tv Mayors Press Availability SFGTV September 29, 2021 6:00am-7:01am PDT
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who loves transit in san francisco? oh, my gosh, everybody loves transit. who had a great ride? who had a problematic ride? that's actually a pretty good. that's okay. that's good. hi, ktvu. so i am rafael mandalmen. i got to take the j church in with a group of activists who are very committed to getting the j back in the tunnel. my experience on the j was a mix of the good and the bad. so i will say that two years ago, the last time that we did this, i was not actually able to participate on that day but i think my staff waited 45 minutes. there was like a three to five
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minute wait but that was fantastic. i was riding with a woman who recently had hip surgery and now there was a transfer at church and market that there was not pre-pandemic and we had to, you know, i think the experience that a lot of folks with accessibility challenges had where we got off and we have to get across this street that is a very hard street to traverse and then it turns out that the elevator that's supposed to make it possible to get down and make the transfers broken. so then we waited for the s-line which is not as frequent and actually involves a fairly rikdy contraption crossing to get into it if you are having accessibility challenges in getting in. so anyway, it was interesting to see the extra burdens that our system poses for people who may be in a wheelchair or using a walker or a cane and i think
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that needs to be foremost in our minds as we think about how to make our system work for everybody. thank you to the transit rider's union for getting us here after two years. thank you. it's been a rough couple of years, but i do want to just express my heart felt gratitude to the staff of m.t.a., the staff of the transportation authority, the operators, all the workers who have gone so far above and beyond over this last year and a half for operators getting on those buses and those trains at a time when it was not entirely clear what kinds of risks that might pose to your health when people were dying and like chicago dying in and getting sick in terrible numbers. it was a very scary time and yet people showed up to work, kept our transportation system moving and we were able to radically in a matter of days transform a system that we had,
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you know, come to rely on into an emergency system that got our essential workers back and forth to prioritize equity and i'm proud of that. i think our m.t.a. has been recognized nationally for the changes it made in those early days and putting equity first and i think that's something that they can be proud of. as we approach what we hope will be the end of the pandemic, it is clear that we are not out of the woods. many of us, all of us i think are very concerned about the notion that we might be aiming at 85% of the service that we had prior to the pandemic. i think all of us agree that the service we had prior to the pandemic was actually not adequate to the needs of san franciscans, much less the needs of the additional san franciscans that will be coming to address our affordability
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crisis. so 85% is not enough and, for me, and i think for all of my colleagues, a very high priority for the next year is going to be figuring out how to get the revenue that the m.t.a. needs to make sure that we are not aiming at worse service than we had before, but are aiming at better service than we had before. and that has been imperative for all the reasons we all know. it is the right thing to do for equity. everyone should be able to get around this city without a car, but it is also an environmental imperative as smoke is filling our airs -- is filling our air and as we face a global climate crisis, we have to get people out of their cars. so, this is a -- an exciting thing to be back. i love this. i love this event. i love that we're doing a month this year rather than just a week, and, with that, i want to
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introduce someone as a friend who i worked with and thank you so much, cat carter. >> thank you, supervisor and chair mandelman. what a beautiful day for a muni ride. we keep having these beautiful days for our ride arounds in transit month. thank you all so much for being here. thank you all who did the ride along and leaving a good example. i want to quickly introduce our colleague, who worked tirelessly to pull this all together and coordinate everything. he's been doing amazing work and he'll be up here a little later. we talk a lot ant our transit first policy and i think we all continue to fall short of that ideal. it's really past time to take our transit first policy seriously. we need to make transit the
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first choice for people to get around meaning more and better service that's fast, reliable, clean, easy to use and safe. we need to put riders first. we have no more time to waste as supervisor mandelman was just saying, the climate emergency is here. mount shasta has no snow for the first time. fires are causing massive damage across our country. before the pandemic, muni served over 700,000 daily trips while contributing less than 1% of the city's green house gases. back in the '80s, muni served over 900,000 daily trips. we need to figure out how to get that many people back on muni and more. we know some people face dyer services in the coming days and months, but we need to start building the future. we need -- we know street priority is necessary to do that and we know sfmta has done
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a pretty good job of that. we've seen them move very quickly to bring faster, more reliable service by putting transit 1 on the streets. but too many riders are still left behind. we have too much service that hasn't come back yet and we need sfmta to work quickly to improve its network. but to really put riders first, we need to grow sfts. we need to invest in it. this is going to take all of us working together. we need to build a vision of a network of fast, frequent, reliable service that connects every neighborhood that provides real accessibility. we need service that's easy and safe for all. this is the idea behind our 30 by 30 vision to have those fast, frequent routes that travel end to end and that connect all neighborhoods. we need all our city leaders to champion the major funding muni will need. we invite you to keep setting
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an example. keep logging your rides at ridecontest.org all month long and tweeting your experience. and, our city leaders need all of us as riders and as voters to keep speaking up and showing up to build the future of muni that we need. thank you again for showing up and speaking up today and every day for the future of transit in san francisco. and now, zack will introduce our next speaker. >> thank you so much, cat. we're going to hear from some of our courageous supervisors who road transit today starting with supervisor mar. >> supervisor mar: good morning, transit riders. it's so great to be here with all of and my colleagues. i'm showing our collective love for transit this morning and happy transit month.
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i rode in this morning on the n-juda and the ride seemed a little bit smoother with fewer delays and quicker than before. so that was great to see and i believe director tumlin and m.t.a. actually have some data to back that up. so, that's been really great. as you all know, we're in a critical moment for public transit in san francisco. we can't afford to debate measures. we can't afford to be divided and we can't afford to drop the ball on delivering the service or go back and forth on the world class transit system that's needed and deserved. we need to put our money where our mouth is. that means we need new revenue. we need to make sure every san francisco voter knows what's at stake. we can't go backwards for our
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climate, for vision 0, for a more livable city and planet and we have to go forward. we need more service not less. more revenue not less. more lines not less. and let's give three car trains on the njuda. let's bring bar to the west side. and, sure, let's tax the rich to fund the bus. and, we need to have the vision to ultimately create fair, free public transit in san francisco because we know every dollar invested and spent on transit pays dividends for our economic recovery, for economic mobility, for our public health and the quality of air we breathe and for combatting climate change and cutting our city's single largest source of green house gas. mobility is a human right and public good in reliable, fast, fully funded and ultimately free transit is a north star we
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all should be working for. let's get the basics right, let's dream big and let's deliver. thank you again, transit riders. thanks to m.t.a. and t.t.a. and just all of the passionate transit advocates in our city and my colleagues and i were with you and we're going to keep pushing forward to create the transit system san franciscans need and deserve. >> thank you, supervisor mar. now i'm thrilled to introduce san francisco's very own mayor. mayor london breed. >> thank you. well, good morning everybody. i am so excited to be here with all of you to really kick off transit month in san francisco and, first, i want to take this opportunity to thank all of the transit drivers, all of our operators, the sfmta staff and many of the folks who during this pandemic were essential workers because we knew that during the pandemic, so many
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people would rely on public transportation and there was a lot of concern about whether or not it would be safe and i've really got to send a shout out to jeff tumlin and the work he did to make sure we were cleaning the buses on a more regular basis and, yes, they have been cleaned on a more regular basis that we were supporting our drivers and the transit riders union, i want to thank you for raising money for masks and ppe for many of our drivers especially because we saw really high rates of covid with a number of our drivers and you stepped in, you supported them and that's what this city is all about. we know how important public transportation is. we don't want to go back to the days when i used to catch the bus in high school and junior high. we would always just look this way, look that way, is it coming? we've got to start walking? are we going to be late to
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school? well, we are new and improved. we have a lot of work to do and part of what the sfmta is trying to do as we speak is to make the system more reliable. make it more efficient. we know what we need, we know it's been very challenging to deliver to san franciscans the service that this city deserves because we're saying take public transit, but we also have to make sure that it's reliable, that it's safe, that it's clean and it's exactly what it needs to be in order to serve what is a world class city especially as we recover. i want to thank each and every one of you today and i'll see some of you on muni. i've been on muni in this pandemic in disguise because i didn't want folks to bother me when i'm trying to get from point a to point b. every time. i end up missing my stop.
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so hopefully i'll see you out there on muni this month. thank you all so much for being here. >> hello, good morning everyone. i'll just be the bearer of all good news. like every year, i rode the 49 to city hall. it was fantastic the ride. it was quick and efficient. we got here within 15 minutes or so. it was incredible. and, that's how lucky we are to have a world class transit system. we're just simply not going to be able to maintain and make it better. that is definitely a priority for me and for all of my colleagues on the board of supervisors and i am sorry that i have to leave early, but i
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have a very good reason that fits into transit month. i am a representative on m.t.c., the metropolitan commission. so congratulations. please get back on muni. it is safe. it is reliable. it is clean. can't wait to see you on the bus. take care. >> thank you, supervisor ronen. so, we have a couple more supervisors coming up. i'm thrilled to introduce supervisor chan from district 1. >> supervisor chan: good morning, transit riders. it's good to be here today. i came to san francisco's chinatown when i was 13 years old. i went to galleio high school and the 30 stop was my jam. that was great. i went to u.c. davis, but still
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used public transit. greyhound and m-track and then when i came back to work to the city, it was getting a little harder. but my first gig in city hall as an aide, i was still living in chinatown and i had the best ride to work. it was on cable car and it was awesome. i love public transit, but at the same time, you know, as my work got more demanding, life was a little bit more demanding, you know, riding around, bus hopping was not easy and for any of you who've done bus hopping in san francisco, you know it takes some time. if you miss that transfer, you know what, you can just get a lot of anxiety going on in you waiting for that next bus. so i know that means we need to do better with our public transit. you know, today as a supervisor
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representing district 1, prepandemic in the richmond, we have one of the highest ridership with 38. 60,000 riders, one direction every day. let's bring back to that level and that's what we need to do and because we know that public transit is public good and we ought to fund it like it is. you know what, i want to also give a shout out to carina chan here from china town trip. she reminded me if any of you have known that her interview with ktvu recently, she reminded me that transit equity is social, economic, and racial equity. let's remember that. happy transit month. >> supervisor stefani: good morning everybody. i am catherine stefani
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supervisor for district 2. i want to thank everyone for all their work on transportation and to the transit riders. thank you for continuing to call attention to this extremely important issue. i see my neighbor steven chun who now works for the sfmta and it's so great. i have a family of four. i have two kids. we took it right to the giants game. it was safe. it was reliable. it was frequent. we want it to be reliable. we want it to be frequent and we are very lucky we had that experience the other day. this morning, i rode the 49 in. and, again, it was an easy thing to do. but, i do want to mention something about families and transit because you cannot ignore the fact that it is very difficult for families who have kids to get around the city
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especially when you have two different school, two different droppoff times, sports, there's so much that families face when it comes to making sure transit can work into their lives. so let's not forget the families in san francisco. i know my former boss used to say transit first does not mean transit last. i want to thank everybody for your continued focus on transit. we are a first class city. we need a first class transit. so thank you for continuing to be here and thank you for your focus on that. happy transit month. >> hello transit riders. i am dean preston, district five supervisor. i want to thank transit riders for putting this event on. thank everyone else for m.t.a. and all of the workers making our transit system roll even during a pandemic.
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this month marks my 28th anniversary as an everyday muni rider and i've just got to say, i just love public transportation, love riding the bus, and, like they say in the movie, you've got to love it to hate it. here we are. but, you know, i took my daughter today to school on muni as i always do, and i thought about the fact that it takes me an hour round trip door to door to do that. and, it would take me 20 minutes if i were to drive. and, in too many ways, we are a car first city masquerading as a transit first city. we have to do everything possible with urgency to flip that script. and, so when i think about
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transit month and thank you for extending transit week to transit month so we have a whole month to celebrate transit, but, you know, i think about all the neighborhoods that i represent that continue to not have their muni lines a year and a half later. i think about district 5 families. i think about neighbors who live up on a hill who are seniors. i think of folks who have seen their muni lines suspended indefinitely with promises for the first year that their line would definitely come back and now a process in place through which their line may be permanently and forever gone. i think about how advocates and community leaders in the tenderloin and in the filmore had to fight so hard with everything else going on in the pandemic, had to fight so hard to get the 31 balboa back and thank you for fighting that fight on behalf of everyone in
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san francisco. when i think about transit month, i think about the operators that continue to drive throughout the pandemic as essential workers themselves and transporting essential workers. i think of the transit operators not just here, but in new york city who continue to operate buses and subways in the middle of catastrophic flooding. i think about all the operators from muni, sam trans, and other agencies that went to help in san jose after the tragic p.t.a. shooting. when i think about transit month, i think about the riders, all of you who choose to or who must use muni and how we as a city have not done enough for you all during this pandemic or ever in san francisco. a transit system should be based on the principles that more service leads to more rides and more riders and less
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service leads to fewer riders and fewer rides. that is why cutting service and cutting lines for financial savings is a death spiral for transit. we must win back transit ridership as we recover from this pandemic. and unfortunately and it saddens me to say it, right now, riders are being given nothing to fight for. and, are instead too often being asked to just accept osterity. we must have a more robust vision that inspires people to ride muni and to support the bold funding measures that we need to take to the ballot. we need a vision that includes fair relief on a path to free
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muni. investment in our workers and more reliable service and not strategies that pit riders from one part of town against riders from another part of town. we need a vision of a world class public transit system for our city for generations to come. and, as supervisor mar put it so well, let's tax the wealthy to make this happen. thank you so much. next up is supervisor haney. >> supervisor haney: all right. thank you, dean. i'm going to ask the easiest question that i know the answer to. who rode transit here this morning? all right. how many of you ride transit most days? all right. well, apparently, they're going to be tracking. i already looked. there's somebody who already in september has ridden transit over 60 times, so whoever that person is, if they're here, i think their name is anthony, very impressive. you probably know this person. we are going to commit not only this month to ride transit, but to support transit and i want
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to thank the transit riders union. i want to thank all of my colleagues. jeff tumlin, the mayor, the m.t.a. staff. we always rode over here this morning with a guy named jason from the m.t.a. who works so hard every day 90 this system, to improve it and it has been especially challenging over the lars year and a half and i want to recognize all of them. many of the folks here are involved in supporting this system and improving it and i want to thank all of you, the m.t.a. board as well. one of the things that has been so important this past year as there have been advocates and i see a lot of the folks standing up here who have fought for our public transportation system every single day over the last year and a half and it was under tremendous strain. other folks have said this, you know, people were scared to go
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on because they were worried that they might be sick, that it wasn't clean, that it was too crowded. as people stopped riding the bus and the train, lines were cut. all of that was a huge attack on what we know as one of the most essential parts of our city and people stood up and fought is to make sure it was maintained. and i especially want to recognize the folks who fought for the 31. this was a line and give it up for the return of the 31. people in the tenderloin. people who live in s.r.o.s. families, seniors. we rode the 31 today from district 5. i went over to district 5 with dean preston and a number of folks and we rode it in and it is such a critical east west connecter for the district that i represent and i want to thank
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you all for fighting so hard for it. the last thing i want to say is i'm the budget chair and my colleagues told me i've been authorized to put this up and to say we are committed to funding muni, funding sfmta. happy transit month. >> supervisor melgar: thank you for being here. i'm the supervisor for district 7. we actually share a longer border with district 5 in san mateo county than with district 5 in san mateo county. i will talk about the great things we're doing. we're doing really well in terms of transit. i love muni. muni is now free for all youth thank you to my colleagues and to mayor breed for making that happen and, you know, we're committed to training and
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supporting a new generation of transit riders so that we can have the highest possible ridership and get people out of their cars and into public transit. that's how we solve the climate crisis is to make sure we reduce those carbon offsets and take the bus. that's what we need to do. i am an immigrant to san francisco. i came when its 12 years it cost a nickel back then and muni gave me freedom. it was a freedom that as a kid from el salvador like very few in my generation had in my country, but here, muni alloweded us to just have the entire the world class city that is san francisco at our feet. if you haven't seen the newest marvel movie, go see it because muni is a prominent character. it's so much part of our identity. i want to thank all of you for
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your advocacy. t.w.u. and local transit workers who have put their lives and their families and health on the line for the rest of us. we need to keep supporting them and advancing this wonderful public good that is transit. in my district, we have city college, san francisco state, and u.c.s.f. as part of the zoo all of the organizations that rely on public transit to be healthy and expand. we want to make sure that san francisco comes back from this pandemic and public transit is the way. let's fund it. let's fund it adequately. let's pave the way for our future and our childrens' future by having a muni system that's fair, that's affordable and that is open to all. thank you so much. sorry. i was supposed to introduce my great friend supervisor ahsha
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safai. >> supervisor safai: good morning everyone. supervisor safai here. in the past, i have to say and truthfully, i've been a big critic of the sfmta and a lot of that has been justified, but today i want to focus on the positive. i think within the last year, even in the midst of this pandemic, there's been a lot of improvement. there's still a lot of room to grow. there's still a lot of improvements to be made. despite all of the challenges and a virus that's spreading rapidly via air internally, our operators showed up to work. many of those operators live in my district in the excelsior, omy and outer mission and they don't complain. i mean, they do complain, julie, i know you know that, but justifiably, they show up. and, if they have complaints, they make it known, but they still show up and do their job
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every single day. so i had an awesome driver today on the 14r. her name was "dee." we got from geneva and mission all the way to the inner mission and 14th. my daughter rode with me, got her to school in less than 20 minutes. it was a wonderful ride. the red lanes worked. no one was blocking us. the driver drove professionally and, you know, what, the bus was packed, but it felt safe. every single person was wearing a mask. i forgot my wallet at home. she still waited for me. i had to come back but we made it on time and i think there has been a lot of good work done and a lot of that improvement has been the result of the advocacy of the transit riders and those that know the system intimately ride it day in and day out. so i'm very happy to say that the part of town that i
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represent, the essential workers have been getting up every single day to get to work, they're riding those buses. every single one of the buses was packed today. the 14r, the 14, 43, every single one of them. and thanks so supervisor melgar and her advocacy, we have the m-line coming back. that's also serving our district now. that's a really big deal. you know, the 52 excelsior's back. we are making improvements and, yes, my daughter rode for free. thank you, supervisor melgar for your advocacy and mayor breed and the rest of the board and supervisor preston for really making access for those children and youth a high priority. so we're going to continue to celebrate it this month. we're going to continue to promote muni in any way and ridership as we can and we will invest in the right way. it also means pedestrian safety
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and traffic calming. so, anyway, proud to be part of this day today, proud to support this effort and i'll stand with all of you in continuing to make muni a priority. thank you. >> good morning. my name is jeffery tumlin and i'm here to say that public transit is fundamental. 47% of san francisco's green house gas emissions comes from the transport sector and public transit is the primary way we're going to make a difference with climate change. public transit is opportunity and our way to correct for past inequity. public transit is essential for efforts to improve health and safety of our population and public transit is essential for san francisco's economic recovery after this brutal 18 months. i'm particularly grateful to all of our front line and
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operations crews particularly our operators who showed up to work every single day through a pandemic to make sure that essential workers could continue to get to work. i'm grateful for the incredible creativity and risk taking that all of our transit planning staff did in reinventing the muni system practically every month for nearly 18 months and i'm really proud of the achievements that they've been able to do with all of that work that they did. we're getting phenomenal speed and reliability improments on all of our core systems. yesterday, we released preliminary data that was showing 20% in speed on the freeway. benefits that i did not think were possible and involved a tremendous amount of risk taking and creativity among our crews. i'm grateful to our traffic engineering team who has
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invested in designing 20 miles the in order to hold on to all the speed and reliability improvements we've gotten during covid. and i'm grateful to the operatoring crews who on our frequent lines shifted to headway management which has meant that our buses are more reliable than they've been in all of the decades than we have data to support that. i'm so grateful to our riders union who've put up with all of the changes that we've made. the stumbles that we've made, the corrections that we've made in order to try to deliver the best possible transit system despite the challenges we are facing. i'm also here to ask for your help. i think has been made clear to all of you, muni is facing the worst financial crisis in history. we're so thankful to the government for getting us through last year and this year. what's clear from all of the data from the counselor and the controller's office is we're expecting at least another four
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years of huge covid related financial losses. particularly to two of our three biggest sources of revenue, parking fees and transit fares. we're going to need a lot of help to find ways to fill those gaps. we, all of us on muni staff believe that we were delivering far inadequate service back before covid. we need dramatic expansion and improment in the frequency, the number of lines, the speed, the reliability. we need a world class transit system for san francisco and we're going to need help from all of you. i'm also so grateful to all the board of supervisors and have offered their help to find ways to fill this gap to fund mu nshgd eeushgd and to finally deliver the transit system that san francisco deserve its and need. and, with that, i'd like to introduce our sfmt academic
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board chair. >> thank you so much for that, jeff. i'm so grateful for our staff, the leadership of jeff tumlin in helping to reconfigure transit. our operators were essential workers and it was a really tough time for many of them as they struggled with things in their family. they showed up;, they persevered and they served this city. what was also so illuminating at that time was our riders were essential workers. in those areas where we had a lot of essential workers. i really want to thank the transit riders, you guys have made such a large difrnts. because so many of our riders are essential workers and can't come up and show up at a hearing and testify and support the need for transit, the voice that you provide is super powerful and i'm so grateful bringing this up, celebrating for a month.
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we need to tell all san franciscans, public transportation is essential ask we need them to support our ultimate ballot measure which will come in the future for our funding needs. i want to thank the leadership of our board of supervisor, also our transportation authority for all committing here to support our funding in the future. it is really critical. the biggest challenge public transit has is it's not as sexy as so many other areas and it's very costly. especially to maintain the reliability and the service. we want to bring back as much service and all the lines that we can but it's crucial because covid really battered our revenue sources and we really increasingly depend on the general funds. we don't have the advantage of generating most of our revenue but that means it's more critical that we need your support. we need all of our elected leadership, everyone in the public. the transit riders and everyone to champion us for a future
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that we can provide the visionary network that everyone wants and deserves and, without it, our city will struggle. i invite all of these people who've been off of transit to come back. we need you to come back to survive and thrive. i need you all to evangelize it taking muni is safe. tell them about our faster service. i live on the 14r, 49 line. i take those buses almost every single day and i have to say i've been so impressed whether it's 1:00 in the morning or 5:00 in the morning. thank you for your advocacy and let's fight together for public transit. >> thank you, director boarden. director tumlin, director chang.
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all the supervisors and mayor who made it out here today to celebrate transit month. and all of you who are standing in the sun for the past hour showing your commitment to a better transit future. thank you, everyone. public transit is at the core of san francisco's economic recovery. muni kept us going during the pandemic thanks to the work of the transit operators, our safety ambassadors and all our front line workers who risked their health to keep our city going. roger moranko is unable to be here today. thank you muni operators and members who kept us going during this pandemic and keep us going today. now, more than ever, we know that muni is more than just a line on the map and more than
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just a yellow sign post at an intersection. it's a sense of belonging and freedom of movement it's access to education, to jobs, to all the opportunities san francisco has to offer. from the bay view to the richmond. just because i owned a fast pass. but supervisor melgar, it was $0.35 when i was a kid. it's a little bit more today we're gathered here today to celebrate transit but we also know how much further we need to go. many lines remain suspended with their futures uncertain and sfmta doesn't have the funds it needs to invest in 21st century transit needs.
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i have hope to reinvest and fund a world class transit system here in san francisco. hope that when we raise our collective voices together, anything is possible. we're the people who make this city hum. the people who never stop riding during the pandemic. who know what's at stake should we fail to invest. but we're also the ones to make this change happen. in fact, we're the only ones who can. so, thank you all for gathering here today. thank you for your energy, for your spirit and for celebrating transit not this month, but every month to come for a world class transit system here in san francisco. thank you. so that is the end of our rally and press conference. if you have not yet go to ride contest.org to sign up and track your rides this month. we're giving out prizes for
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>> restaurants will be open for take out only, but nonessential stores, like bars and gyms, will close effective midnight tonight. [♪♪♪] >> my name is sharky laguana. i am a small business owner. i own a company called vandigo van rentals. it rents vans to the music industry. i am also a member of the small business commission as appointed by mayor breed in 2019. i am a musician and have worked as a professional musician and
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recording artist in the 90s. [♪♪♪] >> we came up in san francisco, so i've played at most of the live venues as a performer, and, of course, i've seen hundreds of shows over the years, and i care very, very deeply about live entertainment. in fact, when i joined the commission, i said that i was going to make a particular effort to pay attention to the arts and entertainment and make sure that those small businesses receive the level of attention that i think they deserve. >> this is a constantly and rapidly changing situation, and we are working hard to be aggressive to flatten the curve to disrupt the spread of covid-19. >> when the pandemic hit, it was crystal clear to me that this was devastating to the
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music industry because live venues had to completely shutdown. there was no way for them to open for even a single day or in limited capacity. that hit me emotionally as an artist and hit me professionally, as well as a small business that caters to artists, so i was very deeply concerned about what the city could do to help the entertainment committee. we knew we needed somebody to introduce some kind of legislation to get the ball rolling, and so we just started texting supervisor haney, just harassing him, saying we need to do something, we need to do something. he said i know we need to do something, but what do we do? we eventually settled on this idea that there would be an independent venue recovery fund. >> clerk: there are 11 ayes. >> president walton: thank you. without objection, this
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resolution is passed unanimously. >> and we were concerned for these small mom-and-pop businesses that contribute so much to our arts community. >> we are an extremely small venue that has the capacity to do extremely small shows. most of our staff has been working for us for over ten years. there's very little turnover in the staff, so it felt like family. sharky with the small business commission was crucial in pestering supervisor haney and others to really keep our industry top of mind. we closed down on march 13 of 2020 when we heard that there was an order to do so by the
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mayor, and we had to call that show in the middle of the night. they were in the middle of their sound check, and i had to call the venue and say, we need to cancel the show tonight. >> the fund is for our live music and entertainment venues, and in its first round, it will offer grants of at least $10,000 to qualifying venues. these are venues that offer a signature amount of live entertainment programming before the pandemic and are committed to reopening and offering live entertainment spaces after the pandemic. >> it's going to, you know, just stave off the bleeding for a moment. it's the city contributing to helping make sure these venues are around, to continue to be
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part of the economic recovery for our city. >> when you think about the venues for events in the city, we're talking about all of them. some have been able to come back adaptively over the last year and have been able to be shape shifters in this pandemic, and that's exciting to see, but i'm really looking forward to the day when events and venues can reopen and help drive the recovery here in san francisco. >> they have done a study that says for every dollar of ticket sales done in this city, $12 goes to neighboring businesses. from all of our vendors to the restaurants that are next to our ven sues and just so many other things that you can think of, all of which have been so negatively affected by covid. for this industry to fail is unthinkable on so many levels. it's unheard of, like, san
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francisco without its music scene would be a terribly dismal place. >> i don't know that this needs to be arrest -- that there needs to be art welfare for artists. we just need to live and pay for our food, and things will take care of themselves. i think that that's not the given situation. what san francisco could do that they don't seem to do very much is really do something to support these clubs and venues that have all of these different artists performing in them. actually, i think precovid, it was, you know, don't have a warehouse party and don't do a gig. don't go outside, and don't do this. there was a lot of don't, don't, don't, and after the pandemic, they realized we're a big industry, and we bring a lot of money into this city, so
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they need to encourage and hope these venues. and then, you know, as far as people like me, it would be nice if you didn't only get encouraged for only singing opera or playing violin. [♪♪♪] >> entertainment is a huge part of what is going to make this city bounce back, and we're going to need to have live music coming back, and comedy, and drag shows and everything under the sun that is fun and creative in order to get smiles back on our faces and in order to get the city moving again. [♪♪♪] >> venues serve a really vital function in society. there aren't many places where people from any walk of life,
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race, religion, sexuality can come together in the same room and experience joy, right? experience love, experience anything that what makes us human, community, our connective tissues between different souls. if we were to lose this, lose this situation, you're going to lose this very vital piece of society, and just coming out of the pandemic, you know, it's going to help us recover socially? well, yeah, because we need to be in the same room with a bunch of people, and then help people across the country recover financially. >> san francisco art recovery fund, amazing. it opened yesterday on april 21. applications are open through may 5. we're encouraging everyone in the coalition to apply. there's very clear information on what's eligible, but that's basically been what our coalition has been advocating
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for from the beginning. you know, everyone's been supportive, and they've all been hugely integral to this program getting off the ground. you know, we found our champion with supervisor matt haney from district six who introduced this legislation and pushed this into law. mayor breed dedicated $1.5 million this fund, and then supervisor haney matched that, so there's $3 million in this fund. this is a huge moment for our coalition. it's what we've been fighting for all along. >> one of the challenges of our business is staying on top of all the opportunities as they come back. at the office of oewd, office of economic and workforce development, if you need to speak to somebody, you can find people who can help you navigate any of the available programs and resources. >> a lot of blind optimism has
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kept us afloat, you know, and there's been a lot of reason for despair, but this is what keeps me in the business, and this is what keeps me fighting, you know, and continuing to advocate, is that we need this and this is part of our life's blood as much as oxygen and food is. don't lose heart. look at there for all the various grants that are available to you. some of them might be very slow to unrao, and it might seem like too -- unroll, and it might seem like it's too late, but people are going to fight to keep their beloved venues open, and as a band, you're going to be okay. [♪♪♪].
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>> shop and dine the 49 challenges residents to do they're shopping with the 49ers of san francisco by supporting the services within the feigned we help san francisco remain unique and successful and rib rant where will you shop the shop and dine the 49 i'm e jonl i provide sweets square feet potpie and peach cobbler and i started my business this is my baby i started out of high home and he would back for friends and coworkers they'll tell you hoa you need to open up a shop at the time he move forward book to
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the bayview and i thinks the t line was up i need have a shop on third street i live in bayview and i wanted to have my shop here in bayview a quality dessert shot shop in my neighborhood in any business is different everybody is in small banishes there are homemade recess pesz and ingredients from scratch we shop local because we have someone that is here in your city or your neighborhood that is provide you with is service with quality ingredients and quality products and need to be know that person the person behind the products it is not like okay. who >> candlestick park known also as the stick was an outdoor stadium for sports and
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entertainment. built between 1958 to 1960, it was located in the bayview hunters point where it was home to the san francisco giants and 49ers. the last event held was a concert in late 2014. it was demolished in 2015. mlb team the san francisco giants played at candlestick from 1960-1999. fans came to see players such a willie mays and barry bonds, over 38 seasons in the open ballpark. an upper deck expansion was added in the 1970s. there are two world series played at the stick in 1962 and in 198 9. during the 1989 world series against the oakland as they were shook by an earthquake. candlestick's enclosure had minor damages from the quake but its design saved thousands of
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lives. nfl team the san francisco 49ers played at candlestick from feign 71-2013. it was home to five-time super bowl champion teams and hall of fame players by joe montana, jerry rice and steve jones. in 1982, the game-winning touchdown pass from joe montana to dwight clark was known as "the catch." leading the niners to their first super bowl. the 49ers hosted eight n.f.c. championship games including the 2001 season that ended with a loss to the new york giants. in 201, the last event held at candlestick park was a concert by paul mccartney who played with the beatles in 1966, the stadium's first concert. demolition of the stick began in late 2014 and it was completed in september 2015. the giants had moved to pacific rail park in 2000 while the
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49ers moved to santa clara in 2014. with structural claims and numerous name changes, many have passed through and will remember candlestick park as home to the legendary athletes and entertainment. these memorable moments will live on in a place called the stick. (♪♪♪) we'll be meeting remotely. various to state, local, and federal order directives. commission members and employees will attend via
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