recent years, is gen geneologyd we do that through our crime lab. >> commissioner byrne: and how many times do you do that [indiscernible]. >> you know, i don't have that exact number, but i can get that information and get that information back to you. >> commissioner byrne: and the lady, miss bob, who rang earlier and came to one of our police department meetings several months ago, would it be difficult for sfpd to contact the family at least twice a

year? because as vice president elias points out, the idea that they need to come in front of us top voice their concern, it's not in the p.d.s best interests. would it be too much of a burden to maybe, twice a year, contact them, these people, so that there's a -- so that they -- again, so that they can feel like something at least is going on? thank you. >> so i will say we do escalate these cases, so we have 21 that we have escalated based on

leads available based on new technology that might allow us to retest evidence. and once we get those two additional investigators -- and it's not that far. they've already been approved by admin. they're probably just getting assigned by admin to start working -- they will be assigned some of these cases that have been escalated because there's information on them, and we could definitely -- i know that allen leavy does a really good job of reaching out with his team, especially victims that do reach out or do call the office, we do prioritize these cases. >> vice president elias: great. thank you. thank you for being here. commissioner yanez? >> commissioner yanez: thank you, vice president elias. thank you.

i just had one questions. the retired investigators that are a part of this team, is this by design that they are retired or is that because of the challenge that we're having with staffing right now? >> no, sir. it's pretty much something that we've always done in homicide. i don't know how far it goes back, but we've always had retired officers come back when we had the 960 unit. >> commissioner yanez: thank you. it makes sense. institutional knowledge is valuable, and i know that the chief has highlighted your work, oftentimes, and i commend you for the work that you're putting forward, and obviously, we field questions have community on these cold cases. if we could develop a funnel

system. obviously, when people experience a loss, communication is important to them. i hope you can take those things into consideration. thank you for your work and your presentation. >> if i can say, sergeant leavy did a great job and the retire members that are in our cold case unit, one retired as a captain and one retired as a sergeant, so we're looking forward to getting them on here to help sergeant leavy and his crew, and hopefully, we'll be able to start calling family members on a more constant basis. thank you. >> vice president elias: thank

you. i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to public comment. sergeant? >> clerk: at this time, the public is now welcome to make public comment regarding line item 6. if you would like to make public comment, press star, three now. good evening, miss brown. you have two minutes. >> hi, can you hear me? >> clerk: yes. >> i would just -- my name is paulette brown, and my son, aubrey, was murdered august 14, 2006. august 14 is right around the corner, and going through this again, just hearing them talk about active cases, my case, it's been 16 years. is it a cold case or is it an active case? just listening to that, it's bothering me. and then, i think that the

investigators should also contact us quarterly, not once a year, even more than quarterly. we're suffering. there's mothers and fathers out here, and there's more than -- we just recently put the digital posters out there at all the ten district stations, and there's more than 100. there's 200, 300, 400, all the way back to the 1960s. these are all unsolved homicides, that they put at all the district stations with a digital display. to hear them say there's 100, there's more. if you go back years, there's so many, and what do we do about getting our childrens' cases solved. there's mothers whose cases are

still on here, and they got tired of waiting, so hopefully, they'll come here and voice what happened. like i said, it's right around the corner from my son's anniversary, august 14, and the case is still unsolved. what do we do? how do we change things and the -- the time is moving, passing in my mouth. my son don't even have a headstone because the money that they allocated for -- the victims services wasn't enough to buy my son a headstone. >> clerk: thank you, miss brown. members of the public who have information, you can call the tip line at 415-575-4444. good evening, caller. you have two minutes. >> hello. my name is george duran. i'm here to support pauline brown and the healing circle,

and i liked the presentation. however, i was thinking -- i talked to an f.b.i. agent who was talking about cold cases. i remember in 1996, the rate of homicides in san francisco was so ridiculously high. and when sanders and somebody -- henderson had to come back to solve those homicides, i think a collaboration with that would help. i think inspectors and main

staff should meet with families a little bit more to establish trust because a lot of the homicides in san francisco that i know from the position that i work in, everybody in the street knows, but nobody's willing to come forward because the relationship between law enforcement and the community is skewed. so i believe that there's ways, and maybe there should be some t.s.a.s with family members and law enforcement working together to get at the community to talk about getting forward with information. we see a rash of homicides, a shooting in san francisco because a lot of people really need to be -- >> clerk: thank you, caller.

good evening, caller. you have two minutes. >> okay. hello. my name is david calderon, and i would like to share my personal experience with going through the san francisco police homicide police protection process. my mother was murdered in 1992. her name was carmen lita holbrook. in 2019, i managed to have her case reopened and assigned, and it was assigned to retired officer james spillane. in my personal interaction with mr. spillane, he refused to complete the investigation because, to quote him, my mother was a junkie and not worth looking into. i also filed a complaint with

the san francisco police department regarding this, and that the original investigators were found guilty of manufactured and presented perjured testimony. with this information being known, the san francisco police department, mr. leavy, i've spoken with you personally, has refused to reopen and reassign my mother's case, and the san francisco police accountability department has also closed this case and refuses to speak to me. i thank you guys for hearing me and hearing my experience, but i think it's important that you guys know what one has

experienced, so thank you. >> clerk: thank you, caller. good evening, caller. you have two minutes. >> hello. can you hear me? >> clerk: yes. >> this is mary bow. my son was murdered november 17, 2007, so it's considered a cold case. thank you for asking the questions in defining because i'm getting a lot of misinformation. i was told a cold case was over ten years. tonight, i heard it's, like, five years. i also heard something that was a good suggestion, that the inspectors contact us, like, grieving mothers or family members at least twice a year, and i heard george and paulette say even quarterly would be good. you know, in 15 years, no one

has ever called me. i've had to reach out and call, and recently, i talked to -- first, i talked to chief scott, and then, i got referred to someone else, and they gave me to daniel dede, who was really nice and offered to call me any time, but what's frustrating is he's still in the queue. 21 active and ten open. 31 open and active. that's kind of ridiculous, and only two retired officers are working on that. my son's case is considered a cold case. it's in a queue, waiting to be looked at. i just want to ask the people on the commission, it may be emotional, if it was your child that was murdered -- my son was

20. i have an older child that's 40 and a younger son that was 20. would that be adequate if it was your child, for two retired officers to work two days a week? do what george said. bring the f.b.i. in. you have so many active cases in san francisco. they go back to the 40s and 50s. for my son, it's been hard for me -- >> clerk: thank you, caller. good evening, caller. you have two minutes. caller, you have two minutes. >> hello. hi. can you hear me? >> clerk: yes.

>> yes, my name is kenya hayes. i'm speaking on behalf of my mother and two brothers. my mother lost her two sons due to gun violence in san francisco. my two brothers are tony dougal and edwardo tay. i'd like to share my experience with san francisco homicide department. i noticed that i have been doing most of the phone calls, reaching out. my mom, i guess she doesn't really have it in here to call and talk, so i call and try to talk to the homicide investigators. i've left numerous phone calls. i've been working with scott warneke. it seems like it's very hard to work with him and communicate with him. i don't know if my little

brother, edwardo tay, is a cold case. i don't know if my older brother, tony mcdougall, is a cold case. i know you said you were going to reach out to the families, but my mother has never gotten a phone call from homicide. you know, it breaks my heart because my mom lost two sons to gun violence, and, you know, it's sad because she doesn't even have it in here to do the -- in her to do the footwork. my older brother has a reward out, but my younger brother doesn't. it's been five years, and i don't know why my younger brother doesn't have a reward out. i don't know what i have to do to get that, but i would like my younger brother to also have a reward put out for him.

thank you for listening to me, and i hope you can reach out to the families more to let them know that they do have a supportive system with homicide and what they can do when they lose a family member due to gun violence. >> clerk: thank you, caller. and vice president elias, that is the end of public comment. >> vice president elias: thank you, sergeant, and thank you to the callers for calling in and listening to the presentation. d.c. aswani, is there a way that we can follow up and in a couple of months, we can have you come in and give us an update with respect to contacting the callers calling in today and being more proactive in contacting these victims or making an effort to contact them more than just the yearly anniversary. >> yes, i can give you an

update. and referring just generically to some of the comments that i've heard, we do work with f.b.i. federal partners. we've made arrests on cold cases and homicide cases and do work with federal partners. we do leverage as many resources as we can. i definitely will reach out to the family members. i'll have somebody from homicide go through the callers and pull their case file. >> vice president elias: great. thank you. >> thank you. >> vice president elias: all right. thank you again for presenting. sergeant, next item. >> clerk: line item 7, public comment on all matters pertaining to item 9 below,

closed session, including public comment on item 8, vote whether to hold item 9 in closed session. if you'd like to make public comment, press star, three now. and vice president elias, there is no public comment. >> vice president elias: great. next item. >> clerk: item 8, vote on whether to hold item 9 in closed session, san francisco administrative code section 67.10, action. >> vice president elias: i'm going to make a motion. >> second. >> vice president elias: roll call. >> clerk: on the motion -- [roll call] >> clerk: you have six yeses. i will tak

>> clerk: item 10, vote to elect whether to disclose any or all discussion on item 9 held in closed session, san francisco administrative code section 67.12 a. >> vice president elias: i need a motion and a second. >> motion. >> second. >> vice president elias: okay. i need a roll call. [roll call]

>> clerk: you have six yeses. >> vice president elias: all right. can we get public comment? >> clerk: at this time, the public is welcome to make public comment regarding line item 10. for two minutes of public comment, press star, three now. and vice president elias, there is no public comment. >> vice president elias: good. item 11. >> clerk: is adjournment.

>> vice president elias: with that, there is no other meeting in june, and we will see you in july. >> you are watching san francisco rising. today's special guest is jeff tomlin. >> hi. you are watching san francisco rising. to show that is focused on restarting, rebuilding, and reimagining our city. our guest today is the director

transportation of the sfmta and he's with us to talk about the agency's 23-24 budget with the muni equity strategy and new projects across the city. welcome to the show. >> thank you it is good to be here. >> i see the sfmta's budget for 2023 and 2024 has been approved. how will it help provide a strong recovery during the next few years for our riders, operators and staff? >> it has been a challenging couple of years. covid wiped out the basic finances. our agency is funded primarily from transit fares, parking fees and a fixed set aside for a general fund and covid has meant we have lost more than half of our parking and transit for revenue. we are not expected to recover them until 2027. this budget takes a one-time federal release funding and spreads that out between now and

2025. and our task is to rebuild trust with the voters that sfmta can actually deliver on their goals and that includes things like making muni faster, more frequent, and more reliable. includes making our streets safer and making everyone feel safe riding the bus. it means taking advantage of the amount of change we're going to experience in order to advance equity so that we invents -- invest the most amount of money in communities that need our services the most. it also means supporting san francisco in its larger economic recovery. basically two years between now and 2024 in order to build trust with the voters and figure out how are we going to find muni moving forward because it is in 2024 and 2025 when the one-time federal release fund went out.

>> are you planning on starting up? >> as a result of covid, we have 1,000 vacancies in the organization. that is why muni service is not fully recovered. this budget allows us to fully staff through 2024, which means we can restore muni service, invest in safety, and invest in other programs in order to make the transportation system work better for everyone. >> can you talk about the mooney service equity strategies? as you move out of the pandemic, how has that plan been updated? i have heard there are elevator upgrades in progress. >> we have been working a lot on equity during muni's recovery. we have been basing our work on the muni equity strategy. this is the plan we update every two years that looks at the changing demographics of san francisco and helps us direct our transit resources where people need it the most. that means people with low income, people of color,

seniors, people with disability, children, all the folks who have the fewest choices. during covid, when we had to strip back the transit system, 13 quarters of the workforce were in quarantine, we directed all of the agency's resources to the equity neighborhoods. places like the bayview, chinatown, the mission, the valley, and even through our recovery, we have continued to deliver the best muni service's so -- to the neighborhoods that need it the most. right now we are still operating more frequent service in core lines in equity neighborhoods than we did precovid. and the result of that is extraordinarily high ridership. we are finding, for example, by investing in the frequency and reliability on lines like the 22 fillmore, that we are getting 133% of precovid ridership, even when the overall system is only

at about half of the ridership recovery. that is 133%. that is on weekends. we are at about 96% of precovid ridership on our main equity lines on weekdays. we're also investing a whole variety of infrastructure projects aimed at making transit work better, particularly for people with disabilities. on the market street corridor, our elevators to the subway station date back to the 1970s and need significant renovation. right now we are busy working on renovating the elevators at the station. we have completed the elevator upgrade for the eastbound platform. we are now working on the westbound platform. that will modernize the elevators and make them a lot more reliable, and make sure that we can continue to prioritize people with the fewest mobility choices. >> that's great. changing topics slightly, i understand the improvement

project is halfway completed. have shared spaces made the product -- project more complicated? >> yes. lots of things have made the terminal project more complicated, including things like covid and supply chain issues. we learned a lot on the first phase of the terra vale project, which rebuilt the street from sunset boulevard to the zoo, including rebuilding all the infrastructure of the streets, the underground utilities, to modernize all that infrastructure and make it more resilient, and make sure that we do not have to rebuild the street, hopefully in any of our lifetimes. we also learned about the importance of collaborating, particularly with neighborhood businesses and residents. we want to make sure that we are constructing the city's infrastructure in a time that the city is suffering and we are not adding to suffering. we're doing things like partnering with the mayor's

office of economic workforce development to support neighborhood businesses through programming during this time. we are also making sure that businesses that create shared spaces in the parking lane, some of those need to be moved out of the way while the utility work is done underneath them. we are making sure that we will either move those platforms and outdoor eating areas back as they were, or help local merchants rebuild them so that we are not adding to the burden of local businesses and that we help everyone recover in this challenging time. >> quite right. finally, many of the sfmta vision zero quick build projects have been well received. can you talk about the evans street project? >> one of the things we did during covid was dramatically expand the rate of what we call quick build projects, which are fast-moving projects using simple and cheap materials in order to redesign streets and test out new ideas and see how

they work, as well as get a lot of feedback from community before moving into a larger capital project that converts all of that plastic stuff into concrete and trees and, you know, curb extensions. what we have been finding is that our quick build safety projects are able to cut severe injury and fatalities between 25 and 75%, depending upon the location on the techniques that we use. so we are targeting streets that have the highest rate of traffic crashes, particularly injury crashes and fatalities. we focused on evans, which is really important connector for all modes of transportation between the bayview and the central neighborhoods of san francisco. also a street with a terrible track record of severe crashes. on evans, what we are doing, again using paint and plastic

posts for the time being, is taking the lanes that are out there right now, and converting them to one lane in each direction plus turn pockets. what we found on streets like valencia or south bend this, or -- south van nass, is a street with one lane in each direction plus a term pocket can move just as much traffic as a street with two lanes in each direction. left turning vehicles mean the two lanes of traffic are never really available for through traffic. these road diets that we do have been tremendously effective for improving safety outcomes for all road users, without exacerbating traffic. they do make all cars slow down to the speed of the most prudent driver. this week we are getting started in partnership with the department of public works on work to restripe all of evans

between third and cesar chavez, and as part of this work will be collecting a lot of data, talking to industrial users in the industrial district and talking to folks in the bayview commercial district and in the mission about how it is working. we will make some adjustments along the way and if it is successful, then we will start another project that is more capital-intensive to make it permanent. if it is not successful, we will turn it back the way that it was, having spent very little money. >> thank you so much. i really appreciate you coming on the show. thank you for the time you have given us today. >> it has been great being here. thank you so much. >> that is it for this episode. we will be back shortly. you have been watching san francisco rising. thank you for watching. [♪♪♪]

the tenderloin is home to families, immigrants, seniors, merchants, workers and the housed and unhoused who all deserve a thriving neighborhood to call home. the tenderloin initiative was launched to improve safety, reduce crime, connect people to services and increase investments in the neighborhood. as city and community-based partners, we work daily to make these changes a reality. we invite you to the tenderloin history, inclusivity make this neighborhood special. >> we're all citizens of san francisco and we deserve food, water, shelter, all of those things that any system would. >> what i find the most fulfilling about being in the tenderloin is that it's really basically a big family here and i love working and living here. >> [speaking foreign language]

>> my hopes and dreams for the tenderloin are what any other community organizer would want for their community, safe, clean streets for everyone and good operating conditions for small businesses. >> everything in the tenderloin is very good. the food is very good. if you go to any restaurant in san francisco, you will feel like oh, wow, the food is great. the people are nice. >> it is a place where it embraces all walks of life and different cultures. so this is the soul of the tenderloin. it's really welcoming. the. >> the tenderloin is so full of color and so full of people. so with all of us being

together and making it feel very safe is challenging, but we are working on it and we are getting there. dev mission's goal is aiming to train young adults, youth so we can be a wealth and disparity in underserved communities like where we are today. my name is leo sosa. i'm the founder and executive director for devmission. we're sitting inside a computer lab where residents come and get support when they give help about how to set up an e-mail

account. how to order prescriptions online. create a résumé. we are also now paying attention to provide tech support. we have collaborated with the san francisco mayor's office and the department of technology to implement a broad band network for the residents here so they can have free internet access. we have partnered with community technology networks to provide computer classes to the seniors and the residents. so this computer lab becomes a hub for the community to learn how to use technology, but that's the parents and the adults. we have been able to identify what we call a stem date. the acronym is science technology engineering and math. kids should be exposed no matter what type of background or ethnicity or income status. that's where we actually create magic. >> something that the kids are really excited about is science

and so the way that we execute that is through making slime. and as fun as it is, it's still a chemical reaction and you start to understand that with the materials that you need to make the slime. >> they love adding their little twists to everything. it's just a place for them to experiment and that's really what we want. >> i see. >> really what the excitement behind that is that you're making something. >> logs, legos, sumo box, art, drawing, computers, mine craft, and really it's just awaking opportunity. >> keeping their attention is like one of the biggest challenges that we do have because, you know, they're kids. they always want to be doing something, be helping with something. so we just let them be themselves. we have our set of rules in place that we have that we want them to follow and live up to. and we also have our set of expectations that we want them

to achieve. this is like my first year officially working with kids. and definitely i've had moments where they're not getting something. they don't really understand it and you're trying to just talk to them in a way that they can make it work teaching them in different ways how they can get the light bulb to go off and i've seen it first-hand and it makes me so happy when it does go off because it's like, wow, i helped them understand this concept. >> i love playing games and i love having fun with my friends playing dodge ball and a lot of things that i like. it's really cool. >> they don't give you a lot of cheese to put on there, do they? you've got like a little bit left. >> we learn programming to make them work. we do computers and

programming. at the bottom here, we talk to them and we press these buttons to make it go. and this is to turn it off. and this is to make it control on its own. if you press this twice, it can do any type of tricks. like you can move it like this and it moves. it actually can go like this. >> like, wow, they're just absorbing everything. so it definitely is a wholehearted moment that i love experiencing. >> the realities right now, 5.3 latinos working in tech and

about 6.7 african americans working in tech. and, of course, those tech companies are funders. so i continue to work really hard with them to close that gap and work with the san francisco unified school district so juniors and seniors come to our program, so kids come to our stem hub and be exposed to all those things. it's a big challenge. >> we have a couple of other providers here on site, but we've all just been trying to work together and let the kids move around from each department. some kids are comfortable with their admission, but if they want to jump in with city of dreams or hunter's point, we just try to collaborate to provide the best opportunity in the community. >> devmission has provided services on westbrook. they teach you how to code. how to build their own mini

robot to providing access for the youth to partnerships with adobe and sony and google and twitter. and so devmission has definitely brought access for our families to resources that our residents may or may not have been able to access in the past. >> the san francisco house and development corporation gave us the grant to implement this program. it hasn't been easy, but we have been able to see now some of the success stories of some of those kids that have been able to take the opportunity and continue to grow within their education and eventually become a very successful citizen. >> so the computer lab, they're doing the backpacks. i don't know if you're going to be able to do the class. you still want to try? . yeah. go for it. >> we have a young man by the name of ivan mello.

he came here two and a half years ago to be part of our digital arts music lab. graduating with natural, fruity loops, rhymes. all of our music lyrics are clean. he came as an intern, and now he's running the program. that just tells you, we are only creating opportunities and there's a young man by the name of eduardo ramirez. he tells the barber, what's that flyer? and he says it's a program that teaches you computers and art. and i still remember the day he walked in there with a baseball cap, full of tattoos. nice clean hair cut. i want to learn how to use computers. graduated from the program and he wanted to work in i.t.. well, eduardo is a dreamer. right. so trying to find him a job in

the tech industry was very challenging, but that didn't stop him. through the effort of the office of economic work force and the grant i reached out to a few folks i know. post mates decided to bring him on board regardless of his legal status. he ended his internship at post mates and now is at hudacity. that is the power of what technology does for young people that want to become part of the tech industry. what we've been doing, it's very innovative. helping kids k-12, transitional age youth, families, parents, communities, understand and to be exposed to stem subjects. imagine if that mission one day can be in every affordable housing community. the opportunities that we would create and that's what i'm

trying to do with this

[roll call vote taken] >> we have a quorum. >> this meeting is being held in-person at san francisco city hall room 400 authorized by the

code -- i'm so sorry. 54953e mayor breed's supplement for emergency proclamation. i would like to remind all individuals present and attending the meeting in-person that all health and safety protocols and building rules must be adhered to. hand sanitizer stations are available and masks. we welcome during public comment periods. two minutes of public comment, first from those attending in-person and then remotely. members of the public may provide remote public comment by dialing 1-415-655-0001, meeting i.d.24804498950, pound pound and star 3 to raise your hand to speak. please know you must limit your comments to the topic agenda item discussed, and remind if

you do not stay on topic the clerk will interrupt and ask you to limit to the agenda item. public comment be made in a civil and respectful manner and address remarks as a whole not to individual staff or commissioners. i would like to thank sfgovtv staff and i.t. staff for their help during this meeting. >> appreciate your subtle reminder we all silence our phones. before calling the first item, san francisco public utilities commission acknowledges and stewards of the unseeded lands in the historic territory of the tribe, and other familial descendants, alameda county. sfpuc recognizes every citizen in the greater bay area has and continues to benefit from the

use and occupation of the tribe's aboriginal lands, since before and after the san francisco public utilities commission founding in 1932. vitally important we not only recognize the history of the tribal lands on which we reside but also we acknowledge and honor the fact the people have established a working partnership with the sfpuc and flourishing members in the greater bay area san francisco communities today. madam secretary, next item. >> 3, renewed findings and state urgency legislation to allow hybrid in-person meetings during the covid-19 emergency and direct the secretary for a similar resolution in the next 30 days. >> members of the public who wish to make two minutes of remote public comment on item 3,

star 3 to raise your hand to speak. do you have any members of the public present who would like to make comment on item 3, seeing none, any callers in the queue? >> madam secretary, we have one caller in the queue. >> item number 3, caller. >> i have unmuted your line. >> sorry, i think i'm waiting for the general public comment period. >> all right. >> madam secretary, no other callers in the queue. >> commissioners, any questions or comments on this item? if not, a motion and second, please? >> move to approve. >> second. >> moved and seconded, roll call

please. >> commissioners, on the matter of the minutes of the june 14th meeting, any additions, comments, corrections, seeing none, open public comment. >> members of the public who wish to make two minutes of remote public comment on item number 4, approval of the minutes, press star 3 to speak. any present wishing to make comments on the minutes? >> we have one caller in the queue. >> item 4, the minutes. >> thank you. i'll be brief for the record, my problem -- pronouns are she and her, i'm going to comment on the minutes. i don't know if i'm in order here but i want to raise a spelling correction.

i didn't know how to submit this. my first name is spelled aleta, alpha lema echo tango alpha. and so in the minutes for the longest time it's been with an i as in india, so i'm not making a big deal out of it. hope i'm not making a big deal of it. thought i would let you know because i've never gotten to submit my name to you in writing. so if i'm out of order, you have my apologies, but i just thought i would raise the typo. and i appreciate the good work the secretary has done in taking my minutes over the last few years. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. >> thank you, caller, i'll make that correction. >> madam secretary, there are no

other callers in the queue. >> thank you. public comment on item 4 is closed. >> thank you, commissioners, any further comments? seeing none, motion and a second, please? >> i'll move. >> second. >> moved and seconded, roll call. [roll call vote taken] four ayes. >> minutes are approved with that one correction. next item, please. >> item 5, general public comment. members of the public wish to make two minutes of general public comment on matter in the jurisdiction and not on the agenda star 3 to raise your hand to speak. do we have any members of the public present who wish to provide general public comment? seeing none, mr. moderator, callers with their hands raised? >> we have four callers in the

queue. >> caller number one, you have two minutes. >> thank you again, president moran, she and her, good to be back with you. i speak to the basics, i hope to be back in san francisco again very soon. to enjoy my beloved second home. and frame in general, what i would like to see as the primary focus of the puc. so always remember the first two words of your mission's name, is san francisco. and so when i set foot in the city and county of san francisco and experience your services

firsthand, it's like having water and electricity. i want that always to be our focus. that's the focus of my conversation and how can we make sure that our water supply is adequate to make it the san francisco and serve the people and our electric supply through cleanpowersf, be adequate to serve the people of san francisco. because when i am in san francisco i am thinking about san francisco and the reason why i enjoy coming to your meetings is because i care about san francisco being my beloved second home. so i ask in the basics, always keep this in mind. first two words of your commission name, how can we do

the very best we can to ensure that we continue to serve the people of the city and county of san francisco and i thank you. >> thank for your comments. next caller. you have two minutes. i have unmuted your line. >> good afternoon. i think sfpuc missed opportunity on the importance and quality of white water on the river -- [inaudible] and economic, recreational, educational value. i'm a fifth generation guide, and commented as an individual, not a representative of my agency. my family has lived in bay area since 1860, and multiple generations have served the bay area through distinguished careers in military service,

healthcare, education, small business ownership, employment, and businesses, and more. i'm proud to be from the bay area with all good and bad. i moved to the sacramento region and have not come home because of the river and the affordable housing. release local businesses in rural towns, national website describes the river as one of the finest boating experiences in the nation. i've spent over 300 days on over 20 rivers across north america and i agree. the tualme river is fun, challenging and safe, and protected for all people, it is relatively more affordable for commercial boaters and private boaters to access.

the last two years have the recreation for physical and mental health of all americans for every background and income river. it's an excellent educational experience where all people can learn about nature, history and culture on location, including where their water comes from. i understand the river dams most other dams in california are exempt from -- >> thank you, caller, your time has expired. next caller, you have two minutes. i have unmuted your line. >> good afternoon. as i think you know, sfpuc staff have not been for the coming with the long-term vulnerability assessment so we have had to be created to find answers. the model runs that use current demand and the bay delta plan

flows but received no response so we ask the question a different way, knowing they compared the flow requirements to 15% decrease in precipitation, we ask a similar comparison between the in-stream flow requirement and demand. the answer no, it had not been calculated. we look back, and the current regional water supply conditions, either state amendmented water quality control plan for extreme flow, requirement on the tualme river or increase in demand 15% have impacts on the performance equivalent to the mean annual precipitation around 15%. the requirement of 15% increase in demand and 15% decrease in precipitation are all equivalent.

now, the baseline demand of 227 mgd is 16% greater than current demand. therefore, the graph based on 227 are equivalent of using current demand and in-flow requirement. why doesn't staff see all the positive in this, after all you can provide the bay delta fan flows and restoring the environment without risking running out of water. win-win. why are key staff leaving sfpuc, could it be the employee who oversaw is leaving because he was forced to keep quiet of the findings? how many other good employees will leave the sfpuc for similar reasons. i hope you will have a chance we submitted earlier today. thank you for the opportunity to comment. >> thank you for your comments. next caller. i have unmuted your line. two minutes.

>> i'm one of the authors of the trust letter you may have received today. letter is intended to provide information to the practicality of the design drop, i want to take a moment to talk about the design drop return period or how often it's expected to occur. among other things, tries to leverage the staff analysis to estimate the return period for the severity of the design drop and reduce security. demand 23% higher than today, design drought return period is once in 3,000 years. to put the 3,000 years in context, 3,000 years ago humankind was just entering the iron age and no justification to make economic or environmental tradeoffs to plan for such a rare event. of course, what the design drop model was created we didn't have the tools to know what the period was, but just did not want to run out of water.

as going back to the beginning of the iron age is too long, what would be a reasonable return period to plan for. i don't have an answer but two data points come to mind. one, for flood control, went to extensive process and came up with a one in 200 year target. the other data point, the situation today. i doubt there is any other major water district in california close to the water are in storage, i'm sure they wish they had more water in storage but i would guess our outliar with so much water in storage means the drop model could be shortened. knowing the return period for the design drop is valuable information, thank you. >> thank you for your comment. madam secretary, one more caller in the queue. next caller, i have unmuted your line. you have two minutes. >> can you hear me now?

>> yes, loud and clear. >> great. david pillpel. general public comment, it would be nice to have maps and photos as a standard attachment to staff reports where appropriate. i've made that comment before. i think commissioner agreed, hopefully she's not nodding off because she's paying close attention, but in particular on items 11a, 11c, 11d, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, all of those involve very specific locations that could have a general area map and photos of either completed work or where work is intended to occur and just to orient the

commission, anyone paying attention here, etc. i think it would just be good going forward to have as many maps and photos where appropriate as part of staff reports, that would be great. thanks very much for listening. >> the call queue is clear. >> general public comment is closed. next item is item 6, communications. >> commissioners, any questions or comments on the communication provided? seeing none, public comment, please. >> members of the public who wish to make two minutes of public comment on item 6, press star 3 to speak. do we have any members of the public present who wish to make comment on item 6. seeing none, mr. moderator, any

callers with hand raised? >> one caller in the queue. caller, go ahead, you have two minutes. >> thank you, she/her, i'm going to speak about the municipal benchmark. i was able to find the report but i had to do it in a roundabout way because the link at the bottom of the one page intro was broken, so you'll want to fix that. but in looking at the report here, i think it's a pretty good report. it shows that we definitely have a lot of work to do, given about 50% of the city's municipal energy use is natural gas, and so we know we are getting the clean electricity from your power system, we have a lot of

work to do, i'm seeing the airport is a huge user of energy here, more than anyone else. and i admit to you i have not yet used the airport, not in 40 years. so as i go through this i am seeing some tables here which look very helpful. i would like to see us somehow take this 2020 benchmark, this eight-page report and somehow put it in a more readable pdf that i can just download. because sometimes slides are not very mobile friendly, don't work well on phones and ipads. other than that, i think the report will help us go where we need to go. >> thank you for your comments. madam secretary, no other

callers in the queue. >> thank you, public comment on item 6 is closed. >> further comments on this item? commissioner ajami. >> just wanted to reiterate the caller's comment. i also noticed the link wasn't working, and i had to do a bunch of search to figure out where that report was. so it will be great to make sure next time these are checked before they are posted. thank you. >> thank you. any further comments? seeing none, next item, please. >> next item is item number 7, san francisco public utilities commission employee retirement recognitions for distinguished service for the public utilities commission and city and county of san francisco.

>> i'm honored to introduce and recognize two outstanding individuals who are in the process of retiring from the puc and having served the agency and the city for more than 25 years. one of whom is here today, and one whom is not. and i just want to personally say having had the opportunity to work with acting assistant general manager alan johanson and michael carlin over the course of this transition period of the last 6 or 7 months i have seen their incredible professionalism and commitment not just to the agency but to the city more broadly and our residents and our rate payers, and they have been absolute professionals and stalwarts on behalf of the agency and it's my honor to read resolutions of recognition for both of them because they both are eminently deserving of any and all praise

that they get from our staff and from the public for a job very, very well done, and a great commitment to public service. first, for alan johanson, whereas he has served the city and county of san francisco one waivering commitment and leadership for nearly 30 years, in that time he has skillfully and effectively championed multi-billion dollar capital improvement for the wastewater and power systems and whereas alan began his impactful career with the city in 1992 as a resident engineer with the san francisco municipal transportation agency before transitioning to construction management with the san francisco public utilities commission in 1998. and whereas as manager of the construction management bureau, alan was critical in advancing our $4.8 billion water improvement program and initiating 20-year sewer program

to upgrade and ensure reliable, sustainable and seismically safe for generations to come, and tenure overseeing the large scale infrastructure projects, alan prioritized the safety of thousands of construction crews who recorded millions of hours of work without a single major injury or accident and whereas since 2021 has the acting assistant general management of infrastructure, led a team of over 280 employees and tremendous implementation of the projects and capital programs, and proven himself to be a thoughtful and collaborative leader to all those with the privilege of working with him, and on june 30, 2022, after nearly three decades of exemplary service to the city and county of san francisco, alan will retire from the sfpuc. therefore be it resolved this

commission hereby expresses deepest appreciation and gratitude to alan johanson for contributions to sfpuc and wishes him a long and prosperous retirement. congratulations, alan. and i will say he always does it with incredible good humor. he has a fabulous sense of humor. even though he's not here, i speak on behalf of all our employees when i say he is going to be sorely, sorely missed. secondly, i'm going to wait -- no -- >> public comment. >> do it at the end, correct. >> one public comment period at the end unless you prefer to do two separate. >> let's do them separately. >> do them separately? ok. >> ok. so, public comment on the retirement for mr. johanson,

members of the public who wish to make two minutes of remote public comment on the retirement for mr. alan johanson, star 3 to raise your hand to speak. do we have any members present who wish to make comment? >> commissioners, it's unfortunate that alan is not here today, it would be great to see him, i have not seen him in a long time but i too express my appreciation on behalf of the board, our member agencies, there are 26 of them and customers for the work alan has done, specifically on the water system improvement program. there was many times we were knee deep in it trying to figure our way through it and he was a strong voice for a good direction and i appreciate that on behalf of amal and the system is better off because of his

efforts and i think that is the greatest testament to public service there is, so thank you. >> any more members present? >> david pillpel, i agree with the comments that were just given, i was going to speak on both of them together. i think i'll do that very quickly. given the extraordinary testimony and congress today, we absolutely need epics in all levels, federal, state, local now much more than ever.

i appreciate michael carlin and alan johanson over their work and integrity many, many years. each generation of the puc has leadership potential and opportunities but must take the time, meet with people, be able to listen and find themselves in their place at the puc to do the best work for people. i note this item on the agenda is for some reason listed as discussion only, but it sounds like there are actually resolutions of appreciation, so i don't know how you want to deal with that in terms of the brown act, but in the future this should not just be listed as discussion, if there is in fact a resolution which is entirely warranted here and to paraphrase billy crystal during

the 1980s, "they are marvelous, absolutely marvelous, and i don't say this to everybody." thank you for their work, thanks for listening. >> thank you for your comments. another caller with their hand raised. you wish to speak, press star to unmute. madam secretary, no one else in the queue. >> thank you, public comment on mr. johanson's retirement is closed. >> thank you, madam secretary. secondly, introduce deputy general manager michael carlin and before i read the resolution, i just want to say that i think his career has been extraordinary, and what i'm going to read in the resolution, i've had the experience to live firsthand for the last seven months in terms of seeing his wisdom, his counsel, good nature

and commitment to the agency and thank him personally to the counsel he's provided over the last half year as i have stepped into this role and honor to work with him over the course of the six months and appreciate his wisdom and counsel. so the resolution for michael carlin, whereas michael carlin began his career december 2, 1996, water resources planning manager, and invaluable part of the san francisco public utilities commission. whereas michael's contributions include the diversification of sfpuc water supply portfolio, championing environmental initiatives and leading the sfpuc with a steady hand through challenging times. and whereas michael was instrumental in the water system

improvement program, 4.8 billion multi-year capital program that updated water systems to bolster reliability, long-term sustain ability. and assistant general manager for the water enterprise, created the natural resources and land management division and under several general manager, shines most brightly with the people he hired, promoted and mentored, and june 30, 2022, after nearly 26 years of exemplary service to the city and county of san francisco michael will retire from the sfpuc, therefore be it resolved this commission expresses the deepest gratitude, wishes him a long and prosperous retirement.

congratulations. now i know we are happy, before we ask michael to say a few words, we are happy to be blessed in the chamber with former fire chief now representative senator dianne feinstein. >> good afternoon, gives me great pleasure to be here in my relatively new role as northern california director for dianne feinstein, and in my role as chief, retired three years ago and attest for the san francisco fire department michael was a great resource for us, a great partner, similarly so, i've noticed the senator's office great asset to the sf staff and

d.c. staff. i would like to read the certificate of commendation she has prepared for michael. in honor and recognition of michael carlin's more than 29 years, michael is many of the traits of public service. leadership in hiring, cultivating and supporting other dedicated people will be his lasting legacy. michael was the leader who assembled the team to push through the water system improvement program $4.6 billion to bolster the reliability of the san francisco water supply, seismic safety and long-term sustain ability. michael's vision, his savvy and camaraderie were critical to the effort. a huge accomplishment for the people of san francisco and the broader region of which michael

should be proud. as a united states senator representing the people of california, i commend michael carlin for leadership and achievement in water. so, i would like to present this certificate of commendation. [applause] >> thank you. >> thank you, chief, and i would like to invite deputy general manager michael carlin up to say a few words before we go to public comment. >> good afternoon. i'll tell you, i won't miss this standing before you, to tell you the truth. i have other things to do. but thank you dennis for the

kind words, appreciate it. i've had about 25, 26 years with the puc but 31 with the city. i started out as a camp assistant in the 1970s, you can date me from there. i enjoyed my time at the puc, it's the great people that help accomplish things that need to be done and chief, i never forget the 2013 rim fire, by the way, huge step up for us and the chief especially. but most of all i'm going to miss the people here, and i'll miss just talking to them, seeing them on a daily basis. and working with them on things of mutual interest, not just for puc, but for communities in general, and very happy that we have accomplished a lot and i wish you the best of luck. i'm not going very far away. i'm planning a wedding for my

daughter, so i got to finish that, finish building my house and looks like i just sold my grapes and my vineyard, in good shape for the rest of the year. so, thank you very much, i'll see you soon. >> thank you. >> and then after that. >> members of the public who wish to make two minutes of remote public comment on retirement of mr. carlin, please press star 3 to raise your hand to speak. do we have any members of the public present, we do. >> honorable mr. harrington. >> it's good to see you all and look like you are doing well. i could not let michael leave without a few words, and so much to say about michael, concentrate on three things. the first is michael knows everybody. i think, you know, i expect him to know people in the puc.

i did not expect him, probably relatives, 10% of san francisco. but all of that going on. but much more outside the city and so when you become general manager of the puc you are a member of all kinds of organizations, typically four letter acronyms, normally with a w in them, so aqua and all the rest of them, and michael knew everybody and i could never figure out why and whether that was important, other than socially. then i realized that as things came up, michael could say oh, you are thinking about, seattle is doing this, d.c. doing this, denver, tampa, what about san diego, and hands out to all the water agencies in the country to help us do what we do the best. and then federal and state regulatory agencies and looking at trying to do the water rebuild, we get together with our staff, our engineers, our water people, our environmental people and talk about the goals and what the project would do

and then turn to michael and steve and tim and is that going to fly. who is it going to be at fish and game or that agency or this agency, and who is their boss, and say this is a winning argument and this is not, and incredibly important to have that connection. the second thing is michael's willingness and flexibility. you know, he would say we could try that, give that a try and maybe things could be better. one example, you know, i'm a fan of engagement and communication and so when i was general manager i wanted to have commission and staff and the public get together and talk about issues of concern. and if you ask me a question i can continue, is that the way this works? >> what else do you have on your minds, mr. harrington? [laughter] >> and i will be quick. and so it's not a magic bullet,

communication does not fix things. but it certainly gives you a better basis to have conversations with people, makes people feel listened to and a way to move forward. and so when i was general manager my commission didn't care, but in 2021 we had a time when we were in a place where the community and the commission and the staff, i'm not saying michael is excited about this, but he was willing, to have conversations and move that conversation and engagement forward. that's a very important thing. the third is the constant. in the 25 years, commissioners come and go, general managers come and go, department heads, leaders of the city come and go, and we hope when we have the positions we offer good advice, good decisions, provide some guidance, but we all know that when you flush the toilet and turn the tap and flip the light switch it's the women and men of the puc that make this place run

and michael was an incredibly essential part of that glue that made the place run and move forward over those years. so i will be eternally grateful. so thank you for your service, your friendship and wish you the best of luck in the next chapter of your life. thank you, commissioners. [applause] >> again, good afternoon, commissioners. president moran. michael, very good to see you. as i put together the letter that's in your packet thinking back i actually was hired at bosca three years after michael joined the puc, so worked my entire career on the water system together. you can imagine there have been times we have been on opposite

sides of an issue and same side of an issue you about the words were so true, i never questioned his loyalty to the regional water system and that's an important thing. i think that's part of the critical piece of good public service. we may disagree, that's part of how we move forward. and certainly were a lot of challenging things in our time together and through the course of that together and with your leadership you made it better. and so i want to thank you for that, michael and wish you the best of luck on your retirement, and good health and good times. so, thank you. >> any other members of the public present who wish to speak? mr. moderator, do you have any callers? hands raised? >> madam secretary, we have one caller. >> go ahead, i have unmuted your line.

you have two minutes. >> david pillpel again, hopefully the last time today. the only thing i can add to earlier comments is i agree completely with all the words just spoken by chief hayes-white, fantastic ed harrington and nicole sandkulla. best of wishes, i'm sorry i'm not down there in person but thank you, thank him for your work over the many years and absolutely it is the people of the puc all these years that make the place run, 90 years this year, and michael absolutely represents the best of all of that. thanks again. >> thank you for your comments. madam secretary, another caller has joined the queue. caller, you have two minutes.

>> thanks very much. rosecranes for restore hetch hetchy. and as you know wants to remost reservoir, relocate your reservoir so the valley can be returned and national park. so in a sense the sfpuc is adversary of ours and michael carlin has often been the face of the sfpuc as adversary. but we have undying respect for the work that all utility people do and michael has been more diligent, worked with more integrity than most, and really first class water agency official and sfpuc is, sorry to lose him and i'll speak directly to him, i'm not supposed to, michael, i wish you really well

and thanks very much for all you've done to make the system work for san francisco and regional customers. >> thank you for your comments. madam secretary. we have one more caller in the queue. caller, go ahead. you have two minutes. >> hi, my name is mark musgrave and i am a white water kayaker. i wanted to give some perspective on the water releases on the tulame river, obviously that's really important river resource for many people that recreate in that area. >> excuse me, caller. caller, i'm sorry to interrupt you but we are on item number 7,

resolution for the retirement of our deputy general manager. this is not general public comment. >> oh, i'm sorry. i'm sorry. >> thank you. >> the call queue is clear. >> thank you. public comment on item 7 is closed. >> wondering what your white water experience was there for a minute, but -- commissioners, comments for mr. carlin. >> i'm the newest member of the commission at this point i guess, but i wanted to say i came in right as things were really rocky in this organization at the leadership level and i know michael, i came in and you had taken the rein

and trying to kind of move everything as smoothly as you could and i appreciate that it's not easy to run an organization this large that provides essential service under such a complicated and not very pleasant situation and be so thoughtful and calm and be able to make decisions day in and day out with so much grace and i real appreciated all of that. i think on a general format i would say i have known you for a long time, i have been in the water world for a long time. i followed you and steve to the regional water quality control board hearing all the great things both of you had done there, and it was really -- as always appreciated all the work that sfpuc have done for, as a

member of this city and as somebody who worked in the water world, and i would say as part of that world i always appreciated how much, how quietly san francisco public utilities was doing things without necessarily making a lot of sort of story around it, but so much leadership is required for some of the work that has been done here around diversifying our water supplies, treatment systems, managing both wastewater and electricity and all of that has been done in, you know, making sure all the best science is available to people, making all the best decisions, obviously we can't do everything but i always appreciated to be a leader without living in a city with a water utility that's a leader

but not necessarily screaming that we are a leader, and that demonstrates the humility and the thoughtfulness of the leadership of this organization which are quietly working towards a better future without necessarily trying to make a huge deal out of it. so i always appreciated that and coming into this role i could see that continuing on. i want to say i'm grateful for your leadership, for your thoughtfulness, for always listening to all the ideas and questions i've always asked. i've never ever sort of being frustrated by them. i know it's not easy to have everybody asking you questions from the top or the bottom, i'm sure all the members of staff, all the things you have to deal with on top of that,s you know. all the asks that we have as a commission and i appreciate working with you on everything and i will miss you, and i hope

you stay in touch and keep us in your mind if you have great ideas and, you know, and stay in touch with all of us, it would be good to use your wisdom once in a while with we can. thank you for everything that you have done. public service is -- is really being, like not getting as much appreciation these days, i've said this a few times, everybody wants to be a billionaire and run a start-up and have a company that's sold for many, many million dollars, but you know, we often forget how, how much selflessness goes into this kind of line of work. so i appreciate all the work that you have done over the years. thank you for making this organization what it is now. >> thank you. commissioner paulson. >> so, michael, thanks for your

service. like commissioner ajami, i came in at a time when things are chaotic and transitions were coming through and rich and you in particular were real resources. i got to become a new commissioner and wander my way through the complexities of this incredible department here in the city which is -- which is pretty unique, the amount of talent and skills that is needed with the staff as i said the other day, you know, to really make, you know, these utilities work in the city is absolutely amazing and your help as a go-to person when i first came in is very valuable. i don't know you that well. i want to also thank you for something that you didn't do, you know, as you know, i've worked in the labor union for quite a while with hundreds of unions and my firefighter and building trades and police

colleagues in those unions spent many years boring me and taunting me about not knowing anything about sacred heart and reardon and the west side fights that have gone on all the time and you never, despite the fact that you probably know more about that stuff than anybody in san francisco did not impose those rivalries and stories on me. so that being said, thanks for your service and we'll be missing you as been stated here. so, good luck on your retirement, enjoy it, thank you. >> commissioner maxwell. >> i've known michael a very long time, since my days on the board of supervisors. and i think what comes to my mind that michael has is a gift for relationships, and understanding the value of them. have to have a relationship with

11 members of the board of supervisors and was not the easiest thing but he has a way of making people feel comfortable, and that's important. and that's a skill that when we start looking for other people that we need to really consider. they may not have maybe a lot of one thing or another, but being able to have a relationship with all the people that he's had a relationship with is extremely important. and you've been such a valuable asset, michael, and it's natural, so thank you for everything you've done and you are going to enjoy the hell out of your next phase, you are going to enjoy it, michael. so, we look forward to seeing you in a couple of, a year or two when you've had a chance to really get into it and you'll look like ed, very serene and comfortable. we'll miss you, and thanks a lot for all you have done. >> thank you. michael, i was thinking of 1996,

and we were a different place back then. it was a smaller department, simpler department, and we had a lot of work ahead of us, we didn't even know what it was going to be. your time here has been a momentous time, and when you think about that, the whole creation and delivery of the ssi -- of the s -- wsip, i'm sorry, and others, too, i don't know that there's anybody in senior management that has served that full spin. i was trying to think whether there was somebody else, i could not come up with anyone. and during that time you helped steer this organization into being an organization that's capable of doing just about

anything. the old joke was that if you want the mountain moved six inches over to one side you could probably do that if you gave us money to do it. and it's -- it is a fundamentally different organization. our priorities are different. and 1996, environmental stewardship was not very high on the list of things. today it is. and people, mentioned, but the people you brought into the organization and nurtured are number one, i think the mark of successful manager when you can bring people in and basically seed the organization with talent and you have certainly done that. some of the things you did were fairly quiet. there's some charter provisions that make us a stronger commission today that are there very much because of the work that you and i think barry had a

piece of it too, to make sure that we are the undisputed masters of water in this city. and then last and alluded to, i think the -- as i loved your recitation of the general managers and commissioners that, you know, michael's experience did occur to me earlier that it would actually be a very long list, and if you had it supervisors and all got pretty crazy. [please stand by]

>> clerk: these resolutions are not an action item.

mr. president, your next item is item number eight, the bay area water supply and conservation update. sandkulla. >> nicole sandkulla.

if i can have the slides, please. >> clerk: you need to -- oh. >> it's up. steve did it while you were taking your picture. thank you very much, commissioners. i wanted to take the opportunity today to share with you information about what's going on in the service area with regards to the drought and drought use reduction. and, you'll hear a little bit from steve when he talks about what's going on, but i want to see what we're seeing. first and foremost, the agencies and their water customers strongly support your call for demand for reproduction and conservation actions to achieve that. they are all implementing their conservation programs to reduce their demand to meet your call and to meet the governor's call. that said, what we're seeing this year, because of the magnitude of this drought and kind of how it's shown up

interestingly enough that there's some differences going on in the service area. 10 of the 26 agencies actually have water supply sources other than the san francisco regional water system. different percentages of what they serve from their system with those, but those are significant to them and what we've noticed is that agencies have alternative supplies and in that case, much more significant than the constraints they're experiencing with their supply. and these are not predictable and they're necessarily not all related to drought. we have two agencies that are dealing with ground water issue that is are impacting their ability to use that ground water source or impacting how much they have to blend to use that ground water source. what we're noticing or anticipating is that these constraints on alternative supplies may impact those

individual agencies regional water purchases and it may limit their ability to roll off of your system which historically often they would do. they would go to their alternative supplies if they had them and it may require them to purchase more of your regional water system depending upon the situation. so, as we've been these last couple months, my staff and i have been tracking these issues and i have asked them now to conduct an analysis of it. i've spoken of it with mr. richie as well so we can get a better picture of what's happening with these particular agencies. how they reduce in their demand and what's the impact on their purchases from you. so just to kind of show you what we're seeing, this is the graph that your staff prepares weekly and you'll see lines

that we're all getting very familiar with. i will call attention to two particular lines and i and steve, mr. richie also, we're continuing to try to keep our numbers flat if we can just like we did in 2015. can we get down to those numbers that we achieved then? can we stay down that low and the green line is calendar year 2022 numbers and showing up recently, there's just a bigger gap between that orange line and that green line and these are san francisco purchases only at the meter line and this is concerning. right. and mr. richie will remark on that as well. and so the question is, is that all the picture? and, so, what i've done and unfortunately this data is -- this is the data that the

agencies report to the state board as they're required to, but it's showing all poetable water use. all potable water use by month. and what i've done is the orange line is the same orange line that you had. so that orange line is 2015 total potable water use, but the green line is 2022. and, now mind you, this is april, so it's not may or june, but it's certainly showing something different than just those regional water system purchase numbers. and that's the concern. that's the concern to understand what's going on with that. and i wish i had the answer for you, but i don't. but right now if we were to look just at april, for example, april 2022 use is actually 3% less than april 2015. that wouldn't necessarily be what you would have thought if you lookeded at april on the

p.c. purchases data. so what's going on? so some observations that we've made that i wanted to share with you. as i mentioned, we're having widespread impacts from this drought and they're really showing up differently. in particular, we have three member agencies that are among the largest purchasers of water from you, so they purchase the largest amount of water and those three are experiencing significant constraints on their alternative supplies. the concern is that this disproportionate use by them because of their size can be outweighing what these numbers show and i'll give you an example and you've probably heard of it before because i think steve has mentioned it. but alameda county water district relies on your supply for a small portion normally for their water supply portfolios somewhere around 15% give or take and the state water project and also local

ground water. and your supply generally is used to blend their ground water and they deliver a combined treated water to their customers. alameda county water district has two issues going on this year. they got a 5% allocation of their state water project contract water. normally, they get about 50%. so that's a significant reduction in that major source of supply for them. and their ground water is requiring greater levels of treatment -- not treatment but blending, and so they're even using more to deal with the one of other available source they have. and, so they're actually purchasing more today than they would normally be purchasing from you despite they are significantly reducing overall uses. some other examples santa clara valley water district and the state water project has implemented drought restrictions. the six member agencies in

santa clara county to get water from valley water either ground water or treated water are being asked with a mandatory 15% reduction being imposed on with fines and restrictions and things like that. so, again, they're trying to figure out how they manage their way through this and then i mentioned alameda county water district to you. in addition, two agencies rely upon local water. locally developed water. one of those is a very large agency cal water bear goulg and they have not gotten water out of that reservoir for the last two years. all these things begin to add up and the question is how much is that impacting our picture because i think it's important for us to actually understand what's going on. so we are as i mentioned reaching out to the agencies, getting a better sense from them of what's actually

happening. i wanted to call this to your attention because i didn't want you to think there's no action going on because particularly the area is reducing, but we'll decipher this, distill it, but just to reiterate, the agencies are committed to promoting drought messaging, conservation savings supporting both your call and the governor's call. i thank you for this opportunity to give you updates and certainly answer any questions that you have. >> president: commissioner ajami. >> commissioner: thank you. i have a question for you on the county's request to hire, sort of treat the ground water a little more, mix it with more water. do we know why is that happening? is this because they were using the ground water too much? is it salt intrusion? do we know what's going on

there? >> so i believe they are having some pfos issues in some of their wells. >> commissioner: some ups and downs. >> so it's a blending right now is how they're dealing with it. i think in other circumstances if it wasn't a drought, they probably wouldn't be taking their ground water at all. they would probably do a big switch, but that's obviously not a possibility right at the moment. >> commissioner: and just to talk on the allocation, i think i would not be surprised if this continues considering the fact that you're experiencing drought after drought. so i don't think that's a passing matter. it's probably going to repeat itself over and over. so that's something to think about. >> you know, it's interesting you say that because that has really, that highlighted not so much with bear gulge because i think they're used to that, but coast side has a water supply

and they went into this drought and they were using because we had a very wet year, so they actually took more surface water than they normally did and so by comparison to that year, their purchases are much higher. so it is interesting as we start to talk about these investments in alternative supplies, better understanding their reliability and factoring that into our drought allocations. that's one of the conversations we're having is we're talking about our drought allocation methods. >> commissioner: on the same topic, i know just recently, maybe a few months back, we had this conversation. you mentioned your team is looking into sort of tracking the amount of production in your region. i was wondering where that process is. i know there's so much going on with the drought.

>> yeah. i believe we have a white paper that was produced last summer that was kind of a snapshot analysis where different studies were at in the service area. so i will check back at my office and i'll provide that to donna for distribution. >> commissioner: thank you so much. >> president: thank you. commissioners? commissioner maxwell. >> commissioner: thank you. it's good to see you. >> good to see you too. >> commissioner: i missed why the ground water is the problem with the ground water. >> so generally alameda county water district always has to blend with the ground water supply and the surface water supplies. they take the hetchy water which is such high quality and they blend it for taste and odor issues primarily so it's a better quality water, their customers like it better. right now, they're having a pfos issue so it's a contaminate issue that can be

treateded out but also can be blended out. so they're also doing blenting to extend their ground water sources as much as they can. >> commissioner: so do you foresee this as a permanent problem? >> my understanding is no it's not going to be a permanent problem. but it's not going to be fixed right away. i'm not exactly sure for the timeline of that project. >> commissioner: all right. thank you. >> president: thank you. commissioners, anything else? seeing none. public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes of remote public 'comment on item number 8, press star three to raise your hand to speak. do we have any members of the public present to make public comment on this item.

seeing none. mr. moderator, any callers with their hands raised? >> we had one caller, but they lowered their hand. caller, if you wish to speak, star three, please. we have no callers. >> secretary: okay. thank you. i'm sorry, no callers or caller. >> no callers. >> secretary: thank you. public comment on item eight is closed. >> president: thank you, next item. >> secretary: next item is item nine, report of the general manager. >> thank you, madam secretary. it's a draft update from steve richie. >> thank you, commissioners. steve richie, assistant general manager for water and i've got these slides up for our drought conditions update and many of which are slides that you will seem to have seen before because some of them aren't changing now during summer. i'll go through them very quickly. first is our storage.

hetch hetchy storage is full. water bank is down about 230,000 acre feet. so i think that's commissioner moran mentioned in the last drought. this is where the levels should be. we're keeping water in storage where we can make the most beneficial use of it. and you see also that overall, we are without water bank at 93% storage in our system. next, is the slide showing the california reservoirs and, again, shasta and oroville are really quite low. for any of the commissioners that may have noticed it, there was an online article today in the san francisco chronicle talking about something like winners and losers in the california water supply situation in the drought. the article was really all about the state water project

and the central valley project driven by these two reservoirs. they did have a picture of the reservoir. it was a full reservoir. it was our reservoir in the sierra. we did bring it to their attention so it's now been replaced with shasta. but it was actually a fact. our reservoir was full where others are struggling, that's part of the design and operation of the system that we work with. the california drought monitor, this has not changed either. california is definitely in a drought and we're all having to deal with that. precipitation at hetch hetchy has stayed level now as we get into the summer months. we don't expect that to change very much. again, we were above 2021 and certainly above 1977, but below the median. very similar for snow pack, below the median, again, we were fortunate for the snow pack because of the heavy rain

in october, that really set the stage for having much more water available to the city as time progressed which you see here got to be ultimately be about 200,000-acre feet which is far below what it would take to totally fill the system, but just balances out roughly what we use. so if you recall the last drought, we had three successive years of a steep decline in water bank. this year has gone kind of level. so basically this has been the year that's bought us another year of time in terms of our overall storage. this is the new slide and it might take me a little bit to walk through this. different questions have come up about what are the other things going on in the system. and this is a graph of monthly hetch hetchy generation totals with and without the threat of water rights curtailment.

so, basically looking through this, you can break it into about four chunks. the first chunk is august '21 through october '21 there on the left-hand side. and you'll see that the actual to date operation meaning the generation was on a downward trend. and that was really in anticipation of curtailments occurring in the last quarter of calendar 2021. curtailments didn't come until august, but we foresaw we might be curtailed through the end of the year and we wanted to preserve our storage, so we generated much less at home during that period. but with the storm at the end of october, november 2021 through june 2022, you see the actual generation pretty much increasing during that period and that was because we did have a fair amount of water coming through the system. so we were basically operating to manage our water supply and the fact that we had a fair

amount of water supply allows us to be generating a fair amount more. so generation turned for a good bit during that period. you know, the blue line took a steep dive that was no curtailment, you know, and we thought that the curtailments we believe would not have been generated much at all. then you get to the period of january 2023, where basically it flattened out a bit and the period june '22 through january '23 again anticipation of curtailment looking forward now shows that red-dashed line because the threat of curtailments, we would anticipate we may have to minimize generation later in 2022 because of curtailments

because to preserve water supply in cherry -- it's one of those reservoirs up there. i couldn't recall the name for whatever pup. now, if there are no curtailments, then we would expect that we would generate more during that period and the state board just put out an announcement they're looking to adopt a renewal of the curtailment regulations because they're in emergency regulation in effect for one year. they're going to expire in august. so they're going to consider adopting the new year's words in july of this year to go forward. so they're fully anticipating to need that curtailment tool available to them. and then, looking at february '23 through july '23, we're looking at this is with median

hydrology, we would be generating a fair amount more coming through the system. if it turns out to be dry, it will look a little less. generation varies overtime based on the availability of water to us and anticipation of whether or not the state water board might curtail our diversions. those are the two fundamental drivers of how much we do. what the impact of that is is not necessarily on total generation, but one of the things we've talked about a little bit is resource adequacy and others can talk about that more. the state is looking for us to be able to agree. we're concerned about curtailments. that's where we get into the challenge of how do we meet all of our obligations moving on,

precipitation, the up country precipitation hasn't really changed nor has it for the bay area and also it really hasn't changed looking at the california outlook. the most recent report shows the cities of california looking totally dry for the next couple of weeks. so that's just the way it's going to be for the next little bit. and, then, lastly to talk about the deliveries as nicole talked about in her presentation, you can see we were starting to move up a little bit with the green. yesterday's report came out and it actually dropped off a little bit, so that's a good sign there. but one question that really has come up and i've asked our staff to look into this and we'll be working with bossco on this because of our importance and reliability as a source,

they are going to be looking to us for more water supply and that will affect our ability to achieve the 10% reduction but in a good way because acwd are looking at a 15% and the greater need for ground water. they're doing a good job overall. and an answer to the question that commissioner maxwell raised, the pfos condition is one that will require treatment to eliminate those chemicals. they're organic chemicals that are persistent in the environment. particularly agencies rely on ground water throughout the country are grappling with this issue. i know that orange county took 70 of their wells out of operation until they could come up with the treatment process to deal with it and put them back in operation after removing those chemicals. that's what alameda county

water district is looking at down there as well. treatment of the water supply overall and not just blend it down is what they have to do to survive with enough water in the current time. >> commissioner: where are the chemicals coming from? you said they're in the environment. are they from what we put on the ground? are they -- what is it? is it organic? >> pfos are very common. they're ubiquitous in the environment. they are associated with fire retardants and various other things. probably in lots of different things that you wouldn't expect to find organic chemicals in, but they're there in trace amounts. and just last week, the u.s. c.p.a. took an action to

propose an action level or something like that that in effect is zero because they don't think there's a safe level in the environment for them overall. they're doing a lot of data and i'm sure there's going to be a lot of discussion about that and there's a discussion that water agencies throughout the u.s. have been facing for the last four or five years, it's really come to the forefront. >> commissioner: so, are we looking at plastics and aluminum and those kind of things? >> in case of aluminum, that's a metal, but in this case, it's -- well, i'm trying to recall is it associated with nonstick coating as well on pans. it's in cookware. so it's in the coating, it's not in the aluminum itself. it shows up lots of different places. so, yeah, in conclusion, again, we're really looking hard at

can we achieve the reductions that we want to. it's going to be dry for a while. so the data aren't going to change and we're looking forward to seeing what the state board poses on the regulations for continued curtailments and we'll try to keep on top of making sure we continue to put water first, but do the best we can in terms of optimizing power generation and white water recreation while we do the other job. and i'm happy to answer any questions. >> president: commissioner ajami. >> commissioner: thank you. going back to power generation slide. i had a question there. so, basically, the difference between the blue and red -- >> can you flip the slides, please? >> commissioner: yeah. can we have the slides up one more time. >> there we go. >> commissioner: thank you. so i'm looking at the lines between june 2022 and

december 2022 and the difference between the red line and the red dash line and blue dash line basically what i hear you're saying is if the curtailment, if there is a chance of being curtailed, we may not release as much water, therefore our generation reduces. is that -- >> yeah. the actual amount of water that we're delivering basically from the peak of summer to about november, our reservoir levels come down every year because we're running water out of them. and so what you see in blue is the generation at kirkwood and moccasin from the water supply and also from holm for the nonwater supply water that's coming out of cherry. so what this demonstrates is the blue would be with holme generating more and the red line is the generation that's

left in just the other power houses when we would generate less out of holme by about 50 gig watt hours. [please stand by]

it is communicated well to us and to you that they are actually meeting those requirements at the same time. obviously, if there is water and they need it and they are already doing the conservation requirements -- i mean, meeting the conservation requirements. >> we've been talking to the county water district since january of this year, knowing we

would get into this situation. we have a running commentary. their general manager always reminds me how much they value the high water supply. he's getting a good deal out of it. as we really get into the numbers and find out if that is really making a dent into the amount of water we would like to see conserved, that's a role that this commission would be happy for us to fulfill for the bay area. we want to make sure we communicate that loudly and clearly to this commission, to all of our customers and elected officials and other in sacramento that we're doing our part even though we're not meeting our conservation goal and still providing the basic water supply levels necessary. >> absolutely. i just want to make sure we don't end up on the wrong side

of the story for something that should not -- >> no, we will make absolute sure. that's why we're looking at it right now as ms. amcula mentioned. we've got to bring the deliveries down in the summer. great. if we don't do that, we want to make sure we know why. if it's because we're providing greater reliability, we want that message out there. >> thank you so much. >> chair: thank you. any other questions for mr. richards? no, seeing none, public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who want to make comments on item 9(a), drought conditions update, raise your hand. do we have any people wishing to make public comment? seeing none, do we have any callers in the queue?

>> operator: we have two callers in the queue. first caller. you have two minutes. >> thank you very much. just to reiterate a couple of things said and to ask the question. he is right that san francisco by virtue of the two big storms did well under their water rights. most people in the state and the artifact of california is what i can, can you want this water right system and [indiscernible] san francisco in an ideal world would be changed and fixed and made more equitable all the way around. it's true that san francisco can do better things for alameda county. what's unclear is the curtailments and the

curtailments, i understand they affect hydro power and not water supply. that's all sort of a little confusing. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. next caller. i unmuted your line. you have two minutes. >> i'm here with some college students and we are listening to this meeting. now i want to say a few things. number one, if we do not release sufficient water to serve the needs of the salmon, soon we will not have the salmon. and guess what? you will not have water. you will not have water. write this down in red, blue,

green, yellow, whatever. you will not have water. go to the place and see how you have wasted millions, maybe trillions of gallons of water and how you have accommodated people like botsa who refuse to become a permanent member, but now is cajoling you. you have the people on the commission and some are white. i respect that. don't pay attention to public comment. don't pay attention to empirical data. don't pay attention to the first people now. i'm in touch with the first people and they don't know what's going to happen to hetch

hetchy. you need to have curing with the first people. go back to the days when it was the hetch hetchy valley. thank you very much. >> thank you for your comments. secretary, the call queue is clear. >> clerk: thank you. public comment on item 9(a) is closed. mr. herrera. >> thank you, mr. president. that concludes my report. >> chair: thank you. next item. >> clerk: next item is item 10, new commission business. >> chair: do we have any new business from the commissioners? seeing none, next item, please. >> clerk: next item is item 11, consent calendar. >> chair: i'm not sure if there's any items you would like removed from the consent calendar. seeing none, public comment, please. >> clerk: members of the public

who wish to make two minutes of remote public comment on item 11, the consent calendar, please press *3 to raise your hand to speak. are there any members of the public who wish to make a comment? seeing none, are there any callers in the queue? >> operator: madam secretary, there are no callers in the queue. >> clerk: thank you. item 11 public comment is closed. >> chair: thank you. the consent calendar is before us. may i have a motion and a second. >> move to approve. >> second. >> chair: moved and seconded. [ roll call ]. >> chair: and the consent calendar is adopted. next item, please. >> clerk: next item is 12, approve the terms and conditions of and authorize the general manager to execute a purchase and sale agreement with cypress

lawn cemetery association, purchase and sale agreement with carlos alberto and an easement deed granting pacific gas & electric company an approximately 300 square foot overhead electric line easement for no cost over the sfpuc parcel and providing electrical service to a remote sfpuc water sampling cabinet. >> my name is deana brazil, right of way manager. this item could approve three real estate agreements to power a remote round water sampling station built through the storage and reliability project. this is a multi-agency effort led by the puc to provide additional water supply for customers through the coordinated use of the stored

surface water and groundwater pumps. the project includes the construction of over a dozen well water facilities and treatment facilities to be connected to the sfpuc system as well as the wholesale commissions. the groundwater sampling station that is the subject of this item is located on sfpuc's parcel 17 in south san francisco. the electrical service line would be owned by pg & e. -- on third party property. the applicant must convey to pg& e an easement. there is a requirement of a

10-foot-wide right of way. in the item before you, we seek approval of two purchase and sale agreements for an easement over the property located at 1755 mission road owned by the owners $7,500 and one easement on the parcel owned by cypress lawn cemetery association for $1,000. the fair market value of the easements is estimated at $2,500 and $1,000 respectively. however, the sfpuc is paying an additional $5,000 for the seizement over the road and seeking a reimbursement as afforded by the code of civil procedure. this fair market was obtained from associated right of way services and certified by the city's director of real estate. additionally, we seek approval of an easement deed between the

sfpuc and pg & e with an easement at no cost. should you approve this item here today, the sfpuc would go on to seek approval from the board of supervisors and mayor as required by the city's administrative code. delays in these agreements would result in a delay in implementing this critical project. thank you for your consideration. i will gladly answer any questions. >> chair: thank you. commissioners, any questions? seeing none, public comment, please. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes of public comment on item 12, please press *3 to speak. do we have any members of the public who wish to make comment on this item? seeing none, do we have any callers on the line? >> operator: madam secretary, there are no callers in the

queue. >> clerk: public comment on item 12 is closed. >> chair: can i have a motion and a second. >> move. >> second. >> chair: roll call. [ roll call ]. >> chair: item 12 passes. next item, please. . >> clerk: approve the terms and conditions of and authorize the general manager to execute a purchase and sale agreement with bay area rapid transit (bart) to purchase (1) an approximately 14,619-square-foot permanent easement across bart property located in colma, california, and 3, and (2) a temporary construction easement to support construction of the vehicular and pedestrian access road, for a total of $306,000, subject to board of supervisors and mayoral approval. >> thank you, commissioners. this next item is related to the same groundwater project as the previous one. this is a real estate agreement between the sfpuc and bart for the acquisition of an access

easement and temporary construction easement over bart property to reach the sfpuc groundwater well station known as the treasure island treatment facility. this facility was constructed on sfpuc parcels 2 and 3 in south san francisco. while it isn't landlocked, our existing land access does not accommodate the delivery of equipment and materials necessary to operate and maintain a groundwater well for production of potable water. sfpuc and bart staff negotiated a purchase and sale agreement for a permanent easement over an existing bart access road and a temporary access easement to accommodate this proposed use. bart agreed to sell the easements to the sfpuc for the negotiated settlement value of $306,000. the purchase price is based on a series of independent third party appraisals commissioned by the sfpuc and bart. should you approve this, the

sfpuc would go on to seek approval from the boards of supervisors and mayor, as required by the code. a delay in implementing this project would impact the treasure island facilities and services. thank you for your consideration. any questions? >> chair: any questions? seeing none, public comment, please. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes of public comment on item 13, raise your hand to speak. are there any members of the public who wish to make comment on this item? seeing none, mr. moderator, do we have any callers in the queue? >> there is one call in the queue. go ahead, i have unmuted your line. you have two minutes. >> what i wanted to say is we need a hydrologist and some experts to tell us about the quality of the groundwater.

now we stole the land and the water from the first people. now we're into groundwater. this mickey mouse is not going to take us too far. there is already some nervousness about the distribution. it looks as if they are now into the business of making more money selling contaminated water. i say this that even in san francisco recently people are getting a foul smell when opening up their water. a foul smell. so we are mixing groundwater,

but we are bragging that our water is the best in the world when it's not. moreover, some of you know and i hope the general manager takes note of it, we haven't replaced many of the pipes, thousands of the pipes that carry clean drinking water. i can say more, but i'll put it in writing. maybe i'll put it in an article so the world can know about the foolishness of this commission. thank you very much. >> thank you for your comments. madam secretary, the call queue is clear. >> clerk: public comment on item 13 is closed. >> chair: thank you. any further discussion? seeing none, a motion and second. >> move to approve. >> second. >> chair: roll call. [ roll call ].

>> chair: item 13 passes. please call items 14 and 15 together. >> clerk: 14: approve amendment no. 5 to contract no. ww-647r, southeast water pollution increasing the contract by $498,103,597 and increasing the contract duration by 621 consecutive calendar days for a total contract amount of $1,787,283,149 and a total contract duration of 3,848 consecutive calendar days . item 15: approve amendment no. 2 to contract no. cs-235, planning and engineering increasing the contract amount

by $55,000,000 and extending the contract duration by three years and six months, for a total not-to-exceed amount of $208,500,000 and a total duration of 16 years; and authorize the general manager to execute amendment no. 2, subject to board of supervisors approval pursuant to charter section 9.118. >> my name is steven rollanson. i am acting for my colleague as he is in the process of retiring today. he's going through the motions of signing a lot of paperwork. i'm here about items 14 and 15, both amendments for the biosolids facilities project. this is for the contractor and the design contract. since they're both the same project, i'm joined by the project manager. we have a brief presentation. i wanted to note that you may recall back at the beginning of this year in january when we went through the budget hearings for this plan, we noted there was a significant increase in forecasted costs and time for this project. it is a big deal and now what we're hearing today is the contract administration going through the process now to formally document that in this amendment. there is no change from what we

presented at the beginning of this year, no new news. but this is important to go through. i'm happy to take any questions, but i'll hand over to carolyn to cover some of the material. >> good afternoon, president and commissioners. carolyn chiu, project manager biosolids project. we are before you today to request amendments to the construction contract and the professional services contracted that support the biosolids project. and to bring this in line with our biosolids scope and budget that was adopted through the 10-year capital plan earlier this year. just a little history and background to remind us. as you may recall we suspended bidding activities and paused

the project in 2021 when business came in higher than expected and we paused to confirm our project delivery strategy. in the months that followed, the p.u.c. and others looked at lessons learned and made a few significant changes and saw the positive impacts of these changes. hence, by october of 2021, which was the last time this project was in front of you as the commission, we provided the update where we wanted to share that we were going to confirm our use of the approach to construct the facility but with an improved project team and an updated bidding strategy. since that last october, the bid procurements and the construction have been going at full pace. this is a slide you're probably very familiar with. you probably only saw it a couple of weeks ago as this is a page out of the quarterly report

to the commission. to date we have a significant portion of the biosolids facilities, including the five digesters. we have the brain of the whole process and some of the supporting chemical facilities and number 2 water facilities. we anticipate buying out the rest of the job by the end of the year. so in the contract amendment under your consideration, we are requesting to increase the contract by $500 million and to increase the duration by 21 months. the longer contract duration reflects the contract schedule which was an outcome of having that bid suspension that i just mentioned, coupled with the necessary time just to do that necessary competitive bid and award procurements of these and the site constraints associated

with having multiple contractors working on a constraint site. the proposed increase to the contract value is based on a recent estimated cost of construction to complete that we obtained from the independent cost estimating team that took into consideration current market conditions, escalations, timing of subcontractor procurements, et cetera. so here is a high-level breakdown of that construction costs increase. you can see the majority of it is because the cost of the construction work has increased. obviously there was some escalation due to time, but there is also an increase due to the cost of materials and labor ongoing in the market right now. and then going -- and obviously with the longer schedule and the complexity, of course the general conditions and general requirements also proportionally go up as well. lastly, we increased the cmgc

contingency to match what we think the project will need going forward. here is the ask. as don already read it. this reflects the estimated cost of construction and it is the amendment and the time extension was in the current approved budget and schedule. all right. now, segueing on to item 15 which is the cs235 professional services contract with brown and caldwell. they led the team when we started in 2013. then they progressed on to the full design of the facility. hence by approving this amendment too, it ensures that

the same brown and caldwell team will available through the construction phase, facility startup and commissioning to provide that engineering support and that specialized service that they have provided all along since the beginning of the project. so we are through this commission agenda item, we are looking to increase the contract value by $55 million for a total contract value of $208.5 million with an extension of 42 months through july of 2029, which is the closeout of the project. once again, having this amendment will continue that engineering support and ensure that they are available to us during the course of construction and then obviously when we have a new facility that we have a commission on more. once again, this like the other

one, the cost estimation and in the current budget and schedule. with that, that ends my presentation here. i'm happy to take any questions. >> chair: thank you very much. commissioners, any questions? seeing none, thank you very much. public comment, please. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes of public comment on items 14 and 15, please press *3 to raise your hand to speak. are there any members of the public present who wish to make comment on these items? seeing none, mr. moderator, do we have any callers with their hands raised? >> madam secretary, we have one caller in the queue. caller, i have unmuted your line. you have two minutes. >> let me say this. could we have the assistant general manager of infrastructure just come and say a few things and turn it over to

somebody who told us some funny tales. why don't you do a needs assessment on this project and find out why we have three middle-level managers who have jumped ship? we have an assistant general manager of infrastructure who doesn't know what's happening. so it says a few things and turns it over to somebody who told us a story. what is a story? we started with $6 billion, now at $12 billion, heading to $20 billion. and not one of you commissioners there had a question to ask. oh, we had some difficulty so we had to have a gap, you know. the contractors couldn't go forward. yes, you have contractors.

the one contractor was a group that was suspended or fired and then brought back. this is what has been happening. we don't have -- this is taxpayers' money. this is not those who brought this guy initially. last year i had to step in and tell your commissioners that something is fundamentally wrong. nothing has changed with this general manager on the 13th floor walking up and down singing the blues. he is not an engineer he may be an attorney, but even that is dubious. we need a good engineer, a manager, and not middle management -- >> thank you for your comments. secretary, the call queue is

clear. >> clerk: thank you. public comment is closed. >> chair: thank you. commissioner paulson. >> i did have one general question and i'm going to couch it with a couple of comments. one is i think somebody did mention that i think all of us as commissioners have been out to the southeast facilities to see that incredible project that is ongoing, and it is. it is incredible. i know that we acknowledge that with the complexities and the state-of-the-art and all the great stuff that is going into this resource, that there was a pause because there was a price piece that i think we, very responsibly, said let's look at this a little bit more and find out how we're -- let's talk about what this is. the general public wants to -- will be asking questions like question asked as commissioners.

we have seen both high-level and low-level additions of all the work done to get new business and to explain what is going on. will there be designs and actual construction themselves and whether or not the cost went up or down for workers and materials, which is general in construction. this isn't just san francisco or one project. this is the entire country if not the world. what can you say -- and this is my question -- what can you say is in layman's terms or in just general terms, what happened -- has happened between the pause that we put together a half year ago and right now when we have these budget numbers which -- and these the same budget numbers i hear you saying, what has changed besides the

diligence that i talked about to move forward. if you could just talk about what specifically this means outside of just the diligence that we had. if you could, please. >> great question. >> because we have to own this. >> oh, absolutely. a couple things as a part of that. one, i think now we have weekly management meetings where steve robinson as the director and allan when he was the a.g.m. with infrastructure and our head of construction management, we all meet once a week so there are no surprises with the cmgc, whether it's competitive business or what's going on with the market. on our side we're caelting a more collaborative marketreatin more collaborative market. we changed our dynamics in the field. the other one was i felt like we

maximized the benefits of the cmgc which is not something we had seen before we paused them. meaning that ability to right size bid packages. even now they're always thinking about if we make this package smaller, we can get more business for a more competitive bid process in the procurement. also looking at the availability of resources there, maybe we can carve out this one and let an l.b.e. prime it. there are all these benefits of trying to get the best price that they take advantage of -- especially since you just mentioned that the market is changing. sometimes we slow it down without exacting the schedule to get the better pricings. a lot of that is our contractors thinking because this is what they do. understanding the market and what we think the procurement could be and obviously putting risk in the right place and obviously doing it in

communication with us and the p.u.c. as well. steve, did you want to add? >> i will add briefly, carolyn touched on the culture in the team and the collaboration and partnership we needed to strengthen and forge. also the contract was looked at as well. you mentioned the opportunity when we paused to evaluate what we're doing and make a conscious decision moving forward. part of what you see is the amendment to modify it. we looked at the terms and the specifications and how they would more fairly and transparently allocate risk. the contract was looked at, as was the culture. we also did some independent cost estimating. we wanted to be transparent. we used that pause to look at how we're measuring pause. now we have more confidence that the number remained confidence from the beginning of the year seeking that pause to today. >> thank you.

and the reason i ask that also is just in general when it comes to infrastructure and structures, the public and the private sector, there are many things that happen during the course of the project that are not known on day one absolutely, from the extreme of an earthquake, changing the price of a project or really finding out after because there is no other way to find out what exactly the bedrock looked like or what exactly happens once you start digging or playing. just yelling about cost overruns for me is a stupid exercise unless the types of things that we've seen right now have taken place. where let's not just wander forward. let's look at things. that's why i ask that question. thank you. >> chair: commissioner jonny.

>> i appreciate you walking us through this and i do want to emphasize the fact that the cost of labor definitely has increased significantly in the past few years especially due to the pandemic. i do understand that. two things. one is i want to make sure as we are approving this amendment, we are sort of doing it with acknowledgement that they can do this job in this price and there is not going to be another one in the next three years. i think that is very important, going back to your comment on risk assessment and risk allocation, i think we are definitely taking on a lot of this risk on our side. this is a common practice in all these public-private partnerships that private entities try to throw most of

the risk on the public side and take the benefits of that. that is not uncommon. this is not the only project and we are not the only ones experiencing this. the second thing i would say is going back to my request and i know we are working on that. every one of these projects has a lot of lessons learned. we have staff changes. people come and go. obviously as people move up the ladder, there are new people coming in. we need to make sure we are documenting and tracking these things to make sure we are learning from them. if we're not learning, we will constantly be on the side of being caught off guard by different things. i still hope we are collecting that data i asked earlier in the budget process. i still hope at some point i will have a way of seeing that data in a better way. and i think i said two things,

but i will say this last thing. the concept of how we do project assessments also needs to change. i know we want to make sure we get the lowest bid, but we also don't want to get the lowest bid that keeps rising up and rising up and rising up. we fall for that lowest bid, but obviously they know when they put this bid on, they're going to take it and amend it as many times as they can. i don't want this to happen. i want us at our end to have better ways of assessing this that is more accurate and we can identify people who are low bidding for no reason or high bidding for no reason. finding some middle ground that's right and accurate. so i'm hoping that dataset that you are putting together will help in that process as well. >> commissioner, if i can say.

thank you. absolutely agreed to all of your points. we are working to put that together. it will be telling and help us moving forward. working with business in the construction phase is important. i would bring us further with my program director hat on. some of that is from inception, preplanning and pre-design, the values associated. this is something we need to think about more in the delivery process. this is something we're focused on at the moment in the budget process. >> nobody expected the pandemic would happen and the labor shortages and supply chain disruptions. no one says that won't happen again, but we have to try to minimize some of the other things. minimize the effect of those and then something like this happens

and we need to adjust things slightly and not significantly. >> thank you. i think what also gives me a little confidence is that you're doing independent evaluation. i mean, when something comes in, you look at the market. you look at what other contractors are doing. i think that really for me gives me more confidence that we're not taking anybody's word for it and they understand that as well. i'm feeling going forward that we have learned some lessons and have put things in place. thank you. >> chair: thank you. any additional comments or questions? seeing none, we will take these two items separately. on the first item, 14, may i have a motion and a second. >> so moved. >> second. >> chair: moved and seconded. [ roll call ].

>> chair: item 14 passes. >> move to approve. >> second. [ roll call ]. >> chair: item 15 passes. thank you call. next item, please. >> clerk: award contract no. wd-2879r, to clark construction group as construction manager/general contractor, for a total contract amount of $260,450,682 with a duration of 2,464 consecutive calendar days; this will be presented by

shellby campbell, who is participating remotely. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i'm shellby campbell for the new distribution campus. i'm sorry i'm not able to be with you in person today and greatly appreciate the opportunity to participate virtually. if we could have the slides. great. thank you. today we request your approval to award a construction management general contract for pre-construction construction services to clark construction for a total contract amount of $260.5 million for construction of the campus. [indiscernible] -- in february i provided the background on this project and shared our progress of completing the schematic

design. this includes administrative offices and shops, an auto shop on the east side, a warehouse and meeter shop on marin street and more on evan. there will be a separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic for improved safety. we hope to start construction in 2024 and occupy the campus in 2028. [indiscernible] -- next. we advertised for the

construction ceqa at the end of 2021. there will be an evaluation of real-time costs the ceqa is looking to maximize opportunities for local contractors. finally, we received three proposals from clark construction, web core buildings and one more. here are the results of the process with clark construction in the high four. we request your approval to award the contract to clark construction in an amount not to exceed $260.5 million for a duration of approximately seven years. we hope to [indiscernible] -- we

will return to the commission for approval to proceed with the project. n.t.p. for construction is scheduled for january 2024. lastly, i would like to introduce clark and the clark teams we'll be working with on this project. building on the success at 5050 evans, this project will represent another unprecedented experience. there will be men and women of calendar representing 60% of the team. clark is a founding member of the construction inclusion week and they also have an internal mentorship program. lastly, clark has an incredible teaching partnership program. the spp is a unique program offering opportunities to

disadvantages communities. this is an m.b.a.-style program fully funded by clark and aims to provide core construction management skills. to date there are over 1250 graduates, of which 61 are from san francisco. of the 61 from san francisco, 27 are from the bay view and $80 million in contracts have been awarded to the bayview graduates. their commitment to the graduates is evident in the contracts awarded to the graduates. just a couple of weeks ago the graduates were met with on another project. i would like to close with a quote from clark, that clark envisions an industry where we celebrate and embrace diversity, foster inclusion and equity. i'm honored to be working on

[indiscernible] -- commission and welcome any questions that you have. >> thank you very much. it's good to hear. i have a question. on contracts that we see, the future approves the contract amount for construction will be not to exceed. what does that mean when we say not to exceed? i mean, i think i know what it means, but what does it really mean when we say that? >> is your question -- this is not a maximum guarantee price if that's what you're alluding to, but it is an agreement that they have proposed, what their class will be for general provisions and requirements, their fee and insurance costs and that is

applied towards the estimated construction costs and we're entering into ana contract that is a not-to-exceed amount. it's a not-to-exceed budgeted amount for the project. >> okay. so what assurances then do we have that this will be the price and the timeline? >> so the purpose of working with the instrument of the contractor is to bring them on board early in the project so there is collaboration during the design process so that as you move through the design, there is ongoing reviews and cost estimates so that you are aware of your project exceeding the budget that you set. so it is a collaboration, a partnership. the contractor assists with

presenting potential alternative solutions, to bring the project back on budget. so it is more of a give-and-take process, but aligned with the goals of delivering the project on budget. >> okay. so i guess it means -- all right. maybe i'll let tim go and think about it. >> i had a question about the spp. i'm not quite as familiar with that. is this a program -- i'm just trying to bump up the fonts here on the powerpoint on the graduates. are these companies that go through the program or individuals? if they're individuals, what are examples of some of the jobs or

titles or certificates that they might get by going through that program? >> they're subcontractors. i should preface this by saying that i'm pulling this information from their proposal because until they're awarded the contract, i don't have any engagement with the contractor -- >> but you highlighted it so that's why i'm asking. >> no, i appreciate that. it's a subcontractor and then there is an ongoing relationship and commitment to award those subcontractors work and business as graduates are given a favorite position with respect to being awarded subcontracting jobs on clark construction projects. >> so these are contractors, not individual workers per se? >> correct. >> thank you.

>> thank you for your presentation. a question for you. i sort of know the answer to this, but i want to see. have we worked before with clark construction? >> no, we have not. >> i would just say, i would like for us as part of the continuum and comment i made in the previous discussion, i would like us also to know which contractors we have worked with and how accurate their business have been and how they have been able to keep to the price. again, i do understand these are complex projects. there are so many unknowns and risks associated with them. even a simple home remodeling can go south because of one complexity. so i do understand that, but i

think it's also very important to know if there are groups that we work with that continuously run -- go over their bidding price and making sure that we are tracking that, that would be valuable for us, i think. i also appreciate how the groups -- one other comment actually i want to make. i also was very much -- i found this quite reassuring, just because there are three different contractors bidding for this project. they were quite close. they weren't really that far off. that makes me a little more confident about these numbers. so we'll see if they can deliver based on the value of the contract they have provided to us. but i also appreciated the emphasis on the diversity and

the inclusion in their contract. i think that was really good, so thank you. >> if i can add. >> sure. >> a little bit of information here. clark has done several projects with public works. as you know, public works has done space for other city projects. their projects are more similar to the projects i do focused on workforce space. and the building industry and the construction and building is more standardized than the highly specialized infrastructure project. so there is more certainty to some degree in how to proceed with the project. and i do think that public works has had a really positive experience working with clark on the last two or three buildings they built with them.

>> thank you. >> chair: any additional questions or comments? seeing none, public comment, please. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes of remote public comment on item 16, please press *3 to raise your hand to speak. are there any members of the public who wish to make public comment on this item? seeing none, do we have any callers in the queue with their hands raised? >> we have one caller in the queue. i have unmuted you. go ahead. >> so let me say if we take city bills which are one -- the commissioner who is sitting down there knows the origins of city bills. city bills cannot produce workers that can build a hospital. we don't have any entity within

the 33,000 workers who worked for our city and a city department who can build a hospital because those standards are high. hodgepodge standards. maybe one commissioner will know the details of what i'm talking about. there is one labor person there. he has no clue what i'm talking about. of the three contractors that bid this contract, clark construction is the better one. they had better accountability and transparency. but let me look at it another way. don't you think our unions should have the ability to have training and produce high-skilled workers. we don't have that.

we have this ongoing sfpuc who prefers not to work sometimes with a union, not to work with the city, but to work in their own mickey mouse bay way. the bottom line is this is taxpayers' money. we have to be very wary of the money stated. somebody said, oh, [indiscernible] -- >> i'm sorry, caller, your time is expired. madam secretary, there is another caller in the queue. caller, go ahead, you have two minutes. >> not to work sometimes with the unions. >> yes, thank you.

i'm not sure -- >> can you lower your volume on your tv, please. >> okay, yeah. is that better? okay, thank you. good afternoon. my name is elsa buey. i am a graduate of the clark construction spp program and a small business owner. i've been in business in bayview since 2008. and the strategic partnership program has allowed me to expand my business. it has given me an opportunity to perhaps to even participate in this particular award if it'sed approved. and i know of other people just

like myself from bayview who greatly benefit. so i don't know what other major construction companies are doing, but i so greatly appreciate the opportunity that having been a part of the clark strategic partnership program, the benefit that that has offered me. i am hopeful and i feel certain that since it's an ongoing process that more small and minority business owners will have the same opportunity that i had. thank you, commissioners, for giving me the opportunity just to have a word. thank you so much. >> thank you for your comments. madam secretary, the call queue is clear. >> clerk: thank you. public comment on item 16 is closed. >> chair: thank you. any additional comments or questions? seeing none, a motion and a second, please. >> move to approve.

>> second. >> chair: moved and seconded. roll call. [ roll call ]. >> chair: item 16 passes. next item, please. >> clerk: item 17: public hearing, discussion, and possible action to authorize the general manager to impose a temporary mandatory prohibition on irrigation of non-functional turf at commercial, industrial, and institutional (cii) sites with potable water in alignment with state requirements. this action constitutes the approval action for the project for the purposes of the california environmental quality act (ceqa) >> i'm the assistant general matter for water. this is a relatively small item. when the governor issued his executive order in march 28, he asked the state water board to adopt a prohibition of irrigation with potable water of

large landscape areas -- not landscaped areas, but turf areas at commercial industrial facilities. as we have done before, the state board did adopt this prohibition on a temporary basis back in may. we're trying to keep pace with the state, making sure that in san francisco we reflect the same prohibitions the state has adopted state wide so we can take enforcement if need be. this one is unique. we're hard-pressed to think of is there any in san francisco of large turf that is not used for some recreational purpose, but we want to make sure that we're prepared to do that if, for example, a proposal came forward to institute a large water-using landscape that didn't have any real function, but used real water. we recommend approval of this. if the state board takes an action to make this permanent, we will reflect that and come

back to the commission. >> chair: thank you. questions or comments? >> you said we are working on -- working to see if the government -- i don't know -- how much of this do we have in the city. is this something that we will be tracking? i'm so curious to see this. >> literally we're keeping our eyes open. i talked to the recreation and parks department and i believe every square inch of turf is used in the recreation and parks area. we have golf courses but those are recreational. so there is no large campus-style areas where it is really hot and people don't go outside and the grass is just there to be green and a nice-looking thing that happen that's what the real target is. >> thank you. >> chair: any other comments or

questions? public comment, please. >> clerk: any members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 17, please press *3 to raise your hand. do we have any members of the public or callers with their hands raised? >> madam secretary, there are no caller wish to make comment their hands raised. >> clerk: complement on item 17 is closed. >> chair: any additional comments or questions? seeing none, a mover and a second. [ roll call ]. >> chair: item 17 passes. next item. >> clerk: item 18: approve the plans and specifications, and award contract no. hh-1007, in the amount of $23,980,141, and with a duration of 668 consecutive calendar days (approximately one year and 10

months), to the responsible bidder that submitted the lowest responsive bid, wilson utility construction company. >> hello. i'm margaret hanaford with the water enterprise. i'm the manager of the hetch hetchy water management division. i fast-forwarded a little fast, but i think we're good. here is my famous -- i thought i would take a little bit of time to show you where the project is and why it's so important for us to get this project done. this project will upgrade transmission lines 7 and 8 on our facilities. as you can see on the map on the right, i have highlighted -- this is a segment of -- an excerpt of california. you can see hopefully in the

upper right hand, that is the hetch hetchy reservoir and on the right-hand side of the map is newark closer to the bay aware. that yellow line is 162 miles and that is where our transmission lines transverse from approximately early intake up on the hetch hetchy water project down to newark and the bay area. this is to upgrade lines 7 and 8 located at our substation on the west near the town of oakdale and going 12.5 miles west to the stanford substation.

i want to talk to you a little bit about why upgrading these line sincere important. we're upgrading these lines to address safety and reliability issues. i first want to talk about safety. we have identified safety detections where minimum safety clearance criteria are not met on lines 7 and 8. we call these hard clearances. an example of a hard clearance is where the low point of the conductor or the wire that runs between the transmission towers has insufficient ground clearance. we have 18 of these discrepancies remaining on lines 7 and 8 and this construction project will raise those transmission towers and address these -- address these safety issues. a second reason for this project is reliability. there are hundreds of proposed

renewable electric-generating projects seeking to interconnect to california's electrical grid system that is controlled by the california independent system operator or the ciso. this will be used to pay for the implications of impact. though these are not interconnected with our transmission system, connection with these new generators can cause an adverse impact to our reliability. we have studied the impact of this new generation on the grid and the adverse impact to our facilities in specifically lines 7 and 8. to mitigate these effects, our selective mitigation project and to remit gait lines 7 and 8. the developers of the renewable

generators are responsible for this mitigation project. we are seeking reimbursement in the amount of $33.3 million. of the 21 developers, we've entered into agreements with 11 developers valued at about $22.5 million. recently we reached agreement with five more developers with agreements valued at about $7.9 million with a total of about $28.6 million or 85% of the total funding we are seeking to collect. finally, commissioners, there has been correspondence regarding the contractor for this project, wilson utility construction company and their commitments to unions and wages. i understand a representative is here today that can answer any questions in greater detail.

but i want to report the contractor and the scroorkts sign the agreements even though not required by the agreement. we want to solve the safety and reliability issues of transmission lines 7 and 8. thank you. and i'll answer any questions. . >> i do have some questions regarding some correspondence that came in and as everybody knows this was on the agenda maybe two or three weeks ago to approve this contract and it was pulled, but there was correspondence attached to it that had to do with an organization that tracks contractors to make sure that training requirements and

prevailing wages and everything that's usually required in the public sector gets taken care of. i was actually surprised to see these letters because this is the first time i've seen a letter from this organization, the fair contracting department coming in. and there were two unions in particular that have apparently relationships where they have pointed out that this contractor has absolutely no track record of having a certified training program in the state and it's never been put together and then there was also thoughts that they thought -- and i don't know if this is totally true, but the letter did state that this was such a low bid that just when it comes to paying all the different components of what prevailing wages are that this contract does not have a track

record of taking care of that. that as a commissioner had great concerns to me and that's what my concerns are. signing the p.l.a., we have -- whether or not the contract documents, desired or not, this is one of the things that this commission in particular, not just for prevailing wages, but local hire and whatever else project agreements that we have in place and various parts of the infrastructure work that we do are important to the city and county and this department and san francisco in general. it seems to me that there were enough red flags as to whether or not this company was going to -- if they got a contract through us to be able to provide the things. the main thing is there is no track record whether or not you sign a p.l.a. or not to have people that are going to be trained to become the trades people that they will be in

order to move that forward and that raises a big concern to me whether or not this contractor should be given this contract. i would like to have that question answered in a hard enough way that convinces we that this is worthy of getting this large contract. that is my question and i would like to have some answers as to that track record and the commitments to the wage and hour and training that we require. >> thank you, commissioner paulson. let me just turn around. i hope this is okay. this is -- i would like to introduce walt posy with the construction company. >> good afternoon, president and

commissioners. i am the director of the training for wilson construction company. to your questions about our track record, we've been in business an i.b.w. contractor for 70 years this year. we participate in joint apprentice training programs across the country. our workers come out of the i.b.e.w. we're signatory with them. our skilled tradesmen come through a certified apprenticeship. that's where we hire from. we do have a very robust training program that we operate in all the states that we do work in. i would be more than happy to talk to any organization to look at our training program to show

what we do and how we are meeting regulatory requirements when it comes to training and the ability for us to train. we have three training facilities. one in washington, one in oregon , and one here in california. >> and these are management labor programs or just are these singular programs? >> they're management labor programs. so in conjunction with working with the ibew apprenticeship, we [indiscernible] -- when they come on board, we just don't rely on the apprenticeship training, we give them further training and job-specific training. we are involved with apprenticeship training and development. i sit on the local 1245 rules committee that dictates a lot of the rules for the apprenticeship and i have a very strong

relationship with the ibew and their training programs. we're very dedicated and committed to furthering the trade. i think for the cost to do the work, we look at the prevailing wage, we look at the wage of the ibew members we will be pulling from and that exceeds that. again, we put out a fair price bid to do this work. and i think the difference between us and maybe some other people who did the work is we're solely doing this on our own. there aren't multiple entities working with one another to provide this product. >> thank you. just one other question. do you consider yourself a general contractor? >> we're a utility contractor. we build power lines. >> do you have other crafts besides electricians that you

directly employ? >> we do have other crafts besides journeymen electricians. we have utility workers which would be the labor operators all through the ibew classification. >> thank you. >> i'm not sure if the question is for you or others. i guess my concern was a little bit also on the low bid, especially because it was even lower than what the engineer's estimate was. i'm wondering if you have gone through these business and sort of evaluated how they have managed to have much a low bid, just to avoid at the end paying much higher later in time.

i'm just trying to understand how this bid could have been so much lower than the other ones and so much lower than our engineer's estimates. >> the fact that it's lower than the engineer's estimate, we were not that concerned. we actually did a third party evaluation to do that, the $28 million estimate and then compare that to some of the information in the bid. we felt that it was still reasonable and understandable from what we had seen and felt that the information -- the bid was acceptable. >> so the engineer's estimate was externally gathered, right? >> yes. >> okay. that makes sense. i appreciate that. thank you. >> chair: any additional questions? seeing none, public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes of remote public comment on item 18, please press *3 to speak. do we have any members of the public who wish to provide

public comment on this item? seeing none, mr. moderator, are there any callers with their hands raised? >> madam secretary, we have one caller in the queue. caller, go ahead, i have unmuted your line, you have two minutes. >> first and foremost, i know a lot about the company who's going to do this job. as i know a lot about other companies who belong to the ibew. and i know a lot about carolyn chiu. so again, there is a lot of ignorance among the commissioners. that line agenda or the agenda items coming before you should get some sort of orientation before you bring it to the public. one commissioner speak ill of the contractor who's really not

a contractor. he's a labor management type of operation as we have in our project labor agreement. with some ties to the labor union. okay? and we know about 261 right here in san francisco, about their transparency and accountability. now, having said that, my concern because of the fires, are we going to put a high-power line up or could we put it underground? i was also thinking that we had [indiscernible] bringing in the water from hetch hetchy and now we are using three. i don't know how we could use the fourth pipe that is now lot

used, but -- i was just thinking about it. now, how about having some sort of an orientation, some sort of a public-making -- >> sorry, caller, your time has expired. madam secretary, there are no other callers in the queue. >> clerk: public comment on item 18 is closed. >> thank you. i was glad to see that you upgraded your safety and drug protocols in light of the incidents that have happened. have you noticed, have you had any -- have you noticed any -- have you -- i hate to use it. have you found anybody that was out of compliance because of your new protocols? >> yes.

so we're catching most of that at our new hire orientation. i think what's really helped us is we provided reasonable suspicion training to all of our front-line people all the way down to the crew foreman. what we've seen is they have concerns and will speak up and get someone else there to have a second opinion to say, hey, maybe we should get these individuals observed and tested. that's been very successful for us to provide a safe working environment. in some cases it comes back as negative and that's a positive thing as well, right. so we're getting a 360° view of the workforce that's out there. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> chair: thank you. any additional comments? seeing none, a motion and a second, please. >> so moved. >> second. >> chair: moved and seconded. [ roll call ].

>> chair: item 18 passes. thank you. next item, please. >> clerk: next item is public comment on the matters to be addressed during closed session. members of the public who wish to make two minutes of remote public comment on item 21 to be heard during closed session, conference with legal counsel regarding the existing litigation dumer versus san francisco public utilities commission, please raise your hand to speak. any members of the public wishing to make public comment on item 21? seeing none, mr. moderator, do we have any callers with their hand raised? >> madam secretary, we have no callers with their hand raised. >> clerk: public comment on closed session is closed.

>> chair: do i have permission to assert attorney-client privilege? >> so moved. >> i'll second that. >> chair: roll call. [ roll call ]. >> we have four ayes. >> chair: item 20 passes. we'll now go into closed session.

>> president: we are back. there was no action taken during closed session. may i have a motion on whether to disclose discussion that took place during closed session. >> commissioner: move not to disclose. >> commissioner: second. >> president: moved and second. roll call, please. >> secretary: [roll call] you have four ayes. >> president: okay. the item passes. there being no additional business before the commission, this meeting is adjourned. >> commissioner: what happened to your gavel? >> president: it got stolen. we evidently have one on order.

>> my name is sylvia and i'm the owner of the mexican bistro. we have been in business for 18 years and we first opened on garry street in san francisco, and now we are located in a beautiful historic building.

and we are part of the historical building founded in 1776. at the same time as the mission delores in san francisco. (♪♪) our specialty food is food from central mexico. it's a high-end mexican food based on quality and fresh ingredients. we have an amazing chef from yucatán and we specialize on molotov, that are made with pumpkin seeds. and we're also known for handmade tortillas and we make our own fresh salsa. and we have cocktails, and we have many in the bar. we have specialty drinks and they are very flavorrable and very authentic.

some of them are spicy, some are sour, but, again, we offer high-quality ingredients on our drinks as well. (♪♪) we have been in san francisco for 27 years, and our hearts are here. we are from mexico, but after 27 years, we feel part of the community of san francisco. it is very important for us to be the change, the positive change that is happening in san francisco. the presidio in particular, they're doing great efforts to bring back san francisco, what it was. a lot of tourism and a lot of new restaurants and the new companies. san francisco is international and has a lot of potential. (♪♪) so you want to try authentic

mexican food and i invite you to come to our bistro located on 50 moroo avenue in presidio. and i'll wait here with my open arms and giving you a welcome to try my food. (♪♪) >> hello, my name is jamie harper. in this episode, we are featuring the park locations in your very own backyard. this is your chance to find your heart in san francisco with

someone special. golden gate park's largest body of water is this lake, a popular spot for strolling and paddling around in boats, which can be rented. created in 1893, it was designed foreboding and -- for boating. it is named for the wild strawberries that once flores. a pleasant trail follows the perimeter past huntington falls, 110 foot waterfall. two bridges connect the trail to the island. the climb to the hills summit, the highest point in golden gate park at more than four hundred feet. you can get quinces of the western side of the city through -- glimpes of the

western side of city through a thick trees. the lake is ada accessible. it has a peaceful atmosphere where you can enjoy a warm day. walk along the lake and watched many ducks, and swans, and seagulls. it is a tranquil spot to stroll, enjoy each other's company, and sail away. many couples come here to take a ride around the lake, floating under the bridges, past the pavilion and waterfall. for a quiet getaway, it makes for a memorable and magical experience. located on 19th avenue, this grove is the place to wear your hiking boots, bring your

family, and bring the dog because it has so much to offer you and your loved ones. it is a truly hidden gem in the city. the part is rich with eucalyptus trees. long paths allow you to meander, perfect for dog walking in a wooded environment. >> i enjoy this base and the history behind it. the diversity that exists in such an urban city, the concrete, the streets, cars, we have this oasis of a natural environment. it reminds us of what san francisco initially was. >> this is a section for dogs and plenty of parking. transit is available to get you there easily. and the part is ada -- park is ada accessible.

there is also a natural lake. this is your chance to stroll and let the kids run free. it also has many birds to watch. it is the place to find some solitude from the city and appreciate what you share with a wonderful breath of fresh air. , an experienced this park and enjoy the peoples, picnics, and sunshine. this is a lovely place to take a stroll with your loved one hand in hand. located in the middle of pacific heights on top of a hill, lafayette park offers a great square a of a peaceful beauty. large trees border greenery. it features tables and benches, a playground, restaurants, and tennis courts.

there are plenty of areas for football, frisbee, and picnics. it is very much a couple's part and there are a multitude of experiences you can have together. bring your dog and watch the mean go with the community or just picnic at one of the many tables and enjoy all of the park has to offer. many couples find this is the perfect place to put down a blanket and soak up the sun. it is a majestic place you can share with someone you cherish. it is located along the 1 and 10 buses and is accessed from the 47 and 90 buses. it is ada accessible. for more information about reserving one of these locations, call 831-5500. this number is best for special events, weddings, picnics, and

the county fair building. for any athletic fields and neighborhood parks, 831-5510. you can also write us. or walking in and say hello at old lock cabin, golden gate park. and of course you can find more information and reach us at sfrecpark.org.

>> president walton: good afternoon and welcome to the

june 28, 2022 regular meet ongoing of the san francisco board of supervisors. madame clerk, please call the roll? chan not present. >> supervisor dorsey: present. >> supervisor mandelman: present. >> supervisor mar: present. >> supervisor melgar: present. >> supervisor peskin: present. >> supervisor preston: present. >> supervisor ronen: present. >> supervisor safai: present. >> supervisor stefani: present. >> supervisor walton: present. >> mr. president, you have a quorum. >> president walton: thank you so much. and i will entertain a motion to excuse supervisor chan made by supervisor preston, seconded by supervisor mandelman. madame clerk, on the motion. >> on the motion to excuse

supervisor chan from this meeting today, supervisor preston? >> supervisor preston: aye. >> supervisor ronen: aye. >> supervisor safai: aye. >> supervisor stefani: aye. >> supervisor walton: aye. >> supervisor dorsey: aye. >> supervisor mandelman: aye. >> supervisor mar: aye. >> supervisor melgar: aye. >> supervisor peskin: aye. >> there are 10 ayes. >> president walton: thank you, motion carries. supervisor chan is excused from today's board meeting. the san francisco board of supervisors acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the ramaytush ohlone who are the original inhabitants of the san francisco peninsula. as the indigenous stewards of this land, and in accordance with their traditions, the ramaytush ohlone have never

ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. as guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the ramaytush ohlone community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. colleagues, please stand with me and join me in the pledge of allegiance. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> president walton: and on behalf of the board of supervisors, i would like to acknowledge the staff at

sfgovtv. today we have kaleena mendoza who records each of our meetings and make the transcripts available to the public online. madame clerk, are there any communications? >> yes, the board of supervisors welcomes the general public to the board's legislative chamber here in city hall, room 250, to both listen to the proceeding or to advise the board in person during general public comment. this meeting is airing live on sfgovtv's award winning channel 26 or you may view live stream at www.sfgovtv.org. alternatively, you may also participate remotely by utilizing the remote call-in system. the best practices are to call in early from a quiet location and make sure your television or computer is concerned down. the board will prioritize hearing testimony from those who attend in person. thereafter, the board will hear from those who called into the remote system.

please note the remote system will be open one time. once the board has heard from all callers in the queue, the president will close the remote system and it will not be reopened. throughout the meeting, the telephone number is streaming on your screen. it is 1-415-655-0001. when you hear the system prompt, that's when you should enter the meeting i.d. 2499 088 6363 # #. you'll know you have joined the meeting once you hear the discussion, however your line will be muted and once you're ready to line up in the speaker's queue to provide comment, press star 3, listen for the prompt you've been unmuted and begin speaking. there are no special orders at 3:00, so the only item with public comment associated with it is general public comment when item 42 is called. you may then speak to the

approval of the may 17 and may 24 meeting, the recommendations of commendation, items 43 and 44, those are for consideration, or you may speak to general matters that are not on today's agenda, but are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board. all other content will have been reported out to the board by an appropriate committee where public comment -- the public comment requirement has been fulfilled. you may still communicate with the board by sending your written correspondence by u.s. mail, the san francisco board of supervisors, 1 dr. carlton b. goodlett place, city hall, san francisco, california, 94102 or send an e-mail to the board by using the e-mail address. in partnership with the office of civic engagement and immigrant affairs, we do have interpreters today during

general public comment. at that time i will invite the interpreters to introduce themselves and to provide access information to this remote meeting in language. finally, if you are experiencing any trouble accessing this meeting, we do have a clerk in person and live answering our telephones. if you call, that concludes my communications. >> president walton: thank you so much, madame clerk. and colleagues, just a friendly reminder, please mute your microphones when you're not speaking. we'll go to the approval of minutes. today we're approving the meeting minutes from may 17 and may 24 board meeting. any changes? i don't see anyone on the roster. can i get a motion to approve the minutes for those dates. made by supervisor preston, seconded by supervisor

mandelman. madame clerk? >> clerk: on the minutes, supervisor preston? >> supervisor preston: aye. >> supervisor ronen: aye. >> supervisor safai: aye. >> supervisor stefani: aye. >> supervisor walton: aye. >> supervisor dorsey: aye. >> supervisor mandelman: aye. >> supervisor mar: aye. >> supervisor melgar: aye. >> supervisor peskin: aye. >> there are 10 ayes. >> president walton: thank you. and without objection, the minutes will be approved after public comment as presented. madame clerk, let's go to our regular agenda, consent agenda times 1 through 5. >> these items are considered to be routine. if a member objects, an item may be removed and considered separately. >> president walton: thank you so much. i don't see anyone on the

roster, so we'll take these same house, same call. without objection, these ordinances are passed on first reading. and resolutions are adopted unanimously. madame clerk, please call item number 6 and 7 together. >> items 6 and 7 are ordinances that authorize the department of public health to award two one-time limited term grants with engaging -- without engaging in the competitive solicitation process otherwise required by the administrative code for grants for the purpose of maintaining the financial solvency of both. for item 6 this appropriates approximately $2 million for the positive resource center and item 7, 1.2 million is appropriated as a grant to baker places inc. and for both items a one-year term of july 1, 2022 through june 30, 2023.

>> president walton: thank you so much, madame clerk. can we have a roll call vote on these items? >> clerk: on item 6 and 7, supervisor preston? >> supervisor preston: aye. >> supervisor ronen: aye. >> supervisor safai: aye. >> supervisor stefani: aye. >> supervisor walton: aye. >> supervisor dorsey: aye. >> supervisor mandelman: aye. >> supervisor mar: aye. >> supervisor melgar: aye. >> supervisor peskin: aye. >> clerk: there are 10 ayes. >> president walton: thank you. without objection these ordinances are finally passed unanimously. madame clerk, would you call items 8 and 9 together. >> clerk: items 8 and 9 comprise the city's proposed interim budget.

item 8 is the interim budget and appropriation ordinance to appropriate all estimated receipts and expenditures for city departments as of june 1, 2022 and for item 9 this is the interim salary ordinance enumerating all positions in the budget for both ordinances for fiscal year ending june 30, 2023 and june 30, 2024. >> president walton: thank you, madame clerk. would you please call a roll on these items? on items 8 and 9. >> supervisor preston: no. >> supervisor ronen: aye. >> supervisor safai: aye. >> supervisor stefani: aye. >> supervisor walton: aye. >> supervisor dorsey: aye. >> supervisor mandelman: aye. >> supervisor mar: aye. >> supervisor melgar: aye. >> supervisor peskin: aye. >> there are 9 ayes and one no with supervisor preston in the

dissent. >> president walton: thank you. these ordinances are finally passed with a 10-1 vote. madame clerk, would you call item 10? >> item 10 -- mr. president, just for the record, items 8 and 9, that was a 9 ayes and one no -- >> my apologies, 9-1. >> item 10 is ordinance to amend the planning code to create the group housing special use district. >> president walton: thank you, madame clerk. i don't see anyone on the roster. can you please call the roll on item 10? >> supervisor preston: aye. >> supervisor ronen: aye. >> supervisor safai: aye. >> supervisor stefani: aye. >> supervisor walton: aye. >> supervisor dorsey: aye. >> supervisor mandelman: aye. >> supervisor mar: aye.

>> supervisor melgar: aye. >> supervisor peskin: aye. >> clerk: there are 10 ayes. >> president walton: without objection, this ordinance is passed on first reading. madame clerk, please call item 11. >> item 11, this is ordinance to amend the planning code to rezone all r.h.1 residential one family zoning districts with exceptions to rh-2 two family zoning districts. to rezone the rh-1d districts to a new class called rh-2 capital d. to provide a density limit exemption to permit up to four dwelling units per lot and six dwelling units per corner lots in all rh zoning districts certain to subject requirements. and to amend the administrative code to require new dwelling units constructed pursuant to be

subject to the rent ordinance and additionally to amend the subdivision code to authorize a subdivider pursuant to the density exception, to map that includes the existing and new dwelling units that constitute the project and affirm the ceqa determination and appropriate findings for both ordinances. >> president walton: thank you, madame clerk -- supervisor melgar, my apologies. >> supervisor melgar: supervisor mandelman, should i go first? okay. this is supervisor mandelman's legislation which was debated, amended, discussed for several months at the land, use and transportation committee. we had a very robust engaged process that included many members of this board outside of the land use and transportation

committee. i want to thank supervisors peskin and preston for their work in very engaged discussion and their staff worked on this legislation as well. and, you know, i think at the end of the day, we crafted legislation that is a halfway point between, you know, different opinions and perspectives on land use. it will be a change for our city, but one that i feel we must embrace. and i think -- i do think that making small steps in progress is better than making no progress at all. i have a minor amendment that i need to present today. at the committee we supported language that ensured that any new units that were waived into for this legislation were subject to rent control, but, you know, after we passed it,

the city attorney flagged that there was a lack of clarity on some of the language. so we are adding this just to make it clear as to what the intent was. on page 9, line 7 -- i'm sorry, page 9 lines 5 through 7 under section, applicability of rent ordinance regulatory agreement, i would like to add the language to read as follows. f, applicability of rent ordinance regulatory agreements. project sponsors of projects utilizing the density exception of this subsection c8 shall enter into a regulatory agreement with the city subjecting the new units created pursuant to the exception to the san francisco residential rent arbitration ordinance, chapter 37 of the administrative code as a condition of approval of the density exception. i believe this to be a non-substantive amendment as can

be confirmed by our city attorney. and, mr. president, i would like to make a motion to adopt this amendment into the record before we vote on the ordinance itself. >> president walton: thank you so much. motion to amend. do we have a second seconded by supervisor mandelman. supervisor safai? >> supervisor safai: thank you, mr. president. first, let me say i really appreciate all the hard work that i think many of us put into this. supervisor mandelman, supervisor melgar, supervisor mar and all of the other supervisors that attempted to steer this in the right direction, but i will not be supporting this legislation today, because i think it's an attempt to thwart our state bill that really was kind of a decor of what i felt was important to

preserve. which would allow for the ability of people to streamline and build two units of housing and requires local communities really to step up and begin to build housing in an aggressive manner. i think we have a housing crisis in this city. some people may agree, some people may disagree, but our housing element that we will have to account for and attest to and submit is going to require us to build thousands of units of housing. and particularly in the areas that this legislation is attempting to zero in on. we've had a lot of conversations about increasing density and the ability to build multiunit housing and i support that goal overall, but i think this legislation actually at the end will end up making it more difficult than it will be to making it easier to achieve the goal of building more housing in your city. so -- our city.

for many of those reasons i intend to vote no today. i don't agree with the five-year hold. i understand that theory behind it, but again i think that will slow down the development of housing. i think that what will happen in practice it will be small builders in the city that will use the opportunity to build on scale and create more housing and increase the supply. and this housing will be targeted toward that missing middle. we've seen that happen in other cities in the united states and i think we can do that and we should be able to shoot for that. i think more time would allow us, as much as we've attempted more time, would allow us to get a better piece of legislation. i think that at the end of the day the legislation that i had going forward which was parallel, preserved sb9, it attempted to exchange some level of affordability for an expedited process, it gave people still the option to build

lesser than four units, but at least two with preserving sb9 which i think is important. it created in-lieu fees and protected historic properties and renters. for all those reasons, i can't support this legislation today. i believe it's too small of a step in a crisis that we need to be taking a much larger step to be building housing in a much more aggressive manner. thank you. >> president walton: thank you, supervisor safai. supervisor mandelman. >> supervisor mandelman: president walton, thank you, chair melgar, for your work on this in land use along with colleagues supervisors peskin and preston. this little piece of legislation has had a very long journey. it's been, i think, more than a full year since i introduced the first version -- well, yeah, it was last may, so more than a year. and, you know, we had many

conversations with folks before then. and, you know, the legislative process is beautiful and frustrating at the same time. no individual on this board gets to get the thing done that they absolutely want without any feedback from others. the product that comes forward are the result of group work. i believe that it is important for us to find ways to allow the production of more housing in san francisco in our laws. i believe it is important for us to allow the production and to fund the production of more affordable housing -- and congratulations, supervisor preston, on a significant win yesterday and to all the members of the budget committee. but i also think and i know that there are -- we have different views about this on this board, that part of the solution --

part of san francisco's contribution to solving these statewide housing crisis is for us to find ways to build more market rate housing as well. i believe that this legislation, although it is not what i introduced, in some ways it has expanded, in some ways it has contracted, but it has moved us closer, i think, to allowing for neighborhoods that have not been producing significant amounts of housing to produce a little bit more housing. to try out this idea of increased density in what were rh-1, 2 and 3 districts. if this moves forward and becomes the law of san francisco, this is not the final statement on density in low-density neighborhoods. this is one piece of legislation. we may come back and revisit pieces of it that have got -- that have been able to get us a consensus around it.

but i do believe this is a positive step. and with regard to whether we want to turn over the rezoning of rh-1 to the state for a one-size-fits-all sb9 approach to creating density, my answer is no and the planning department's answer was no. that was baked into this legislation, but that's, you know, a piece of this. we introduced this -- i introduced this long before sb9 came along. and i support the elimination of rh-1 zoning. i think it's the right thing to do, but allowing up to four units and allowing six units on corner lots and trying this out which is something for property owners rather than developers, if that's what it takes to get confidence on this board, then that's, you know, a deal i've been willing to make. i think we need to go further. i think we need to go faster. i think we need to do things like this and many more of them.

but i don't think this is a step backward and the opposition it has inspired is intriguing to me. there is no four plex ballot measure out there. there is no other way to pursue four plex. this up-zoning of low density neighborhoods, so i don't get the point of trying to kill a piece of legislation, that although modest and incremental would be in my view a step towards a denser city with more market rate housing which i think is a goal. perfect? no. better than what we got? yes. that's my test for legislation. i'm staying on it. and i want to thank all the folks on the board and in the community who have been willing to engage around this and i want to thank supervisor melgar in particular for working with the city attorney on this final amendment. >> president walton: thank you,

supervisor mandelman. supervisor peskin. >> supervisor peskin: thank you, president walton. colleagues, let me share the accolades to the chair of the land use committee for, as i said in committee, a good and difficult process. and we haven't spoken to this yet. there were three competing pieces of legislation from three different members of this board and we had to sort through that. and ultimately, the land use committee actually went with the least restrictive proposal. i'm actually kind of shocked that there is opposition to this. and i want to drill down into that opposition, because the land use committee rejected pieces of legislation that actually required more affordability as presented by supervisors mar and supervisor safai. but, supervisor mandelman chose to -- i did not make this amendment -- supervisor melgar did not make this amendment,

supervisor preston did not make this amendment -- chose to go down the path consistent with public policy that this and previous boards have adopted that would subject these additional units as further amended today or about to be amended by supervisor melgar, to the rent stabilization ordinance. now mind you, these are units that would rent at market. but today's market rents are tomorrow's affordable rents and indeed that is what this board and previous boards have done in the case of adus and multiplexes. what they hate is rent control. they hate rent control and that is why they're posing a bill that increases density in san francisco. so, let's be real about it. it is a positive step in the right direction. i'd say that is a supervisor who represents the densest district

in san francisco. but it has remained stable and those communities have been viable because of rent control. i rest my case. >> president walton: thank you, supervisor peskin. supervisor dorsey. >> supervisor dorsey: thank you, colleagues. i will be voting against this legislation, but not before commending supervisor mandelman and supervisor melgar for their leadership on the original proposal. as someone who is coming into this process late, i think in good conscience i should give credit to others who worked on this, including those who offered amendments which i disagree. but i think this legislation could have made important progress for our city to meet its housing obligations over the course of the next decade. philosophically, i'm not adverse to taking incremental steps provided those steps are in the right direction, but after doing

homework on this, which included conversations with advocates and others whose expertise i trust on housing policy, i'm convinced that this legislation actually does take us in the wrong direction. first as amended, this legislation would result in little if any new housing production given added requirements that limit the feasibility of most small-scale development city-wide. second by amending the planning code to rezone rh-1 zoning districts to rh-2, i'm convinced this measure would place san francisco beyond the reach of state law, specifically sb9, the california home act. sb9 was enacted last year and made important changes to law to homeowners to divide their lots into two lots and allow homes on each of those.

limiting discretionary review processes that i have seen too much and for too many years during my 14 years working here in city hall frustrate rather than facilitate needed progress on housing. i think sb9 will facilitate small scale development here in san francisco and i think it should be unencumbered by local laws like that. so i want to make sure that sb9 has an opportunity to work. we have an obligation over the next eight years to build 82,000 units of housing. failing to do that, i think risks the loss of state funding for affordable housing, for transit and possibly the loss of local control all together as the supervisor for district 6, i think my district would be disproportionately affected by punitive measures the state could take if we fail to build the housing we need to build. and for that reason, although i applaud the work that was done,

i will be voting no on this. thank you. >> president walton: thank you, supervisor dorsey. supervisor mar. >> supervisor mar: thank you, president walton. i also wanted to thank supervisor mandelman and the business staff for all their work on this policy over a year plus i think. and supervisor -- thanks to land use committee chair melgar also for leading the months of discussion about this along with my alternative proposal and supervisor safai's as well. you know, i do want to say that i think this is a really important small and first step that we're taking to really support small-scale development in our low density neighborhoods, which, you know, includes most of my district. and this is a very important way to add new housing to meet the needs of our communities in our low density neighborhoods. but it's also important, because this is a new type of small

scale development that really hasn't been done in our city before, it's important we get the details right on this -- on the density. and make sure it's the right incentives, that it's really creating the housing that is needed. and the missing housing that we all talk is the goal of the small-scale development. so i am disappointed that it doesn't include the -- my additional provision that would really incentivize affordability -- or affordable units or ensure that the units created are affordable. but my proposal also included a separate incentive program for homeowners, separate from the density bonus, that would incentivize affordability on these units. so we're going to move ahead with the housing development incentive program that they're working on with the legislation we passed to create it earlier

this year, that will create financial incentives for homeowners to create affordable housing, or ensure affordability in these units. so i will be supporting this. i also -- one last point -- the last time the board considered, you know, a big -- a similar and new type of density bonus was a home sf program maybe four or five years ago and that was also a long process. i wasn't on the board at that time -- yeah, two years. thanks, supervisor safai. and then to get the details right on home sf. and that also required further amendments, so i know we'll continue to look at this legislation and possible amendments in the future. thank you. >> president walton: thank you, supervisor mar. supervisor preston? >> supervisor preston: thank you, president walton. and want to thank a bunch of folks and echo the thanks for --

for supervisor melgar. i didn't know if we'd get there -- i don't think i've seen a situation where we have three parallel pieces of legislation, none of which were simple and trying to manage those with various amendments. so, thank you for your work to bring everyone together around this one and thank you, supervisor mandelman, for your really working i think constructively with the committee. i think it was important, even though it made it complicated to have multiple pieces, i thought it was important to discuss the proposals from supervisor mar and supervisor safai really exploring to what extent affordability as part of this kind of up-zoning is or is not feasible. i think it was a very important discussion for us to have. i will say that, frankly, i don't understand the opposition to this. i understand a frustration if

folks want fewer protections in place or want to err on the side of having fewer limitations on this, but i do think at the heart of this, as supervisor peskin i think has eloquently stated, we're talking about whether the units created here should or should not be subject to rent control. i do not think it is consistent with a position in support of rent control to vote against this measure because it restricts a landlord in the future on these units from gouging their tenant with unlimited rent increases. and fundamentally, that's what we're talking about. so i fully understand why a developer would prefer to create units that are not subject to any controls, and i fully understand why many landlords

will want to have units where they can raise people's rents 10, 20, 30, 50 or 100% and this is someone who did tenant rights across the state. there are lots of landlords not subject to represent control who are raising rents. that's not san francisco. at least i hope not. and it's not anything this board has ever really supported or should support. so, i think that these are reasonable amendments and i think if we as a body are supportive of rent control, we should be using every opportunity to make sure units are subject to rent control. now our options on that are limited, right? we deal all the time with situations of certain types of new construction, certain types of properties like single-family homes where the state has restricted us from applying rent control. and that's a frustration that we all hear from our constituents and have to break the news to them that they're not covered by rent control. but as supervisor peskin stated

for the vast majority of rental units, they are subject to rent control. it's extremely important. it's what has allowed a working-class to remain in san francisco. i will be supporting this. i want to thank supervisor mandelman for all your work on this and really recommend that colleagues who are supportive of rent control support this with these amendments. thank you. >> president walton: thank you, supervisor preston. and i do just want to start out by saying that i love rent control and can't wait until the day we can repeal costa hawkins. in fact, this will get me excited if every unit in this legislation was going to be under rent control. and i do want to appreciate supervisor mandelman, supervisor melgar and everyone who worked on this, because i know a lot of time has gone into this legislation, but for me, there is just some very fundamental things that i have issue with. i don't believe that all of a

sudden because of this legislation, we'll start to see certain communities across san francisco building a lot of four plexes. i just don't believe that's going to happen. i know the intent behind the legislation, thinking that it will push certain communities to build more, but that's not going to be the case. and what i do know is going to happen it's going to accelerate gentrification, particularly in communities like where i live, like where i represent. it's going to obliterate preserving housing for families and kill the fabric of certain communities. i think it encourages people to speculate and buy homes they don't have to live in and put people in them and kill the fabric of the communities that exist. and really take the unity out of community. and so for me, it just has too many obvious negative consequences for communities where we've seen gentrification, for communities where we've seen

people pushed out. i think this legislation is something that, quite frankly, is problematic in that way. as a supervisor who lives in a district that builds housing, i know that there are ways to build responsible, affordable housing, get people involved and get people excited about building housing. i don't think this is it. and even though i appreciate the intent, i do think it will do a number on certain communities, particularly communities where we see families, where we see vibrant families living together. i think this is going to really encourage speculation and, therefore, i can't support it. we do have a motion to amend made by supervisor melgar and seconded by supervisor mandelman. can we get a vote on the amendments, madame clerk. >> clerk: on the amendment to item 11, supervisor preston. >> supervisor preston: aye. >> supervisor ronen: aye. >> supervisor safai: aye.

>> supervisor stefani: aye. >> supervisor walton: aye. >> supervisor dorsey: aye. >> supervisor mandelman: aye. >> supervisor mar: aye. >> supervisor melgar: aye. >> supervisor peskin: aye. >> there are 10 ayes. >> president walton: motion to amend carries unanimously. and, madame clerk, can you call the roll on the amended item number 11? >> on item 11 as amended, supervisor preston? >> supervisor preston: aye. >> supervisor ronen: aye. >> supervisor safai: no. >> supervisor stefani: no. >> supervisor walton: no. >> supervisor dorsey: no. >> supervisor mandelman: aye. >> supervisor mar: aye. >> supervisor melgar: aye. >> supervisor peskin: aye. >> there are six ayes and four

nos with supervisors safai, stefani, walton and dorsey in the dissent. >> thank you by a vote of 6-4, this ordinance is passed on first reading. madame clerk, can we go to our 2:30 p.m. special order. >> clerk: yes, mr. president. for the 2:30 special order, it is time to honor and recognize those individuals in the lesbian gay bisexual queer and questioning community for their civic work and contribution to the city and county of san francisco. >> president walton: thank you so much, madame clerk. and it is good to see everyone in the chamber this afternoon. today as you know, we are celebrating pride formally as a board of supervisors. and i would like to invite supervisor mandelman to give

some opening words, but before we do that, then we will bring up supervisor dorsey and then supervisor melgar will be presenting for supervisor chan as supervisors chan's honorees are young people who need to get back to their program. and then finally, we will proceed with roll call order to present special commendations. with that said, supervisor mandelman, you have the floor. >> supervisor mandelman: thank you, president walton. colleagues, today we are closing out pride month by honoring exemplary members of the lgbtq plus community. i want to thank president walton for again creating space for this celebration of queer excellence on today's agenda and, of course, special thanks to the ever amazing natalie g in supervisor walton's office and jackie in my own. pride 2022 has been bittersweet. this was the first time since

2019 that we were able to celebrate pride in person with friends and family. after more than two years of covid, queer people and our friends are more than ready for a party. and san francisco came through on that front. deep gratitude to sf pride, to all those who came through with so many amazing queer events throughout june and to all the city workers, especially our first responders, who got us through a wonderful, wonderful and mostly peaceful weekend and month. but there is a larger context that is not so fun for fabulous. even before friday, so-called proud boys planning riots in idaho, here in the bay proud boys drag queens and a drag queens story hour in the library. against this backdrop of racist and misogynistic rhetoric, there were 200 pieces of anti-lgbtq legislation pending throughout

the united states. and then friday. six extremists denied reproductive rights. am i worried about what comes next? which is sort of a weird question. i mean it's enough. there are no queer rights without women's rights. we're all worried about what comes next, but where we are now is pretty damn terrible. full stop. so, this pride -- this year's pride was simultaneously joyful and rageful and maybe that's fitting. the struggle was far from won before friday and perhaps we'll look back at friday as the day they finally went too far. the day they finally pushed the majority too far. pride started as a protest and it's still a protest and the work is far from done. today we will honor heroes and she-ros who have maked our city

a little queerer, a little less patriarchal, a little more fierce and yes, a little more fabulous. do we have laura online? great. lara is the executive director for the lyric center of lgbtq youth. she grew a up on the tijuana border. they lived in mexico and commuted to school in san diego. she made her way to san francisco and earned a bachelors in recreation and masters in school and counseling both in the san francisco -- both from san francisco state university. like many san franciscans, they were drawn to our city by promises of diversity and inclusion and they have spent much of the last quarter century helping san francisco make good on those promises. lara's commitment to serving

those in need is exceptional. they have fought for justice and demanded equity in our broken systems. they have worked at ymca, san francisco unified and other organizations that work to support communities and individuals in need. san francisco is fortunate that last october lara was chosen as lyric's new executive director. for 33 years, lyric has made its home in the castro with a mission to build community and inspire positive change through education enhancement, career training, health promotion and leadership development with lgbtq youth, their families and all races. lyric was founded in 1988 and is one of the largest youth centers specifically for queer youth in in the last year alone, they have served over 4,000 queer youth. 81% of whom are low-income and 17% of whom are homeless or marginally housed.

lyric is a jill of all trades. non-profit providing access to services, from job training to community groups to free prep. on april 29 of this year, lyric received a bomb threat resulting in the full evacuation of their staff and youth clients. 24 days later, less than a month, they received a second bomb threat, again leading to evacuation. the caller left a message where she quoted leviticus. and followed up with another threat and called 15 to 20 times. when state senators have to clear out home and office for investigation by bomb squads, it's terrible that lyric had to deal with this. -- demonstrating incredible

strength and resilience. following these threats, she wrote a note for their staff. thank you for your bravery, your dedication, and for working every day in the face of those who would spread hate. this will not deter us. it only motivates us to do more to build a diverse and just society. thank you, lara, for your bravery and your dedication. you've made san francisco a safer and more loving place for lgbtq plus youth and it is my and our honor to honor you. [applause] >> thank you so much, supervisor mandelman, for this recognition. i'm humbled. i share this honor with all the leaders and trailblazers that came before me. i will have the lyric team who work on a daily basis to ensure the safety and care for every lgbtq youth. as you know, and you mentioned, lyric has been an anchor

institution for the past 35 years in the city. as the second oldest and second largest lgbtq youth institution in the country, lyric is playing a pivotal role nationally. we're fortunate to be in san francisco, the city that historically is a beacon for lgbtq plus people. this is the reason lyric exist. a beacon of hope for youth. not only living here, but coming to this city for hope and refuge. we have been founded by several individuals who have similar stories about getting off buses and coming to san francisco. individuals like roma guy. we take lessons from people with lived experience and incorporate those 35 years later. i came to san francisco in 2003 also looking for refuge. escaping family rejection as many other youth do. i grew up in a single parent household, immigrant family with a mono lingual catholic speaking

mom who had no idea what to do with a nonbinary child. i felt lost, isolated and incredibly lonely. i came to san francisco for refuge and to find my community. that is what lyric provides every youth that comes to seek our services and quite honestly that is many of the reason our staff and board choose to be part of the lyric family. the opportunity to build community, to have a safe haven, a place for us to be authentically ourselves with no judgment, to celebrate our lives, our stories and to build strength in our community. and, yet, as supervisor mandelman mentioned, our work is not done. our challenges are intense. since april 29, lyric has been experiencing bomb threats, death threats and as far as i'm aware, we're the only institution in the city that has received these threats in the last few months.

in each situation our community has been affected from street and road closures to evacuation, not only our building, but surrounding buildings in our neighborhood. this is a threat to all of us in the castro district. we go from devastation from friday and the supreme court decision to overturn roe v. wade with clear implications that same-sex partnership and marriage could be next. currently 38 states across the country have anti-translegislation. i have called daily and weekly from organizations and parents and individuals asking about our services. asking for refuge, because san francisco is that beacon of hope. and lyric is not turning anyone away. we'll be laser focused on creating wraparound services for every young person who walks through our doors.

the staff and i continue to serve the city of san francisco despite the hate that we receive. our story -- one story that sticks with me is from a youth that i met just after starting at lyric in october. they had taken four different buss to get from san francisco from their small town in the midwest and ended up sleeping their first four nights in the city on the beach in a tent, because they didn't know where else to go to feel safe. when living on the beach, they met a gay man who mentioned lyric. they didn't fully understand the city, but they ended up on our doorstep. we helped them with food, food vouchers and got them help right away. they worked with one of our youth advocates and were able to get the youth to understand and support them with basic needs. i'm happy to report that this

young person is going to be starting city college here in san francisco, working part-time to save money for their housing. it really is these stories that help me wake up every morning and help me go to work. this person ended up on the first step and now is being supported and is part of a fabric of san francisco. we are hurting, but we're also resilient. thank you, supervisor mandelman, for this recognition. i am in deep gratitude for your support of lyric. as a 19-year-old resident of san francisco, parent, community member, i'm grateful to the city for its commitment to protecting lgbtq youth. [applause] >> president walton: supervisor melgar. >> supervisor melgar: thank you. i hope you're still on. i want to thank you, supervisor mandelman, for recognizing lara who i have known for a long

time. before they were executive director of lyric, they were deputy director at the mission ymca which is where we started our relationship. and i just wanted to add, besides the amazing work that lara has done at lyric, she also led the way for being a positive leader and role model among immigrants and young people. for many of us who come from immigrant backgrounds, being yourself in a very traditional religious culture that is oppressive and doesn't give room for people to blossom -- and i say this as an immigrant mother of a gay daughter -- having someone like lara who is supremely competent as a youth development professional lead the way and pave the way for the blossoming of leadership of so

many people in the excelsior, in the mission. it took my breath away. they're one of the most competent hard-working people that i've ever known and i'm so grateful we're honoring them and thank you, supervisor mandelman, for doing that. thanks. [applause] >> president walton: thank you, supervisor mandelman. and congratulations again, lara. and now we have supervisor dorsey. >> supervisor dorsey: thank you, president walton. colleagues, earlier this year my partner who is from bill was over the -- brazil was over the moon from excitement when he learned that his greatest drag performer was coming to a venue in our neighborhood. and going to that show with him in april was an amazing reminder of two things. first how great it is to be going to any live performance

after two years of a global pandemic and lockdown. and second what a fabulously entertaining art form drag performance can be. i don't think there is a better venue for drag performance in san francisco, than oasis. it is located in the south of market neighborhood on 11th street. its diverse roster of programming includes local and visiting drag stars, cabaret and performing artists, live musical acts and d.j.s. joining us in the chamber today are fabulous individuals from oaces.

snxt raed >> oace opened on new year's day and has been a safe space for the lgbtq plus community ever since. it is a space for joy, inclusion and celebration and queer identity. oace was voted best of the bay in multiple category, including best nightclub, best drag show and cabaret. in 2020 when the world was turned upside down in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, oasis faced challenges and almost shut its door for good. however, darcy found a way.

meals on heels. it provided an opportunity for in-person performance when most everyone was living on zoom and their phones during the on set of the shelter-in-place order. meals on heels garnered international coverage and earned headlines in the "new york times", the guardian and other news outlets. it uplifted the spirit of so many people during the time of uncertainty and far too many tragedies. through proceeds and donations from supporters and community members, oasis was able to reopen their doors to the community. they are back and better than ever. earlier this month, a mural entitled showtime was unveiled. it honors the history of drag culture and showcases san francisco's talented queer art scene. the mural depicts late drag artists including bambi lake, tippy, felicia flames, it's a

tribute to queer representation and significant moment of the soma night life community. so i want to thank darcy, lori, sophia,ic russ, for all they do to provide a safe space for our community. i want to give a shoutout to their amazing talent and fierce looks. it's my honor to present a commendation to them and their entire staff at oasis. thank you. [applause] [applause]

>> thank you, thank you, so, so much. it really does mean a lot to myself and my colleagues. oasis was created as a clubhouse and a clubhouse for the community. there were so many shows happening in venues that weren't owned by lgbtq plus people and to be able to create a space by the actual performers that were on the stage and were also running the show behind the scene was really important and ground breaking. there was also no mid-size cabarets where people could come that didn't have a lot of money and could see touring cabaret acts. it has been an amazing opportunity to be able to be that space for the community and it was true. we almost lost it.

and we did everything we could to keep going during the pandemic. and we finally had to have a telethon and the community rallied and we raised $270,000 in 12 hours. and it was -- it took our breath away. [applause] yes. [laughter]. and while i was out of necessity and i always say necessity is the mother of invention, but it is those times, hard times when things are born and so much was born during that time. and because of that, oasis really is the people's nightclub now, the people's cabaret, because, you know, this city owns it. we can open the doors and we can put the wigs on -- yes, i'm wearing a wig -- [laughter] -- but people that show up make the magic and that is what oasis is,

the magic of the people, both local and from out of town. and i couldn't do it without these amazing people including icarus who couldn't be here today. a lot of times think drag performance is fluff and it's easy to do, but it's hard and it's painful and it's expensive and it's really amazing to be honored like this. so thank you, so, so much for this honor. [applause]

>> thank you, supervisor dorsey, and congratulations again, supervisor melgar. >> supervisor melgar: thank you, president. i feel so privileged to be able to present this commendation today on behalf of supervisor chan, who i know would have loved to be here with us today. i'd like to welcome gender and sexuality diversity alum and connie liu to the podium, please. as we celebrate pride, in and with our communities, i'm honored to be able to recognize the community building an intentional space being created to uplift and support api youth. in 2013, the chinese progressive

situation started at gender and sexuality diversity because queer youth leader in the space demanded that there be a place to explore their gender in the context of their identity chinese americans. gsd has been a place of meaningful and deep connection and it has provided a safe space for youth to explore their identities and lean into their curity. this program has created space for intergenerational dialogue and for young people to forge relationships with adults allies and be part of the lineage of lgbtq plus communities. i am so inspired by these young movement builders. it has changed the community that it is a part of.

and for that, we have honor and uplift the young people who paved this way and the young people who will lead us to a more inclusive and liberated future. thank you for being here. and i commend you. [applause] [cheers and applause] >> hello, everyone. my name is connie liu. my pronouns are she, hers and i was founding youth member the chinese progressive association. [applause] honestly, growing up in san francisco, it was really tough going to like school and hearing so many like homophobic and transphobicic comments. i knew from a very young age that i didn't matter, that i was

not cared for and that people would judge me because of how i identified. and i felt like i didn't deserve to exist in this world. and a space like gsc and gpa changed my life. it was the space where i talked about liking girls for the first time. it was the first time trying different clothes and expressing myself. i felt i could truly be myself. i think being in a space where i felt like i really mattered, that my voice mattered and that i had a stake in creating the world that i wanted to see and other queer and transyoung people deserve to live in, just empowered me to be the leader that i am today. so, you know, we need more spaces and more resources for queer and trans-young folks,

especially culturally relevant spaces. i think navigating my sexuality with really conservative homophobic chinese parents, to talk about language barriers, to talk about access was super important. i honestly wouldn't be here today without g.s.c., without having such a supportive space with other young people and other adults and seeing -- seeing chinese elders living their life and existing was -- i did not know that was possible. once i got to connect in these intergenerational spaces, it made me realize, oh, i can actually grow old and be myself and i hope that, you know, we keep fighting for these types of spaces, so that all queer, trans, nonbinary young people,

especially working class community like young people of color, can thrive and be themselves. thank you. [applause] >> president walton: congratulations again. [applause] and we will continue with supervisor melgar's awarding. >> supervisor melgar: thank you, colleagues. so today i am very proud to

honor eddie coffeyman, edward kaufmann at the district 7 honouree, who is resident of sunnyside in district 7. eddie is such a humble, outstanding leader who has dedicated his professional career to supporting youth, families and the lgbtq plus community. moreover, eddie is a strong role model and an adult ally who builds up young people. i have to take a moment to say these past few months have been intense in the way that supervisor mandelman talked about, in the attacks on the queer community from disgusted leaders across our countries has been such an affront to human rights and liberty. and one of the disgusting talking points of the right has

been about how young people are not safe with gay and queer people. and eddie exemplifies what it is to be -- devote his entire life and career to uplifting and building up young people who are low-income, who have not had a chance in the world, and create that path towards success and leadership. eddie has been the executive director for a renowned organization, mission graduates, that seeks to advance young immigrant people into achieve academic success and get them into college. for the past 10 years, eddie has helped folks through mission graduates to reach their full potential as first-generation college students. under his guidance he grew this organization eight times to over 100 staff, serving 5500 youth

and families in the mission district, supervisor ronen's district. as the son of first generation college student, he knows personally the importance of building college, growing aspirations within families. eddie demonstrated passion for education and the lgbtq plus community is transformative through his work as a mentor and as a faculty member at city college's lgbtq studies. and he has taught there for over 20 years. one of his great joys has been to teach in the male intimacy and relationship course. before joining mission graduates, eddie spent eight years leading big brothers big sisters of the north bay. in 2010, he was recognized with the heart of marine excellence and leadership award,

demonstrating exceptional leadership and vision within his non-profit organization into the general community. eddie has also been involved with the youth leadership institute, the ywca of oakland, san francisco counsel on homeless and the san francisco human rights commission. he is a recognized trainer in the area of youth development, youth adult partnerships and environmental protection. in his free time, eddie is also an avid snowboarder, scuba diver and knitter. i know that eddie always has his yarn and his knitting, while also contributing to changing the world. i'm so grateful that we have community leaders like eddie that have faithfully been building up our community and our young people. i am so grateful for you eddie

and i'm very proud to give you this commendation from district 7. [applause] >> supervisor melgar, i am flattered. i am thrilled to see you in a seat where you can do some of the best good you can. i am very pleased and i'm humbled to have been nominated, because i don't work in the lgbtq community all that much. i do teach my class, but i think i represent what a lot of us in san francisco represent. when i moved here straight out of college 30 years ago, it's because of the welcoming, accepting, diverse community that san francisco is. and i was able to be myself. i was able to feel connected, feel appreciated, feel safe,

which at a time right now is more important than ever. and it really allowed me to have the opportunity to do what i'm passionate about, which is working with youth and working in education. and i also recognized over the years i've seen the importance that allies can play in social struggles. i remember being, you know, not in this room, but in this building when gavin newsome first allowed same sex couples to marry in the city and i remember how powerful that was. i also know that the work that allies have done in terms of creating same-sex marriage across the country was really critical in changing people's public perception of the issue. and so i feel very fortunate to

get to be an ally. and so i -- i am very honored to be a white ally of a latinx and immigrant organization that is doing incredible work. and i just want to use this time to encourage all of my brothers and sisters and everyone in between to support additional -- the -- the work that needs to be done. just recognizing, we talked about covid and the learning loss that students have been experiencing these past couple of years is incredibly difficult. the socio emotional learning that students haven't been getting because they've been learning on zoom. they haven't been learning how to connect with each other, how to deal with conflict, deal with

bullying, all the things that young people have to experience. they didn't have those experiences, so this past year we've seen a lot of that in our schools. so i just want to encourage all of the supervisors to continue to champion the issues of young people and of education, i know there is an exciting charter amendment that is coming up very soon. i believe it will be talked about tomorrow in committee that will support schools directly to really build what school communities need to build community schools. so thank you. and i just, yeah, happy to be here. [applause]

>> president walton: congratulations, eddie, and thank you, again, supervisor melgar. supervisor preston? >> supervisor preston: thank you, president walton, and i hope everyone had a wonderful weekend of festivities this week. this is an amazing collection of honorees today and i am honored to recognize district 5 resident tab buckner. tab is a longtime -- oh, go ahead -- [cheers and applause] yeah! >> most of you know tab. if you don't, you haven't been working and organizing in politics in this town very long

and you should get to know tab. tab is a longtime civil rights activist in san francisco and advocate for lgbtq rights for international solidarity and the working class. i've worked on so many things with tab i can't even count them, but i think that i probably got to know tab best when we shared a bus. my daughter's bus to school was the same one tab took to get to ucsf and discovered a whole different side of this amazing guy bright and early in the morning. i'm going to tell you a little bit about him. i'm going to tell you i think i had five pages of notes about tab's experience, so it was very difficult to whittle this down, this man's life experience is unbelievable. but i will try. tab was born and raised in new york city like myself. and his youth coincided with the civil rights movement, the vietnam war and stonewall riots.

all this left a profound effect on how he saw the world as a gay person. shortly after coming out, tab attended the first ever national march for gay rights in washington d.c. inspiring a lifetime of advocacy. in the late 1970s, tab demonstrated against fundamentalists anita bryant's referendum reversing miami's gay rights ordinance and fought for a proposed ordinance at new york city hall. he also worked in new york to challenge the power anda bewses of -- abuses of big oil and fought a progressive income tax and no law regarding workplace chemical exposure in new jersey. luckily for all of us, tab came out west in 1983 as a canvas director for the campaign for

economic democracy to advocate for environmental issues as well as women's, gay and tenant rights and all of this work eventually led him to san francisco. on his first day in san francisco, tab joined dozens of others here at city hall to support gay supervisor harry brit's enactment of landmark rent control legislation. soon after tab joined the harvey milk lgbtq democratic club where he's remained active by participating in or leading over 50 electoral campaigns. in addition to supporting candidates like harry brit, he has worked to pass ballot initiatives advocating for the rights of immigrants, people with h.i.v., the homeless, tenants, working people and for environmental protection and public power. during the worst years of the aids crisis, tab also served on the milk club's h.i.v. action committee, helped distribute the

club's can we talk and take control safe sex pamphlets and worked against prop 64 which would have quarantined people with h.i.v. tab has also participated in various direct action and solidarity campaign. he joined many lgbtq activists and central american solidarity work, including the san francisco chapter of the committee in solidarity with the people of el salvador. he has never been afraid to put himself out there, whether it's for a human billboard in the pan handle or getting arrested while protesting in mayor frank jordan's office while fighting for an equitable budget. tab has spent countless hours mentoring upcoming activists and movement folks as well as students. for most of the past decade he

worked as student services advisor directly helping students there. most recently, in very local district 5, tab has served on the steering committee for the coalition for complete community which successfully promoted affordable housing which is before the board at 730 stanyan, as well as on site services at this location. he's on the board of the haight ashbury council. i could go on, but i will not. what makes tab special is not this tremendous lifetime of service and incredible resume, but it is that tab is one of the most kind, positive and empathetic people that you will ever meet. his love of organizing, of people and of politics is infectious. he takes tremendous joy in

connecting people and connecting with people around the issues that matter in our lives. so i'm thrilled to honor tab today and thank him for his entire -- for his tireless advocacy his entire life for the people who need support and for the people of our city. our city is so much better because of all your work. thank you, tab. [applause] >> thank you, supervisor preston, for those very generous words and i'm extremely honored to get this from you and extremely proud you're my supervisor. even before you set foot in your office here, the work you did on rent control statewide as well as make sure tenants had a right

to counsel for evictions here in the city, i am so grateful for that. and to you and your fantastic staff who through this horrible epidemic, when up entered office -- when you entered office, in such a sensitive manner handled your constituents. you reached out to make sure they were okay. going as far as actually having that safe sleeping space in the haight which was so successful. people were placed into permanent housing afterwards. so thank you to you and your staff for the incredible due diligence in the city. yes, coming out during that decade after stonewall, our community has seen quite a bit over the years. you know, an event like this would have been a pipe dream a couple of generations ago. i came of age in the backroom bars of greenwich village just a

few blocks from where supervisor preston was growing up. and it was still years away from before even new york city could pass a gay rights ordinance. it didn't pass until 1985, if you can believe that. so our strides have been extraordinary. however, as we had last week the harsh realities of what happened in the supreme court, the liberties that we take for granted can be so easily snatched away at a much faster rate than the way we attained -- the way we attain them. our country right now should be really with the global community working in the crisis mode on the climate catastrophe before us. and instead, we're told that a war across the world is not only slowing down our environmental goals, but actually accelerating our need for fossil fuel and at the same time we have to ward off all of these fanatical

factions that try to continue to chip away at our rights and the rights of other communities that are a part of ours, because it's no more universal community than the lgbtq. so, freedom isn't free. we have to remain vigilant and engaged. we cannot afford to be otherwise, particularly at this time. but being this is a time of celebration, let's have the confidence and celebrate not only what we've achieved, but what we can do, because our potential is extraordinary. we are a very brilliant species that can do very stupid things, but hopefully in the hour that we're in, we'll finally come around and move forward, first here in city hall with a budget that is truly fair for its constituents, and nationally and globally as well with new generations of people who continue to remain engage and follow the footsteps of those

that came before us. i want to congratulate my other fellow recipients. thank you for all that you've done. it's an honor to share this with you. in closing, i want to remember my late parents, my mother, who as a teenager worked in the french resistance of world war ii, first in england and then france and my father tom buckner who was impassioned about the civil rights movement. i was fortunate to have fantastic role models to grow up with. lastly, i want to extend my appreciation who is watching right now, my dear friend alan baird, the incredible union organizer who helped get coors out of the bars connected to the arab american grocers. he teamed up with harvey milk. he never stops campaigning.

he wanted to thank everybody here for continuing to boycott coors. thank you, all. [applause] >> president walton: congratulations again. thank you, supervisor preston. supervisor ronen? >> supervisor ronen: thank you, president walton and happy pride to everyone. this weekend's festivities were exactly what we needed to lift our spirits and feel happy for a few moments and be with people who are like us and love like us. and accept like us.

so thank you for everything. it is my excitement and honor to be recognizing nicole santa maria as our district 9 honouree for pride month. give her a hand, everyone. nicole became the executive director of ella in 2019 and she led the agency through the entire pandemic. always ensuring that our transimmigrant and translatino members had a place. nicole came to ella after years of working with and advocating for the lgbtq community in her home country of el salvador. as a professor of design and art therapy, nicole created and conducted art therapy workshops in el salvador with the canadian embassy for survivors of

anti-lgbtq violence. she then went on to cofound her own organization. where she collaborated with ngos, human rights organizations and government entities in central america the caribbean and the u.s. to create awareness for the human rights abuse communities face. especially low-income transgender women. like other international activists and trans-people, nicole was forced to flee el salvador. when she arrived to the united states, she earned a master's degree here and landed in the bay area. where she counselled lgbtq survivors of violence and developed curriculum for support groups. nicole has served on the city's

transadvisory committee for three years where she has been in instrumental. [please stand by] [please stand by]

>> -- how is it possible that a human being can do the atrocities that i have to survived? how is that possible? and now in this context that we are living now, i must confess that after seven years of my survival, i have been witnessing violence, hatred, hate crimes and all forms of violence against trans people, intersex people and people of all orientations, here in this country that gave me the great opportunity to survive. so how these things can still

happen in our here? we are more than numbers. we are more than the statistics that we are seeing, and that's at the end that we are trying to achieve this, human rights,

human rights for everybody. and i think that -- and i'm going to be super -- i'd like to receive this award because it is a commitment not only for me, not only for ella, not only for the rest of the activists and organizations present today, and for the ones that are not here, but for the community to create a better san francisco, a better bay area, where everybody can feel safe, and what that's in me. so what that means, it's a commitment to walk the talk and continue working, continuing doing the great job. so i'm going to receive this great job and receive this great award that i'm having

here, but that our immigrants, that our people in our own languages, we bled the same blood, we cry the same tears, and we feel the same as everyone else. everyone has to be represented, and i want to be the voice of everyone. so ella para trans latina is doing this work. my pronouns are she and we because the we, is it what made possible the i. because in this context, i want to thank this community, the immigrant latinx. at the end, we have to speak the same language of love and commitment to our city here, and that's a great honor for

here. in our future, the safe space for our communities is in jeopardy, so i'm taking this opportunity to ask, and i will continue asking and coming to you, supervisor ronen, and coming to each one of you, to create and build a better san francisco, a better bay area to know how we can feel and feel safe. thank you so much. [applause] >> president walton: congratulations again, and thank you so much, supervisor ronen. [applause]

>> president walton: supervisor safai? >> supervisor safai: thank you, mr. chair. i'd like to take a moment to recognize san francisco state university center for iranian studies. this center was found found in

2016, and it's the first of its kind that focused on the diaspora community specifically in connection to iran. the center hosted artwork exhibits, speakers, funds to expand the field and research in the community. as an immigrant in this community, i can tell you what being in america and san francisco means: an opportunity to be accepted for who you are, who you love, and live in a pluralistic society. that's not always available in countries around the world, and so much of that has been talked about today. today, folks are literally

putting their lives on the line, so the act of the iranian pride event is uplifting, and i want to recognize them today. let me call up the doctor and the team to talk more about their important work and recognize them today. thank you. [applause] >> hi. thank you, supervisor safai, and thank you to all the supervisors today for this wonderful occasion. i was so moved to hear all the other speakers, and i don't even feel like we have the same level of bravery, but i still want to recognize the important work that we're doing in the context in which we find ourselves today, and that is,

as a community, as an iranian american community, we have an important role to play in creating connections and other communities. the center, we're really proud of our roots at san francisco state because as you might know, the ethos of san francisco state is deeply embedded in the recognition of social justice, equality, and recognition of all of our communities. one of the things that we've been trying to do since the founding of the center is to recognize all the members of our diaspora community, and as supervisor safai said, there's a great deal of homophobia, anti-trans activities going on in this country, but it also exists inside of iran, and we've been trying to do a lot of work to raise the existence

of our queer, gay, and gender fluid folks in our community because all of us as san francisco recognizes the iranian diaspora. i want to recognize the people standing around me because it's their vision, their work, and their love to continuously put forth this idea that there's a pride for all of us. no other universities in the country that have centers for iranian studies are doing this,

and people feel so loved and respective, and i think it's because we live in a place like san francisco. it's not just fighting for our rights, it's fighting for our stories. as you know, iranians have a tough battle because we get portrayed in the media all the time through the lens of u.s. foreign policy, through the tension of the u.s.-iran relationship, so for us to create something else that's love and kindness and respect for many people is something that we pride ourselves on, so it's a great honor for us today, all of us, to receive this commendation, and thank

you, supervisor safai, for your work in this community, as well. if you want to learn about all the work that we're doing, i hope you'll come to our website. thank you very much. [applause] >> president walton: congratulations again. [applause] >> president walton: thank you, supervisor safai. supervisor stefani? >> supervisor stefani: thank you, president walton. first of all, happy pride to everyone, and thank you to supervisor mandelman for your

very inspiring opening comments, and congrats to all of the honorees today. it's nice to see such positive stories given the time that we're in right now because when you watch the news, everything feels so awful, and to see such incredible people before us gives us such hope. right now, i would like to recognize the chair of the brady united activist campaign. she's a graduate of harvard law school, and served as the editor in chief of the harvard women's law journal. ruth's legal talents and personal passion have helped lead to ground breaking challenges in the law. for over 30 years, ruth

dedicated her life to countless appeals, dedication, and work as morris forester. over the years, ruth filed amicus briefs in the united states supreme court and several federal courts to support marriage equality. ruth was part of a team of lawyers from morrison forrester who fought for same sex marriage couples in montana. that team succeeded in 2014.

ruth's advocacy for a better and freer country does not stop there. how i came to know ruth is through her gun violence prevention work. ruth has worked on numerous pro bono amicus briefs in support of gun violence restriction laws. unfortunately, we have seen each other at way too many vigils at the mass shootings over the last few years. in 2018, san francisco joined the san francisco brady chapter and immediately hit the ground running with a movement to end gun shows at the cow palace in daly city, and thanks to ruth's persistent advocacy, in 2016,

the cow palace saw its last gun show, and we all owe you a debt of gratitude for that. [applause] >> supervisor stefani: after that, she became brady california's legislation and policy chair in august of 2021. ruth has been a fierce leader in the restriction of ghost guns on our streets, and because of ruth, we were able to pass a piece of legislation here in san francisco, becoming the first city in california to ban ghost guns, the possession and sale of ghost guns in the city and county of san francisco. because we were able to do that, many other counties, as they do, have followed suit, and again, we have you to thank for that. your brilliant legal mind figured that out, worked with the city attorney's office, and we were able to get that passed unanimously. we know that guns are wreaking

havoc in our cities, and the number of ghost guns that have been seized by san francisco police have increased by 300%, and they are the weapon of choice for those who should not be in the possession of guns. i want to thank ruth for everything that she's done in her advocacy, not just for guns but for gun violence prevention, your ad vocation for lgbtq rights, and your passion for safety on our streets is just to be commended. we are all just reeling from last week, watching the supreme court strike down new york's concealed carry law. you just think it can't get worse, but they overturn roe v. wade. my daughter, who's 13, has let

rights -- less rights on pride than i do. you will not give up, and with a tenacity that i know is unstoppable, i take comfort from that. it's an honor to be able to honor you today, so thank you, ruth. [applause] >> thank you so much for that. you really did a lot of homework. it's really an honor to get this recognition. i feel so lucky in really having chosen to move to san francisco. one of them is, in my opinion, we have a local government that is as open to ideas about

preventing gun violence as anywhere in the country, and when i was marching with my brady colleagues, we once again this year had a banner saying disarm heat, and also remember the survivors of the pulse night club in florida. people in the lgbtq + community live in fear of violence, especially in black and brown communities. i personally believe that legislation is a very important thing, and i am thrilled that i can come to supervisor stefani with an idea, and she and her

excellent staff are excited about it, and then, a majority of the board cosponsors the ordinance and votes for it unanimously. i thank you so much for that. it sends a message, as supervisor stefani said, throughout california and multiple cities and counties enacted similar legislation. yesterday, the state senate voted to ban ghost guns and kits in part. you all starts -- started that,

and i thank you so much. [applause] >> president walton: thank you, supervisor stefani. congratulations again. [applause] >> president walton: and now, i have the honor and pleasure to bring up barbara grata.

[applause] and before i make my statements about barbara, i just want to acknowledge and congratulate all of today's honorees. this is definitely a special moment for us to be able to do these commendations again, as we are coming out of the pandemic, and so it's great to have everyone back in the chamber and, really, to be able to honor everyone appropriately. and today, i have the privilege of honoring our local district 10 small business of the year. barbara began her business in

2006, peddling her wine and wares in farmers markets in and around district 6. merchants of butchertown is a collaboration of business owners and other community partners in the bayview-hunters point neighborhood. by working together, the group's intention is to grow, support, strengthen, and maintain the integrity of small business models, and their flagship event, the butchertown jazz festival, held in october, brings people together from all over san francisco. barbara has also organized district pride floats dating back to 2017 and the third street pride ride during the pandemic. her participation and bayview activities support all local

businesses and the lgbtq + communities. barbara sits on the edot board since 2016 which serves the third street corridor and bayview. i just want to say, if you're ever in district 10, and you're ever in bayview, and you want to have a chance to taste some delicious wine made right in community, grata wine is the place to go. not only is the wine great, but there's complementary meals to go with it, and it really is, like, a home away from home for folks who go to barbara and go to catherine and grata wines.

i want you to know that we appreciate you and we want to honor you, and we say thank you and appreciate everything that you do. [applause] >> thank you, president walton. i'm very flattered and honored to be recognized today, so thank you for bringing d-10 pride to the forefront. when kathy, my partner, and i, moved to bayview back in 09, we didn't know what to expect, and we were soon warmly welcomed down the block and from the girls down the block. it's just been an on going positive experience and adventure since we moved there in this community. as you mentioned, we did start our business out of our garage, and it since has become a community hub down on third

street, and we're very grateful for the support that we get from our community, and as is typical of the gay community, the queers find each other, so it has become a safe space for people to come and feel safe out in the bayview. from that, we created the district 10 pride committee, which is several of our customers which have become friends in the community as well as my partner, kathy, who's in the back here, and typically is in the sidelines, but she does so much work for bayview, as well. and district 10 pride, our goal is to have activities and events for lgbtq in the

bayview. i feel in some ways, listening to everybody and all of the groups and organizations that were there. our goal is to move forward and creating more events and activities for youth and seniors, as well, in the neighborhood, and i probably will get with some of the groups here today for consultation because i feel we have a lot to learn as far as the organization of what we're doing out in the bayview. but i'm encouraged, and i'm -- it's a pleasure to work with the group that we've created thus far, and thank you for participating in our float and our pride rides fellow

motorcycles, sir, so thank you, and thank you very much for the honor. >> president walton: thank you. [applause] >> president walton: supervisor mar? >> supervisor mar: thank you, president walton, and congratulations to all of the amazing honorees at this tremendously moving and hopeful

celebration of pride month here at the board of supervisors. i'm really excited and honored to be able to recognize a district 4 leader, amos lin is my honoree. he's a really unique and humble activist that has impacted the lives of so many people across so many issues, and it really has reflected his lived experiences and the intersectional of so many issues as an immigrant, an asian, a gay man, and as a parent and somebody with a deep commitment to social equity and justice. amos emigrated to the united states from singapore in may 1999 to be with his american partner, mickey. since then, amos has been

actively [indiscernible] he cofounded out for immigration, created to empower others in the same situation, educate the public about issues in immigration inequality. in addition, amos organized his time for the first immigrants right summit in 2007, and he's served on the ccof bond committee, the city of san francisco human right's commission lgbtq advisory committee as well as on the board of l.y.r.i.c., and he's also played a leadership role at the elementary school that his daughter attends.

amos and his husband, mickey, and their daughter, alicia, are currently on a well deserved family vacation, and fortunately for them, they're on their vacation, but unfortunately, they're unavailable and they're offline, which is good for them, so i will present this really -- this certificate of -- this special commendation to amos and his family when they return from their vacation, but really thank amos for all of his dedication and work to our city. thank you. [applause] >> president walton: thank you, supervisor mar. supervisor peskin? >> supervisor peskin: thank you, president walton, colleagues. my honoree i think is known to many, if not all of us. jeremy lee is a third generation san franciscan who i

think we all now because of his organizing and advocacy work, as a chinatown advocacy organizer and work at the rose pak democratic club, and we know him to be an engaged member of the 2022 redistricting task force. he was born in the city's children's hospital and grew up in south city, graduating from el camino high and received his bachelor of science from u.c. san diego. how did he do everything he does? like many bay area kids growing up in a multigenerational chinese american family, san francisco's chinatown was the

center of jeremy's universe, even though he did not live there, but his grandparents emigrated from china to chinatown and demanded that his family return to chinatown at least once a week. his advocacy began in 2016 working for jane kim's campaign, and his love for the community has been brewing since before then. jeremy aspired to bring everything to his leadership role at the rose pak democratic

club, something i know that rose pak herself would be very proud to see. his work took him out to the tenderloin and 6 street. bridge building serves him well as a member of the san francisco redistricting task force where he listened with an open heart and a desire to help as many communities as possible. at a time when nearly everyone, including many nonprofit organizations watched with serious concern, the 2022 redistricting debacle, jeremy furiously took a stand for an open and democratic process. he historically fought to keep

neighbors of concern together that were often excluded, including low-income, bipoc, and immigrant communities. we voted unanimously to pass legislation protecting both neighborhoods, can survive political attacks, and build a stronger bond and alliance. jeremy represents a unique

voice, merging beliefs and voice all while elevating values of the communities that he loves. jeremy and jupiter, thank you for modelling and teaching us what pride can and should be about. it's bigger than a parade and a party. thank you for your work. [applause]

>> i've lived in several cities across the globe, and i have to say there is no better place to be both queer and asian than right here in san francisco, and it's because no other city values both queer and asian voices like san francisco does. we find value in our immigrant communities. we -- we find value in the richness of the queer experience. our city has established not one, not two, but three cultural districts centered around lgbt communities. seeing our own identities recognized, that matters. representation matters. this became clear to me as a member of san francisco's redistricting task force. as a chinatown activist, i was able to elevate the unique

needs of monolingual families and seniors. as a queer person, i could speak to the importance of place making and maintaining queer spaces because our faces depend on these communities to gather, to feel free from violence and to build our chosen family. now i'm personally not a big fan of the spotlight, so i feel this moment should not be about me. when you can, you share it. i would like to dedicate this award to jupiter peraza. jupiter is an incredible trailblazer in so many ways, but i became most familiar with her work through her fierce ad -- advocacy.

jupiter made sure we never forget the importance of keeping the transgender district whole, that cutting it apart would destroy the minimal power they had managed to build; that splitting up the transgender district would be a clear attack on the values our city holds dear. thank you, jupiter, for your leadership and for the transgender community's unwavering commitment to lgbtq people across our city. >> good afternoon, and thank you, jeremy, so much, for that very touching and kind introduction. i would like to thank jeremy, as well, for his bold representation on the redistricting task force, and

this honor is extremely and absolutely commendable on behalf of supervisor peskin. i would also like to say that in regards to redistricting, i made a promise to myself never to speak up unless it was genuine and it was honest, and it came from a very vulnerable place in regards to my trans experience and the collective experience of the transgender community, and it really recess nates, and it's really touching that that vulnerability resonated with jeremy. and in regards to redistricting, the transgender district is the smallest legally recognized cultural district in san francisco, and i felt a responsibility to defend and protect physical

boundaries that are very symbolic of the home and refuge and safety, so my advocacy was exactly that, and it was very important for me to defend that, so thank you, jeremy, for this, for allowing me to take some of your time for this. it's a sign that our city is indeed heading in the right direction. [applause] >> president walton: thank you, supervisor peskin, and again, congratulations, and i want to say congratulations one more time to all of today's awardees. thank you for all of your service and great work to our

communities here in san francisco. we appreciate you, and today, we celebrate you. and that concludes our 2:30 p.m. special commendations. madam clerk, let's go to items 12 and 12. >> clerk: item 12 and 13 are two items that include a memorandum of understanding.

item 13 adopts and implements the m.o.u. between the city and county of san francisco and the service employees international union, local 1021, the staff and per diem nurses, to be effective july 1, 2022 through june 30, 2024. >> president walton: thank you so much, madam clerk. supervisor safai? >> supervisor safai: thank you. i just want to make a note about this particular special contract in front of us today, those nurses that are in laguna honda and s.f. general and other parts of the city. over the last few years, i have been meeting consistently with these nurses.

they have shared horrific stories with me and have been really fighting for better conditions and respect. we had a hearing. it happened on the first day that we reported a case of covid 20 years ago, and those conditions have not gotten better but in some cases have gotten worse. we've centered around so many of the different things that would allow these nurses to excel and do better and hired those nurses in a much more appropriate manner to ensure we have the appropriate staffing levels, so i want to thank them for their dedication to the frontlines, their service to our city, and ensuring that our residents had the services that they needed to thrive throughout the last couple of years. i think this contract in front of us reflects their hard