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tv   Mayors Press Availability  SFGTV  October 2, 2021 8:35pm-9:01pm PDT

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the call of the chair. can we please take a -- a vote on that motion? >> clerk: yes, mr. chair, and i also wanted to confirm that there are no other callers in the queue. on the motion to continue item number 11 to the call of the chair -- [roll call] >> clerk: there are three ayes. >> chair haney: all right. this item will be continued to the call of the chair. madam clerk, are there any other items before us today? >> clerk: there's no further business. >> chair haney: great. this meeting's adjourned. thank you, colleagues.
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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
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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 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
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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. 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
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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 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
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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 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
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something that simple. we must do better. but a bakery recently was vandalized, pharmacy ramshacked and they faced two cases of 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
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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 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.
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(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 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,
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there's been dozens of businesses that are victims. 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
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the creation of the program. i remember when i came to visit michael, after footprint was broken into it and his efforts 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
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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 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
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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 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)
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>> it's an honor to be here and i want to thank supervisor mar, mayor breed for taking time and 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
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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 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 --
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carlin company hair studio. i just want to take a moment to thank supervisor mar for helping push through the relief bill and 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
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cover stolen goods or shared spaces. >> for -- this is a vandalism relief fund. it is for, sadly, people who 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
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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 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
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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 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
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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, 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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shop and dine in the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges residents to do their shopping and dining within the 49 square miles of san francisco. by supporting local services within our neighborhoods, we help san francisco remain unique, successful, and vibrant. so where will you shop and dine in the 49? >> my name is ray behr. i am the owner of chief plus. it's a destination specialty foods store, and it's also a corner grocery store, as well. we call it cheese plus because there's a lot of additions in addition to cheese here. from fresh flowers, to wine, past a, chocolate, our dining area and espresso bar. you can have a casual meeting if you want to. it's a real community gathering
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place. what makes little polk unique, i think, first of all, it's a great pedestrian street. there's people out and about all day, meeting this neighbor and coming out and supporting the businesses. the businesses here are almost all exclusively independent owned small businesses. it harkens back to supporting local. polk street doesn't look like anywhere u.s.a. it has its own businesses and personality. we have clothing stores to gallerys, to personal service stores, where you can get your hsus repaired, luggage repaired. there's a music studio across the street. it's raily a diverse and unique offering on this really great street. i think san franciscans should shop local as much as they can because they can discover things that they may not be familiar with. again, the marketplace is
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changing, and, you know, you look at a screen, and you click a mouse, and you order something, and it shows up, but to have a tangible experience, to be able to come in to taste things, to see things, to smell things, all those things, it's very important that you do so. >> chair mar: good morning. welcome