tv Mayors Press Availability SFGTV September 30, 2021 4:25pm-5:01pm PDT
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>> okay. sorry. all right. good morning everyone. i'm san francisco mayor london breed and i'm excited to be here at footprint with michael, the owner. with our captain and our assessor-recorder, the supervisor of the community gordon mar and office of economic and work force development. so many people who work hard to help support our small businesses because we know despite what has happened during the pandemic, so many of our small businesses have been suffering in san francisco. the cost of doing business, the ability to find a storefront and
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go through the city's bureaucratic process to get open in the first place has changed our city as we know it. often times during the spring time, we're celebrating small businesses in san francisco but we need to do a better job of putting our money where our mouth is when we talk about supporting small businesses. i still go to the same dry cleaner i have been going to since i was a kid. i still go to the same dentist i have been going to since i've had teeth, i go to the same place to get my nails done when i can afford to get them done. it is an important part of the spirit of san francisco, we love our neighborhood shops and restaurants and businesses and we want to do everything we can to support them and this pandemic has made life very challenging. i remember walking around in the castro, there are a lot of businesses i frequent because they're close to where i live.
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one day i was walking and i noticed something different. there were a lot of windows that were broken. i was devastated, but i was so angry. i thought now all of the money that they struggle to make during the pandemic is now going into fixing something that they did not do. in fact, in the castro, there was one person who vandalized all five of the windows broken. in chinatown, 20 businesses were vandalized and thanks the the san francisco police department, that one person that vandalized those 20 businesses has been arrested and is currently being detained in our jails. the fact is, we have to make sure that we are doing everything we can in this city to hold people accountable for the crimes they commit. but we never want those crimes
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to happen in the first place. if they do, we have to stand by our small businesses. we have to provide the relief and support they need because it's not just about the business owner and their livelihood, it's also their employees who are supporting families themselves. it's a big deal. and so in san francisco, we've tried to be very creative about the programs we have instituted, especially since this pandemic. we have been able to give out a significant amount of resources for grants, for loans, for facade improvements. for people dealing with challenges. we know that that little bit of money goes a long way. with our sf shines programs and a number of things, we have been able to help support small businesses and in addition to that, just recently the board of
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supervisors supported an effort to for the next year provide for those who want to open new businesses in san francisco, able to waive a number of city fees that often times are expensive and makes it difficult to open a business. we know we have too many empty store fronts. we have to get rid of the bureaucracy like we did when voters passed prop 8 and small business recovery efforts. we hope businesses notice a difference and just to be clear, for someone who may want to -- i'm sure you have probably heard about this, change a nail shop to an ice cream bar or shop, it shouldn't take two years to do something that simple. we must do better. but a bakery recently was vandalized, pharmacy ramshacked and they faced two cases of
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vandalism. frank's flowers burned to the ground. all these incredible places that are institutions in our city. i want to thank supervisor mar for working with us to establish this new program, this vandalism relief fund that will provide anywhere from 1-2 thousand dollars to those who need to provide repairs the first their businesses. we allocated a million dollars in the budget to do that because we know there are so many businesses that have experienced this. this is one of so many of the programs that we try to offer to help support and protect our small businesses. there's not a one size fits all. san francisco is an expensive city, but i'm really proud of the fact that we continue time and time again to look at creative ways to invest in small businesses. they are the driving engine of san francisco. we can't just keep talking about
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it and adding more layers of bureaucracy to make life difficult for them. we have to make changes to our policies, we have to make changes to our investment. we have to do that because we need to see a change in the city we all know and love, built on the backs of small businesses. i want to thank you all for being here and i'm really excited that footprints is a beneficiary because of the challenges they experienced and i'm looking forward to make sure at least 500 businesses i think will benefit from this program and hopefully we won't have to use all of it. i want to take this opportunity to introduce our partner in this effort, supervisor gordon mar. (applause) >> thank you mayor breed and everyone for being here for the announcement of the relief grant program. i'm pleased to be here along with mayor breed, office of
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economic work force development, assessor-recorder and our merchant association to announce this important, very important new program that the city is start together provide economic relief and support to our mom and pop businesses that have been victims during the pandemic. unfortunately that's a lot of businesses throughout the city and particularly in residential neighborhoods. during the pandemic, we have seen a surge in vandalism and burglaries, in particular targeting neighborhood businesses in our neighborhoods. here in the sunset district, there's been dozens of businesses that are victims.
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mr. bread bakery, sugar and water dessert cafe were all burglarized and we have seen it play out in other areas. on irving many businesses have been hit. and then most recently and i think it has gotten some attention, frank's florist, 87-year-old historic business not only burglarized but burned out last week. i want to really thank michael, the owner of footprint shoe store here for first suggesting the creation of the program. i remember when i came to visit michael, after footprint was broken into it and his efforts
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to recover. michael mentioned that it would be helpful to owners like him who have suffered these losses to have a little bit of financial support from the city in their recovery. and whether it is to repair the broken windows or damage to the storefront, to pay their insurance deductible or to beef up security system, to prevent -- to hopefully prevent crime impacting them in the future. from that conversation i had with michael back in february, i started working with my staff and colleagues on the board and in june, i proposed $1 million to provide a fund for small businesses and i want to thank mayor breed for working with my office over the past three months to create this program. i know, you know, we are hopefully going to be able to
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provide support to at least 500 businesses through this program. but the need is even greater and we're going to look at how we can expand the pot. in the budget, i think there's an additional -- some additional funds in this year's budget that we can used to expand the pot if there is a great demand for the program, which i think there will be. beyond that, this is just providing relief to the businesses and supporting them in their recovery. but we really need to look at how we can prevent the steps the cities can take. i know mayor breed and chief scott in the police department and -- good folks here at this station are committed to as well. i'm going to hold a hearing mid october in the public safety neighborhood committee as to what we can do as a city to address crime in our commercial
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corridors and ensure safety for businesses and residents. that will be an opportunity to really look at how we can prevent this type of crime from happening in the future. today we are here to announce the launch of the important new program and i want to introduce sunset native who took over this footprint shoe store from the previous owners just before the pandemic kicked in. i want to thank michael for keeping this important business going in the neighborhood and serving the community and for suggesting that we create the store front relief program. thank you. (applause) >> it's an honor to be here and i want to thank supervisor mar, mayor breed for taking time and
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putting this program and their entire teams and everybody behind the scenes, putting this grant together so small businesses can come out of this. i want to thank the station after our store got vandalized, the captain reached out personally and was along my side to get through the insurance handling process. he and his team were there for us. thank you. the pandemic has been for me, never knew what a pandemic was. when i took over the business i was excited to start and two weeks later we were told we had to close. i think something that is positive that has come out of the pandemic is community. i think without the pandemic, this never would have happened. i definitely see this is a positive to come out of covid-19
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and i look forward to continue to engage with the city to help small businesses. i grew up just a few blocks from this store. i shop and eat at all of the neighborhood stores and it is very sad to see them struggling. but i do believe if we come together, with the help of the grant for the stores that got vandalized, we'll be able to come out stronger and united as a whole together. i want to introduce people to come up. grace? (applause) >> hi, i am with carolyn lin -- carlin company hair studio. i just want to take a moment to thank supervisor mar for helping push through the relief bill and
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mayor breed for signing the bill and pushing it through. it is very much needed. we have been in much -- had many challenges, the construction and pandemic and now crime. it is good to have relief and help from the city in these very hard times. just want to thank you supervisor mar and mayor breed. and i guess i'm the last speaker, we're all available for questions if you have questions for the speakers. >> i saw that the release was saying that grants aren't to cover stolen goods or shared spaces. >> for -- this is a vandalism relief fund. it is for, sadly, people who
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have been victims. there are specific requirements we have. for example, if you have been vandalized, we would ask that you report it to the police. so we want to make sure there's a police report and receipts for the expenses. and if you are a victim of graffiti for example, all 311 to report it and as long as we have receipts, we can provide the relief. today we brought the checks for footprints, not just the vandalism relief fund for what he had to deal with but also sf shines and the less questions you ask, the more time we can spend shopping to spend more money in his good store. christian? >> i'm not sure if it's for the mayor or supervisor, are we talking broken grass, graffiti you talked about. what does it cover? and does it work in conjunction
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with broken glass? >> just to be clear, it is any vandalism related to anything you would need to make a police report for the vandalism on your store and it could include graffiti and often times people don't leslie make police reports for graffiti but if you have been vandalized and something needs to be fixed because of the vandalism, that is what it encompasses. the money from the broken windows fund can be used as a tool as well. so for example, say if you had a broken window and then you also as a result have desire to put in cameras and other systems the enhance and protect your store, there's possible support through these various programs to do that with a cap on the idea that
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we provide. the vandalism relief fund is capped at $2,000 at this time. >> can we have an idea of what is going on? [indiscernible] is it one person or -- >> captain, do you want to talk about that today? >> so we made an arrest recently and it was a series of vandalisms occurring in the chinatown business corridors and it was occurring up and down ocean avenue. so, from the investigation in that arrest, what we were able to learn was it was basically one person that was responsible for upwards of 30 or 40 incidents. in that case, we do know based on interviewing that person,
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too, that it was prejudice based. there was vandalism involved but it was driven by prejudice and again, 30-40 incidents is quite a lot of incidents. and across multiple police districts. hopefully that arrest in and of itself will reduce a lot of these incidents. >> feel free to shop if you want. thank you for being here. ♪♪♪
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>> as a woman of color who grew up in san francisco i understand how institutions can have an impact on communities of color. i think having my voice was important. that is where my passion lies when the opportunity to lead an office in such a new space came up. i couldn't turn it down. i was with the district attorney's office for a little over nine years, if you include the time as an intern as well as volunteer da, all most 13 years. during the time with the da's office i had an opportunity to
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serve the community not only as the assistant district attorney but as director of community relations. that afforded the opportunity to have impact on the community in an immediate way. it is one thing to work to serve the rights of those without rights, victims. it is really rewarding to work to to further the goals of our office and the commitment we have as city employees and advocates for people who don't have a voice. i don't know of anyone surprised to see me in this role. maybe people have an impression what the director of the office of cannabis should be like, what their beliefs should be. i smash all of that. you grew up in the inner city of san francisco. my career path is not traditional. i don't think a person should limit themselves to reach full potential. i say that to young women and
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girls. that is important. you want to see leadership that looks diverse because your path is not predetermined. i didn't wake up thinking i was going to be a prosecutor in my life. the city administrator reached out and wanted to have a conversation and gave me interest in the new role. i thought you must not know what i do for a living. it was the opposite. she had foresight in realizing it would be helpful for somebody not only a former prosecutor but interested in shaping criminal justice reform for the city would be the right person for the space. i appreciate the foresight of the mayor to be open how we can be leaders in san francisco. i was able to transition to the policy space. here i was able to work on legislation, community relations, communication and start to shape the ways our office was going to reform the criminal justice system. it is fulfilling for me.
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i could create programs and see those impact people's lives. i am the change. it took truants youth to meet with civil rights movement leaders who fought to have access to education. being a young person to understand that helped the young people realize this was an important thing to give up. what we find is that young people who are truanted have a really high homicide rate in our city, which is a sad statistic. we want to change that. >> coming from a community we are black and brown. i don't reach out to other people. i don't think they feel the same way. >> i had the great opportunity to work on prison reform issues and criminal justice reform issues. we created a program at san quentin where we brought
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district opportunities to lifers and talk about how we are all impacted by the criminal justice system. we brought over 40 elected das to san quentin for the situation. now we are inviting the police department. our formerly incarcerated group born out of this programming asked for the opportunity to work on a project where we could bring the men in blue on the outside to come speak to the men on blue inside to start the healing dialogue around how the criminal justice system specifically in san francisco impacts the community. i was attracted to the role. there was a component of equity that was part of this process. the equity community here in san francisco is a community that i had already worked with. before i took steps to visit cannabis businesses i thought it was important my team have a chance to go inside and speak to
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men who had been impacted. that conversation needed to happen so we know how we are making an impact with the work that we are doing. the da's office as we were leading up to the legalization of marijuana in the state we started having conversations on the policy team what that could look like. the district attorney was really focused on the right side of history for this. we realized it would be quite a heavy lift for individuals who have been negatively impacted by the war on drugs to expunge the record. it was important to figure out the framework to make it seamless and easy. they put their minds to it after some time and many conversations the data analysts and other policy walk throughs on the team came up with the idea to engage
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the tech community in this process. code for america helped us developed the rhythm to be used for any jurisdiction across the state that was important to create a solution to be used to assist all jurisdictions dealing with this matter. the office of cannabis is the first office to have a completely digital application process. we worked with the digital team to develop the online application. there are going to be hiccups. we are first to do it. it is one of the most rewarding parts to offer a seamless -- to offer a seamless approach. that is how they can find solutions to solve many of the community challenges. the best way to respond to prop 64 was to retroactively expunge 9,000 cannabis related records for san francisco. it feels like justice full
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circle for my personal experience. in the past i was furthering the war on drugs just as my directive. really coming from a place of public safety. that was the mandate and understanding. it is nice to see that pass a society we are able to look at some of our laws and say, you know what? we got it wrong. let's get this right. i had the privilege of being in the existing framework. my predecessor nicole elliott did an incredible job bringing together the individuals super-passionate about cannabis. >> the office was created in july of 2017. i came in early 2018. i have been able to see the office's development over time which is nice. it is exciting to be in the space, stickily in thinking about her leadership. >> looking for the office it is
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always we might be before my time when i was working for the forboard of supervisors. i learn new things every day it is challenging and rewarding for me. >> we get the privilege to work in an office that is innovating. we get to spearhead the robust exprogram. >> i am excited she came on board to leverage experience as a prosecutor 10 years as we contemplate enforcements but approaching it without replicating the war on drugs. >> i was hired by cam laharris. i haven't seen a district attorney that looked kind of like me. that could be a path in my life. i might not have considered it. it is important that women and certainly women of color and
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spaces of leadership really do their part to bring on and mentor as many young people as they can. it is superimportant to take advantage of as many opportunities as they can when they can intern because the doors are wide open. plans change and that is okay. the way this was shaped because i took a risk to try something new and explore something and show that i was capable. you are capable, right? it was about leaning in and being at the table to say my voice matters. you find your passion, the sky
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>> candlestick park known also as the stick was an outdoor stadium for sports and 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,
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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 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.
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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 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. (♪♪♪)
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>> chair: good morning, and welcome to the rules committee of the san francisco board of supervisors for september 27, 2021. i'm joined by vice chair raphael mandelman and connie chan. our clerk today is ms. alyssa samera a. do you have any announcements? >> yes, mr. chair. the minutes will reflect that the committee members participated in this meeting remotely throughvity conference to the same extent as if they were physically present. we invite public participation
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