going to public comment and, iman, do we have anyone in line? >> yes. we do have members of public that want to make public comment and as a reminder if you are a member of the public

who's interested in making public comment, you can indicate that by clicking on the various hand button and zoom or by dialling star nine on the phone. and our first public commentor, walksf, you've been permitted to unmute. >> thank you. this is brian hawksman again on walk sf visionzero organizer. and i wanted to echo a few things that were pointed out in a letter by senior disability action. family connection centers and walk sf in response to the draft action strategy. first, appreciation for the sfmta and partners that have adjusted and improved the action strategy to reflect some of the priorities we've talked about in the past. to a limited list of actions that we know are effective in reducing the behaviors that lead to those crashes and injuries that kill people

namely speed and we're hardened to see a comprehensive speed management plan by 2022. but knowing that this is the last of visionzero plan until 2024, we can't say this will significantly bring down fatal crashes each year that we need to. quick builds are such a great and effective program that the sfmta came up with and we know they bring down speeds. without a deeper investment of quick builds, 40 miles still won't receive full safety projects by 2024. additionally, signals won't be for walking speeds until the end of 2024. and by 2024, still 60% of signalized intersections on our most dangerous streets won't have accessible pedestrian signals. so, we know the sfmta doesn't have unlimited funding to take

on this work and we know that. we know that some of this work is really inexpensive. funding the quick build program to fully address these streets. reflects about one half of 1% of the agency's budget and we know that the sfmta plans to secure revenue over the next three years and so we encourage the sfmta and its partners to go further and identify top visionzero funding gaps and prioritize these needs. the quick builds, the pedestrian signals. as the points come up very soon for new transportation revenue. thank you so much. >> chairman: thank you for your comments. are there any other comments from the public? >> yes. there's another public comment. >> chairman: go ahead. >> kevin miller, you've been allowed to unmute.

>> hi everyone. my name is kevin miller. this is my first meeting. i really appreciate everyone's efforts and help. for everyone in particular special needs community that the handicapped, the disabled, whatever we want to call it. i live inspect san francisco. i have a brother with special needs and i'm not sure if this subject has been touched on before, but i just seeing if this is something that has been or i can get more knowledge and information on. i guess, for me, with my brother with special needs also my building with people using walking assist devices, wheelchairs, across the street there's a senior center, it's just ongoing obstructions just a basic sidewalks in my area. i know there are many challenges and many interests and with the city but it's just

-- for example, i'm out of the lower polk street area and i had this excellent idea. there was a bicycle lane installed. now i can't recall, but there are many lights now when you approach the corner. the car light, the bike light. and the pedestrian light and i think that's sometimes can lead to a lot of confusion for people whether it's a bicyclist that the car or the pedestrian and i'm just kind of wondering if there's been any increased problems or other reports of it as a concern because i do see people getting confused and maybe starting to start out and they realize that's for the bike lane, that's for the car lane and i just worry about any harm that would come to anyone. although, that may be with a good intention, has anyone else

brought that attention or concern because have you noticed that. i mean, also, our area, unfortunately, we have a very great homeless population and due to a lot of the structures, they completely block the sidewalk and my brother for example, we start down a sidewalk, he uses a walker, but he can't really -- his whole day could be just fine to go down the sidewalk to the corner or maybe around the block, and, for him, just even trying to get off the curb, it's almost impossible. he can't go an extra block or two blocks and i want to keep him going as much as i can before we have to use a wheelchair. so i've reached out to report my concerns to your office and most of those have just gone over to the police department or the homeless outreach department, but it's always been a reactive as opposed to a proactive approach and i'm just kind of wondering if this committee has any other ideas

to help us or help those that something to help at least have a passage way clear on the sidewalk for people, for all of us, but in particular, for people like that. >> chairman: thank you. >> thank you very much. >> chairman: thank you for your comments. are there any more public comments? >> there are no other public comments at this time. >> chairman: thank you, iman. again, thank you ryan and mimi and michael for your commitment and comments today and i hope this is a start for us working together in minimizing for

people with disabilities in san francisco. i appreciate it. again, thank you very much for your comments. >> thank you so much for having us. we really appreciate it as well. >> yeah. thank you very much. and i don't know if the chat is viewable to everyone or only certain people, but kevin who just commented, if you want to reach out to visionzerosf@sfmta.com i'm happy to chat with you and provide some additional resources to address at least one of your comments. thank you very much for having

us. >> chairman: thank you. we will now move forward to item number eight. report from mayor's office on disability from the director's report. >> great. hello everyone. i'm nicole vaughn. the mayor's office of disability. and i just want to recognize that after my report, i'm going to be spending about ten minutes giving a summary of what's going to be happening may to july. the mayor's office of disability perspective. there will be another opportunity for general public comment for items not on the agenda. so i know there's some other folks that have other general comments to make and we're looking forward to using those after my report today. so, again, this report will

focus on everything that's been happening may through july. as you know, there was not a meeting in june. so it's a little bit longer today, but there's a lot of critical information that i would like to share. i'll provide to you following this meeting and then it will be posted up on the website, the m.o.d.m.d.c. website for the general public as well for reference. so the first thing i wanted to mention today is the shared spaces legislation. it was brought up in the beginning of this meeting, i wanted to emphasize again what's happened over the last few months. so first, under the prompting of the mayor's disability council, there's been significant followup from senior disability action, the community moving campaign and the transit justice coalition,

disability advocates were able to in the shared spaces legislation have some very critical accessibility amendments added to the legislation itself. i encourage the council members to track the legislative results under the item number which is 210284 on the legislative tracker under the board of supervisors. but, in summary, the legislation now provides for 8' path of travel wherever feasible and never less than 6'. so the disability advocates were able to get more space on the sidewalk. another thing that was added to the legislation through this advocacy work was the process for inspections and how the city is going to be doing the

inspections themselves are still to be defined and i do encourage the council with both the shared spaces issue and with jfk drive which i will talk about in a moment, i really encourage you to keep both this item and jfk drive and several other things that i'll mention at top of mind as you're beginning your planning. i know august will be a focused planning meeting for you all and so i really want to encourage you to keep these items on the agenda as something that you're tracking because the public remains in place, but remains concerned. and so i just want to encourage you especially around some of these issues that came into the legislation like the rolling audit inspections happening every other month. the a.p. path of travel and then the other item that was significantly added to the

legislation was posted signage requirement for how to contact 311 with a complaint or concern. in addition to the things that were legislative, there are other items within shared spaces program that are under development as the permit program becomes -- is under way. which it isn't yet. we're still in a temporary phase until the end of december, but then the permit program will begin. so we are updating design accessibility standards to be more explicit around details, especially around the comprehensive view of shared spaces. so not just how to make the park lit accessible, but what happens with the sidewalk and the curb lane and the bus stops

and every other place where accessibility is impacted. we're really looking to help and design standards and update through the sfgov websites to make visibility requirements more visible and easy to understand for the public. we are also in the development of a disability community basing page for the shared spaces program so that the access around shared spaces and maintaining access is very easy to understand and also it's very clear if there's a concern how to file a complaint and then, finally, there is a new data tracker in development that will assist 311, public works, sfmta greatly in understanding exactly where and what the status of an existing complaint related to shared

spaces is. and, as we talked about in the previous mayor's disability council meeting, i really want to encourage the council to continue working with the businesses as this program rolls out and develops and evolves. it needs to be community effort and involves the business community as well in order for it to be successful. the next topic that i wanted to mention was the emergency work that has been happening in the last few months. so, as you know, i reported pretty extensively on all of the different efforts especially related to vaccination, people with disabilities that was happening in march and april and now into the summer months we are i just want to make sure people are

aware that the home bound program is still very active as of this morning we had -- >> sorry for the interruption. this is one of the interpreters. can you repeat the name of that program. we both missed it. >> no problem. the home bound program. the home bound program is still active and as of this morning, we have done 454 home individual home visits to individuals who are not otherwise able to give out to receive a vaccine and another 300 individuals including seniors and people with disabilities have been vaccinated and community outreach efforts. if you are a member of the public that still needs access to the vaccine, the call center, the vaccine call center is also still active. that number again is

(628) 652-2700. so in moving forward in our emergency effort, we're going to continue to track vaccine needs, but in addition to that, we're focused on some other things. so one of the things that we're working on now is specifically involving emergency rehousing efforts in the shelter-in-place hotels to make sure there's an accessible process both for entry into the building and for anyone needing a reasonable accomodation. we've been working with the port to help advise them on their emergency resilience plan and how to use the port as an accessible and safe harbor in the event of an emergency. we've also been looking at ways

to advise our colleagues at the federal level on grant access needs that might enhance access and emergencies for people with disabilities and then next week on thursday, july 22nd, we'll be participating in a wildfire update hearing as part of the board of supervisors public safety and neighborhood service its committee if you'd like to turn in on that and learn what we're doing in terms of wildfire support as well as air quality and heat. that meeting is 10:00 on thursday, on july 22nd. the next thing i want to move toward is a brief update that the age and disability family of san francisco efforts that's

led by das and a multi-agency community effort and is cultured by m.o.d. and the ihss public authority is working on its next cycle of action items. the main focus on discussions related to outdoor spaces and buildings. the july meeting focused on engagement and inclusion and especially how the city may expand upon ablism, education efforts and the september meeting will focus on goals for the next three years related to transportation and making our transportation systems more age and disability friendly. i would encourage the council as part of your planning again to consider an update from the age and disability friendly folks to help the public understand what's been done and what we're doing in this area as a potential future topic or

even a potential collaborative meeting with the d.a.s. commission. related to specifically the outdoor spaces, i did want to mention a few things that m.o.d. has been involved in. we've participated in feedback and advisement regarding the pilot proposal that was presented the collaboratively to the rec and park commission and there will be more forth coming community engagement on that effort so you can continue to track that as well and, as mentioned, earlier, m.o.d. continues to advise on the accessibility improvements related to jfk drive temporary closure. rec and park and m.c.a. are beginning a community

engagement process of in response to the action strategy that this council heard about in the previous meeting. the action strategy if you need refresher or for anyone in the public is posted directly on the county transportation authority website and if you look under the jfk drive action strategy praem work, all of the documentation in a m.o.d. has provided is part of that community feedback effort so far including the public comment history that has been provided to this council is posted on the website and i want to urge the council again to continue to track the progress on the jfk drive issues. it's of extreme concern to the community and we want to make sure we do the engagement as competently as we can.

just a few more things. collaborations are under way in the last month or so that i would like the council to also consider tracking in addition to age and disability friendly and shared spaces and jfk drive, two more things. one is the summer together program. many of you may know that the city received funding to provide summer camp for kids across the city. and it's been a largely successful program. however, we needed to do quite a bit of work to help with equity in the school district around making sure kids with disabilities had access to this program as well. and so one of the good things that's come out of the summer together effort is there is now a commitment between m.o.d. and the department of children,

youth, and families and the school district to put together a working group and task force on future after school programs and future for a camp structure that can be even more inclusive and feature after school programs in the summer. so i'm very pleased about that and we do encourage you to track that and ask questions and advocate if you so choose. and, then, finally, we've begun work with the new director on homelessness in really thinking through how to begin to incorporate and continue to incorporate disability access as part of the new funding that has been approved for homelessness and supportive housing initiatives including the safe placement of people with disabilities into housing

and shelters and also the best way to maintain the public right of way and reduce encampments in our sidewalks. and i really encourage the council to perhaps think about how to agendize this particular item or perhaps a visit on the mayor's office of homelessness about what's happening here and to provide feedback. and, with that, that ends my report for this afternoon. >> chairman: thank you, nicole for that report. so now we are going to go on to item number nine. information item. correspondence. do we have any correspondence at this time?

>> this is debbie. and i just need to get to it. so give me one second. i have to shift my screen. let me read a letter that came in for a comment at this meeting. it is from a constituent and the comment from the correspondence says "good afternoon members of the council. my name is mere alparento. i'm the coordinator of disabled

students programs and service its at city colleges of san francisco. i am a former member of this council and also a person living with spastic dipledgic cerebral palsy. i've never been able to ride a regular two-wheeled bicycle. and i find my current experience exhilarating, joyful, and healing to my heart. in addition, i'm getting a cardio work out and exercising both arms and legs with no joint impact. walking places stress on my knees hips and spine. biking does not. it is a bomb for body and soul.

the current pilot program is every sunday in golden gate park until november 2021. in filling out preand post questionnaires, i am concerned that the accessible bike program since it is being sponsored by lyft and sfmta, it's focused on whether people with disabilities would use an accessible bike for everyday use transportation or to people with disabilities use the accessible bikes mainly for recreation. this is the wrong question. it is not about how people with disabilities use adaptive cycles. the truth of the matter is that people with disabilities should be given the same chance to access an accessible cycle for any activity they choose. equal to the abled body

population. if the theme is to be affixed to that but it should be minimal by the city. if this goal does not city under the funding requirements of an sfmta function, then the cost of having accessible cycles should be funded by the city and county under some other line item like park and recreation. i want to thank the mayor's office on disability and with council for all the work you have done supporting disabled students at city college and across san francisco. i ask that the accessible bike program continue regardless of the outcome of the survey about transportation versus recreation. this is an equity issue in san franciscans can rent a bike to ride at golden gate park, then

people with disabilities should be afforded the same opportunity. thank you, muriel parento. and that is our correspondence that's been received. >> chairman: thank you. now, we are going to go to item ten, general public comment. this time, iman, do we have comments about jfk, is she still on the line? >> so, at this time, i do not see anybody who has indicated that they -- never mind. there are people who want to make public comment. you've been allowed to unmute.

>> this is my third attempt to be able to comment about this i will read you a letter. this isolation due to covid, i attempted to visit the young museum on friday, june 25th. imagine my chagrin to discover jfk drive had been blocked to cars including vehicles carrying disabled people. none of the ten free handicapped parking spots on jfk drive directly beside the entrance to the museum will be accessed by me, a disabled person with a government issued blue parking plaquered. i would like to know what m.o.d. is doing to intervene on behalf of disabled persons so that it's a public museum belonging to the city. the means accessible to citizens without undue

logistical or financial hardship. in my experience in many foreign countries, disabled peoples'' ability to access the museums has never been compromised even when streets are otherwise closed to vehicles all the way disabled person had to do is show the blue plaquered. vehicle access to the front door of the museum is immediately granted. no hassle whatsoever. san francisco is less sensitive to disabled people than paris, rome, london, munich, etc. i thank you for your kind attention and prompt action because as we continue to with all sorts of colloquy and feelings going back and forth, each month that this persists disabled people like myself are deprived from getting access to

that which we gives us joy in life and for which we have contributed so heavily in our taxes. thank you for your prompt attention. [please stand by]

are there any council members who have an comment or or announcement at this time? >> hearing none, i just want to say thank you very much for to remind members if there is still a part of going to call it adjournment. going once, going twice. ok. >> good meeting, guys! >> thank you, very much. >> really excellent meeting. great presentations. those were -- it was really

interesting. >> great meeting. >> have a good weekend, everybody. >> thank you. >> you too. >> ok, go ahead. >> yeah, i just wanted to second. i didn't get my hand up quick enough. no problem. >> ok. i see you guys on tuesday. thank you all.

to speak to you this morning.

before i -- before the mayor takes the make phone, i want to say a few words and introduce our mayor, london breene. it's been an incredible year. 2020, first part of 2021 has been a very challenging year for all of us. i can't be more proud of being a part of a city under the leadership with our mayor. we saw what true leadership means. in the midst of a global pandemic, san francisco was the first to take action to really get in front of what was facing us. we saw the result. we led across the board in terms of big cities, the amount of preventing death. the shelter in place order which our mayor's leadership started

really a national movement on shelter in place. we got into june with the george floyd murder that followed that. we had had our mayor step up and respond to the challenge to get the resources that we needed to really put the rioted and the civil unrest and looting and fires down really quickly. we saw where a lot of cities continued to have problems for months. we saw really a peaceful summer here last summer given all that was going on in our country. leadership is important. people are important. staffing is important. we're going to talk a little bit about all of that today. the other thing that i'd like to

say that with our mayor and staffing and all the issues i just brought up. it didn't just start when she became mayor. she was the first supervisor that i met when i got here on the board of supervisors. she has been supportive from the day a riefed. riefed. arrived. i appreciate it, the san francisco police department appreciate it. without further adieu, i would like to introduce our mayor, london breene. >> : thank you, chief. it's definitely great to be here with all of you in person today. it's been a very very challenging 15 months. to be here in person is so significant. we appreciate it a lot more as a result of what we had to do in terms of our actions during covid. here we are, san francisco with

over 82 percent of our residents who have been vaccinated. we're doing great in comparison to other major cities. i'm grateful to the people of this city who stepped up and made that difference. we're seeing a whole other spot light being placed on san francisco. on the one hand with covid what we've seen is a lot of praise and support, san francisco has gotten a lot of great attention as it relate it covid. but sadly as it relate it crime, we've gotten a lot of negative attention. when you think about where we were last year during the holiday july 4th, we saw unprecedented shootings. the death of a young six year old boy in the bay view hunter's point community. it was heart breaking.

when i think about what happened last year with violent crime and where we were even this past forth of july weekend. we saw not one homicide over that weekend time period. just recently lory was here from chicago. i'm sure you have been hearing about the unprecedented amount of gun violence in chicago. over a hundred shootings over the week anne. weekend.here in san francisco we nowhere near that. we've gotten to a better place. not perfect. but a better place than what's being highlighted now. we've seen a lot of the attacks on our elderly particularly our asian seniors. the videos are not just going viral in san francisco but all

over the world. what's not going viral is every single instance our police department have arrested many of the people in these particular crimes. there have been arrested sadly in the death of jays young. the guy, we saw the video of him riding the bicycle into the walgreens. he has been arrested and is currently awaiting trial. the case of the man walking home from the post office who was stabbed and robbed. his perpetrator was arrested. the man in the franklin street market, i beloved member of the community, his perpetrator has been arrested. two people were stabbed, that perpetrator has been arrested. what is not getting the attention is the fact that when you come to san francisco and

commit a crime, you will be arrested by this police department. our investigators and the work that they do to bring people to justice has been extraordinary. when we talk about the burglar burglaries and car break ins perpetrated by ten groups of people. when those groups get arrested, we see those car break ins go down significantly. at the end of the day we have to make sure that accountability is a part of this. one of the big conversations that is happening around defunding the police is not taking into account all the incredible work san francisco has done to invest in program that's help to prevent crimes from happening in the first place. an unprecedented investment of $65 million in my budget to help

with street violence prevention and victim services. all the incredible work, thank you for the work that you do to reach out to the families who sadly are victims of violent crimes. a lot of investment preventing these crimes from happening. wellness teams out in the communities checking on those who are suffering from mental illness and addiction. a sobering center. a street crisis response team who are responding to the calls who don't know what to do when they see people screaming and unresponsive in the streets. mental health beds. an unprecedented investment. all of these things are a part of our network of trying to address public safety. it's not just about funding or defunding the police. not just about funding one

program over another. it's a comprehensive strategy to make sure the right investments are being made to deal with the challenges that exist. going back to covid, we use the data and the science. what we should do as a city. that's what we did in this year's budget. the chief today is going to talk a lot about the statistics because there's a lot of misinformation out there about what's happening in san francisco. we know that numbers don't matter when you're the victim of a crime, any crime in any capacity. at the end of the day we have to use this data to make a decision about our policies an our investments. in the coming months we're going to be making some significant changes. we are not prepared to reveal all of our plans to help address some of these issues around these retail thefts and holding companies accountable like

amazon to not do their due diligence to vet these stolen goods. we have to make sure there are tools to hold people accountable but more importantly, we have to look at the data and allow that to help guide us. finally as we move forward, we need police officers. we have a number of officers retiring, this work just doesn't happen. we have a number of officers retiring, we have others leaving the force for different reasons. we need to back fill those officers. i'm hopeful that the work we're doing to make those investments to bring those officers out on the streets to bring down crime as well are significant. work withing our partners, ambassadors has everything to do with prevention and also

accountability. we have to reability when a crime is committed but the best case scenario is to make sure that crime never happens in the first place. here in san francisco, yes, like any major city we have our challenges. at the end of the day we're going to work hard to step up and do everything we can to make the right investments, arrests, hold people accountable and do what we can to look at the data and make the appropriate changes to our system for the safety of our city. i want to thank all of you for being here today. i want to thank the men and women of the police department. if you take nothing from this event, this press conference today that you go down the laundry list of all of those crimes that have been committed here in san francisco over the past year. you look especially at the

violent crimes in particular and look at the arrests that have been made and start to highlight those in a way that they've been highlighted in terms of when the videos went viral. when you see the incredible work that goes into the investigation part of it an arrests and all the things this san francisco police department is doing to bring justice to those families that are victims, you would be proud of the work being done. i truly am. thank you for all being here today. thank you chief scott. he will go over the the statistics so you can see in comparison where we are with the crimes in san francisco. >> : thank you mayor. i know the mayor touched on public perceptions, i think it's important to start by acknowledging people's fear about crime particularly when

these videos go viral. these things get in our head. people start to believe that is our city. that is not our city. today's news conference i'm going to show you some comparative numbers. think of this as a mid year check in. computer statistics. it's a program police departments across the country use to perform statistics to understand where their cities are in terms of statistics. it allows us to reduce those crimes. let me be very clear about something, about two things. those numbers you're about to see represent human beings. they represent people, i don't want to be dehumanizing when i talk about numbers an statistics. we understand because we see it

day in and day out, these are people. our brothers, sisters, nephews, aunts, friends that are being victimized. it's important to take a step back and remember that statistics represent people. what we see on some of these videos are brazen crimes. there's no statistic on the outlook and how we perceive what's going on in our city. that's why police officers are so important. most of us feel more comfortable when thee see officers in their neighborhood. that's our justification for the reality of our officers being on the beat and being on the street to make people feel safer.

these crimes aren't as frequent as many people think but it's still unsettling. most of these crimes are solved and we'll continue to do that. i want to start by really lifting up what's going on here in our city. it starts with the members of the san francisco police department. i'm the chief of police, you see command staff members on the wall here. the mayor. the work is being done by the members, the patrol officers. day in day out solving crimes, working with the community and doing what we need to do to keep our city safe. still, even when we have everything to work right, it seems like it's not enough. you've heard this cliche before. we can't arrest our way out of

problems. we need to make arrests and hold people accountable. the other side of that equation is officers on the street. this mayor, from day one, has been very definitive about the need to have officers on the beat. she supported the budget and staffing. we need to have staffing to balance the other side of the equation. holding people accountable that will always be one half of the equation. the other side we struggle with is keeping enough officers on the street so you see them in your communities to prevent what is happening from happening. according to city beat, 75% of san franciscans want more sfpd officers in high crime areas. seventy six percent want

expanded community policing through their neighborhoods and sixty four percent want more sfpd office everies in busy areas where we have these brazen crimes that we've seen on video. china town included. that's why we're so appreciative of what's happening with the mayor's leadership and community members calling to staff this department adequately so we can do our jobs. that is not going to go away. we'll continue to advocate for what we need to keep this city safe. every number represents a human being, even someone has suffered a loss of injury sometimes the damage is irrevokable. homicides, we have people in this room that have lost members of their family both in uniform

and out of uniform. people in this family who have had their houses and cars broken into. we all know how that feels when it happens to you. you don't care about statistics. it happened to me and turned my life upside down. we understand that. that's why it is so important to work with our community. through the mayor's leadership and urging we established a community liaison unit to help people get through the turmoil of being victimizeled. to pre vied a better service. we want to prevent it in the first place but when it happens people need help to navigate the system and need help. that's what the system does. let's go to our statistics. this is our mid year statistics and how we're going to frame the

conversation to show you year to date and mid year statistics we're going to take a look back so can you compare where we were 2018 and 2017 same time of year. one of the things that make this time of year challenging and unique. last year we had people inside their homes, we didn't have the tourist that's we normally have. it's hard to get a gauge on where we are in crime when you only look at last year. we're going look at the last three years to get a perspective of where we are an where we've been. homicides last year. we are up somewhat from where we were this time last year. if you look at 2019, 2018, 2017 you see pretty consistent

numbers. we're up four this year. if you go back to 2017 we're down pretty significantly from 2017, even 2016 and up slightly from 2015. next slide, let me say a few things about that. some of our strategies that we've introduced this year include a partnership with an entity called california partnership for safe communities. one of the things among the many we want to do with homicides and this speaks to what the mayor said earlier is investigate the root causes. our investigators do a magnificent job of clearing homicide cases. the other side of that is what can we do for the individuals most at risk for being involved in a shooting or homicide either as a victim or as a perpetrator.

what can we do for those individuals and families to provent it. our strategy moving forward is to get to that issue. that's what the mayor spoke to with the partnerships. identify the people most at risk who are people of color. black and brown men. that's not necessarily policing. we're a conduit to get services to the families most at risk. our job is to prevent and solve crime and get other people involved to address those issues to make the situation better. let's go to gun violence. since 2016 this is where we're having some challenges. 2021 we're almost double where we were last year in terms of gun violence. this includes fatal and non

fatal shootings. 2019, 2020 we were in the mid fifties. you can see that we're not terribly higher than we were in 2016, 17, and 18. we're almost double where we were in the last two years. part of the strategies i just mentioned will help address that. it building relationships with the community members that are necessary to get a handle on this issue. we have commander pete who are a big part of this along with our investigations bureau, this brings all this together. our strategies on gun violence are holistic. we have to get a handle on this. illegal legal ghost guns. the number of illegal ghost guns

that we con fist kateed over the last four years have increased exponentially. these are guns that materialize in people's homes. they are dangerous, unregulated and in our city. we're addressing that with our partners from atf and our federal partners. we have an increase in con -- next we'll go to sexual assaults. here is an area that i'm pleased to say is far below where it was the last few years.

when you look at 2019 to 2020. this was a significant drop. 2021 we continue to go down in that area. still that's 88 victims that have been sexually assaulted, far too many. we're working with the district attorney and advocacy groups. including treatment and services to the victims. that's a par of our plan, if you will, to get better in all of those areas. we do okay. we can always get better. we dropped sexual assaults from eleven cases to nineteen case nz june. that's a huge increase from a month to month perspective. it's something we want to keep an eye on because that's concerned. we want to make sure we keep

control of that. next we'll go to robberies. again, videos drive perception. when you see people getting robbed. when you see elderly victims get getting robbed and they go viral. here is the reality. our robberies from 2018 to year to date have gone down each year. we hope to continue that by year's end. if we continue the trend, we hope to keep this going. robberies are one of the categories where cops in the street matter. police officers in the street really matter when it comes to driving down robberies. people are less likely to rob people when they see officers

nearby. that's a fact, it's proven. it's tried and true. i can't say it enough, we need officers on the street to keep this going in the right direction. some of our high traffic corridors, our tourist areas. people enjoying themselves. we have to see police officers out there. the mayor did market vibrancy plan. we have seen robberies cut by 3. it matters when police officers are on their beat and able to stay on their beat. we want to continue that trend an make sure we keep that going in the right direction. aggravated assault is our next category. if you look at the five year period, again, this is some of the videos that we see happening

that go viral. when you look at where we are now compared to where we were just three years ago, we're actually doing okay. i want to say this. we know that not all crime rz ce reported. there's always a degree of under reporting of crime. we encourage people to report if they are victimized. that's how we know what going on and how we deploy. if you look at 2018, 2019, 2020. you see a significant drop. we are below where we were in 2019 our precovid year. can we do better? yes.

we're not doing terribly and we want to keep that trend going as well. again, research. the university of california, they started the foot beat deployment to see how that effected aggravated assault. it's proven, cops matter. when we put them in those areas, high corridor areas, assaults went down. we know that matters. that's been proven by research. next topic is burglaries. as we talk about property crime, the narrative in san francisco has been car break ins. it's been that way for a long time. here is an area we're struggling somewhat in terms of increases. we saw this trend start even before covid. last year we started to see

burglaries go up. we started to see other types of crime go down. could there have been some type of displacement? maybe. a lot of those were garage type burglaries. tools, bicycles. the good news is we started the year off really in a hole and over the last three and a half four months, we've seen burglaries decrease. at a about four percent increase year to date. it's still an increase. some of the things we've done is made some drastic change nzs in deproiment. deployment. a lot of these crimes happen

overnight and we had to make that adjustment. continue to keep these people off balance to let these people know that you'll see officers overnight. burglaries are up. we are going in the right direction compared to the way we started the year off. 2020, particularly last summer we had a spike because of the civil unrest. we had a lot of looting but we were able to get that under control. we have to compare it. next we'll go to larceny theft. retail theft is in that category. as you can see from 2017 and these are mid year numbers to now, it's been a steady decrease

in this category. i will give you not every crime reported. we can only go by what we know. it's counter to the narrative. not to say that these things that are happening, they are brazen and heinous. they need to stop and people held accountable. the statistics are in front of you. much work needs to be done in retail theft. a lot of the things the mayor said are coming into play. it's very challenging. what we can control is what we can control. that's our strategies an tactics. give the da the best cases we can give them. when these crimes do have them particularly when they are crews

that were mentioned earlier, we identify who they are an bring them to account for these crimes. we do a pretty good job at that. we have to get better. this is something that people -- it's personal to me when people think what they see on the video is what we represent. we all work and live here, it's a good city and safe city. that's not what you think when you see a guy ate local pharmacy and having at it with someone. they're in jail. we will catch you. make no mistakes about that. we're good at what we do. we'll keep going until we catch the people responsible for these crimes.

we hope to keep that going in the right direction and listen the frequency of these viral videos that we keep seeing on news and social media. next category is car break ins. here is another thing that tends to go viral. if you look at where we were in 2017, it was the worst year we had ever had. we ended that year with over 30,000 car break inns. ins. we shifted our focus. car break ins that continued in

2019 and 2020. we're starting to go back up. we'll get a handle on that. put together a plan that we believe will make a difference. more officers on beat. particularly in the corridors that people visit our cities. that's where our problems are concentrated and that's where we will be. we have to be there. we have to be consistent about our deployment. we'll be consistent in our arrests and we also have to continue to drive some of these things down. we are up seven hundred crimes from where we were last year. we need the officers to do the work. we're going to make due with

what we have until we start to get academy classes through. we'll make it happen. this is is the image of our city that we're talking about. you can come to san francisco. it's a safe city. sfpd, the mayor, elected officials. we got your back. next category, auto theft. auto thefts are up. that's a two year trend. we started to see that also in 2020 before covid. that trend continued not as significantly. less of an increase this year but it's still up. that is also an issue that we need to get a handle on. if you look at where we were back in 2015, we're down pretty significantly but it's after a

good year in 2018 and it went up a little bit, we're starting to go back up. it's pretty significant from 2019 to 202 #. 2021. these are hard crimes to solve. we're going to do everything we can to keep this under wraps and under control as well. the auto thefts are middle of the night type of crimes as well. that's where nighttime deployment can can impact some. it's a difficult case. most of all the thefts we recover a lot of cars that get recovered in other jurisdictions.

when your car gets stolen, you don't care what is stealing it, you just want your car back. that is our mid year statistic. you can see when you look at these over time, it paints a much different picture than watching a video that goes viral. i don't want to be dismissive of the videos because they are brazen and heinous and awful. we need to prevent those things from happening and arrest the people doing it. we want to keep perspective on the reality of what's really happening in terms of crime activity in our city. i hope this provided some perspective for you. that concludes our presentation. we'll be available for some questions. thank you.

>> hello, everyone. and welcome to the ribbon

cutting ceremony for 490. i'm the deputy executive director for mission housing development corporation and it is my honor to welcome you back isn't that exciting? we are back into our neighborhood. you know, after, what, more than a year of collectively fighting the covid-19 virus. thank you, mayor, london breed. and thank you supervisors and all of the community effort that allowed us to be here today in this outdoor space to be able to celebrate 490. and we would like to remind you though as we are so proud to be hosting you here today, we want to encourage you to kindly wear your masks as you enter the building, and to respect still the social distancing guidelines that 490 is basically asking from all of us. for our own safety. now it is my great pleasure to welcome today's guest to conduct the ceremony for us, we're very

excited that she's here today. and a community-based organization that is going to be headquartered here at 490. and we're very excited about that. [applause] they'll be located at the flex place at the corner of 16th and south van ness very, very shortly. basically what they do -- they provide immigrant families in the bay area with social services and emergency support for most cultural values and serve as a bridge between our community and consulates and the governments. so we are very pleased to have them come today to conduct a blessing to make sure that this building is blessed today. and i invite lydia to come up to the stage and begin that blessing ceremony. come on over. [applause] >> good morning to everyone.

i am going toed in spanish and she'll translate it, okay. [speaking spanish] (speaking foreign language) [speaking spanish] (speaking foreign language) [speaking spanish] (speaking foreign language)

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[speaking spanish] (speaking foreign language) [speaking spanish] (speaking foreign language)

[speaking spanish] (speaking foreign language)

[speaking spanish] (speaking foreign language) >> thank you very much. thank you. [applause] >> [speaking spanish] i just want to recap because we didn't have someone to translate in english what she just finished saying, but she wants to thank brim housing and mission housing, the mayor, all of the agencies, and anybody that had a contribution to make this building a possibility for the community. she wants to express her gratitude. she also talked a little bit about the journey for many -- you know, from yucatán. i am so sorry. and they came here to look for a better -- and just more positive opportunities. and i get a little choked up

because i know what that trajectory looked like as an immigrant person and someone that as myself, i know what that means. and she wanted to remind every member those that we lost during this pandemic. and so, again, she wants to have you all keep the good fight to make sure that we can continue to build affordable housing and she's looking upon all of you guys to be able to do that. mucho gracias. so, let's continue on. and let's talk about what is 490. it's an 80-unit affordable housing building that you're sitting here today that is located in the san francisco mission district. just a couple blocks from here we have the authentic 1950 mission that is another wonderful partnership with the partnership of bridge housing and ourselves that we were proud to do a groundbreaking very recently. what has that done for me, and for those that may be wondering what that word represents. we decided to name it for

various reasons because it actually means to "move upward, forward, and a desire to always advance." and we believe that it embodies the resilient spirit of this neighborhood, a neighborhood that fought and they were very vocal about what they needed. and so here together as a community, as a group, we're celebrating this amazing, amazing celebration for 490. so we continue to [speaking spanish] so we'll continue to move forward, right? right? yes! yes! yes! [applause] mission housing and bridge housing are proudly basically celebrating the -- what we consider to be such a great accomplishment. and so we just want to be sure that you celebrate along with us because this is actually a little piece of history that we are sharing with you today. we saw about 230 families that moved into their homes here. we actually have several --

several -- several -- looking -- several -- please wave to those residents that moved in here, and i just want to welcome them to their new home. we're so excited. it really makes me get choked up because there's nothing to fight for something, deliver something, and then see the families moving in and this is what we're celebrating today. this is for you. so now it is my great pleasure to welcome someone that is an advocate for affordable housing and i know that she's been very, very vocal about it for many years and she continued to be a partner and a supporter of our organization and everyone here that is sitting here today -- our mayor -- our mayor of san francisco that has been extremely busy for the past year or so, and we're very thankful for her to have time to join us today. that being said, mayor london breed, would you please come up and share your thoughts. [applause] >> thank you, marcia. i've got to say today is

definitely very special because it's been a long time coming, and i think that some of the folks that are joining us here today don't really realize the history and the struggle and the challenges that have existed for so many years, specifically in the mission community. and supervisor ronen can recall at a time when we saw a huge amounts of displacement of the people in this community, she was working as an aide for the supervisor in the office that she now occupies and i remember when i was on the board of supervisors and this community rallied together -- rallied together to ask for more support in san francisco, more support from city hall to build more affordable housing. and at the time i remember thinking to myself, what difference is it going to make when the people in this community may not even have an opportunity to get access to these units? and so together, myself and members in this community supported my efforts when the

federal government, hud, said, no, we could not use neighborhood preference. i flew on the red eye to d.c., they changed their mind because all i did was tell them my story about my experience of growing up in the philmore and what happened there, the redevelopment that came in, tore down a lot of beautiful homes owned by black people, rebuilt a number of affordable housing developments, but made it difficult for the people who lived in this community to have access to those units. i was watching as what was happening in the mission already happened in the philmore western edition community. so it was important that when we started, and we identified the number of the developments in this community, the community did a whole walk-thru, and i went through that walk-thru and that drive-thru to identify a number of properties and at the time our late mayor ed lee helped to put $50 million in the

budget to begin the process of acquiring these sites, and i picked up the mantle and we were able to acquire some additional sites as a result of the work of this community, the advocacy of this community, not only do we have seven sites identified for affordable housing in this community, we also are using neighborhood presence to make sure that people from this neighborhood have right of first refusal to access these units and to live in their community. [applause] that was -- i mean, this is -- i get emotional too, marcia, because i think about what's going to happen differently in this community for the people in this community. and so i was there for the opening of the childcare center, for the ribbon cutting and the ceremony. i was here when we did the groundbreaking, the amazing groundbreaking here with the space, to cleanse off all of the negative spirits and bring in the positive energy that these

families deserve. we were on shopwell when we opened up a new senior developpent in and we have other properties where we're going to be doing a lot of ribbon cuttings in these community. in total almost 800 units and counting. so that is absolutely amazing. [applause] but we know that there's more that needs to be done. this pandemic, although it set us back, we were still able to get this project done. we were still able to continue to build. and that is so critical because families, like the ones that we see here today, they're counting on us. they're counting on us to move as quickly as possible to get this housing built so that they can move in and raise their families in these incredible communities. i can't help but get excited, especially because i know that this is going to change and save lives. housing has to be the priority. san francisco has not done the best job of moving forward as aggressively as it should in

building more housing opportunities. i can't imagine my grandmother who raised me -- i can't imagine what she would have to go through now in san francisco and what would happen and how difficult it would be for her to be able to raise her grandchildren and take care of her developmentally disabled daughter nowadays and the access to affordable housing. it would be almost virtually impossible. what we want to do in this city is to change that to make sure that people have safer, affordable places to call home. and i'm so grateful that we are partnering with mission housing and with bridge housing to create these incredible spaces that are not just about buildings -- they're about people -- and people's lives. and their ability to live in dignity and take care of their families and live in a place like san francisco. and to be able to come back and tell those stories about their families emigrating to san francisco, or their grandmothers

raising them. to be able to tell those stories, because they will have a future in this incredible city. and i'm so grateful that housing here will provide that opportunity. so, thank you, everyone, for being here. thank you for all of the folks that had a role -- the mayor's office of housing and the bank of america and our financers. so it took a village. it really did take a lot of people coming together, but more importantly -- more importantly -- it took this community rallying and demanding what they know that they deserve in order to live in dignity in the community that they call home. so, thank you all, so much for being here today. [applause] >> thank you, joan, for coming out. >> thank you, all. thank you for making this (indiscernible) i'm so

grateful. [applause] >> these are the stories that we are very proud of, that we should all be proud of. thank you, mayor london breed, and thank you so much for acknowledging and for being here and for the work, you know, that everyone was able to do to make this happen. our next speaker is our executive director at extension housing to say a few words. i'm sure many more words but just a few. come on over. >> thank you, everybody. joan got me crying up here. give me a sec. thank you all for coming and i feel that i get to do this now and after 10 years it's kind of hard to believe that we're having a ribbon cutting every few months in the mission. marcia and myself took over the housing 10 years ago, well, we didn't look like what we look like now. we had a lot of growing to do, and we couldn't have done that growing without the support of our community.

without the support of the late mayor lee and then mayor breed herself, and you know, most especially i'd like to thank bridge housing. we forced our way in the door and no one could get rid of us, and bridge housing is the one that opened that door up. so we wouldn't be able to grow the way we are and to provide the things that we provide on a daily basis, not just in these new buildings, but in all of our buildings, if we haven't had the trust and respect of bridge housing. so, thank you very much, for showing up. [applause] >> coming to these ribbon cuttings, as great as they are, it has me thinking about the past and how far we've come and just how important it is for us to stop right now. we've all just gone through a really hard ordeal and we're still going through it, and it's important to look forward. you know, it's important to come together and to say here we are at this point in time.

and i know that these things happened in the past and i know this person said that, and this person -- this company did that -- but here we are as a community together supporting each other. and we're standing on something tangible, on a physical structure that was erected with the blood and sweat and tears -- and i guess a little bit of money from the san francisco government, of course, but without all of that coming together, working together, we wouldn't be here right now. we'd still be talking about how many people are displaced in the city and we would still talked about what if we could have built that. and we're standing on something that we did -- that we accomplished. and i just really want everyone to take a moment and to pat yourself on the back because it wasn't easy. it was exhausting. it was emotionally trying. but we're here now and we're about to have some empanadas later and have a good old time. so from the bottom of my heart i just want to thank everyone. thank you very much.

>> thank you. right back at mission housing. really interesting story about this building and i want to talk about that and talk about relationships and how powerful and important they are to achieving what we're here to celebrate today. back in the day when we were just fighting to stand in justification, you know, people forced out of the mission and we weren't under the cloud of a global pandemic like today. mission housing and bridge housing had partnered a block away from here. and he came to my office and said we'd like to get back in the game and that was a momentous day. not only did that happen but a few months later, and the mayor's office of housing acquired some land that we're standing on, it was fully entitled for a market rate

condominium project. they had drawings that were done, they were ready to break ground. the mayor's office had the vision and the wherewithal at the time to acquire this shovel ready -- remember that term that we used to talk about? and the city took some grief at the time because they paid a lot. in hindsight it looks like a pretty good number, a pretty good deal by today's standards. so i want to thank the mayor's office and the leadership for making that happen. and then sam and i, i think that we decided we should get the band back together after what happened here in 1950, and fast forward, and here we are today. you know, as sam said, a lot of blood and sweat and a lot of hard work and a lot of talented people that, you know, we're not going to be able to thank everybody today, but i want to thank the relationships that we value most and, really, the mayor's office of housing -- mission housing, as sam said, bridge and mission got together

and we might have helped mission on some things, but they certainly helped us to understand what the mission is all about. and thank you for the blessing today. it's a complicated neighborhood, one that has been under a lot of pressure and, you know, if we can come here and to be a part of helping to stem that tide, that's part of our mission. so i thank mission housing for helping to educate us about the mission itself. and we're not done. we're going to be working with mission housing and we're busy trying to finance the infrastructure, but bridge is going to build there and mission is going to build there and we'll have a couple more of these ribbon cuttings. so i look forward to that. and i also need to thank a few of the key actors here, and from architects, who we're working with in portland and here in the san francisco bay area. and those who built this building, and thank you, bob, and your team. and nibe is building in berkeley, another very complex

neighborhood and a complex project. and i want to thank some of the folks at bridge briefly. mitch, who couldn't be here but his namesake here, this caterpillar was named after mitch apparently. so for all of you who know mitch, really helped to get this off the ground and he was helped by anna and sarah and david from our team that worked with sam and michael and marcia and the folks from mission housing. so thank you all for helping to execute that initial vision and for being here today to help to celebrate. congratulations. >> i would like to introduce -- >> i would like to introduce -- god, you're tall -- even with heels. i would like to introduce the next speaker, supervisor hillary ronen. come right on over. [applause] >> supervisor ronen: thank you, everyone. it feels good, madam mayor, to keep coming to these ribbon cuttings.

it's incredible. like sam said, after 10 years of not doing any of this, to be able to celebrate every couple months with, you know, the opening -- the ribbon cutting of a new affordable housing complex. and like our mayor said, this isn't about buildings, it's about people. and talking to the incredible families that are living in this building we've got to remember where those families were coming from. there are so many families in the mission that are living in tiny s.r.o. hotel rooms -- four people, five people, to a room. and if that wasn't -- that's always been unacceptable, but after this year of pandemic when we weren't allowed to leave those rooms, when kids had to open up their computers and sit on their bunkbeds and be in a tiny space for 24 hours a day, and weren't allowed to hang out

in the hallway because they could get sick -- that is cruel it almost feels -- it makes your home feel like a jail. and those are the kind of conditions that families moved from to finally be in a proper home where their kids can run outside and be safe, where they can have their own bedroom and feel like they have that -- that privacy and that space to grow up and be kids. that's what projects like this make happen. and so thanks to the mayor's neighborhood preference -- thank you for that law, that was one of the best and the most important laws that we've ever passed in san francisco. making that happen, going to washington, and -- and not leaving and not taking no for an answer, it's one of your great legacies, mayor breed, because that is what made it possible for families that live in the s.r.o.s in the mission to move into proper, adequate housing

for themselves and their families. and we can't stop -- like you said, we're going to keep on going because while there remains one family improperly housed in an s.r.o., where there remains thousands of people living on streets of san francisco, we can't stop. we've got to keep this going. and thank you, mission housing, for resurrecting your housing development or we wouldn't be here and we wouldn't do all of these ribbon cuttings without you. thank you, marcia, and thank you, sam, and, bridge -- of course, you never stop. so thank you for partnering with our local community-based developers, because we need that local -- that local voice and that local commitment and those folks from the community that are doing this work, like sam, marcia and oscar and so many members of the mission housing team. thank you so much, this is a great day. congrats. [applause] >> i would like to introduce our

next speaker, kevin blackburn, from the federal home loan bank of san francisco. [applause] >> well, again, it's an honor to be here this morning and, sam, with your giant shirt there, and i am the last one to speak and i am feeling like the cleanup like willie mays right now. but i don't know if you have noticed but there's been a common theme that has gone through each speaker today and that is the stories. you know, i have some facts to share with you, but facts tell, but the reality is that stories sell. and the stories of the people whose lives have been impacted by having access to quality, affordable housing are the things that drive us to keep working hard to provide justice

and equity for those who need it most. so i'm privileged that the federal home loan bank of san francisco, this is, like, the best thing that i get to do. i spend a lot of times on planes, well, prior to the pandemic, anyway, a lot of time on planes going back and forth to d.c.. and that is hard work. but this is really where it all makes a difference. so, you know, the facts that i just want to share with you and i want to really congratulate mission housing development corporation and bridge housing for collaborating because to build affordable housing, it is the most difficult type of housing to build, period. and to do it and to see what you'd be able to create here, i think they deserve a big round of applause, don't you? [applause] of course it doesn't happen in a vacuum. you know, years ago i'd say, well, building affordable housing is like a seven-layer

cake because you have so many layers of financing and expertise and, and now with the cost of housing continuing to increase it's probably a 10-layer cake now. but there are three layers of that cake that i just want to talk about and one is the federal home loan of san francisco. we know what is going on in washington, and once upon a time there was an atmosphere where both sides of the aisle worked together for a common good. one of the things they created was the affordable housing program. and so the federal home loan bank of san francisco gives away 10% of its profits annually in the form of grants for affordable housing with. bridge as a partner, that has translated to about $33 million in grants to bridge. and the congressional district, speaker nancy pelosi, created 5,40 units of affordable housing and that's quality work. but we don't do it alone. we do it with community capital,

and the members, the federal home loan bank that provided the grant. and then it takes affordable housing developers to bring it all together. and so for the federal home loan bank of san francisco, we're honored to continue to be the legacy of building affordable housing in san francisco and we want to just acknowledge mayor breed and her vision to -- to be a fighter. you know, it's one thing to get in office and to kind of move things along. it's another thing to drive an agenda that really matters. and there's nothing that matters more than providing quality housing for people. so not only are we working to continue to support affordable housing, but right now with the legislation introduced in washington that would allow the home loan banks to support infrastructure, and that is important -- it is worth it. i was on the phone at 6:00 this morning back in d.c., because this legislation is really important and we want to be able as the infrastructure bill comes

together to be another tool that banks can use to support the infrastructure development, because we need it. and so just keep your ears open we appreciate the support from supervisor ronen and from speaker pelosi as well. so, thank you all for being here today. thank you, mission housing development, and bridge housing and this is a great day. and will we're honored to be able to celebrate it with you. thank you. [applause] >> all right. thank god i'm wearing my heels. i was going to wear my flats but i wore my heels. anyways, before we get moving on to the ribbon cutting ceremony, i just want to acknowledge the team that actually worked so hard to make sure that we can do this celebration, which is bridge housing team, and also mission housing team. for all of you that worked really hard here -- where is the staff? mission housing and bridge

housing, lift your hands up? big and proud. [applause] there's a few here too that are shy to come out, but thank you so much. i hope that you guys enjoy this space. you are standing and sitting here today and it's basically the place where our children are going to be able to play. parents are going to actually be able to go right here and do their laundry and to be able to have their kids run around here so i just wanted to acknowledge this space because i think that it's beautiful. and i'm a parent of three and if my little one his an opportunity to be in this space, i would be proud to have them run around because it's a beautiful, safe space. with that being said, we'll continue on with the ribbon ceremony and we'll ask the speakers to move up here. but before we would like to remind all of you that we have a reception on the rooftop. if you haven't been to the rooftop yet, we left that for last. and we partnered with a neighbor of ours, a commercial tenant of

ours that is providing amazing empanadas to enjoy. so if you want to be at the reception, the elevators to my right, and another right there's going to be staff there directing you to take you to the rooftop. and so you can grab a bite to eat and take it with you. and the other thing that we have are some amazing t-shirts. so for all of you joining us today, pick up your t-shirts. it's very nice -- nice t-shirt that you can take with you. very proud of that t-shirt. besides that i just want to say -- actually ask everyone that is here today -- i want to ask for a commitment. would you -- would each one of you guys commit to be supportive of affordable housing? we have learned about the stories about what this building represents and all of the work that everyone that is here today, and i just want to make sure that i hear you loud and clear that you are committed and to keep affordable housing efforts moving forward. can i hear that?

[applause] okay. so, [speaking spanish] which means we're going to move forward together. thank you so much to all of the speakers. please come up. >> all right, are we ready? okay. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... [applause]