tv Mayors Press Availability SFGTV August 13, 2021 11:15am-12:01pm PDT
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all right everyone. hi, i'm san francisco mayor london breed and i want to thank you all for joining us today. i want to give a shout out to the folks vax to max. i want to thank you for hanging out and trying to get people to vaccinate because i know you want to go back to school quickly. i don't know about you, but when i was a kid, i wasn't pushing to go back to school on any given day and clearly our children need to be back in school. and part of making sure they're
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back in school, making sure they're safe. making sure our communities are safe is important for us to do our part and this is how everyone can do their part is at least get vaccinated. in san francisco, about 84% of san franciscans have received at least their first dose of the vaccine, but sadly, with the african american community, that's about 64%. with the latino community, it's at about 74%. and we need to make sure that those communities are getting the vaccine because what we're seeing with almost 100 people now in the hospital that most of those folks are african american and latino. and so it's important to us because also, the other issue is that most of the people who are in the hospital, i think dr. colfax has the specifics, but they've not been vaccinated. so even if, you know, i as a vaccinated person gets a
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vaccine, if i get the and the fact is that person can get sick and end up in the hospital and that person can potentially day. this really is a matter of life or death. i understand people have concerns. and i understand that people are frustrated with the mask mandates and all the other requirements. i get it. this has been tough and it's been a long time, but as i have said time and time again just because we are tired of the vaccine -- i mean, just because we are tired of covid-19, just because we are tired of all the rules and regulations and being told what to do, just because we are sick of it, doesn't mean it's sick of us. it's not gone because we want it to be gone. so what this means is we have to do even more and as a result, we have decided to take our case to the public in a
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different way. if you have at least five to twelve people who want to be vaccinated, we will bring our doctors and nurses and equipment and other resources to you. all you have to do is go sf.gov/vaxtoyou. so we'll provide you all with that information. it's important that we make it as easy as possible. there are a number of pop-up locations in the mission. we are trying to make this as easy as possible. and we know and vaccines
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specifically in the african american community. the fact is we're at a different time where we really need to focus on saving lives. we've not even had six hundred deaths even in one of the densest cities in the last 15 months because of this virus. if we go at the rate that we're going, we expect within a couple of weeks according to dr. colfax to lose at least 300 people. that's why we've had to put together the appropriate vaccine outreach team as well as mandatory mask indoors even for those who are vaccinated. the last thing we need that's
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the easiest thing you could do to support one another. we should be so proud. san francisco's a dense city and we had one of the lowest death rates. we all came together in the beginning of this pandemic. we took care of our neighbors. we went we got that last hurdle l, that last stretch. it's like the nineth inning and we just need one more hit out the ball park. and if we all just roll up our sleeves and start to get vaccinated even though we have concerns, we're doing it for our fellow san franciscans.
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and, so with that, i want to turn it over to dr. grant colfax. >> good afternoon everybody and thank you, mayor breed for your ongoing leadership during this pandemic. i want to thank chiba piano lounge for sponsoring this. and, of course, the amazing dph team, the mobile team led by dr. mary mercer. just remarkable work. we have 77% of eligible san franciscans now fully vaccinated in our city. so this is a remarkable achievement and, i think while the next few weeks will be very challenging and we're seeing covid-19 increase dramatically in our city, it's very important to remember that hundreds if not thousands of lives have been saved. we're in a much better place than during the fall and winter surge because people are vaccinated. because these vaccines work.
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because they keep you out of the hospital. because they are saving lives as we speak. if you are not vaccinated in san francisco. this is not a good time to be vaccinated. the delta variant is here. it accounts for more than 90% of our cases now. and it is a highly transmissible and there's emerging evidence that it's more likely that you would end up in the hospital compared to the virus we were dealing with just a few months ago. this is covid on steroids. the difference now between being vaccinated and not getting vax if you do get covid-19, it could be -- if you're vaccinated versus not vaccinated, it could be the difference between spending a few days in your bed at home, versus spending a few weeks in
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an i.c.u. bed. very important that people get vaccinated. we know that the health officers across the region, recently instituted an indoormandate effective today. that is a temporary measure to decrease the spread of the virus. we were at just twelve cases of covid-19 just a few weeks ago in late may and early june. now we're over 200 a day. we need to continue to slow the spread. do our part. we will bring the vaccine it to you. the mayor just announced this. we're doing everything we can. we will work with you. we will get the team there, let's max the vax across the city. 77% more to go. we're doing everything we can to get people vaccinated. the vaccines continue our way out. these next few weeks are going to be challenging. the best protection is the vaccine, the masking, and telling your friends, your family members, your community
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members get vaccinated today. thank you. >> any questions about the vaccine related stuff? >> if i had told me in my family, would you come to my house? >> yes. we can do that and we've already been doing that. so people can sign up and we will be there. >> can people come up and say, hey, i live outside san francisco, it's going to take a long time for me to make an appointment. >> we're really focusing on san francisco's residents at this point to try to get those numbers up and we're coordinating with other counties. so i think if people have other questions, we can put them in touch with the local health department to make sure they get vaccinated as well. >> i'm wondering if you can talk about zuckerberg sf general and the decisions of the supplemental costs of those getting johnson and johnson
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shots. [inaudible] mrna pfizer. >> so i just want to make it really clear, we have not changed our policy as a health department and as a city with regard to following cdc guidelines for administering vaccines. if people have received a johnson and johnson and are requesting a second shot, we will accommodate them, but our policy has not changed nor has it changed at zuckerberg general hospital. >> have there been studies on that? >> yes. so in consultation with infectious disease experts, the decision was made again. if people are requesting a second shot after johnson and johnson, we will accommodate that, be but we're not changing our policy at this point. >> any indication it does improve the efficacy of the johnson and johnson shot? >> i think the important thing is right now we don't have
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conclusive data on additional shots beyond what the cdc is recommending. but, again, in consultation with infectious disease experts, we do think this is safe and accommodate people if they so request. >> break through cases, are they mostly people who have been vaccinated with johnson and johnson or why johnson and johnson? >> so i think really the key point is that break through cases remain relatively rare compared to people who are not vaccinated. that's really important. all these vaccines are incredibly effective in terms of reducing the risk of hospitalization. and, again, we're continuing to follow cdc guidelines whether they are the mrna or johnson and johnson vaccines. accommodating people and are requesting an additional shot. but the break through infections, i think really, i understand the focus on break through infections here, but i think it really misses the big picture. the key reason we did the indoor mask mandate and so forth is because we need to get
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more people quickly vaccinated as soon as possible. that includes the johnson and johnson mrna vaccine. we will follow cdc recommendations going forward. >> are you still administering the j&j? >> absolutely. it's a good vaccine. and we will continue to administer it. we have lots of vaccines available. if people want the mrna vaccine, we will do that. we have the menu and it's available. >> what would you say to people who are tired of wearing masks and being [inaudible] ? >> well, i'm disappointed that the health office, i'm sorry that we had to go to indoor masking as well. it's the right thing to do in terms of where we are right now. especially, our projections are showing cases are going to continue to increase through this month and early september, so we really need to slow down the transmission. what i would say if you're tired of wearing a mask, if you're not vaccinated, for
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god's sake get vaccinated and get your family and friends vaccinated. >> had is there an now that this delta variant is surging and it is so much more contagious, a lot of those sites, they've shut down? >> so we're continuing to work with our other health partners across the city to ensure there's adequate testing for people. d.p.h. has been doing over 40% of the tests that have been administered. so just to emphasize that piece working with kaiser and c.p.m.c. but we're exploring a number of possibles. we know that compared to where we were, there's a lot more home testing available. so we're encouraging people to use that and talking to our partners about expanding testing options in the future. and at the health department, our testing focus remains in our clinics for the skilled nursing facilities and shelters. those are really key areas
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where we're going to continue to support testing. >> a lot of people are excited to get an appointment online. what would you say in terms of wait times and is the city considering those mask mandates [inaudible] ? >> so, again, we're looking at options to potentially expand testing and encouraging our other partners, kaiser to expand testing and we have drop-in testing as well. we have pop-up testing where covid-19 is most prevalent. so if those drop-in sites where people can literally walk in, you can still get tested on a drop-in basis. >> roughly 5,000 tests are being done a day. where do you expect to see that number -- where do you want to see that number? >> yeah. i think testing is obviously an ongoing key issue for us to
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support cross the city. i don't want testing to distract us from the need to get fully vaccinated. i'm hoping we can mitigate some of the wait times. i expect those to unfortunately continue to go up. you know, we're down to fewer than 2,000 tests a day, now we're at 5,000. if we expand up to 9,000 a day, we're going to continue the need to expand. and/or to use those home testing kits and use the kaiser ucsf and other health care systems in addition to look at what the health department has available. >> the city is spending more resources on these mobile vaccination sites. >> well, the vaccine because it's more complex, we will have always spent more resources because testing is a little bit easier. we are going to continue to look at the ability to expand.
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we can do both things at the same time. but we're at a different stature now. so we need to do both things well at the same time. >> can you expect restrictions here in the city and if businesses were to require that you be vaccinated in order to enter that business, would the city approve that? >> yeah. we're very supportive of businesses and other entities requiring proof of vaccination for people to enter the premises. >> and, now, new york city is doing that. they're talking about they want restaurants and venues and fitness centers proof of vaccination. at least is the city considering taking that step? >> we're exploring that. again, right now, we've seen that a number of bars and restaurants and other entities are doing that and we're very supportive of that and encouraging people to take advantage of that policy with regard to showing proof of vaccination at these entities.
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>> one more question. what goes into deciding if san francisco wants vaccine mandates like new york city. like why not yet? >> well, i just think we're exploring the pieces right now. again, i think that the good news is that san francisco businesses were one of the first in the country as far as i know to adopt this voluntarily. and i think it's really trying to determine, you know, in working with various entities is there a need to implement policies similar to new york's or is this going to happen more on the basis of what's being driven in the community. i think we saw that in other situations with the pandemic as well is people, communities are adapting the practices that they know slow the transmission. so we're exploring that. the thank you. >> what do you say about the people that are afraid about the side effects of the vaccine and that's why they don't want to take it? >> yeah.
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we know and there have been millions of people in the united states these vaccines are incredible safe. look who's dying of covid-19 right now, it's people who are unvaccinated. these vaccines work, they're safe and effective. thank you. so i want to thank ned and israel from chiba lounge for hosting us today. are there any other questions related to the vaccine? all right. any other questions in general? >> [inaudible] >> well, what i want to start by saying is the stipulation that i signed with the ethics commission after having numerous discussions, i feel is fair, we worked out an
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agreement with the staff to address some of the challenges that we are listed in the stipulation and in particular, there were mistakes made. i take full responsibility for those mistakes and i've learned a lot since becoming mayor and being in office and as i said in my statement, i made it clear that at no time have any of the things related to this stipulation had any impact on the decisions that i've made as mayor. and, my hope is that over time, i've been able to prove that and overtime, moving forward, i'll be able to continue to approve that. >> [inaudible] >> well, i hope that the work that i've done and addressing one of the most challenging times in our city's history which is not directly related to the challenges that exist in the stipulation. i would hope that my record and what i've done over the past couple of years will make a difference as well as the work that i'm -- that i do moving
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forward. i mean, it's difficult because, you know, people may look at this, of course, and feel a certain kind of way. i can't completely control that. i can only make sure that i do exactly what a leader in this city should do. when you make a mistake. you step up, you take responsibility for your action. you put it all out there and you hope that people will look at it and realize that, you know, you're human just like anybody else and the goal is to make sure that i completely make it clear to the public that at no time in any of these, you know, challenges that existed that, you know, i allowed any of this to impact the decisions that i've made in running the city and it's going to take some time to demonstrate and ensure the public that my goal is to lead this city, to continue to do my job and at no time have i ever
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allowed any of these issues to interfere with the decisions that i make in this office and i will continue to do that. >> did you believe you were doing anything wrong at the time [inaudible] the letter heads regarding the letter for your brother or [inaudible] and do you recognize that those things --? >> at the time that i did them, no i did not. >> and now? >> and, now i do understand that they are a problem and i will be doing things differently. for example, the event, the pride parade in san francisco, i've always had a float during the pride parade, it's just the way that it was covered during this time period was different that how i had covered it before and so i realize that that was problematic even though this is -- the pride parade is not a campaign event, it's not -- it's a civic occasion. it's a way in which mayor and public elected officials all participate, but i've always had a float and in this particular case, there was a mistake made and so we're
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as a sibling or a parent or something. i just love the city. i love everything about it. when i'm away from it, i miss it like a person. i grew up in san francisco kind of all over the city. we had pretty much the run of the city 'cause we lived pretty close to polk street, and so we would -- in the summer, we'd all all the way down to aquatic park, and we'd walk down to the library, to the kids' center. in those days, the city was safe and nobody worried about us running around. i went to high school in spring valley. it was over the hill from chinatown. it was kind of fun to experience being in a minority, which most white people don't get to experience that often. everything was just really within walking distance, so it make it really fun. when i was a teenager, we didn't have a lot of money. we could go to sam wong's and
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get super -- soup for $1. my parents came here and were drawn to the beatnik culture. they wanted to meet all of the writers who were so famous at the time, but my mother had some serious mental illness issues, and i don't think my father were really aware of that, and those didn't really become evident until i was about five, i guess, and my marriage blew up, and my mother took me all over the world. most of those ad ventures ended up bad because they would end up hospitalized. when i was about six i guess, my mother took me to japan, and that was a very interesting trip where we went over with a boyfriend of hers, and he was working there. i remember the open sewers and gigantic frogs that lived in the sewers and things like
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that. mostly i remember the smells very intensely, but i loved japan. it was wonderful. toward the end. my mother had a breakdown, and that was the cycle. we would go somewhere, stay for a certain amount of months, a year, period of time, and she would inevitably have a breakdown. we always came back to san francisco which i guess came me some sense of continuity and that was what kept me sort of stable. my mother hated to fly, so she would always make us take ships places, so on this particular occasion when i was, i think, 12, we were on this ship getting ready to go through the panama canal, and she had a breakdown on the ship. so she was put in the brig, and i was left to wander the ship until we got to fluorfluora few days later, where we had a distant -- florida a few days
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later, where we had a distant cousin who came and got us. i think i always knew i was a writer on some level, but i kind of stopped when i became a cop. i used to write short stories, and i thought someday i'm going to write a book about all these ad ventures that my mother took me on. when i became a cop, i found i turned off parts of my brain. i found i had to learn to conform, which was not anything i'd really been taught but felt very safe to me. i think i was drawn to police work because after coming from such chaos, it seemed like a very organized, but stable environment. and even though things happening, it felt like putting order on chaos and that felt very safe to me. my girlfriend and i were sitting in ve 150d uvio's bar, and i looked out the window and
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i saw a police car, and there was a woman who looked like me driving the car. for a moment, i thought i was me. and i turned to my friend and i said, i think i'm supposed to do this. i saw myself driving in this car. as a child, we never thought of police work as a possibility for women because there weren't any until the mid70's, so i had only even begun to notice there were women doing this job. when i saw here, it seemed like this is what i was meant to do. one of my bosses as ben johnson's had been a cop, and he -- i said, i have this weird idea that i should do this. he said, i think you'd be good. the department was forced to hire us, and because of all of the posters, and the big recruitment drive, we were
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under the impression that they were glad to have us, but in reality, most of the men did not want the women there. so the big challenge was constantly feeling like you had to prove yourself and feeling like if you did not do a good job, you were letting down your entire gender. finally took an inspector's test and passed that and then went down to the hall of justice and worked different investigations for the rest of my career, which was fun. i just felt sort of buried alive in all of these cases, these unsolved mysteries that there were just so many of them, and some of them, i didn't know if we'd ever be able to solve, so my boss was able to get me out of the unit. he transferred me out, and a couple of weeks later, i found out i had breast cancer. my intuition that the job was killing me. i ended up leaving, and by then, i had 28 years or the years in, i think. the writing thing really became intense when i was going through treatment for cancer because i felt like there were so many parts that my kids
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didn't know. they didn't know my story, they didn't know why i had a relationship with my mother, why we had no family to speak of. it just poured out of me. i gave it to a friend who is an editor, and she said i think this would be publishable and i think people would be interested in this. i am so lucky to live here. i am so grateful to my parents who decided to move to the city. i am so grateful they did. that it never >> after my fire in my apartment and losing everything, the red cross gave us a list of agencies in the city to reach out to and i signed up for the below-market rate program. i got my certificate and started applying and won the housing lottery. [♪♪♪]
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>> the current lottery program began in 2016. but there have been lot rows that have happened for affordable housing in the city for much longer than that. it was -- there was no standard practice. for non-profit organizations that were providing affordable housing with low in the city, they all did their lotteries on their own. private developers that include in their buildings affordable units, those are the city we've been monitoring for some time since 1992. we did it with something like this. where people were given circus tickets. we game into 291st century in 2016 and started doing electronic lotteries. at the same time, we started electronic applications systems. called dalia. the lottery is completely free.
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you can apply two ways. you can submit a paper application, which you can download from the listing itself. if you apply online, it will take five minutes. you can make it easier creating an account. to get to dalia, you log on to housing.sfgov.org. >> i have lived in san francisco for almost 42 years. i was born here in the hayes valley. >> i applied for the san francisco affordable housing lottery three times. >> since 2016, we've had about 265 electronic lotteries and almost 2,000 people have got their home through the lottery system. if you go into the listing, you can actually just press lottery
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results and you put in your lottery number and it will tell you exactly how you ranked. >> for some people, signing up for it was going to be a challenge. there is a digital divide here and especially when you are trying to help low and very low income people. so we began providing digital assistance for folks to go in and get help. >> along with the income and the residency requirements, we also required someone who is trying to buy the home to be a first time home buyer and there's also an educational component that consists of an orientation that they need to attend, a first-time home buyer workshop and a one-on-one counseling session with the housing councilor. >> sometimes we have to go through 10 applicants before
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they shouldn't be discouraged if they have a low lottery number. they still might get a value for an available, affordable housing unit. >> we have a variety of lottery programs. the four that you will most often see are what we call c.o.p., the certificate of preference program, the dthp which is the displaced penance housing preference program. the neighborhood resident housing program and the live worth preference. >> i moved in my new home february 25th and 2019. the neighborhood preference program really helped me achieve that goal and that dream was with eventually wind up staying in san francisco. >> the next steps, after finding out how well you did in the lottery and especially if you ranked really well you will be contacted by the leasing agent. you have to submit those document and income and asset
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qualify and you have to pass the credit and rental screening and the background and when you qualify for the unit, you can chose the unit and hopefully sign that lease. all city sponsored affordable housing comes through the system and has an electronic lottery. every week there's a listing on dalia. something that people can apply for. >> it's a bit hard to predict how long it will take for someone to be able to move into a unit. let's say the lottery has happened. several factors go into that and mainly how many units are in the project, right. and how well you ranked and what preference bucket you were in. >> this particular building was brand new and really this is the one that i wanted out of everything i applied for. in my mind, i was like how am i going to win this?
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i did and when you get that notice that you won, it's like at first, it's surreal and you don't believe it and it sinks in, yeah, it happened. >> some of our buildings are pretty spectacular. they have key less entry now. they have a court yard where they play movies during the weekends, they have another master kitchen and space where people can throw parties. >> mayor breed has a plan for over 10,000 new units between now and 2025. we will start construction on about 2,000 new units just in 2020. >> we also have a very big portfolio like over 25,000 units across the city. and life happens to people. people move. so we have a very large number of rerentals and resales of
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units every year. >> best thing about working for the affordable housing program is that we know that we're making a difference and we actually see that difference on a day-to-day basis. >> being back in the neighborhood i grew up in, it's a wonderful experience. >> it's a long process to get through. well worth it when you get to the other side. i could not be happier. [♪♪♪] good morning phil. good morning san francisco. i am san francisco mayor london breed and i am so excited to be here with each and every one of
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you because san francisco although we're dealing with some challenges with this delta virus, we're still coming alive again, we're still re-opening, we're still wearing our masks. and what's most important, what's most important we are enjoying our city and we are making these cable cars available to the public, to san franciscans, for the month of august at no charge. so what does that mean? well, you know what happens when someone gives you something free. that means you have to be patient because during the month of august, typically what will be happening is these operators that are with me today would normally be testing the equipment, making sure things are running smoothly, making sure that they are safe and making sure that the public is safe, so, please, listen to your operators, be patient, be
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understanding. this is a process. there is not going to be a complete time schedule, right. yes. but there will be fun and it is worth the wait. you know, san francisco, i can't think of this city without cable cars. and i can't think of this city without all of the great things that we know, love, and treasure. when people come to visit our city, they come downtown here in union square. they go to pier 39 and the fary building. they visit the crooked road on lumbard street. no trip to san francisco is complete without a ride on our cable car. so today, we are officially and i see people are already lined up and waiting to go. we are officially making them available and, as i said to you all before, please be patient. please be understanding. we have just been through a
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very challenging 16 months with this pandemic and what that means is things won't just go back to the way that they used to be automatically. it requires all of us to be patient, all of us to be understanding and all of us to do everything we can to just really appreciate the fact that there were lives lost during this pandemic and we are still here, we're still standing and we're still able to enjoy the beauty of san francisco. so, with that, i'll just say have a good time and know and before i introduce jeff actuallin, you have to wear your mask on the cable cars and on muni at this time and please make sure you get vaccinated. it's like this delta variant is like covid on steroids and it's
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important that people get vaccinated and most of the people coming through our hospital doors are not vaccinated. we want to get back to normal life. we don't want to shut this country down any longer than we have to so thank you all for being here today and without further adieu, i want to introduce the director jeff tumlin. >> thank you mayor breed. my name is jeffery tumlin and i'm proud to say that on this day, 148 years ago, andrew holiday tested what was then called holiday's falling. adapting obscure gold rush mining technology in order to try to make a form of transportation that can bring san franciscans up and down our
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crazy hills. no one thought it would work. and cable cars became one of the most popular forms of public transportation in the city and allow the city to develop beyond the tiny clusters of buildings. we're so pleased that not only did the symbol of san francisco's enginuity survived, but the symbol of our resilience has survived as well. we're many efforts to try to shut them down so i'm so happy to be bringing these services back and i have so many people i have to thank. i need to thank all of the cable car operates and administrators most of whom worked keeping the vaccination clinics running and doing a thousand other jobs as disaster
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service workers throughout the pandemic. and, they are here. we are so grateful to them. there are so many people who during the pandemic work to maintain our fleets and rebuild historic ancient cars but i particularly want to thank all of the crews, arnie hanson who delayed his retirement to make sure all of these services made it through the pandemic stronger than they were before so we can continue sustaining this great symbol of san francisco's resiliency. so, without any further adieu, i want to make a couple reminders. first of all, things are going to be a little rough. all three things are operating. they'll be operating from around 7:00 a.m. to around 10:00 p.m. yes, you do need to wear your masks and without any further adieu, i want to invite all of you to join me and the mayor riding the cable cars half way
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>> this is the meeting of the small business commission augus. the meeting is called to order at 4:30 p.m. the small business commission thanks media services and sfgovtv for televising the meeting which can be viewed on sfgovtv or live streamed at sfgovtv.org. members of the public calling in, the number is 415-655-0001. the access code for this evening
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