aided by return of conventions and hotel rooms in san francisco by tourists. i will turn this over to paul to talk about fiscal year 19-20 for both districts. >> thank you, chris and thank you everyone for the opportunity to be here today. the first section i will review the tourism improvement district. related to convention sales generated 355 meetings with $275 million in direct spending. i did want to make a note as i present these numbers the change from the previous year's reports. this is down 83% from the previous fiscal year due to

covid. also, related to sales bookings we had over 485,000 room nights booked. this is down 73% in bookings also due to covid. we also attended 20 virtual meetings. typically we would attend 200 live meetings during the year. this is down significantly as well. marketing and promotion. leisure visitors comprised 11% -- 91% of all visitors. typically that would be 60% because of the decrease in amount of business travel and meetings. visitor center saw 2000 people in first two months of 2020. that is down significantly. closer to 250,000. we continue to have staff that speaks over 12 languages.

related to marketing efforts. we had recorded 11.8 million visitors. typically it is 30 million. we were able to continue to get media reporting. that did not change significantly. it definitely was a drop. we do our website we have 2.9 million unique visitors. this was a drop of about 70%. typically travelers will use our website to find out about the city, things they can do. since no one was traveling and planning was much lighter, this decreased significantly as well. in the economic impact of these visitors with 82 million.

typically it is closer to 250 million. we did grow the media followings with the instagram, twitter and facebook. moscone expansion district. the end of 2019 we did see the finish early 2019 the finish of the moscone expansion project. it was on time and on budget. one significant thing we did host was pcma. it is for to 20 attracted 4800 meeting planners and attendees. this is key to promote meetings at convention centers and hotels. we as the city only have an opportunity maybe once every 10 to 15 years to host this event.

this was just before the pandemic. it was in january. it was a really successful event. this slide the moscone expansion incentive fund is down to 150,000. i think what is significant to note is that the previous period this was at 2.5 million. this is our incentive fund we use to help attract business. due to the lack of funding andmed due to low occupancy it was severely impacted. this fund is used to attract new clients and retain clients during any type of events going on in the city. >> to interrupt you that was your 10 minutes. >> that is the end of my slides.

>> perfect timing. thank you very much for your presentation. as we have said to others who have been presenting reports on their district. we recognize what a very challenging period this has been and just want to thank you for your work and leadership during what has been in many ways an impossible time especially for folks depending on the tourism industry, which is showing some signs of life but we have a long way to come back. i see supervisor chan on the roster. >> thank you, chair preston. i, too, concur with chair

preston has said. it is a challenging time for a lot of really industries and definitely tourism. i am curious given the challenges you face and unpredictability in terms of tourism. i think that. [indiscernable] by comparison to other major cities in terms of tourism recovery. what are the strategies? we look to you for tourism expertise and just seeing how you are over $2 million to $150,000 that is alarming. the numbers point to a dire picture. trying to understand now what

you have it is coming to terms. we have to make payments. what are your strategies? i know it is a big question. >> sure. i understand the question. i am happy to answer. the key strategies. look at the typical market mix of visitors that come to the city. typically leisure visitors make up 30% of the visitors coming in. with the november 8th change for international visitation opening up from europe that will help impact us. also, if office workers start coming back we do hope in january that will see a pickup in business travel. it makes up about 22 to 25% of

travel into the city. it has been virtually nonexistent. those are two key factors. meetings at moscone and in general that are held at hotels, we have a lot of demand. the sales team is quite busy answering a lot of calls related to future meetings at moscone center. we are starting to see some pick up in terms of bookings for late 22 and 23 that are more corporate groups that tend to book short term. your associations book five to six years out, same with medical conventions. we are starting to see pickup with those. we feel based on our forecast that probably by mid-22, maybe

earlier, maybe may, around there things will pick back up. it will take a couple years from our projections before we get back to 2019 level. we are still concerned. i think the mandates related to masks and things going on with covid are impacting the ability to host meetings. until those things change we will be challenged. >> i think it is a more specific question. knowing it the true we have international travel specifically from european countries. we know that asia is not open. asia and international travel. meanwhile that is more for tourism improvement district and where my function is your strategy could change and depend on the events that we don't see

asian travel opening up any time soon. it will be a different strategy for the tourism industry. my assumption for your moscone expansion district is more domestic travel. that is assumption. could you validate that? is moscone for conventions more domestic flights and corporations for the booking? >> moscone typically comprises 90% domestic attendance. probably 10% international. it depends on the event. medical events tend to see more international travel. asia is a big part of it. for us when we -- if you were to break down travel between asia

and the rest of the world, it is probably about 60% nonasian and 40% asian travel. you are correct that there would be less travel even though europe is opening back up for travel. that impacts the meeting business as well. 90% domestic. we do see that the numbers that are projected are still far below 2019, but they are starting to grow as things change with covid. >> thank you so much for all of your answers. thank you, chair preston. >> thank you, supervisor chan. >> this is first one in the version of the tourism im provement district we have had

since i joined this committee. i am trying to wrap my brain around the differences between the community district that we see and just wondering and maybe this is more for mr. corbin. i think you talked about the side size -- size of the tourism district from. the public side a lot of folks with a lot of community ambassador services, cleaning, public safety, escorts, that kind of thing. my understanding this is a more focused on promotion of travel slightly different flavor. i am curious on those things more traditionally that we see around cleans is that at all part of these districts or is

that done in partnership with anyone in the area? if you could address that, that would be great. >> i would be happy to. chair preston and the supervisors or 11 members much the board i am happy to provide information on the community benefit and business improvement district program at your leisure. main difference between community benefit which are property based and the business-based improvement goes to assessment. i will get a little wonky. articles 13c and b of the state constitution. you have to showcase that specific benefit. in the community-based district like japan town there is a formula to disseminate the benefit to the service. 30,000-foot level larger property, more you pay into the

district. on the business based district there is no engineer. you have to articulate specific benefit to the businesses. issue of cleaning and i have been exploring in business-based district. because they are city-wide special assessments have to focus on the benefits to those specific businesses. if you provide cleaning via tid assessment dollars. special benefits go to nontourism hotels and other folks that benefit. it is going to impact the 13c and b provisions the city attorney cares about when we review these for renewal information. >> thank you for that clarification. that is helpful. appreciate it. seeing no other questions or comments from colleagues, let's go ahead and open this item for

public comment. >> thank you, mr. chair. we are working with the department of technology checking for callers in the queue to comment on this agenda item 1. for those watch on sfgovtv or he wills where. if you -- elsewhere. call in by following instructions on the your screen. dial 415-655-0001. id24922118986. pound twice and star 3 to speak. do we have callers in the queue? >> we have no callers in the queue right now. >> thank you. with no callers in the queue public comment on this item is now closed. colleagues can we have a motion to send this item with

recommendation to the full board? >> supervisor mandelman. >> on the motion offered by member mandelman this resolution be recommended to the board of supervisors. vice chair chan. >> aye. >> member mandelman. >> aye. >> chair preston. >> aye. >> mr. chair, there are three ayes. >> thank you, mr. clerk. the motion passes. thank you, director, and mr. clerk next item. >> item 2. resolution receiving and approving an annual report for the japan town community district for the fiscal year 2019-2020, as required by the property and business improverment district law of 1994 and the district's management agreement with the city. call 415-655-0001.

id24922118986. after you enter the meeting id dial pound twice if you wish to comment. dial star 3 now to enter the queue to speak. mr. chair. >> thank you, mr. clerk. welcome again to mr. corbin from oewd. he will present on this item along with the executive director for the japan town community benefit district. 10 minutes. >> if you are speaking we do not hear you.

>> we are here today to hear the fiscal year 2019-20 report for japan town community benefit districts. governed by article 15 of the tax regulations and the 1994 act. covers the annual report for fiscal year 19-20. we ensure they are meeting the management plan of the annual report and we provide the board of supervisors with a summary memo. the japan town is property based. formed in 2014. expires -- there are typos here. i apologize. i will update these slides. i will send the updated slide to the clerk. the staff of the executive director is our service areas are environmental enhancements

focused on cleaning services as discuss understand the previous presentation. economic marketing and engagement and advocacy and reserve. benchmarks are 1. whether the variance between the fiscal year budget within 10% of the management plan. 2. one in 5,600ths per are from sources other than the actuals. and 4. if it is indicating the funds carried from the current fiscal year and designating progress to be spent in the upcoming fiscal year. this is the second annual report. they have benchmark one over the past two reporting periods. two. they met non assessment revenue

in 19-20, 23% of the budget from non assessment revenue. three they did not meet this benchmark. 10% variance between budget and actual. i will explain. they did meet carry forward and met benchmark here. three out of four were met. they missed the three. the variance between the budget and actual. per management agreement with the city and county of san francisco if they are missed oewd has to review to determine if there is an impact for the special first general benefit. oewd reviewed the engineer report section e describing the special and general benefit. environmental -- environmental.

any general public benefit is incidental to providing the special benefits to the assessed parcels. due to that and the addition was on the administration side it is was in compliance with services related to the special benefits. upon fury view it was -- upon further review. the biggest how staff time was used. it should be separated by work performed by service not all administration. essentially, any work they did on economicken man'sments they -- enhancements was labeled as staff and add enough time and focused on administrative duties of the organization. when staff during that oewd did not special benefits due to the combination of both factors. due to the pandemic they did

respond well. they worked with the covid command center with information to the community. they began the heart of japan town fund to help small businesses. provided covid-19 safety kits and organized covid-19 testing in the community. recommendation for the japan town are to utilize time keeping software to keep track how staff spends work town to breakdown the work. incorporate these findings how they report on fiscal year actuals to ewd. they performed well. integrating to the broader community and forged critical partnerships. it is a well-run organization and well positioned to successfully carryout the

mission. i will turn this over. >> good morning, supervisors preston, chanand mandelman. i am executive director of the japan town community benefited district. thank you for giving me the opportunity to give you a big picture of the work of our cbd for fiscal year 19-20. next slide please. as you may or may not know. japan town cbd covers six city blocks. we have 163 small businesses and 10 non-profits. not only designation for visitors but community with deep-rooted history. there is a cbd formation. there is always surveys conducted. the top two areas of concern of property owners and those living and working here was cleaning

and safety. japan town we have two community ambassadors that keep our area clean, provide above baseline services. it includes graffiti removal and tree weeding and painting city properties. we receive a grant for four big placed in the district and worked with d.p.w. and the team on this. during fiscal year 19-20 we tried to organize community cleanup we were successful to do one. the pandemic hit and we had to stop that one for that fiscal year. here are cleaning staffs. if you look the district is smaller compared to other benefit districts and

improvement districts. we still have the same amount of trash that everyone else has seen. of course, during 1920, the biohazard human waste has increased. one of the things again that was a top priority for our stakeholders and property owners was keeping japan town safe. in 2018 we received a generous donation from chris larson to implement the safe camera program. at the end of 19-20 we have approximately 119 cameras throughout the japan town. we work closely with sfpd on this as well as the da's office. so far it has provided valuable data to sfpd. we actually had public

defender's office. we also receive 14 requests from the public. these cameras not only provide visuals at the time it happens but pieces together the crime where the perpetrator entered japantown and departed from japantown. it is really important tool that many other communities in our surrounding areas have been coming to the cbd to learn about it some more. part of keeping japan town safe is making sure we have good communication with northern district of sfpd. we had town hall meetings with them and we participated in small business advisory forum. one of the things we are very

proud of is the call for assistance which we started in japan town in japanese, english anchor rian. it was something that sfpd said we will implement to all merchant corridors. they improved on it. it is shared city-wide. we also keep small businesses alert on safety issues by sending out a safety alert. this goes toward our small businesses and nonprofits. keeping japan town informed with town halls and meetings with d.p.w. for small businesses and staying in touch with the various organizations that may being up japan town is really important. people have come to depend on our newsletters that come out if

not weekly, you know, at least monthly. next slide, please. helping to promote japan town. of course, before the pandemic hit we were fort natural to complete the sf japan town website which attracts many visitors so they can learn about types of businesses in japan town. we redid the streetlamp banners which we invited four community artists to participate. it became a street gallery of their work. we are proud of that. we are continuing to do holiday lighting in various holiday promotions. >> sorry to interrupt. to the chair to direct that was the 10 minutes. >> okay. >> if you need a minute or two to wrap up, go ahead. >> of course, pandemic we were

the boots on the ground to help small businesses. i have to thank my staff for all of their hard work. we launched a resiliency fund that raised close to half a million dollars and provided 5,000 grants to 80 businesses. that is it. thank you everyone. huge thanks to chris for always guiding us and to our district supervisor dean preston for his support in everything that we do, too. >> thank you. i just do want to thank you and really recognize all of the outreach work and support that the districts have provided to japan town, particularly to small businesses during the

pandemic. i got to say that as our office engaged with communities around the district in going out and walking neighborhood commercial districts and talking to businesses in many parts of the district, we were the only folks providing information to business owners. that was not the case in japan town. we would go talk with businesses, they all were receiving your newsletter, had the information about grant information, the latest on eviction protection for small businesses, knew about the resilient see fund. really i want to recognize the director and your team and board members for just we all had to pivot during the pandemic.

i think the cbd really rose to the occasion in providing critical services at a time when the survival of japan town has been and continues to be at stake. i think your support of small businesses in particular was really invaluable during this time. thank you. colleagues, any comments or questions? supervisor chan. >> thank you, chair preston. this is probably more of a question for mr. corbin. i am trying to confirm with the district map that it does include both the peace plaza and the garage, is that correct? help me understand how has it been in coordination with rec and park in terms of partnership

maintaining the space? what kind of support can we provide? trying to understand that. over time for the community that space while it is very valuable for the community to bather and do great things including the garage. there were challenges that required investment and repairs for the garage and for the peace plaza. how has it been with that partnership with the pd? >> i will speak for our relationship with rec and park it is very good. we had various events in japan town. we are always in communication with them, even cleaning and maintaining of the plaza area. they are on speed call whenever i get a message from our community. the relationship there is very

good with s.f.m.t.a., again, we have a good relationship with them. we are part of the small business working group. anything that comes to us we relay back to them at that time. >> years ago, a long time ago, it was identified there was a leak into the garage from peace plaza. has that been fixed? >> not yet. this past week they started to do some construction down in the garage. it is ongoing. >> do we know when that is going to finish? >> my assumption that repair is the responsibility of the city. >> correct. i don't know the end date of th repair either. i think it is i have to check with the japan garage

corporation. >> i would say and i am not trying to put words in your mouth. chair preston and i will be your advocates should you need support to henry move the repair of the leak forward to make sure it is completed. >> thank you. >> thank you, supervisor chan. seeing no other comments or questions, let's open up for public comment. >> thank you, mr. chair. we continue to work with the department of technology for public comment on item 2. if you are watching on channel 26 or through sfgovtv or he wills where, if you wish to speak on this item call in now. you will dial 415-655-0001. enter id24922118986.

press pound twice to be connected to the meeting. following that dial star followed by 3 if you wish to inbeter the queue -- enter the queue to speak. we are checking for callers. >> we have no callers in the queue. >> thank you. with no callers. public comment on this item is closed. unless there are questions, colleagues, not seeing anything. can we have a motion to send this item with positive recommendation to the full board? >> made by supervisor chan. mr. clerk. on the motion offered by vice chair chan this be recommended to the board of supervisors. vice chair chan. >> aye. >> member mandelman.

>> aye. >> chair preston. >> aye. >> mr. chair, they ayes. >> thank you that motion passes. thank you director. mr. clerk next item. >> 3. hearing on the de factor route abandonment and service restoration for muni buses, trains, and cable cars. if you wish to call, call in 415-655-0001. today's id24922118986. after you enter the id dial pound twice and press star followed by 3 if you wish to enter the queue to speak. the prompt will indicate you have raised your hands. wait until you are unmuted. you may then begin to comment.

mr. chair. >> thank you, mr. clerk. i want to make a comment before we get started. welcome back to m.t.a. leaders who are here with us. i appreciate your coming back to committee. item before us is the hearing on the de factor route abandonment of service restoration for muni buses, trains and cable cars. i want to thank vice chair chan for her cosponsorship and director mandelman for all of his work on crucial transit issues in particular as chair of transportation authority. as i said before, this is a crucial issue of city policy and also personal for me as an every

day muni rider for 28 years and public transit rider my life. i think when i hate it i love transportation. public transit is the lifeblood of our city. there is no recovery without robust public transit. i have been publicly critical of what i have viewed as an approach that has characterized s.f.m.t.a. service restoration to date as we lagged behind other cities restoring service despite federal investment in recovery. this hearing today is is continuation of an extensive hearing in july. during that first hearing, i think there was some frustration on my part and from the

advocates that m.t.a. had not at that time committed to releasing a plan to return 100% prepandemic service hours for all suspended muni lines. district 5 is the heart of this controversy with all lines targeted for possible elimination or at least lack of return commitment. all of the lines serving western edition and japan town and other neighborhoods. our office rejected this approach. worked tirelessly to advocate for service restoration and return of lines. there is a lot of updates here. i won't go through all of them. m.t.a. representatives will talk more about this. since our last hearing there have been a lot of updates related to service restoration, including m.t.a. detailed

response to the resolution that the board of supervisors passed requiring m.t.a. to present a plan to the board outlining plans for full muni service restoration and return of lines and hours. there has been a very positive development of the additional $29 million through the m.t.c. that was anticipated which should help in restoration. perhaps most significantly, equally significant m.t.a. release of draft proposed winter 2022 service restoration plan. that plan outlines the proposal to restore many of the lines that advocate and my office and

supervisor chan have been demanding over the last year. it is a major restoration that comes to fruition for japan town western edition and other parts of the city. i want to note some of the positive changes for district 5 included the brinking the two back as partial root to the presidio. that line was suspended for over a year and a half. the entire line of the parnassis along 21a of the partial route up to the civic center. also, expanding capacity on the 5 fulton, 5r and restoration of

the full route. these have not been approved. these are proposed recommended changes from the m.t.a. i am sure m.t.a. will elaborate on the restoration plans impacting these lines and other districts throughout the city and let the public know how folks can see the details of this proposed restoration plan which we will not cover all details in today's hearing. hopefully they can inform the public where this information lives. i want to say as i have said publicly previously. the suspension of lines without commitment created what i would characterize as major rift between transit riders and m.t.a.

i believe the latest proposal offers hope to unify elected officials, operators and riders to restore and expand public transportation for the future. we have work to do. i want to be clear and you will hear more details from a 100% restoration. that is why we called the hearing to provide charity what is proposed now and what is process will be for the getting to 100%. there are when i say not 100%. latest proposal restores some lines. some lines are not returned, some lines shortened, some lines have lower frequency and also return of cable cars not fully restored. i have communicated with fta.

online the routes will be restored if not by february but in the next round of expansion. all of that said i want to reiterate the proposed february 2022 plan is a major step in the right direction bringing back declines and expanding others. i hope to accomplish three things in this follow up hearing. first, make sure we are all clear on what m.t.a. is proposing for service restoration recommendations that have come about since the last hearing. the process for that to be adopted or considered by the m.t.a. board. second, get clarity on plans for further restoration beyond the february 22 restoration. either in the form of commitments or at least

understanding the process for making further decisions beyond february 2022. third updates on any barriers to restoration such as funding issues or operator availability and status update on how to overcome those barriers. before we turn it over to m.t.a. and jump into this. i want to convey my gratitude and deep respect for those of you who are advocates for return of lines and support of public transportation. the list is long. i want to thank japan town for justice and task force and filmore neighborhood collaborative. the high school on the 21 line. transit equity sf. san francisco riders bike coalition, walk sf, senior

disability action and muni riders equity and green mobility transit operators and many other advocates who spoke loudly and clearly about the need to restore services. your voices are being heard. [please stand by] ms.

>> i'm happy so thank you for this hearing. i want you to know the board is committedto expanding provisions and dialogue. this is an iterative process . in this pandemic the fact we had pre-existing funding issues, staffing issues and other challenges prior to the pandemic which have only intensified as a process of the pandemic has made it an interesting exercise constantly going throughlooking at how we restore service , serving those we need, looking at equity issues and we're committed to that . at the end of the day you are in support of the restoration of service to the extent we can staff it and make sure it's reliable and that it's good. it's really hard seeing empty buses that are restoredwhen there are other areas that we need help . so we are trying to take up a balanced approach in figuring out how we bring back the service knowing the city has not recovered at the level

other major cities around the country i want you to know we are dedicated to providing access topublic transit service. i myself and the daily writer i take the bus , yesterday i was i took the 40th14 arc of the 22 and i'm always on the bus . i've always steve and julie feedback about the frequency, crowding i see that we're really engaged so we have major skin in the game that we have to also be responsible about making sure we have the funds that we need. the staff that we need so when people find their lines restored they can get there so thank you for your support. we look forward to your support on further funding so that we can continue to move down that wayand i'm happy to answer any questions after director kirschbaum . >> thank you chair and now we will turn it over for 15 minutes to director tomlin or and/or the director, welcome. >> thank you chair and thank

you for all the welding of welcoming us here today. we're eager to share our plan for service restoration early 2022 and layout key issues before us. after a short update about immediate impact towards service related situations with regard to the city vaccination mandate trends director julie kirschbaum will develop into our plan service restoration. then shall also discusswhat it takes to get us to on percent or more . including our hiring and budget situation. transit director julie kirschbaum. >> good morning. going to take amoment to share my screen . can you see myslides ? >> yes. >> thank you for welcoming us to this hearing and for acknowledging areas where we may have difference in the past but areas where we are starting to cometogether .

we are eager to share our plans service restoration for early 2022 and layout the key issues before us. service is critical to meeting our shared goals forequity, economic recovery and fighting climate crisis . none of this work would be possible without the amazing sf mta staff that support the service. i want to acknowledge at this time that very same staff that has been carrying us over the last 20+ months through this pandemic are tired. they are fatigued. we are experiencing low morale and that's very much i think due to the kind of heightened state of being in this emergency for as long as wehave been . we are grateful to the thousands of sfmta employees who got vaccinated against covid-19 and are doing their

part to protect the health and safety of san francisco residents. 95 percent of employees are fully vaccinated and many more are partiallyvaccinated or working through thereasonable accommodation process . only 90 employees did not comply with the covid-19 mandate . and we currently have approximately 110 operators who are not available for service as a result of the vaccine requirements. however i want to report the majority of those are working their way through the reasonable accommodation process and should be returning to service in some form. the next thevaccine requirements , the reason we're talking about today is because it does create some challenges and uncertainties for us especially combined with some of our existing challenges around service delivery. in october depending on the day of the week we missed between 70and 140 ships . so even relatively small number

of people who are not vaccinated contributes to that number. we have to put a number of things in place to minimize gaps and crowding for our customers. some places we are still working upthe kinks . for example the one california early morning service we are still experiencing service gaps that we will be closing in the next couple of days. but we are really appreciative in particular of our union partners that helped us to develop and provide two new incentives including a vacation buyout and a daily premium for operators willing to help staffing gaps that are the most acute and also i'm excited we are graduating a new class of operators friday and a second class will graduatethe first

week of december so we do believe we will continue to improve our service . but this does createsome short-term impacts . we also i don't think you're going to know or the next maybe 4 to 6 weeks whether what are the long-termimpacts of the vaccine requirements . if we were to for example lose allhundred 10 operators that are currently not available for service , that would take months of additional hiring. if that number is much lower andwe expect it to be much lower , we may only lose the matter of weeks so we will continue to keep the board updated. we are targeting february for our winter service that could be march for later. i am really proud of these continued service recovery. despite very low downtown activity. there currently approximately

50 percent of pre-pandemic ridership and our weekend ridership recovery is close to 60 percent. we have a weekend lines that have over 80 percent of their free public ridership so we are excited to see san franciscans in the san francisco visitors using ourtransit system to make such key recovery . during the pandemic we initially reduced service creating a minicore service network . since then we continuously restored service that previously existed and we've also added some busy corridors and created focusing improvements on the neighborhoods identified by the many service equity strategy. the high number of residents from lower level household and people of color you ask supervisor preston indicated there are six routes that have not yet been restored and we want to walk you through today

our staff recommendations on how we further expand such resources. the service expansion to essentially is about determining how we allocate th staff that's going to be hiring . we are then prepared to continue hiringwith the goal of more service expansion this fall . in order to ensure we are able to keep the new staff we hire we address some difficult funding decisions for the sfmta. while we are incredibly grateful for the funds and the recent recognition by mtc of how dire our financial structure is, we have already spent half of the recovery funds. they cannot carry us past 20 2324 if we do not identify new funding sources . we are currently hiring at all levels of the organization with we graduated two classes and as iindicated we have two more coming this year .

we've also hired mechanics and we're about to hire our largest class of overhead line workers in afive-year period . while we still face vacancies, we are seeing we're starting to see more progress and more people come and join our famil . you're all familiar with the three service options. we shared with the public. we also reviewed in september sfmta's board in the process is through dozens of community briefings, community meetings and the survey. what we heard kind of if we were to simplify all that input is a strong interest in restoring key pre-pandemic connections. so for example getting people up to eighth street, hilton st.

mary's, restoring service in critical areas of the tenderloin or at very high for example. we did hear that those , that coverage and connections were most important for people with disabilities . so overall i think there is concern about frequency and growing crowding, many of our recommendations dude focus on firstmeeting the needs of our most vulnerable customers . the best place to get information in detail about this proposal is that sf mta.com/network 2022. i have them up on the slide. supervisor preston highlighted some of the details. we also have them in the appendix . if you have more detailed questions during the day. but we are recommending restoring the six street parnassus although at a lower frequency. when we first share these

recommendations with the mta board, policy advisory group we did not have the recommendations to fully restore the eight accent vx bayshore in part because we got feedback very late in the process but we are able to incorporate thatinput . we're also recommending restoring the 28 bar, the 23 monitoring and 43 sonic. we are also recommending to restore the two, 10, 21 and 31 although not on their full routes. we are not recommending at the time restoring the three jackson extending the 12th specific to cover all portion of that route. and we are not recommending to restore the 47 primarily because we believe that our there are better ways to serve the 47 corridor or so for example, rather than having a 47 and 49 on vanness have a

more frequent 49 which also provides frequency all the way to city college. we are also recommending the 12 pacific, the full-length. operating every 7 and a half minutes. as well as strong north-south connection on seventh and eighth streetproviding access directly to thecourtyard . the , there are two places where we are bringing options to the board rather than recommendations. one is on the 48 lines. which have a much more direct route in post covid service but goes on a street where we're hearing complaints from neighbors and then the jade church which i'm going to cover briefly. what we had heard from writers

on the church is that they value having one seat ride and don't transfer can be challenging particularly for people with

>> beyond that we are very excited about the possibility of coal service restoration and

we plan to continue hiring as we workthrough these funding challenges . there are a lot of places where we would like to addservice . i do want to point out that because we have added more service in many corridors and new routes in order to completely restore pre- covid service levels we would not only need 100 percent of our service hours, we would need to fund more than that to continue to meet all the evolving needs of san francisco. >> thisis my last slide . >> okay, good. >> to find stable long-term funding and continuing hiring are critical building blocks for any service restoration . if we continue at our current rate of hiring we could have enough transit staff to provide free pandemic service levels in the fall of 2022 however without additional funding it

could be difficult to continue to hire at that rate because we don't want to be in a situation where newly hiredstaff would have to be terminated because of a funding shortfall .we are currently working with the office to determine the timing duration and depth of our budget gap that we will face once we exhaust the federal funds aswell as our agencies reserves .we're developing several options for increasing the budget gap . but to be successful in closing the gap to continue to hire we will need the full support of the board of supervisors as well as ourother partners. thank you so much for your time . sorry to go a little bit long andwe appreciate the extra time to cover this topic . >> thank you director kirschbaum. and director tomlin as well for the intro. i'm hoping to do all our presentations first and i'm

very glad that our operators of the evening, i was glad to be here and my understanding is roger marenco , union president would like to give some brief remarks. we're also available to commission members for questions . welcome mister marenco. the board is yours and we do request up to five minutes. if you see fit to give us any updates and help us more fully understand the situation. thank you for making the time to be here. >> thank you supervisor preston.i have to split up my time between our executive vice president peter wilson who is on call so thank you director

kirschbaum for that presentation. we see things from a different perspective. wesee it from a transit operators perspective and we see it from a workforce perspective . the way we see things on the ground level is that we feel that the agency is playing squid games with the city and county of san francisco public transportation system . we are not in support of this service restoration in this manner because we cannot support not bringing back certain lines like the lines that you stated and or bringing back lines that are only coming back halfway. we are not in favor of that because we essentially like i stated we feel that the agencies playing squid games in terms of putting neighborhoods into neighborhoods, fighting

for whichlines should survive. we are not in support of that . we honestly believe we have enough transit operators to fill all of the runs in some way shape or form to a very goodlevel of pre-pandemic service . the way the agency has been tweaking the transit operators has been on par with using the word disrespect in terms of not meeting the very professionals, the experts that no the lines, the routes. and the agency or for public knowledge here as told us they do not need to meet and confer with them in terms of many of these issues relating to operator morale, service implementing new roles, changes etc. because of that the city and county of san francisco is suffering delays, their suffering dirty buses. their suffering from canceled

lines. reduction in service. even though we had a most significantfederal assistance . we believe that this is an austerity approach in termsof de facto route abandonment , it is putting forth. we have enough men and women ready willing and able to work. bring back the line of full-service restoration and we just feel that the agency is disrespecting its workforce. by being back in terms of telling us they do not need to have to confer with us in terms of service changes, adjustments, route cuts. sign ups, etc. if we are able to be at that table in terms of meeting and conferring we would be able to see how and why these types of professionals men and women who know these past requests first and last. why we are not willing to put

neighborhoods or communities against each other in terms of saying which lines should survive and which lines we should kill. i know that my time is short here but i do want everybody to know that we do have the ability and are ready willing andable to bring that full-service restoration . we support the resolution was implemented a couple months ago in terms of restoring everything but this year. i know my time is short and that the wilson had some comments so executive vice president wilson i'm going to call .>> i'm here roger, thank you. i'm trying to be brief. thank you. >> welcome mister wilson and committee. go ahead. i didn't realize both were presenting so if you need an additional up to five minutes go right ahead. >> thank you supervisor.

i appreciate your commitment to transit. supervisor preston and i met as i was signing the 21 haze which is ourneighborhood line that i ride . thank you for doing this. i want to knowledge the sfmta has had a challenge for covid when we talk about emergency contracts about that speaks about emergencies. i think most people thought about emergencies as the next big earthquake that is scheduled for sometime soon but that covid cut us off guard. i like to thank you lee kirschbaum for thework on these incentives . i look forward to getting back today. she and iwere going to talk about section 15.1 in our

contract . and while as mostother workers in the city and countyof san francisco get time that half, they work around holidays . not even 60 , they only get eight hours of the contract actually says. and i'm very excited about the week like nextweek starting this saturday people would be encouraged to come in and work on their days off .and make time and a half based on the contract and its section 15.1 for anybody like davidout there listening wants to add data . i do want to acknowledge the that have your employees studies show that happy employees come to work more often. get sick less often. do a better job and as mister marenco acknowledged or our understanding that california state law which shows up in the mmba which is so important for

all of us seeks to meeting and conferring and i had a good conversation with our director of hr yesterday and i look forward to speaking with her again next week but the agency seems to have a totally different understanding of california state law. we asked to meet and confer. wehave a bulletin , the sfmta has a bulletin coming up about our next general sign up. this general sign up as unilateral changes in our working conditions which the sfmta does not acknowledge our right to meet and confer. what they're doing is canceling one runs for people. there are people during this pandemic while the sf mta has had challenges people whose daycare has been canceled. schools, other issues. people spouses, loved ones

losing jobs. and the reaction has been let's cancel this run. somebody joke has a specific run at a specific time because of hisother obligations .the sfmta has not confirmed about these canceled runs and they are just giving people new ships without concerns for these people's livelihoods. so they're having they changed the way people are paid. the driver shows up to one location, ends up finishing work at another location and has just unilaterally changed and said we are no longer paying theoperator to get back to where they started work . there are other things that they are changing without discussingbut i'm not going to take everybody's time on that . i would appreciate going forward that we realize these are employees of the city and county of san francisco not

just members of our union and that the city and county have obligations to make sure their members are treated fairly. and happy employees make better employees. thank you. >> thank you mister wilson. thank you both for sharing some of theviews of our operators union . obviously we all greatly appreciate you and your members and all that you done forthe city through the pandemic . >>. [please stand by]

>> i want to recognize that. i want to get clarifications around some of the things not proposed to be fully restored. not necessarily to challenge them in terms of recommendations

for restoration in march for a better understanding what we are looking at beyond march, if we know. let me start with the lines that are restored at shorter routes. i want to thank you, director, for outlining the 43 and others restored to full routes. there are the other ones you listed. 31, 21, others not yet at their full route. i wanted to ask you if you can commit even if not on the timeline that those full routes will be restored. the fact that goal is to restore those full routes as operator availability or funding issues are resolved.

>> thank you. it depends on the route. if the 31 is not going downtown, it is doing something different than it did previously. extending along fifth street to pick up senior housing on folsom then extend to caltrain. 21 is going to civic center, but not on market street. there is something we would revisit in the future. the two clement on clement street. for all of these changes we said we are not treating the recommendations we are bringing to the board as permanent recommendations. there are some places based on feedback and technical analysis

that we do think some permanent changes should be considered. we are talking to the m.t.a. board on december 7th. what kind of separate stand alone process would be to have those conversations with the public. i don't think we have any recommendations right now on those routes per se, but i do see a value in the coming months of having some discussions about what we think should be considered as permanent and the public process versus what should be something that we are continuing to pursue additional funding for. then address those resources that become available. i understand the interest to have a more detailed road map on that. we are still several months away

from that. we do recognize the strong need for it. >> thank you. i think that one of my concerns that i expressed privately is with some of these shortened lines that they can be a self-fulfilling prophesy. if you have 21 carrying 8 to 10,000 people each day and shorten the line, even as service rebounds it is a less attractive line for a lot of users. lower numbers. i want to make sure we are building toward completely restoring in a phased approach. you know, as opposed to bringing back at lower service level or shortened lines in a way that is later looked at as a reason to

not effect those lines. i discussed that with you in our conversations. i have an understanding. i will say it sounds like 21 commitment to bring it back on the shortened route and not decision as to or commitment to it coming back in the full route. it is not going to be back and there would be a process to the process. a process including public engagement before a decision is made. am i framing that accurately? >> you are. i want to clarify that what we heard during this public process was the value that a route like 21 plays on hayes street as a safety net. we are increasing frequency on the 5.

we are adding buses on the 5. there is a lot of people that naturally gravitate to that more frequent service, and we wouldn't be evaluating 21 hayes with the same expectations that we evaluate say a route like the 5. it is not playing the same role in the network. it is providing in the short term a safety net for people who really can't or choose not to walk that extra distance. we are not trying to create a self-fulfilling prophesy where we say it used to have thousands of people now it doesn't so it must be a failure. that is not what we are intending here. we are intending to recognize that this does play a role in the system and to evaluate it more likely would evaluate some of the other circulatetor routes that take people to major

transit hubs. >> thank you. happy to engage more with you around some of these lines specifically, including 21. it is important and hope we can get to where the full line restoration is mapped out with a timeline working toward and trying to generate the funding to make that a reality. folks are patient and understand why this needs phased in. there are many reasons in the hayes valley neighborhood association sent a strong letter outlining these. many reasons why it is valuable to have the full line which operated over 100 years and even though the bulk of the emergency restoration may be on the shortened line, it is important to build toward the full line

for a lot of folks the one or two transfers on two or three buses to get where they are going. can i ask the same question on the frequencies? i was enencouraged by our conversation earlier this week around the frequencies. some of these lines for instance the 6 is coming back at 20 minute frequency. that is not ideal. my understanding that is a short term driven by resources frequency, not a longer term plan to have a line like this running at 20 minutes and there is a commitment to improving that frequency at the staffing and public issues. is that a fair characterization? >> i think the 6 is a good

example where we need more service on haight street and we heard that the community wanted more continuous connections. we are bringing the service back but not at previous frequency. we would like to add more frequency and we will be looking at ridership on that corridor as well as across the system as we prepare for future service restoration. >> thank you. in terms of the process and it is hard to look beyond the immediate planned restorations with a lot of uncertainties, but, you know, i think that the ta as a body and the board as supervisors and my office has been critical of the outreach

from the outreach process and survey contents. some of it, there were things in the outreach that were inaccurate descriptions of pre-pandemic service. it was evolving. i am wondering beyond the march 2022 restoration whether m.t.a. can commit to sharing future rider surveys and outreach plans with our committee before they go out live and public. we can address the issues. including an issue in supervisor chan's office and mine where you couldn't take the survey on paper. some of the tools you had to use

a slider online. there are issues like that that those of us dealing with constituents every day may be able to flag and provide input before they go live. i would ask director tumlin or director kirsch baumif that is something to do before the next round of outreach. >> we are always happy to have extra feedback. we are moving as you know at lightning speed, having rebuilt the system six times in what ordinarily would each one would be an 18 month process. both minds it is better than smaller group. we welcome any input that you have. >> thank you.

question two. i know a lot of strides are made around vaccinations. thank everyone at twu as well as m.t.a. leadership for dramatically improved numbers around where we are than where we were a couple months ago. i did want to just get the perspective around the vaccination progress. i know tw is working hard to urge members to get vaccinated and director commented on the numbers to date. i wanted to ask mr.marenko to provide that update on the efforts to get operators vaccinated. thank you for all of your work. i know this is a big priority

you are working on. >> we have been working in conjunction with m.t.a. and city hall, mayor's office in terms of educating and informing members specifically the transit operators in terms of facts. there are a lot of opinions/rumors. we are not interested in that. we get the facts to everybody to let them know what happens if they get vaccinated and be what happens if they do not get vaccinated. we think we are doing a good job. we were number one in the city and county of san francisco the highest nonvaccinations memberships. we are number one but i am confident the numbers will continue dropping within the next couple of days. >> thank you. switching gears to another topic. we talked a lot in the last

hearing about bus line and about trains. i want to check in on cable car runs and lines. this is an issue that twu has raised recently in a rally held near city hall. i wanted to ask director tumlin or kirschbaum. can you describe the obligations under the charter regarding the cable car lines and how they are impacted by the pandemic and what restoring service on cable cars looks like. >> i didn't know if supervisor

preston wanted to hear from roger. i am happy to share. the cable car, as you know, is a historic treasure and critical element of the san francisco brand. it was completely rebuilt under the leadership of senator feinstein in 1984. we are very much approaching the need to do another rebuild of that scale, and we can talk about that on a different day. at that time i think there was also the concern that cable car would become an amusement ride or only a tourist attraction. they went to kind of the unique step of putting a service section into the city charter.

it says -- it is a little bit vague. roger and i differ in our understanding of it. it says we will provide the same routes as well as normal service level from 1971. we have been having some disputes with cable car operators who see the charter as solidifying the exact shift pay for cable car operators, and because of so many things changing in covid, including having less cable car operators than we have had in the past, we did need to change and reconfigure some of the pay which we have not done in probably a decade.

we are currently operating a lot of cable car service. we are operating service from about 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. we are not operating what you would describe as normal 1971 level. we are committed to training and hiring and working in partnership with 250a to continue to restore service over the coming years. i think we are not where anybody wants to be on cable car. at the same time, i do believe we are serving the bulk of the cable car service needs while also meeting all of our other competing needs we have been talking about at this hearing including getting kids to school, supporting economic recovery and keeping people out

of their cars. >> thank you, director. mr.marinko, would you address what is the understanding? >> the cable car runs have not been touched, changed. i think probably since before i was even born. the agency decided to use the pandemic or the threat of pandemic or the notion that there are not enough operators to shift the cable car runs, which have been historically protected without meeting. that right there we believe is violation. as a result many of our cable car operators have voluntarily

decided to simply leave the cable car division because they feel that this is not right in the way that s.f.m.t.a. did this in terms of cutting, reducing, slashing protected runs under the san francisco charter they are protected. that is why they have not been changed or altered since before i was even born. that is our stance on it. i know that pete wilson wanted to state something on that. i will ask him. >> i will keep it brief. i want to point out it is not about pay. the charter says schedules. it talks about the schedules. one thing that has been done is early morning runs have been -- it starts later and ends earlier than it used to. that affects the riders of the

people not ill, people -- people in nob hill and union square and downtown. it affects all of them. i have never had a cable car operator say the charter says i get paid this much. the charter says this is what the scheduling should be. cable car operators are paid well. they do hard work. if it is 10, 11, 12 hours. they are train operators they get paid well. like the people i mentioned before who are used to coming in at 5:30 a.m. because of obligations or coming late in the day and working until 12:30 p.m. or 1:00. those schedules are not available. in july kevin davis, chair person for cable car division, spoke with the mayor's office. they agreed with us. they are silent on this issue.

it is hush, hush as far as we are concerned. there has not been a meet and confer. you know, they are violating the city charter which is not violating 250a only. it is violating the votes of all citizens of the city and county of san francisco. thank you. >> i appreciate your perspective on this. it is unclear to me. i don't know if there is an agreement the charter requires what is described and because we are in the pandemic and state of emergency certain benchmarks aren't met during this period or whether there is a more substantive disagreement whether the city needs to get back to those level of service and run. is that it?

>> it is the former. we are committed to meet the charter and to expand the hours of cable car. we also are limited to the resources that we have. we did both, pete and i did participate on a cable car task force that supervisor peskin helped set up for many months as we restored cable car service. we talked about two alternatives. one is delivering the schedule that we had pre-covid but missing and having gaps because we don't have all of the operators. the business community that

participated, tourism, sf travel, union scare merchants, fisherman's wharf gave a clear indication having consistent service from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. was much more important to the city's recovery than prioritizing longer hours when we couldn't deliver well. we are committed to get back to pre-covid service level. we need to do a lot of hiring between now and then. [indiscernable] >> as a board we have a tough struggle do we make sure the central workers go where they are or focus on downtown that is not recovered. sf travel talked about that. we would love to increase cable car service. it would be irresponsible at the expense of more critical lines.

that is a real thing. we brought it back. the board is on this. as former head of the restaurant association i am watching what is going on downtown. there is really a resource scarety we are dealing with. we are committed to the cable car service. i love it. i used to take it every day to work. i want to point out this is an issue we have been very much committed to the board in trying to figure it out. when we talk about equity and balancing out of restoration of service and how we do it, these are trade-offs. understand that. this is what we are grappling with as a board every week and every time we talk about these things. no one takes this lightly. the reality is that we are really trying to figure out how you bring back a system that makes sure the equity is included and that you are

getting in those critical routes. those routes that need brought back as well. >> thank you everyone for sharing your perspective on this. one question more broadly than just the cable cars is the $29 million allocation from m.t.c. we receive which is good news, i believe it was confirmed after these proposals around the service restoration. i want to find out. we talk about resource scarety issues as driving some of the more limited leans, service. is the $29 million factored into the current be proposal or will it allow us to expand frequency or lines from what is proposed? $29 million does that allow us

to amend the recommendations to add more service or frequency? >> the $29 million is really important for buying us additional time before we need to identify bridge or permanent funding. what is constraining us for the winter is the pace of hiring. short term challenges we are facing are not funding but having the $29 million is part of a package of solutions that we need to get to full restoration and sustain full restoration. it very much buys us time. it does not help our immediate winter picture because really we are hiring as fast as we can.

>> thank you. i understand. another question and we will turn it over to roger chanwaiting on the roster. on this financing issue, what is the price? assuming the hiring and operator capacity issue is resolved. i understand there is a different perspective between the union and m.t.a. around the current capacity. set that aside. let's assume full existing staffing or additional hiring gets us to where that is not a limit on service restoration. what is the price tag for m.t.a. to be comfortable committing that in fall of 2022 we would have 100% restoration? setting aside operator

constraints. how much additional funding would it take for m.t.a. to make that commitment? >> i will jump in here. our acting cso is on the line as well. he can get us the latest number. i want to emphasize our challenge is sustaining our ongoing operations. the money we are looking for is stable ongoing operating funds in order to close the structural deficit that we faced before covid. and in particular when the federal money burns out and we burn through reserves before we are able to replace that money. jonathan you have the latest numbers. there is the no fixed number because all of our numbers are

facing u-shaped curves. not to give you the latest estimate of the ongoing additional money we need every year to stabilize and sustain. >> only thing i would add and good morning. in the report as presented to the board and this committee we had already assumed in fiscal 22 the cost side to provide that level of service. that is assumed in there at the highest level at each level of staff assist. however, as director tumlin noted that was taking our costs of prepandemic service, the design and how that service was staffed. doing retirement, dpi, what it would be today.

the service may be different but staffing that is required with the working groups is different. m.t.a. board will work on that setting a new baseline what that service should look like. we are working with controller's office to hone in on the cost side of that. the next step would be what is our revenue package to get to that number? the answer is correct. $29 million gives us more headway and time to find the permanent revenue source. the monthly labor burn rate is in the 61 to $65 million per month. that would give you a sense of what labor costs across the agency are. >> thank you. the more clarity. i know the controller is looking at these numbers. we hoped there might be some of

their analysis done by the hearing. that is still in the works. i think the sooner we can get to the vision and i appreciate the effort in the responses to the board. mapping out the costs. sooner we get to vision of here is the cost. one-time funding and in permanent funding it will take for m.t.a. to commit to 100% service restoration by a date certain, that is the lacking piece of the puzzle with the progress on the partial restoration. i want to identify. that is really an urgent goal as we ask voters to trust us all with additional revenue from which ever sources it ends up being. mapping that out explicitly is the key to that.

director tumlin did you want to say something. >> as soon as we are able to get time numbers from controller's office we will work quickly to get you the numbers you need. we depend be upon the full support of all members of the board of supervisors to get agreement on the funding strategy to make sure we win that necessary funding. we are your partners. >> thank you. supervisor chan. >> thank you, chair peskin. i am more than happy to have this conversation continue on. it is worth the wait to really make my comments. it is really not a question because i look forward to the controller's report on the finances of s.f.m.t.a. is really

what i am looking at. i know about all of these. i hope it is true. in the coming months your conversation in terms of discussing about the service restoration, all of the things that s.f.m.t.a. is doing is temporary. to see finances and the deficits pre-pandemic. how do we fix this long-term? it is what i look forward to. i also want to respond to what chair borden mentioned when it comes to tradeoff and equity. that could be true. again, i want to look through

the controller's report. resources is always going to be limited. resources have to be limited even before pandemic. it is the mentality how do we manage resources and to break down the mentality that we can fight against that and fight back against that to make sure that people who have been before the pandemic and more so now during the pandemic and after, hopefully, that the people can help with it will have a reliable service for years to come. resources have been limited, will always be limited. it is a conversation that we say that because of the pandemic. we have to have all of these

trade-offs. i am concerned you can continue to just say because of the pandemic. i don't know if that is realistic. fundamentally we need to think about resources in a way that truly serves the people that depend on the service moving forward. i don't know. i am frustrated, too, this conversation has been going on for so long since we took office that we have s.f.m.t.a. we have asked for the strategy. people depend on your service before pandemic and continuing to be. i look forward to the controller's report to give us the data to depend on april have that conversation moving forward. i urge the board of directors to

think when we talk about trade-offs. that is not going to go away. the resources have always been and will be limited. then what? that is my frustration. thank you for indulging me to express that. >> can i comment on that? >> yes, chair borden. >> i want to say the difference is this. our service level, we have 50% return of ridership. that is a different trade-off than full-service 90%. when i talk about trade-offs, i don't mean we will or not bring lines back. there is no master plan to kill the lines. there never has been. that was never we have wanted to get rid of this line, that is not part of the equation. if we were a business we would

scale service to the required der ship. we are a public service we could never do that. there is a reality throwing good money after bad. you can't deliver great service and restore lines. people are frustrated. we are aware of the fact as the city returns. the work force in san francisco doesn't has to go to the office. the people deciding to work in the office is the ease to take public transit to the destination. if they haven't taken it in a year and they are coming back and the connection works well for them they will want to come back. reignite the city and come back. if they come back and the line is there but the service is slow or overcrowded, then they say you know what? i don't need to go to the

office. i will be a remote worker. we are balancing where we are today. when we are back to the place at 90%, it is not the trade-off i am talking about. i am talking about at the time at which we don't have the revenue not only from ridership but from parking and fees, it is harder to say let's bring everything back and hope everybody is happy with the fact the lines are back and not happy the lines don't get them where they need to be. one california is a good example. people are frustrated by the miss run. some people are committed. some people have a luxury where offices pay them to park. that is what we are talking about. we are not talking about scarcity of resources. we will. in this time with this unique situation where our further

funding comes by restoring service and wanting to encourage people to come back, those are the pieces. i wanted to clarify that. >> thank you. let me comment on that. i think it is important and i am glad we are discussing it. i think it gets to the heart of the thing. in the immediate moment everyone understands there are resource constraints, especially in a pandemic with revenue falling for the ridership. counter balanced. i think it is an argument we could do more. i am concerned when i hear what sometimes does seem like as supervisor chan has identified a

scarcity mind-set when we are looking forward. i think what we keep asks is for a clear commitment of all of the lines, all service, cable cars, everything coming back. if there is a resource gap to get there be clear on the gap. from my perspective and i think this is shared. we shouldn't talk about ridership is only 50%. we don't ratchet up. we should be in a position to ratchet up service, the minimum service to meet demand. this is public transportation. i want to say if our fire department wasn't able to respond because of lack of firefighters or equipment or funning, we wouldn't accept the idea, this station is going to have fewer firefighters to respond more slowly. we would not accept that as a

city. we would do anything possible, i would hope, to make sure that absolutely essential service was at the level we wanted it to be. we need that approach for public transportation. we are asking and begging for challenging us to let us be partners and let us not play the. [indiscernable] it is the same comment. we understand there may be short term trade-offs. how do we move quickly to a place where we are not pitting these things against each other? >> if that means the bus is half empty, that is okay. it is not a problem, it is a success. it feels like we are behind and just providing the minimum level to deal with overcrowding and

this urgency as opposed to challenging all of us the mayor, board of supervisors, m.t.a. leadership, union, all riders, property owners and tenants in the city to step up and close whatever gap there is with clear guarantees that all service is coming ba. thank you for your patience. >> thank you, chair preston. i have some questions and points on transportation. i feel like this line of questions raises a larger set of issues that extends beyond m.t.a. about how -- about the value, about our choices in spending. this may be my ptsd from being on the city college board of

trustees. it is quite dangerous for public entities to imagine resources and not make hard choices. where i completely agree with you is that we have critical services, particularly services serving low income folks, folks who rely on public transportation, seniors, kids. we need to do everything that we possibly can to get the revenue that we need to provide those services in the way that our residents deserve. i also value public servants who identify the hard choices, recognize the resources and lay out for us what the choices are. one of the things i appreciated about the m.t.a. there have been bumps over the

last year and a half, and one would expect that given the magnitude of changes the m.t.a. is trying to figure out. i have actually will get to the conversation in a minute. i appreciated on the things i cared about and paid close attention to. the m.t.a. is presenting some of the hard choices and giving us what we need to decide when all things are not possible and sometimes there are trade-offs. that is a real thing. what i intended to say was that pre-pandemic my priorities for the system were fix the trains and especially make the j church work better. i requested the meeting of the transit reliability working

group in part after big train failures. pre-pandemic those are good. these are things that could be fixed or don't make sense. man, our trains, tunnel disaster and train service is unreliable. for me as supervisor i have this line that has never performed in the way that my constituents expected with reliability they would expect. we have had many conversations before the pandemic, community meetings. what can we do to make the j church work better? you know, in that context we talked about the notion of does the j need to go to the top? couldn't we center a better for everybody trains in the tunnel

and for people trying to get downtown from the valley and other parts of my district to run the j as surface line, quick transfer at church and market, and rely on the system working that way. i appreciate that the m.t.a. has tried to figure out if that is a thing that would work and would help the system. the information we have gathered is complicated. taking the j out of the tunnel is part of making the tunnel work better and getting better service for constituents riding the n and better services riding the k and for those who ride them. better service for anybody taking anything in the tunnel. it is pretty clear now to me this is not an experiment that worked well for people who rely

on the j from the valley. particularly, with any sort of accessibility challenges and mobility challenges. i feel like we are not quite there yet. i don't agree with the technically supported recommendation number one. i guess i would hope the m.t.a. would look at maybe some choices 4 and 5 as well. i think we have had meetings with j riders. the motion of putting service back in the tunnel but at a vastly -- at a volume that ensures the j will be a pretty infrequent train that not a lot

of people rely on. the people who do rely on they will ensured they will have the ride. may be better than what we have now but is not the ideal end stage. option 3 if that is as good as we can do seems like the no-brainer. it does seem odd when the volume in the tunnel is down to not just get people back home to toe valley in the evenings with one shot. as brought up with staff the possibility of looking at other options that might keep the tunnel working well with out -- give people from the valley a one seat ride into downtown and not lead to the very infrequent service for those people who are

trying to get along be the j route. it does seem like some combination of services might be the answer here. whether it is combining j trains running only on the surface and j trains in the tunnel. there are infrequent trains that go down town. at least some for whom that is important. other trains only run on the surface just for biting the bullet and recognizing if we have a one seat ride that is the way to do it through the bus. we will let people get to downtown that way. i think there are other things to look at. what we have now is not really working for the valley and not for me. i want to thank m.t.a. staff

julie, shawn, jeff for their time, their transparency, for meeting with folks many times and a dialogue how to make this go forward. chair borden i am sure up come up with the right answer in december. i want to thank you for willingness to engage with neighbors around 48, 35 and to try to figure out away. there have been winners and losers there as well to try to achieve agencies goals in terms of better service without unduly burdening folks in the neighborhood. that is my speech. my question is back in our working group conversation we spent a lot of time on the

operator shortage age shortage of other folks working for m.t.a. that we need to get the work done and get us around the city. i am wondering whether the -- i share chair preston's desire to figure out a number to get us to full-service or beyond. i also wonder about the actual bringing in of the people versus the loss of people. i noted that even with the numbers you are talking about training they are dwarfed by the number of people we would lose if the vaccinated. people don't get vaccinated. i am wondering how those training numbers compare to the

annual attrition numbers? are we on track assuming that the voters are able, the board of supervisors or voters or mayor are able to get you the additional 50, $150 million that you need for your operations. are we on track to get anywhere near 2200 operators and beyond? we need more than that to actually do the expanded service. >> i think we have a good plan. i think it is one that we all have to monitor. the relatively small class sizes that you are seeing in 21 have to do with the fact that we not only needed to start hiring operators. we also needed to hire trainers. then train those trainers. we were starting classes of about 20 operators every five

weeks. starting in june. that class size is increasing to 40 beginning in january. we are skipping one five week class and reducing a class at the end of the year because we are going to be focusing on training our existing operators as they exercise their right to move to different divisions and try different modes of service. we were very close to getting to a steady state of operators coming out of the muni working group. we had partnered and created city drive, which was helping with the class b permits. we had done other things to speed up the medical process and

other things that were impacting the process. we do know how to hire operators. i think we have a good plan. i think that does need to be evaluated monthly and quarterly because across the bay area what was once just m.t.a. shortage is now a bay area operator shortage. you can see that when you see canceled trips from bart. i was in sacramento earlier this week. they are struggling with something similar. we don't know what that regional competition will mean and we are going to have to track it closely. we did reach out when we were really seeing at the height of the high vaccine numbers, i did reach out to several bay area

agencies and ask for mutual aid especially on the weekends where we miss service. we are maximizing operator over time, trying to do everything we can. we are not meeting the 75% service level that we are at which is why while i share roger's goals of full-service restoration, i am cautious about our timeline. i think that we have all of the right pieces in place to continue to restore service and we are going to need to watch it very closely as we address new challenges. >> the stacy transit said they had a shortage of 100 operators.

it is a bay area regional issue. >> thank you, chair preston. i think this is and has been for years now the barrier in some ways a bigger barrier than revenue. we have to fix the revenue problem and we have to fix this. if you feel like you have a path to getting up to these numbers for full-service restoration and beyond, good. if not, i think there is real concern on the board's part, supervisor ronan discussed this on tuesday around hiring overall in the city, and we need to solve these problems. that is an important part of this conversation, too. thank you everybody for your

work. i think i am done. thanks. >> thank you, supervisor mandelman. supervisor chan. >> thank you, chair preston. i want to reference back to what supervisor mandelman mentioned about ptsd from the state and city college. i do, too, have performed tsd from days in city college. i have a different perspective where that ptsd comes from when it comes to trade-offs. i think that the resources to provide the services. city college free education and low cost higher education. it is what we have with public transit to provide public transit. i believe it is the public good.

at the same time it is about managing the resources you have. pts d that i have we retracted to give the administration a 10% raise while they cut classes. those are the conversations that if we talk about trade-off conversations it should be about managing the resources and money you have to make sure you do meet your coordination to provide public transit for people who pretended on it. people working from home. you know what? the population that uses public transit. i am happy they do. i don't think they are -- i am talking about they do not depend

on public transit to get to work for their daily life. i want to reference this, too. this is probably through the chair funding the comments from director borden. there was a budget annual mist report that got into 2020. that referenced a ridership. in the ridership they talked about. this is before the pandemic. the ridership of s.f.m.t.a. is in decline since 2014. that is because s.f.m.t.a. did not meet the annual ridership goals in 2017 fiscal year and 2018 fiscal year. that is likely because s.f.m.t.a. has not met customer rating targets. that was before the pandemic. i recognize the pandemic added

hardship the way you deliver your service. i am saying it is a system eckproblem. resources are limited. how do we move forward? let's recognize that we did receive like many other public transit agencies. you did receive federal funding. the federal funding is to carry you through the harshness that we experienced. i would say in some ways it evens out. you experience the hardship, federal dollars, close to $1 billion to our city's rescue for the public transit agency. i am saying what is stopping us from restoring the chargeses for what we should have receive

before pandemic. i am grateful because i grew up san francisco using public transited. i am grateful for their service. i am glad chair borden is here. it is about the decision. it is about our board of directors. how do you make sure people depending on it can use it before the pandemic. especially during the pandemic and in 2022 as we recover from the economy. thank you. >> what i will say that is why we increased service on declines focused on people that were going to work, hospitals or hogspitalty businesses. that is -- hospitality businesses. we added back the routes that

had not been in service before. i think you would see that we learned how people get around the city. they get around differently during the pandemic. where they were going to the grocery store or work. they were different than the trips prior to the pandemic. we are still in that stage where you see a increase in need and ridership in certain pockets. not so much in other pockets. that is what we look at. making sure we serve those people most that need us most. the cable car wasn't priority. trying to bring it back to your point. yes, we have always had issues with reliability this is part of the conversation around the j and reliability in the subway. we recognize those people are transit deepen department. they are least able to be limit

for work. they can lose their job for not being on time. we are looking to make sure the critical routes increasing frequency of service and adding expresses that may being sense in that regard. that is a trade-off right now as we scale things looking at the patterns who needs service most. this is to bring back the service as noted. there is no grand plan not to do that. we are trying to look at the picture of movement and service needs greatest are tackled first. >> thank you, chair borden and supervisor chan. i would like to go to public comment at this time.

>> we are checking with department of technology for comments on agenda item 3. for those watching on cable charm 26 or streaming through sfgovtv or he wills where if you wish to speak call in now. follow instructions on your screen. dial 415-655-0001. meeting id24922118986. following that press pound twice and star followed by 3 if you wish to speak. for those on hold in the queue continue to wait until you are prompted to begin. you will hear that your line is unmuted. i understand there are around a dozen callers listening. we have five callers in the queue. could you please connect us to the first caller.

>> good day, chair preston and committee members. i am district 8 senior and j church work group. i appreciate this hearing to hold muni officials to act. i took part in the rally hosted by coalition of transit riders last thursday with speakers dean preston, supervisor chan's staff and the transit workers who spoke about need to restore full service on all muni lines. thankfully my district 8 supervisor mandelman convened the zoom meeting and invited the transit is manager and representatives from the sf cac to hear from constituents. we j riders overwhelming oppose

the church route that ends. we have to navigate traffic to get across cracks and cracked pavement at the high-injury network station to go two flights down or find an elevator to get downtown. seniors and persons with mobility issues face huge challenges because the j church doesn't from balboa to embarcadero and back through the subway tunnel. our concern is that they will dismiss the needs of j riders even though the m.t.a.'s priorities are to center concerns on persons with disabilities and seniors and prioritize coverage over frequency. option one to keep the service as it exists is inconsistent

with the stated priorities. option two runs four trains per hour with full-service routes in both directions advances both of m.t.a.'s priorities. option two were implemented. >> your time is concluded. next caller, please. >> this is lower rain petty, senior -- lorraine petty from district 5. i support restoring all existing service to the pandemic service. if these are not restored it would be a mistake. huge set back to equity for all in san francisco especially seniors and vulnerable communities. a good trial of the transit

first policies. my primary line is 31 balboa that did not run for a year and a half. considerable public pressure is when you agreed to bring it back. to the ferry building declared a priority equity line because it is for people of color and low income folks. it is not fully restored. it is missing a third of the route. now muni proposes to devote it to caltrans. allowing muni to justify abandoning the 47 caltrain line. 21 ways is another example. to muni restoration will mean cutting in half. number two will be stopped at

presidio avenue. same with j church allegedly restored. that meant cutting off in mid route as the previous speaker is referring. they are conducting a transfer most policy where most trips are going to require two or three buses. this is a disincentive to taking public transit. muni will never recover with transfer most policy. i urge you to restore lines in full. >> your time is concluded. next caller, please. >> i am a resident of tenderloin and community organizer with tndc and for the 31 action committee. thank you to supervisors for this hearing and supporting full

restoration to pre-pandemic level, local 258 operators and supporters for coming out last thursday for the rally to restore muni. we thank sfgovtv for restoring as much services in 2022. we are demanding all services be restored to pre-pandemic level. especially from those who need service the most. we sound be like a broke ken record but we don't have a lot of tests on s.f.m.t.a. if they committed months ago we would be fining ways to ensure services continue in the future. it is a difficult year. we appreciate changing from 30 to something more hopeful. this helps and we hope

s.f.m.t.a. continues to do so. we want transportation equitable and not run like a business. we want to put the public first and needs met by people who rely on it because they don't have other options. this proposal has to enter service restoration is in the right direction. to pre-pandemic level and provide us in san francisco something to fight for in the coming year. thank you for your time. >> next caller please. i am calling to repeat that we would like service to pre-pandemic level as soon as possible. thank you. i have talked to many people

with experiences. if the pandemic continues to have impact on the capacity including the operators who failed to report vaccination status or fail to protect minors. many are upset because they have been inaccessible to those not connected to the internet. service does not communicate three options were not considered not allowing for specific comments. we demand the j church be be restored. the advocacy has been engaged in complaints and not demands. under staffing and the financial concerns they face. work towards restoring service as soon as possible. [indiscernable] to build a better transit system

together. it is important to find commitment from new leaders to make sure the gains we are fighting for as a city are not lost in the immediate future. thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. i am cathy deluca community living campaign, non-profit work with seniors and add difficulties with disability. we want to restore muni service to pre-pandemic level. thank you to everyone here. the residents fighting, advocates, union, supervisors and s.f.m.t.a. staff. i don't doubt for one minute that s.f.m.t.a. staff cares about residents and wants to deliver excellent transit services. i see a major disconnect between those doing