>> welcome to to the 42 annual san francisco government awards. i'm-the san francisco director for sure spur i and i want to thank you all for being here tonight to honor excellence in public service. at spur, we strive to a bay area where all people thrive. we know accomplishing this takes partnership, (indiscernible) particularly are local government and we are really proud to support the good government awards, because we truly believe that government can make a positive difference in the lives of san francisco residents so really excited to take a moment to acknowledge and thank all of the

folks who make the city run so well. i also like to- [applause] i also like to acknowledge and thank our elected officials who are joining us this evening. san francisco city attorney david chui. [applause] assessor recorder joaquin florez. treasurer tax collector jose is -former city attorney dennis (indiscernible) and current general manager for sfpuc. [applause] and of course san francisco very own mayor london

breed, please join me in welcoming mayor london breed to the stage. [applause] >> alright! good evening everyone! it is so great to be here and after work hours never the less. drinking in city hall, hanging out with our friends and family, and just taking a moment to pause and reflect on all the extraordinary work that so many of you have done and will continue to do for the city and county of san francisco. in fact, i know we have some extraordinary people that we will be honoring here tonight, but i really want to take this moment to acknowledge many of you who were nominated for these awards, because we know your work is equally as important. you know, san francisco continues to go through challenging times, and when i think about what we are

trying to do to make san francisco better, safer, cleaner, more efficient for the residents and the people who live here, who visit here, who work here, the people that make that happen consist of public servants who work as city employees, who continue to roll up their sleeves and do everything they can, you can to make san francisco that beautiful viberant welcoming place that we see on the postcards that people experience every single day. don't let the narrative about san francisco that is floating out there distract you from what san francisco truly is. [applause] i was out this past weekday and i went to the cherry blossom festival. first, i spoke on stage, but then i went in disguise. i walked around and i could barely get

through japan town center. i could barely move because there were so many people. they ran out of burgers. it is one of the most sought after burgers at a cherry blossom festival. i stumbled on this great easter egg extravaganza and drag queens were running the show and in the front row were families and kids and folks enjoying san francisco. i went over to the marina, i road into the bayview hunters point and i wondering where are all these people coming from, just enjoying the embarcadero, enjoying and smiling and appreciating san francisco. and every stop i went to, there was either a department of public works worker who was cleaning up the trash, there was a muni bus driver driving one of the buses the 24, 22, who knows, past the

particular events. there were firefighters and police officers on the streets and yes, there were people giving tickets to folks at the meters. you know, keep the city going. but there was so much activity and so much excitement and all of that happens because of the people who serve and protect the city and county of san francisco and that startz with our city workforce. so, today as spur has done for 42 years in honoring our workforce in extraordinary, we want to thank stir and thank you. that is a why there is a lot of food and drink but don't eat over or drink over $25 per person. we don't want any problems with the city attorney office. david is looking like it is me now, not dennis, even though they are over there sitting together. the fact

is, we are here to celebrate you and just take a moment to pause and to reflect on the extraordinary work and in particular i want to call out and you'll hear the names and the people a little later, but the municipal fiber team from department technology. i see linda joining us here today. [applause] you know, what happened and still happening in oakland is not happening in san francisco. let me just say that. thank you linda. [applause] the permit center team from public works, department of technology and the office of the city administrator. [applause] now, for those of you who had to stand in line and wait all day to get permits to do very simple home improvements, trust me, you appreciate this new efficient program. the housing acquisition team from the mayor's office and

department of homelessness and supportive housing with all these great projects we are taking over to make sure we are able to house people who were formally living on the streets. they now have a safe affordable place to call home thanks to this team. [applause] the public integrity reform team from the city attorney and controller's officeism for those who pay recology, you probably got a refund so thank you very much. [applause] and last but certainly not least, assistant deputy chief simon pang always out there on the front line with the street crisis response team and all the great work serving as a true ambassador to san francisco but doing everything he can-he is somewhere. is he

here? where is simon? way in the back. from the san francisco fire department- [applause] you would think that chief nicholson was getting the award, she is all in the front row, simon. but, at the end of the day, we know this work is hard and we know sometimes you don't hear thank you enough, but i'm here to say thank you, we appreciate you and this is just a chance to really demonstrate that appreciation to a few of your colleagues who have definitely gone above and beyond, but well come to the families and friends and the community and thank you for being here to support these extraordinary public servants. glad to be here also, as i said with spur who lead the effort the last 42 years, so without further ado welcome executive director of spur, alicia john baptiste. [applause]

>> thank you so much mayor breed. as always incredibly inspirational remarks. isn't she amazing? the mayor of the city! thank you. [applause] good evening everyone. alicia is john baptiste with spur happy to be celebrating with you. the extraordinary public service you have been providing. as mentioned, at spur we do believe in local government as a force for good and this year's award winners truly demonstrate why that belief is so well founded. among you, you have tackled everything from bridging the digital divide, to restoring public confidence in how government works, to finding innovative ways to shelt er and care for our most vulnerable neighbors and in doing this, you have shown why local government, especially is so important. because the truth is, the circumstances that shape our lives as

individual people are a result of so many different things. they are the result of federal policy decisions and state policy decisions and local policy decisions, of macro economic forces and micro economic forces, divisions and choices made every day by nations, by businesses and by individual people, so there is is this huge array of forces working on our lives, but it is at the local level where we actually live. it is in our homes, at our dinner tables, walking on our city streets that we reflect to ourselves about what is working in our lives and what is not. what we are grateful for, and where we struggle. so when we face challenges, whether they are the result of something that the federal government decided a generation ago, like

under investing in our social safetynet or a global phenomena like a pandemic, it is our local government that we turn to. it is you all who we turn to, so we ask you to solve these macro issues, economic insecurity, housing insecurity, climate change, health access, digital equity, the list goes on and on, and we turn to you because government is the only american institution who's job it is to truly serve the public good. to serve the good of all the people. so, even though these are not issued created locally, san francisco didn't invent homelessness or digital divide, it is imperative we be able to solve these issues locally, because people need to trust that there is a

institution dedicated to their wellbeing. because people need hope. because people need to know that tomorrow can be brighter and particularly today when we are still experiencing the uncertainty and insecurity that comes with the huge changes we experienced over these past few years, people need to be able to count on their government to provide security, stability, answers. to chart a path forward. and we are living so differently today then we were just three years ago. and that means we are having to adjust the way we organize, pretty much everything. our transit systems our tax structures, work hours, even our literal physical space. all of it is in flux as we reorient and reorganize. and that has a cost, but also, we

wouldn't be living differently if it didn't also have benefit. so, while we are in this process that feels very distabling and unsettling, this process also has enormous potential for what can be. for what we can create together. and that is why your work is so critical, and it is why we are celebrating you today, because you have proven that locally we can tackle the big macro challenges. we can find the way forward. you have shown that we can bridge the gaps. mend the nets, serve our most vulnerable . you have shown we can count on our government to deliver for all of us and we can be hopeful for the future we create together. so, i'm so grateful for all of the extraordinary work you have done. i'm really thrilled to be honoring you

all and all from spur and me personally, i want to just say thank you. [applause] and now we'll start the party. so, we'll kick things off tonight with our first good government award honorees. true housing heroes. the housing acquisition initiative team. [applause] >> there were several goals to take advantage of local and state funds available in a relatively soft real estate market to acquire properties at scale and quickly to address really what continues to be a critical need in our

city to insure that we attend to diverse needs and diverse neighborhood said. >> the housing acquisitions are made possible with two primary sources, one is our city our homes fund the gross receipts tax to increase service for people experiencing homelessness. this was a large historic inflex of local funding for homelessness. in addition the department was able to secure $136 million in home key funding. home key is a state wide initiative of $1.4 billion to expand housing for people. >> we went through a public procurement process so we advertise on our website that the city and the department were looking for buildings to

buy. we receive over a hundred buildings that people told us i will be willing to sell my building to you guys. we literally went to every single building that we decided had potential and then we have different things doing analysis. will this building be a good candidate for say families or for young people or adult. >> we acquired 8 buildings that include 6 buildings we acquired as the city playing the role of purchasing and owner residential property as well as twob buildings we partnered with one of our non profit housing providers. the first building that the city acquired we closed on that purchase in december of 2021. that is 16th street in the mission district. it is 25 unit building that had been vacant and is now housing 25 young adults and one

of the largest buildings we acquired is city gardens south of market. 200 unit building, brand new construction, beautiful building that will house 200 families that are formally homeless. >> to get the buildings ready we issued competitive procurement. those procurements actually had two components. one was for property management and then there was support services component and the support services is providing case management, wellness checks and supporting the overall tenants housing stability. in the application process, we also encouraged collaborative applicants and that really helped us get two agencies that provided their skilled expertise in that particular service component to best serve the building particular population. >> there were so many different partners that made this happen. from legislative perspective, we could not have done

this without the city attorney. the planning department. made sure we had all the requirements needed to move forward with acquisitions. san francisco police department was huge in terms of community engagement. the non profit providers that run serveesses across our system of care were with us every step of the way. they were there in the legislative process supporting this, they were there in the community talking to people about the work and who they serve and certainly there hand in hand with us every step of the way. >> good evening everyone. i'm

executive director of homelessness and supportive housing and this is very very very exciting. i see the hard work that our staff put in every single day, and i know that it is not obvious sometimes to the general public recollect but they are just an amazing amazing group of people. and so, this just makes me so happy. i can't even tell you. tonight it is my honor to be here to celebrate the work of the supportive housing acquisition initiative team. well many members of the hsh staff involved in the bold initiative and you heard we had other partners, this team lead the charge with this new approach to acquiring and opening supportive housing . the team charged with adding 1,000 new units through aggressive acquisition strategy that built on the momentum coming out of covid and leverages

one time funding opportunities from prop c and home key program. to date the group acquired 987 new units of housing across 8 buildsings to provide housing to adult families and youth out of homelessness and we have more to come. through this innovative collaborative effort, san francisco leveraged $136 million in competitive home key grant funds to bring critical state resources into our community to address one of the most if not the most pressing challenge. iment to thank the team for making the vision realty so thank to dan adams, dan is senior advisor for housing initiatives in the mayor's office. dan was hired for expertise in affordable housing development and finance as project manager to lead the identification and acquisition of former hotels converted to permanent supportive housing for people

experiencing homelessness. dan does not directly supervise but is responsible for leading and project managing work that involves city staff from multiple departments, non profit housing providers and are private consultants. salvador menjivar is director of housing at hsh and oversees 67 staff and responsible for managing a $417 million portfolio of programs that provide housing to formally homeless adults families and youth. this includes over 10 thousand units of site based permanent supportive housing. over a thousand scattered housing subsidies and supportive services to help tenants stabilize and retain housing. dylan schneider is the manager of policy and legislative affairs at hsh. sure many of you know her. she directly supervises two staff and is responsible for managing relationships with the

board of supervisors, responding to request for information from the board and budget analyst, respondsing to whistle blower complaints, shepherding legislation and staffing public hearings when items are being heard, which is all most every day. elizabeth hewson the manager of supportive housing programs hsh. she is responsible for managing a portfolio of several thousand units of site based permanent supportive housing for formally homeless households. she oversees a team of 13 other employees, day to day work includes managing dozens of grant agreements with psh providers, establish policy and procedures for department portfolio, reporting to state and federal funders as well as local oversight entities coordinating service delivery and non profit and trouble shooting individual client issues. lisa augstin

is the finance director and she oversees a team of 17 staff and responsible for managing the fiscal accounting and budgeting functions with a annual budget of $672 million. monique colon. managing for contract invoice and monitoring. this is the housing acquisition team. they are amazing folks. i'm so so pleased to be here and so honored to work with all of you. congratulations on a very well deserved award. [applause] >> thank you and good

evening. my name is (indiscernible) director of housing department of homelessness and supportive housing. on behalf of dan, elizabeth, dylan, monique and lisa, i want to express gratitude for this wonderful recognition. i want to thank (indiscernible) the executive director. we also want to express our gratitude to mayor london breed. for her leadership in the effort to acquire our 1,000 units of housing, for the people that are most in need in our community. lastly, we also like to thank you to our non profit partners and other elected officials that supported us in this effort. it take a village to do this project. homelessness is one of the most painful national manifestations of

economic social political system. (indiscernible) working to create different solutions to homelessness. if you take a look at the local newspapers, you will think that very little is done to address homelessness in san francisco, but i got to tell you something, that could not be farther from the truth. tonight our team, the department reaffirm our commitment to continue to work to find a solution to homelessness in our city. i want to ends by inviting you to celebrate (indiscernible) not the wonderful team back at the department or the mayor's office doing all this incredible work to acquire all these units. i want us to celebrate the over 715 individuals that are

going to be placed in housing because of this initiative. 750 people. [applause] and 250 families with children. [applause] those are the true heroes. over 1550 people including children, human beings like you and i with dreams who can now have a place to call home because of all the work we have done and all your support. thank you very much. [applause]

>> our next good government award honorees, did the nearly impossible, they consolidated the city's permitting processes, which is really extraordinary. to state of the art one stop shop, the permit center team. [applause] >> (indiscernible) much more welcoming experience for visitors and frankly much healthier work environment for staff. some of the key tenants of the project includes sustainability, efficiency, flexibility certainly. >> department of

technology it team played a key role thin network design and implementation (indiscernible) the service team application fee and (indiscernible) all made this collaborative effort at department center which is more focused and a lot of backbone behind it that was designed and implemented by the it staff at the department. proud to see how technology can (indiscernible) implemented at this permit center we are able to provide better experience for the residents, businesses, visitors as well as the employees of the city of san francisco. >> data plays a important role in the permit center. prior to the move to 49 south van ness, working off of paper sheets an ecdotal evidence, with permit center, especially with the

queuing system we are able to have real data and real numbers to back up and make business decisions based on actual data. we are able to track the customers entire journey throughout the permit center and identify peak hours, bottlenecks and make business decisions. >> physically we center customer service by placing the customer service representatives at the front door of the building as customers enter and provide a warm greeting. the team has to be knowledgeable and a lot of difference type of services provided at the permit center and once they understand what the reason for the customer visit, then they can provide the journey to get their permitting. >> permitting prior to the permit center was spread out across a dozen permitting departments in 10 different buildings across the city. the calilous catalyst is

colocate the functions in one building with the hope of accomplishing two things. to create a better more centralized cohesive customer experience, and secondly, to foster collaboration across departments that have been used to operating as their own silos. now everything you need for permitting is available under one roof, not only all the departments and staff, but services like our print center, which allows you to print plan sets or get notary services as well as automated cash and kiosk that allow to pay for services. it was a enormous chess game to figure how to move a dozen department broken into bureaus and subdepartments across 10 buildings and did it across 10 separate weekdays thin summer of 2020. >> because there is so many moving pieces involved in making a project of this magnitude come together, and working for the real

estate division we have real deadlines to meet and that speaks to leases and dates that we cannot move in terms of expiration or things rolling into hold-over so we have real financial deadlines and dates to adhere to. what that means is, we cannot shift the date in terms of when we would be moving into this building. people needed to vacate when they had to, and there was no flexibility around that. i'm most proud working with you know, a insanely incredible talented team of individuals. >> good evening everyone. deputy city

administrator and the person overseeing the permit center today. i'm really excited to be here about recognizing the delivery of this really big complex project. when plans were being made for new office building at 49 south van ness, city leaders seized the opportunity to consolidate permitting that was done in 14 different locations at the time, so wouldn't have to chris cross the greater civic center area to get the permits they needed to construct or renovate a building or open a business. actually, realizing that vision that the leaders had come up with and delivering the physical space and the service model and all the data parts and the technology that makes it work, took the work of the team being recognized tonight. excuse me, i'm losing

my voice from a cold. gus customer service manager has been key in setting up the entire customer flow and queuing system and all of those parts. samual chui the senior project manager public works worked with the people and stakeholders to envision how you bring all these people together in a place where they had been in such separate locations and really separate silos, how do you create that space that works? umesh gupta, department of technology, had to figure how do we build a network that will integrate the department needs, all their different systems and make sure new telephones, all of those things worked on day one when we moved into the is enter.

andrea labatan, the building manager was the one who helped coordinate and make sure everybody was able to move in as well as all the people in the 16 stories above that are in the departments that are supporting permit center activities, public works, building inspection and the planning department. mori wallner is the business analyst and he's been-he as we moved into the permit center in trying to take all this data and transform the way that we are doing business. mori knows more then anybody knows there is a lot more work to be done to be improving permitting and this award really recognizes this huge accomplishment in getting us into a single place where that collaboration, where that customer focus

can happen. so, all these people insured networks and technology would serve staff and customers, and assembled a group of expert customer service staff who can work with all most every personalty type imagine. all most 200 different personalty types every day. they finished the work and moved people in the center. you heard in summer 2020 when many staff would have been available to help, dsw assignments elsewhere in the city or sheltering at home with families andt noavailable to come into work. before calling the team up, i also want to recognize two people who were not eligible to receive a good government award, but been really key in delivering this project and i think deserve recognition as well. they are melissa whitehouse and rebecca myer [applause]

permit center directors past and present. and so with that, i love to welcome up the team. [applause] >> even though we are here today to recognize this good group of managers, this award really is for the hundreds of employees that work with us on the front line and behind the scenes at the permit center every single day. employees from over 12 permitting departments, passionate about customer service and focused on improving and streamlining the permitting process for businesses, special events and construction in san francisco. a big thank you to these departments, to their staff, to

our coworkers for their service and support. we also like to thank our former director melissa whitehouse. thank you for providing us the permit center blue prints, for laying down the groundwork and for assembling this wonderful team. and also for instilling in us with your spirit of good government. i assure we still carry the spirit with us every single day. also want to thank our current director rebecca myer. thank you for your strength, for your commitment, your courage and for your vision which keeps us motivated as we take on and coner new challenges at the center. it is your leadership that will take this team to center and the permitting process to the next level. thank you to carmen chui our city administrator and douglas leg,

our deputy city administrator for recognizing our potential, for believing in us and supporting us and supporting the vision and mission of the permit center. lastly, thank you to spur for this wonderful event and for honoring us with the 2023 good government award. congratulations to all the honorees and are thank you for your great work. we wish everyone a wonderful night. thank you. [applause] >> now please join me honoring our next good government award team. these are the civic champions responsible for refunding san francisco rate payers $100 million. the public integrity refuse rate reform team.

[applause] >> by september of 2020, we issued a public facing report that outlined how recology was providing hundreds of thousands of dollars to a special event fund that mohammed nuru-controlled. it was a off the books account outside the city finance system and it begged the question of course, what if anything is recology getting in exchange. by december of 2020, recology council disclosed to us there had been a significant error in the 2017 rate application and that is where the controller's

office came in because we needed them to figure out exactly how much rate payers had been over-charged. >> our team had to quickly get up to speed, identify why the error occurred, quantify the amount of the error, and understand well enough to be able to make recommendations that were going to be useful to policy makers . we were lucky our team and the controller office was paired up with a great city attorney. with this project, it was both humbling and i gratifying knowing that we were able to get on average $190 returned to every rate payer in san francisco. that is what public service is about and that's what makes it so rewarding. >> this group didn't know each other when we first came together. i worked

with yvonne and celsly in the city attorney office and deep in the process of investigation and negotiation but we needed help and went to the controller office and todd and said here is the support we need and it was like he opened a magic door and all these great people leaned in and joined our team and pushed us, challenged us, joined us in negotiations and fact finding. >> whenever government takes a deep dive into something that is a issue or a problem, and you are able to tackle it, what emerges is better government. good government, and here what is going to emerge from these negotiations and this effort is our refuse rate system in san francisco is better. it is better longterm. it is better for us having conducted these negotiations from achieving

these results from shedding light on these errors and coming up not only with a solution that helped address and readdress the problems of the past, i think in terms of the future it helps us chart a better path forward. >> the 2022 refuse rate reform measure which passed by san francisco voters with more 70 percent of the vote in june 2022 really increasing the transparency and accountability of the process. it puts the controller in charge of the refuse rate adjustment process. it asks them to make recommendations to the rate board, it also puts a rate payer advocate on the existing rate board, which gives a much stronger voice to the residents of san francisco as refuse rate payers. the ballot measure also asks the rate board to be more involved with occasional independent audits of the rate setting process. >> just want to say you know, how proud we are of the entire team. it isn't just the managers but a lot of

people behind the scenes and within our departments that facilitated the whole thing and the tenacity, work ethic, the challenges that we faced, tight timelines in order to make the june ballot, we did this 100 percent remotely. brave new world with new ways of doing things and 100 percent zoom meetings and learning how to overcome all those difficulties and just generally the long hours and the commitment from everybody. >> good evening. i want to welcome you all to the 42 annual academy awards for san francisco city government! [applause] and on behalf of the academy, i just want to thank each and every one of you for everything you are doing for san francisco. my name is david chui, your city attorney and contrary to what mayor breed said, i'm not tracking

how much wine each of you are drinking. that's what we have cameras for here at city hall. so, i am honored to join in help introduce my fellow nominators. i was thinking of starting with the joke about how the chinese department and latino department and jewish department had a couple drinks and walked on a stage but ben and dennis told me, can't do that. what i do want to say though, is these two amazing public servants behind me are city controller, and former city attorney, they helped to kick off the work of this team and the three of us are so honored to lead the best city attorney's office in the country, the best city controller's office in the country, the best publicue till tay commission in the country. [applause] and as part of reflection of that is the team that we are recognizing tonight. you heard some of what the work is about but what i'll say on a

serious note, this is work that stemmed from a wide ranging public integrity investigation that spanned nearly 3 years and uvvaed many staff from our office. they embarked on very complicated discovery and reviews, pouring over countless financial statement jz documents, conducting numerous interviews all over the city, over 40 negotiation and information sessions with recology and what was the outcome of this after two year negotiation, it resulted in a $100 million refund to san francisco taxpayers and if that want enough and i did hear that cham pain bottle, yfs going to refer as the $100 million team but they are actually the $125 million team because after they finished their work in 2021 they took another bite at the apple and got another $25 million from recology so with that friends and colleagues, on behalf of our city attorney office, the controller office,

the public utility commission, controller ben roseen field and our wonderful gm and former city attorney dennis herrera, let me bring up the public integrity reuse team. [calling out names] >> thank you very much. we want to say thank you to spur for hosting this event and for supporting good government and public servants. we want to thank our fearless leaders, ben, dennis and david for supporting our public integrity work, and it is really rare that the legal system can actually make victims whole, but we got awfully close and that is because of the great partnership between our offices and leveraging both the legal expertise of the city attorney's office with

the financial expertise of the auditors and accountants at the controller office who fought for every last penny with interest for the rate payers. and then we are able to leverage the lessens that we learned as part of calculating what the rate payers were owed to inform the new rate ordnance that govern how rates are set going forward. i know glens wants to thank the subject matter experts throughout the city. i don't think there is a single department in the city who doesn't interact with recology and trash, so thank you to everyone who contributed to that effort. it was a pleasure to get to work with such amazing colleagues and dedicated public servants. we all got to become friends on zooms over the pandemic, and three years of public integrity, which i think we are all most over. can i say that? ben is like don't say

that. [laughter] so thank you for honoring us tonight. [applause] >> next up is this evening we have the stewards of our city digital equity. these are folks who extended high speed internet to low income communities, the department of technology municipal fiber team. [applause] >> the mission of my team is to provide foster labor free broad

band. there are certain areas in the city which lack internet and we notice it is mainly focused on affordable housing and we are trying to solve that problem. i'm proud of leading a team of employees. highly motivated who built the largest municipal fiber in the country. as of now it is 48 thousand miles of fiber, enough to go around the world two times. >> there are over 500 affordable housing sites in the city and out of those, we connected close to a hundred. these range from single building, multilevel building to (indiscernible) and they can range from 20 units to 200 units. we reached a total of 9300 households and 1080 homeless vets but we try to exceed what we have

done the year before so the number will continue to grow. >> we involve many other departments, puc for their pole and (indiscernible) conduits. even the central subway project, we use central subway as a path to go all the way to china town, which was pretty hard to get to. it involved a lot of different departments, many many people. >> i have been doing this for 18 years and nothing has been at this scale. a lot of things we do is on the ground and infrastructure. getting to the building is always different. downtown you are dealing with all most hundred percent on the ground infrastructure. you are dealing with old conduit that have been there over a hundred years old. they were paper literally, clay, they collapse. a lot in the day were made out of redwood trees and they just bored through them and

that is the conduit. >> we provide customer service for the fiber to housing project in collaboration with the mayor office of housing and community development. they provide essentially a first tier of support, but mohcd role in the project was beyond that. they helped on-board buildings that identify high priority buildings, they assist customers with getting on to the network. they talk through with residential service folks at the sites. what are the requirements they can help customers get on the network. the feedback from the residents of the affordable housing buildings we serve has been great. >> we are fortunate to serve a large vast amount of communities. our program has seen a wave of acceptance. we get daily phone calls, daily e-mails of people reaching out wanting to know how

can their buildings apply for these services. i think this program is extremely valuable to everyone involved. we see wifi similar to homes, shelter, food, to be able to keep up with the world they need access to wifi and access to just relevant and (indiscernible) >> good evening. well, you heard from the country's best housing group, permit center, controller's office, puc and city attorney and now i like to share with you the work of the best department of technology and fiber team in the country.

[applause] my name is linda and i serve as the city chief information officer and executive director of department of technology. i like to thank spur and the nominating committee for recognizing the municipal fiber program. the good work would not be possible without the vision and support from mayor london breed, city administrator chui, the board of supervisors and capital planning. even before covid, san francisco believed that all residents should have the ability to access the internet and we were already underway building a fiber network to serve our most vulnerable residents. covid showed us the essential and necessary nature of the internet for healthcare, schools, senior care,

job opportunities, economic development, and city service delivery. residents and you use the internet every day, and the spur award acknowledges the importance of this mission, and we hope san francisco's programs inspire other jurisdictions to provide their unserved residents with internet access to close the digital divide. it is my honor to congratulate and thank joseph john who served the city for 29 years and heads up the municipal fiber team and the team itself- [applause] absolutely. for their commitment, hard work, enthusiasm to build and serve residents with essential internet service, so thank you team. [applause]

>> good evening. i'll make it short. linda has spoken about the team but i'll tell two things about them. one, they think in the long-term interest of the city every time they do their work. several years ago, our staff was installing fiber somewhere near (indiscernible) and it was a saturday. i took my third daughter over there and she came with me and she talk today the staff quite some time and when we were going home she told me one thing, your staff did a very good job, but they could not explain to me why they are putting (indiscernible) she told me i should explain that to them. the fact is we also didn't know what purpose we are going to use this but we were very sure that

the cost of installing 200 (indiscernible) because you have to do the digger, you have to put a (indiscernible) the team continued with the same philosophy for every project. because of that, this project social responsibility project of providing free internet has become practical and it is feasible. secondly, i want to say that this team has the capability to adapt, to challenging situations. you tell them anything they find a solution for that. i tell you next time last year when the fiscal year comes i say what did we do last fiscal year? let us beat that record. some time in april i told randy and kevin you come up with a affordable housing so they came with a list of 47 locations. i

called rene and josh and talked to them and josh tells me joseph, we do 15-20 a year, now you are telling me to do 3 years work in 3 months time. so, i told josh and rene, you are very smart. it is how smart you do the things, it's not the work and try to tell them, make use of existing resources in the city whether (indiscernible) underground, on the pole or microwave, work with caltrans, motivate your staff and find a solution. when he was working from my office to his office he stopped by my office and told me, what is wrong with your boss he has gone crazy or he is joking. so she ran to my office to tell me that. i told her, i was not joking, i was serious, but as for the second

statement, craziness i never disputed in the past and not dispute it now. josh and rene did how many- >> 42. >> kevin keeps track of that, so they did 42 [applause] and thank you spur. i want to say that the city is lucky to house such a team of employees. thank you. [applause] >> our last honoree this evening is also our only individual honoree. the man who is proving compassion plays a pivotal role in good government, assistant deputy chief of community paramedicine, simon pang. [applause]

>> community paramedicine is a very very great idea. easy to sell, but never the less, if it wasn't for our chief of department that was supportive, if it wasn't for the mayor that was supportive, nothing would have happen, so it is like a perfect confluence of events. we had a very good knowledge of the city resources, the referral processes, we put out proposal and collaborated with the health department and came up with the street crisis response team so that was 2020 and the first team got started on november 30, 2020, one team working 5 days a week at the start. so often we on ambulances and first responders see someone 2 or 3 times a day because we take them to a emergency room and they are stabilized, the

doctors recognize that there is nothing acrut and discharge back to the community and then they might have alcohol use disorder or substance use disorder and a citizen will see them on the sidewalk prone on the sidewalk and call 911, we come and pick up again and take them to the hospital and happens again and again and again and the street crisis response team was tasked responding to people in acute behavioral crisis. and that team is alternative to policing. june 2022, we had a cut-over, so approximately 14,000 calls annually that the police were handling all transferred to street crisis response team. street wellness was designed also as alternative to police to respond to wellbeing checks, so a wellbeing check is very losely defined.

somebody sitting in a doorway to somebody calling out of state saying they haven't heard from a family member and are could you please knock on the door. we had the street wellness and street crisis response team and recognize these teams were essentially responding to the same population. both teams will respond to people housed and unhoused, but primarily we are working on street level conditions, and people that are experiencing homelessness on the streets. paramedics are trained to respond to emergency, work as rapidly as possible and stabilize, and a community pair med paramedic the idea is slow down and try to understand someone's true needs and advocate for them and find a way to connect them to the appropriate system of care. the best thing is to be ernest, respectful, authentic, to get down on someone's level.

quite literally get down on their level and start a conversation. offer friendship. provide food, coffee, and let the person know that you are really there to help them. [applause] >> wow, the lights are bright. greetings and saluleitations, your fire chief nicholson. pleasure to be here to celebrate one of the best, simon pang. first of all, shout out to spur. thank you my sisters for running such a great organization and we can always use a shot in the arm like this, no covid punt intended. a feel good shot, so thank you for that. just being here tonight makes me really proud of all the work that the city and county of san francisco is doing so

thank you everyone for all the work that you do and congratulations to everyone tonight. so, first of all, i want to thank simon's parents for having him. they are here. thank you so much for having him. [applause] and i can say that the world is a better place because of your son, and san francisco is a better city because of your son, so thank you. [applause] i also want to thank dph and dem, sister mary ellen and hsh and everyone for their partnership. we did not do this alone, and we continue to not do this alone. we saw a need as chief pang spoke about. both he and i work together as paramedic firefighters back in the day and i remember thinking, wow, he is really kind. he is really

nice. he doesn't have a big ego and i would want him to take care of me, because he is so smart and good at what he does if anything ever happened to me. hopefully that won't happen simon, but just so you know. simon has been the architect, the main architect of community paramedicine, which is an alternative to policing and frankly alternative to just bringing people to the emergency room over and over again, which is when we saw that was not exactly what they needed. it has been really a iterative process developing the appropriate teams for the different needs that we have, and simon has been about helping the most vulnerable is and the most challenged people on our streets. he has a good heart. he does things for the right reasons, and i

just respect that so much and he's super smart, and people call from all over the country to ask for his advice, his council in terms how to get their own programs started. so, i just want to say, simon, thank you for everything you do. congratulations and congratulations to all your family as well. [applause] >> hi, my name is simon, and i thank you very much for this honor and i wanted to say, it is very strange to see both my chiefs next to my parents, my smart and beautiful wife and my two wonderful sons. strange and wonderful that they are all together at the same time.

[applause] and january 2016, april slone and i were tasked with restarting ems6. we started with a 20year old vehicle and one cell phone, and since then, we now annually respond to nearly 20 thousand incidents per year. community paramedicine is a story that's writing itself. we have been very successful because like all first responders, we respond rapidly, we work 24 hours a day weekdays and holidays, but additionally, we have had a willingness to fill system gaps and we had a e thrks hos if not us, who? community paramedicine is a idea that did not originate with me, but we have

pushed the-we have pushed the implementation of community paramedicine a little further down the playing field, and all our accomplishments would not have been possible without the help and support of many others. the community paramedics themselves doing the work every day. they are highly motivated to create positive social change. my high performance management team of april slone and mike mason. [applause] the many city agencies that we collaborate with, and finally, key stakeholders, my own leadership in the fire department, chief nicholson, chief tong, members of the board of supervisors and finally, mayor london breed. thank you again and i will work very hard to earn your continual support.

thanks. [applause] >> i want to thank you again for all the incredible work you have put into serving the people of the city of san francisco. you really do prove to us local government is a force for good and we are forever grateful. this concludes our formal program, but it brar bar is still open, so stick around and enjoy. thank you all so much. [applause]

>> you are watching san francisco rising with chris manner. today's special guest is carla short. >> hi, i'm chris manner and you are watching san francisco rising the show about restarting rebuilding and reimagining the city. our guest is carla short the intric director of public works and here to talk about the storms we had and much more. welcome to the show. >> thank you for having me. >> great to have you. let's start by talking about the storms that started beginning of the year. there fsh a lot of clean up recovery

and remediation. can you talk about what your team did? >> sure. the 17 inches of rain we got starting on new year's eve through the first 2 and a half weeks of january made it one of the wettest periods in recorded history for san francisco, so as you imagine we had a lot of work to do. we gave out more then 31 thousand sand bags, we were operating all most non stop from new year's eve to san francisco residents and businesses out of our operation yard and frequently working thin rain so it was a beautiful dance to watch. we had a corio graphed where people drive in the stop and load with san dags and get on it way so thats was the most visible thij weez had to do. responded to all most a thousand calls for localized flooding for the corner of the street with catch basin. our

team trying to address that. we clear and pick up anything to block and it hopefully get the flooding to go down. if we are able to respond we call in the san francisco pub utility system and are responsible for the sewer system under so they bring ing vack trucks that vacuum out debris inside the catch basin. we also dealt with lots and lots of calls about trees and tree limbs down. i think we actually faired better then some other places in terms of loss of full trees. we did have whole tree failures and that is not that uncumin with super satch waited soil conditions. we had over 950 calls about trees or tree limbs down. a lot of calls were about loss of a limb and we could save the tree. we are still assessing the data to figure how many were full tree failures versus limb failure. >> also had land movement too. the great highway comes to mind. what is your

approach to managing rock mud and land slides? >> that is a great question. we had 28 different slides over the course of that period. it is kind of a interesting process, so the first step is we have our geotechnical or structural engineers take a look to see is the hillside safe, do we need to stabilize it in some way or just need to do some cleanup? once they made their assessment they will recommend the next steps. often times to protect public safety we will place k rails the giant concrete rails at the base omthe slide area to make sure that any debris doesn't get on the edroway and bring ing the heavy equipment to scoop up on the ground and move off the roadway and try to open the roadway. some cases, we will actually inject some rocks or other stabilizing forces either into the slide area or sometimes below the roadway. right now there is

nothing that's unstable out there but be are keeping a close eye on the areas including the gray highway area. >> right, right. well, so talking about the storms in the city response, brings us to southeast community scepter when there is rain remediation projects going on. can you talk about the inconstruction project kblrks that is a favorite project. a beautiful new community facility. we were involved in pretty much every aspect of developing that project for the public utility commission. they were a client. we design project management and construction management and the landscape design for that project. and one thing that we included was storm water management throughout the entire project site. so, that project encapturealize the rain water that lands on the roof and flows into the

landscape where we have rain gardens so intent is slow the water down to and give areas to collect to percolate into the ground rather then the sewer system. when we have sewers that are overloaded, because our rain water mixes with the sewer treatment storm sewer system, we actually can end up dist charging into the bay which we dont want to do. anything we can do to just prevent those combined sewers from overpm loaded is a good thing and in this case allows the water to collect onsite and percolate to the ground which is the best way to manage the storm water and it is beautiful and provides habitat. i encourage everybody to see it. it is special place. >> that's great. there was recently news about how city (indiscernible) powered by steam, which is super unusual i think. i understand public works ablgtually does the maintenance

on the system. can you just talk about that a bit? >> sure. that is a unusual situation. that steam loop was actually built when the city was recovering from the 1906 earthquake. it only provides to steam about 4 buildings in civic center but that is how we keep buildings like city hall warm. the steam goes into the radiators and provides the heat. it is a old system and if you see steam billowing out of the man holes or other spaces, that is indication of a leak actually. we spend a lot of time trying to fix the leaks because it's a old system. it is managed by the real estate department and at one point they were looking trying to replace the whole thing but think that is a massive undertaking so now they focus on making as needed repair said. we did a big

repair on growth street where we spent a month and a half working on the known leaks s in the area. it is a very tight spot and have to use blow torches to seal up the leak so a intense operation and seeing more leaks on polk street so we will be out there once it warms up to fix the leaks. >> excellent. let's discuss what is the reunifiquation of public works. there fsh a proposal or plan to split off the division, called the street and sanitation. now that has been shelved and public works is going to just retain being a single entity. can you talk through the process? >> sure. yeah. the original proposal was a ballot measure voted on to split the department into 2. it basically create the department of sanitation and streets that was really going to incompass all our operation divisions so it was a street

cleaning department but encompass everything we refer to as operations. when we worked preparing for that split with the city administrator office, we found there were actually 91 what we call touch points between the operations work and our engineering and architecture side, so we really felt like it could be very difficult to split into two departments. we have so many areas of overlap. there was a new ballot measure last november to reunit the department. technically we split october one and did split in some ways. we did put on hold some of the behind the scenes things like rebranding all the vehicle jz giving everyone a new e-mail address in the sanitation and streets department, but on january 1 of 2023 we came back together so we are reunited i want sing the

peaches and purb song and think it is a good thing for the 91 areas of overlap. we making #2c3w50d use of the research. preparing for the split. looking at all the touch points and trying to strengthen the department so we are more streamlined and efficient. one of the most important component from the original ballot measure is commission oversight. we retained two commissions, the public works commission which oversee the over-all department and approve the budget and contracts. and sanitation and street commission and their mandate focus on policy and deliverable for street cleaning and basically the operation division. reporting to them regularly how we are doing, we think will help make sure we are as efficient and effective as we can be as a department. >> that sounds great. thank you so much for coming and talking to me today and appreciate the time

you have given. >> thank you so much for having me. it was a pleasure. >> that is it for this episode. you are watching san francisco rising. >> usf donates 100-120 pounds of food a night. for the four semesters we have been running here, usf has donated about 18,000 pounds of food to the food recovery network. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪

>> i'm maggie. >> i'm nick. >> we're coe-chairs of the national led organization. what food recovery does is recover and redistribute food that would go wasted and redistributing to people in the community. >> the moment that i became really engaged in the cause of fighting food waste was when i had just taken the food from the usf cafeteria and i saw four pans full size full of food perfectly fine to be eaten and made the day before and that would have gone into the trash that night if we didn't recover it the next day. i want to fight food waste because it hurts the economy,

it's one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world. if it was a nation, it would be the third largest nation behind china and the united states. america wastes about 40% of the food we create every year, $160 billion worth and that's made up in the higher cost of food for consumers. no matter where you view the line, you should be engaged with the issue of food waste. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ >> access edible food that we have throughout our lunch program in our center, i go ahead and collect it and i'll cool it down and every night i prep it up and the next day i'll heat it and ready for delivery.

it's really natural for me, i love it, i'm passionate about it and it's just been great. i believe it's such a blessing to have the opportunity to actually feed people every day. no food should go wasted. there's someone who wants to eat, we have food, it's definitely hand in hand and it shouldn't be looked at as work or a task, we're feeding people and it really means so much to me. i come to work and they're like nora do you want this, do you want that? and it's so great and everyone is truly involved. every day, every night after every period of food, breakfast, lunch, dinner, i mean, people just throw it away. they don't even think twice about it and i think as a whole,

as a community, as any community, if people just put a little effort, we could really help each other out. that's how it should be. that's what food is about basically. >> an organization that meets is the san francisco knight ministry we work with tuesday and thursday's. ♪♪♪ ♪ by the power ♪ ♪ of your name ♪ >> i have faith to move mountains because i believe in jesus. >> i believe it's helpful to offer food to people because as you know, there's so much

homelessness in san francisco and california and the united states. i really believe that food is important as well as our faith. >> the san francisco knight ministry has been around for 54 years. the core of the ministry, a group of ordain ministers, we go out in the middle of the night every single night of the year, so for 54 years we have never missed a night. i know it's difficult to believe maybe in the united states but a lot of our people will say this is the first meal they've had in two days. i really believe it is a time between life or death because i mean, we could be here and have

church, but, you know, i don't know how much we could feed or how many we could feed and this way over 100 people get fed every single thursday out here. it's not solely the food, i tell you, believe me. they're extremely grateful. >> it's super awesome how welcoming they are. after one or two times they're like i recognize you. how are you doing, how is school? i have never been in the city, it's overwhelming. you get to know people and through the music and the food, you get to know people. >> we never know what impact we're going to have on folks. if you just practice love and kindness, it's a labor of love and that's what the food recovery network is and this is

a huge -- i believe they salvage our mission. >> to me the most important part is it's about food waste and feeding people. the food recovery network national slogan is finding ways to feed people. it's property to bring the scientific and human element into the situation. i

didn't - >> sound familiar do you keep on getting up there's an easier way. >> of course there's easier way get rid of of mosquito they breed whatever this is water no water no mosquito mosquito feed on good blood the eggs hatch and stay near the waters san francisco to breathe and the adult underlying mosquito waits on the as many until it's sexuality hardens water pools in any areas and creates places you'll not normally think of budget and any

container that holds water and hidden in bushes or else were dump the water and do it over soil not into a drain the larva can continue growing in the pooled water is sewage disthe first of its kind the area if the sewage is two extreme have a licensed plumber assist water pools in rain gutters and snaking and cleaning out the water when keep the water from pooling and keep in mind that mosquito breed in other waters like catch balgsz and construction barriers interest crawl spaces with clmg is an issue you may have is week to cause the water to collect this is an sour of mosquito so for buildings just fix the clean air act drains and catch basins can be mosquito ground it will

eliminate it as a possible location keep shrubbery and growths estimated any water to can be seen and eliminated birdbath and fountains and uncovered hot tubs mosquito breed but it is difficult to dump the water out of a hot top can't dump the water adding mosquito finish rids the source of mosquito there are also traditionally methods to protect you installing screens on windows and doors and using a mosquito net and politically aau planet take the time to do the things we've mentioned to eliminate standing water and make sure that mosquito are not a problem on your property remember no water no mosquito mm.m. mm.m. m.

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