tv Mayors Press Availability SFGTV September 23, 2023 11:00pm-12:01am PDT
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>> >> what say a nice day to build housing in san francisco. good evening, everyone. i'm london breed where we are going to build over 500 units of housing. [cheers and applause] >> man, i don't think i have ever signed a piece of legislation supporting housing that has made me happier than the one i'm about to sign today. you know, president peskin, i want to take us back a tad bit because when you came back to the board of supervisors, the work that we did together by providing the opportunity for the board of supervisors to make legislative decisions instead of leaving it in the charter,
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understanding that it is so important that we do economic feasibility studies to ensure that the decisions that get made around our requirements for housing, don't impact our ability to build. we know a lot of things for housing are not within our control. the cost of materials and the economy and setting interest rates is a whole but there are things here locally that are within our control. i want to take this opportunity to really appreciate so many people who came together with the technical advisory committee, who worked day in and day out to ensure that we really dug deep, that we fulfill a process that we made to the people of san francisco. that when we make decisions about inclusionary numbers, if the economy changes in anyway, we will reevaluate those numbers to determine if they should be
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either raised or lowered, and we will not play politics with the needs to do everything we can to build more housing in san francisco. and today, fulfills such a promise. no, it is not everything we need to do to get to the 80,000 units that san francisco needs to build in order to fulfill our housing commitment for the element, but it's an incredible start. what does this mean? this means we have come together with stakeholders. i want to appreciate board president peskin and those in my office for the work and the various tac members did to get us to this point. i even said at this point when anne was in my office, what did you do for president peskin to get him to be so cooperative. i'm not used to this.
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i don't know what kind of magic she did or worked this committee in the way that she and president peskin did to make this happen, but what i appreciate most is it shows the power of collaboration. it shows what can happen for the greater good of our city when we are willing to come together and to negotiate and to compromise, and to do what is in the best interest of san francisco. so, what does this do? well, this unlocks thousands of units that are now possible because they can get the financing necessary to get these projects done. what does this do? it creates a number of various layers of commitments that we are making to not just wait years to make adjustments to inclusionary numbers, but to look at inflation, to have built in
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mechanisms to be sure that we don't wait around for policies to pass or change but able to move forward now with projects that are being approved and already been approved so we can unlock housing in san francisco, so that we can break ground and build more all over san francisco including downtown. what does that mean? it means we are building housing but we are creating jobs. so i want to really thank all of the various labor organizations from the plumbers to the carpenters, to the electricians, all people that are responsible for building housing in san francisco. more housing means more job opportunities and we want to make sure that we are building so much housing that we can barely find the workforce to do it. that is our goal, but more importantly, and i know, go ahead, clap labor.
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they are excited about that. [ applause ] but more importantly, affordability is a real challenge and we want to be sure that our san franciscans of various areas of labor and our bus drivers and workforce in san francisco and others and to those who are struggling to make ends meet. we want to make sure that we have as much housing as possible to ensure affordablity for different layers for jobs that exist all over san francisco. we have a lot of work to get there but this is our very very first step. we know that we have to do so much more. we have to be more aggressive than ever before if we are going
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to meet our goal. san francisco already has 50,000 units. do you know what that could mean for the city of san francisco? what that could mean for what is happening right now with new technologies that is emerging in every part of san francisco, and not just right now but pier 70 and dog pound and we are the leading company in the world here in san francisco and more to come. so we have to make sure that we are building the housing necessary to meet the needs, to meet the demand. that we are doing everything possible in this legislation that i am about to sign today is a significant step in the right direction. so i'm looking forward to
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breaking ground here in those 500 units as well as other parts of our city. let's get to financing, let's get the job going, let's make magic happen for the city and county of francisco. [ applause ] and before we sign the legislation, i want to take the opportunity because this doesn't just happen because we want it to happen. this happens because people come together and they do the hard work to make it happen. as i said, president of the board of supervisors, aaron peskin, ben rosen field, our controller, the director of the planning department, sarah phillips, oewp, and who worked her magic, conrad who was a part of this team as well from the city side. i want to thank all of the members of the tac who came
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together to fight it out on the inside and merged together on the outside, and i want to thank the consultants and want to thank the developers estrada, matthew, thank you for the work you do. jim morrison, with hines and erickson and fearless developers here. from 530 howard street. en enrique. carl from fisherman fiore. thank you so much. and we couldn't do this work without the incredible people whose hands build these units, the carpenters, thank you so much. [ applause ] and the building trades. and of course many of our housing advocates, jay natoli is
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here. thank you so much to cory from the housing action committee. it is a village. we won't stop, we can't stop now. first step in the right direction. and before we sign this legislation, i would like to introduce supervisor president of the board of supervisors aaron peskin. [ applause ] >>supervisor aaron peskin: thank you, mayor breed. the mayor got it just right. this is government working at its best, collaboratively based on actual data and i have to say, the meetings that we've had over the period of months were actually very pleasant, they were not contentious, they were informed by experts. all of them i was going to thank, but the mayor has thanked each and every one of them. i will say that the office of
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economic and workforce development were splendid. i think we named him excel spreadsheet conrad. 22 years ago, san francisco was at the leading edge of creating affordable housing in new market rate development. that legislation was carried by my then colleague supervisor mark, who worked very closely with erickson and we created one of the first on-site inclusionary affordable housing laws in the united states of america that has been copied by cities all across the country. but it was never meant to be static. we enjoyed robust times and that ten percent initial number crept up to 15% and eventually 20%. but when times are tough, that number has to be adjusted in a way that allows new housing
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start to happen. the mayor understood that, the entire board of supervisors are almost the entire board of supervisors understood that and that is what led to this process. mayor breed referred to the fact that unfortunately in a number of time, the number got put in the charter at 12% and nobody could bring it down and we took that charter and we made that promise saying we will revisit this every few years and adjust the inclusionary rate number accordingly and we kept our word and that is exactly what happened. now, our job is not done, because as these significant reductions in the requirements for on-site affordablity has gone down, this city has the
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obligation to build 80,000 units of housing, the majority that need to be affordable and we have to find a way to do those. we have had that conversation and that is part of this conversation and that is what the mayor and i are also collaborating on and realizing the affordable housing bond will be the opportunity to vote on this march, march of 2024, in the amount of $300 million. we mentioned that this week and working to get that passed. with that, it is my pleasure to witness this signing. it truly has been a collaboration and i will close by saying it is one of many collaborations. it is the kind of collaboration that we had relative to adaptively reusing vacant buildings in the downtown core that we cleaned up and passed
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and along with corroboration with supervisor melgar and her work and in the city and county in san francisco. our work is not done. i look forward to more collaborations going forward. thank you, mayor breed. >> good afternoon, my name is michael cohen from strata. thank you all for coming today. it's really fantastic to have you all on this humble parking lot which we are advancing plans to build this incredibly gorgeous 500 units, residential building. i have to say those plans are much brighter today because of this legislation. indeed this legislation is the most impactful that has come out in a decade and it's so important because it addresses
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the single barriers which is affecting housing to do and that is affordablity. and there are things that are outside of this city's control, but by significantly reducing this bill, we will be able to build housing and will not happen over night but over the next years, it will have a huge impact. in addition to what it says, this bill says a lot. one, it directly acknowledges that we could not hope to build additional housing without
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decreasing the rate to market. and shows when the stakes are the highest, leadership in the state and san francisco can come together to work on pragmatic solutions. i have to say the mayor and supervisors and everyone else, it's remarkable because you did something really important, really well, really quickly with no drama. for that, i will say thank you, and god bless. [ applause ] i think rebecca is going to come up. >> >> hi, everyone. nice to see you. i am rebecca foster, and i had the honor of being in that inside closed door site on the tac, not really, it was pretty low drama. and i am also the ceo of the housing accelerator fund.
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those things are really connected. we launched the housing accelerator fund in 2017 as a public-private partnership, really to turbo charge the city and affordable housing developers to be able to preserve more housing more officially and since then, we build millions of dollars for san francisco projects and made over $400 million in investments and supporting those around the city. we love this fund. and we have build more units around the city that help residents stay in their long time homes to amazing beautiful buildings like just down on howard street, the new 200 unit building unit on howard that
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will welcome 200 families next income to affordable housing in san francisco. clearly, i don't need to tell anyone here that getting affordable housing, getting any housing built in san francisco is complicated. it's hard. it takes a lot of grit, and for us, it's full of way too many negotiations with a lot of cattle raising and with spreadsheets, and like on the tac, we spend a lot of time looking at the maps of what it takes to make projects work while trying to balance the critical importance of delivering homes faster. this year starting construction, not seven years from starting construction, and getting the systems and policies right so we can massively scale the overall delivery of housing in our city to hit that 82,000 necessary
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homes for future generations and for people who live here now. >> we all keep up this hard work together because we know how important each and incremental win is to building homes on this parking lot and that is for our neighborhoods. serving on the tac with my great partners and working with the incredible city staff that the mayor mentioned, was really an honor and an extension of all this work. it was an incredibly collaborative crew and i did not go inspecting this collaboration and i don't think anybody did because this is san francisco. we just spent our time deep in the weeds and really focusing on the imperative of kick starting the delivery of more housing as soon as possible with all kinds of head wind line the mayor
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mentioned and that we have the ability to build the affordable housing that the city desperately needs. thank you for serving on the tac and i'm super excited for this legislation and the affordable bond that supervisor peskin mentioned. mayor london breed: thank you, rebecca, to everyone joining us today. now it is time to sign the legislation to make it official. [ applause ] >> >> all right. are you ready to sign this legislation? >> yes.
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>> long it was in fashion, o'shaughnessy water system has been sustainable. in addition to providing water for the bay area, it also generates clean hydroelectric power to run city buildings and services. and more recently, some san francisco homes and businesses. >> satellite electricity is greenhouse gas free, so we see a tremendous benefit from that. we really are proud of the fact that, we've put our water to work. >> even with the system as well coon received as hetch hetchy, climate change has made the supply of water from the sierra vulnerable. and requires new thinking about where and how we use water. >> we have five hundred million
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gallons a day of wastewater being dumped out into san francisco bay and the ocean from the bay area alone. and that water could be recycled and should be recycled for reuse through out the bay area. >> we're looking at taking wastewater and reading it to drink watering standards. we're also looking at our generation and looking at onsite water reuse looking at the technology and strategies we have available to us today. >> the very first recycling plant in the state of california for landscape irrigation was built in san francisco. we've just developed a new recycled water plant in the ocean side wastewater facility for irrigation purposes in golden gate park, lincoln park and the panhandle. >> a century ago, san francisco built a dam to create bunched znswer of fresh water to ensure the future and ensure the taps will flow for future
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generations, it will take as much vision when it reflects a fundamental change about how we think about water. >> i think we recognize there's going to be change in the future. so we're going to have to have the flexibility and the creativity to deal with that future as it's presented to us, it's a matter of how to see it and say, okay, let's make wise use of everything we have. >> this o'shaughnessy centennial moment is made possib(music). >> i started the o was with a financing and had a business partner all ended up wanting to start the business and retire and i did was very important to me so i bought them oust and two weeks later the pandemic h-4 one of the moments i thought to myself we have to have the worse
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business in a lifetime or the best. >> we created the oasis out of a need basically so other people bars and turning them into a space and when the last place we were performing wasn't used turned those buildings into condos so we decided to have a space. >> what the pandemic did for us is made us on of that we felt we had to do this immediately and created this. >> (unintelligible).
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>> where we would offer food delivery services with a curbside professionalism live music to bring spectacular to lives we are going through and as well as employ on the caterers and the performers and drivers very for that i think also for everyone to do something. we had ordinary on the roof and life performances and with a restaurant to support the system where we are and even with that had terribly initiative and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt had to pay our rent we decided to have an old-fashioned one we created club hours where you can watch to online and or be on the
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phone and raised over one quarter of a million dollar that of incredible and something that northbound thought we could do. >> we got ourselves back and made me realize how for that people will show up if i was blown away but also had the courage but the commitment now i can't let anyone down i have to make the space serviceable so while this is a full process business it became much more about a space that was used by the community. and it became less about starting up a business and more about the heart of what we're doing. this building used to be a- and one
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of the first one we started working on had we came out what a mural to wrap the building and took a while but able to raise the money and pay 5 artists to make a design around many this to represent what is happening on the side and also important this is who we are this is us putting it out there because satisfies other people we don't realize how much we affect the community around there when he i want to put that out there and show up and show ourselves outside of those walls more fabulous. and inspires other people to be more fabulous and everyone want to be more fabulous and less hatred and hostility and that is how we change the
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the dialogue. in many ways, this exhibition is contemporary. all of this artwork is from the 9th century and spans all the way to the 21st century. the exhibition is organized into seven different groupings or themes such as activities, symbolism, transformation and others. it's not by culture or time period, but different affinities between the artwork. activities, for example, looks at the role of gender and how certain activities are placed as feminine or masculine. we have a print by uharo that looks at different activities that derisionly performed by men. it's looking at the theme of music. we have three women playing traditional japanese instruments that would otherwise be played
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by men at that time. we have pairings so that is looking within the context of gender in relationships. also with how people are questioning the whole idea of pairing in the first place. we have three from three different cultures, tibet, china and japan. this is sell vanity stot relevar has been fluid in different time periods in cultures. sometimes being female in china but often male and evoking features associated with gender binaries and sometimes in between. it's a lovely way of tying all the themes together in this collection. gender and sexuality, speaking from my culture specifically, is
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something at that hasn't been recently widely discussed. this exhibition shows that it's gender and sexuality are actually have been considered and complicated by dialogue through the work of artists and thinking specifically, a sculpture we have of the hindu deities because it's half pee male and half male. it turns into a different theme in a way and is a beautiful representation of how gender hasn't been seen as one thing or a binary. we see that it isn't a modest concept. in a way, i feel we have a lot of historical references and touch points throughout all the ages and in asian cultures. i believe san francisco has close to 40% asian.
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it's a huge representation here in the bay area. it's important that we awk abouk about this and open up the discussion around gender. what we've learned from organizing this exhibition at the museum is that gender has been something that has come up in all of these cultures through all the time periods as something that is important and relevant. especially here in the san francisco bay area we feel that it's relevant to the conversations that people are having today. we hope that people can carry that outside of the museum into their daily lives.
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>> i went through a lot of struggles in my life, and i am blessed to be part of this. i am familiar with what people are going through to relate and empathy and compassion to their struggle so they can see i came out of the struggle, it gives them hope to come up and do something positive. ♪ ♪ i am a community ambassador.
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we work a lot with homeless, visitors, a lot of people in the area. >> what i like doing is posting up at hotspots to let people see visibility. they ask you questions, ask you directions, they might have a question about what services are available. checking in, you guys. >> wellness check. we walk by to see any individual, you know may be sitting on the sidewalk, we make sure they are okay, alive. you never know. somebody might walk by and they are laying there for hours. you never know if they are alive.
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we let them know we are in the area and we are here to promote safety, and if they have somebody that is, you know, hanging around that they don't want to call the police on, they don't have to call the police. they can call us. we can direct them to the services they might need. >> we do the three one one to keep the city neighborhoods clean. there are people dumping, waste on the ground and needles on the ground. it is unsafe for children and adults to commute through the streets. when we see them we take a picture dispatch to 311. they give us a tracking number and they come later on to pick it up. we take pride. when we come back later in the day and we see the loose trash or debris is picked up it makes you feel good about what you are doing. >> it makes you feel did about
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escorting kids and having them feel safe walking to the play area and back. the stuff we do as ambassadors makes us feel proud to help keep the city clean, helping the residents. >> you can see the community ambassadors. i used to be on the streets. i didn't think i could become a community ambassador. it was too far out there for me to grab, you know. doing this job makes me feel good. because i came from where a lot of them are, homeless and on the street, i feel like i can give them hope because i was once there. i am not afraid to tell them i used to be here. i used to be like this, you know. i have compassion for people that are on the streets like the
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homeless and people that are caught up with their addiction because now, i feel like i can give them hope. it reminds you every day of where i used to be and where i am at now. [music] welcome to our video on the improper use of city positions. people deserve the government this works for them. this monies the decisions are made with the public's interest in mind. not for personal gain. to make sure city resources, titles and. am serve the public and are in the use for personal gains. restriction its had officers and employees can do with our city title and public resources. like official letterhead and business cards. or while on duty. to start, we cannot use our city
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title for private gainor advantage and cannot use it in ways this lead others to believe we are representing the stele when we are not. for example, dropping our city title to get faster service or better treatment. not allowed. using city equipment for personal business, also a no-no. >> public resources can't be used for nonwork activities. for example, we can't use agency letterhead for a reference letter. we cannot use city resources for nonwork purposes the minimal use of city resources for person everpersonal purposes check with a childcare provider or calling the doctor is okay. >> also, a city official we need to be mindful when engaging in political activities. for example, we cannot enengage in political activities on duty,
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using city resources or equipment; in uniform or on city premesis. a park, street or other public place is excluded. we cannot sit in our office and microphone calls urging donations to political campaignseen if using your phone or on a break. we cannot ask other city officers or employees for donations on our time or off sight. >> what can you do if you want to be politically active? unless your department prohibits you miengage in volunteer political in personal capacity and on personal time. we can attend public meeting in our private capacity and personal time and identify ourselves. but clarifying we are speaking as individuals and not as
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representatives of the city or any city department. >> we cannot use our position to help family members or partners get a job with the city. to keep the hiring process fair for all those in government are not allowed influence the hiring or. am decision involving a family member or romantic partner and not sell, publish or use nonpublic materials this were prepared on city time or using city resources. that's a quick summary but it is up to you to know the law. visit the website to learn more, for questions contact the ethic's commission at 415-252-3100 or ethics.
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commission @sfgov.org. thank you for watching and for doing your part to serve with effectiveness, transparency and integrity. >> in case there is is a you're watching san francisco rising with chris manners. special guest is david chu. hi i'm chris manners and you're watching san francisco rising the show that's about restarting rebuilding and re imagining our city. i guess today is david chiu, the city attorney for the city and county of san francisco , and he's here today to talk to us about the opioid crisis, reproductive rights and the non citizen voting program. mr chu, welcome to the show. thanks for having me on happy to talk about whatever you want me to talk about, so can we start by explaining the difference
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between the city attorney's office and the district attorney's office? i think it could be slightly confused. that is a very common fusion with members of the public so um, if you get arrested in san francisco by the san francisco police department, all criminal matters are dealt with by the san francisco district attorney . we handle all civil matters on behalf of the city and county of san francisco. what that means is a number of things. we provide advice and counsel to all actors within city government from our mayor. every member of the board of supervisors to the 100 plus departments, commissions boards that represent the city and county of san francisco. we also defend the city against thousands of lawsuits. so if you slip and fall in front of city hall if there's a bus accident if there is an incident involving the san francisco police department, we defend those matters. we also bring lawsuits on behalf of the city and county of san francisco, where most famous for litigating
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and obtaining the constitutional right to marry for lgbtq couples have sued gun manufacturers, payday lenders, oil companies, you name it, who are undercutting the rights of san franciscans and the city and county of san francisco. so now moving on to the opioid crisis. i understand you've had some success in court, um, dealing with manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies. could you elaborate a little bit on that for us, so the opioid industry and by that i refer to the legal industry that prescribes pain pills. um over years. uh, deceived americans and resulted in literally thousands upon thousands of deaths and tragedies that we see on our streets every day when it comes to the addictions that folks are experiencing. many of the addictions really stemmed from what happened over a decade plus period where the prescription
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pain industry marketed prescription pills in ways that were false. we were one of thousands of jurisdictions around america that brought a lawsuit against the opioid industry. but we've had a particular set of successes that others have not. ah we initially brought a lawsuit a few years ago against every part of the opioid supply chain, and that included manufacturers, distributors and retailers, including pharmacies over the course of four plus years. a number of these corporate defendants settled with us. we've as of this moment brought in over $120 million of cash and services. to the city to help address the root causes of what we're talking about. but a few months ago, we had a really historic verdict against the pharmacy, walgreens and their role walgreens was responsible for literally over 100 million pills, flooding the streets of san francisco over a period of
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years where they flouted federal law that require them to track where they're pills were going to. they had a what? what we refer to as a phil phil phil. pharmacy culture where folks would bring in their prescriptions, and the pharmacist would just fill them without checking why someone was coming in multiple times without checking why certain doctors were seen a 100 fold increase in the number of opioid prescriptions that they were prescribing. so we had a historic judgment against walgreens recently, but it's been a very intense lawsuit. and we know that will never bring back the lives that we have lost to opioid addictions. but it's critical for us that we get the resources that we need. maybe one other thing i'll mention because it's often confusion. a large percentage of folks who are addicted to street level drugs say heroin or fentanyl started their addictions. with painkillers, opioid medications
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that were prescribed through doctors provided through pharmacies and so literally the suffering that we're seeing on our streets was caused by the opioid industry over many, many years and has created the significant crisis that we are dealing with right now. right right now moving on. i understand after the recent supreme court ruling, striking down robust as wade that you've put together an organization that's designed to help mm. provide free services to people who are both. seeking abortions and providing them can you tell us about the organization? sure so, um, before the dobbs decision came down, but after we learned about the leak from the supreme court about the draft that suggested the decision would be as bad as it has turned out to be, um, i reached out to leadership from the bar association of san francisco because we knew that if that decision came down there would be tens of thousands of patients around the country as well as providers whose legal situation would be in jeopardy. women
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doctors, nurses who could be subjected to lawsuits who could be arrested who could be prosecuted, particularly in red states? 26 states where rights are being rolled back or in the process or have already been rolled back because of the dobbs decision. so we put out a call to lawyers all over the bay and frankly, all over the country, and as of this moment there have been over 70 law firms that have answered our call to be part of the legal alliance for reproductive rights who have committed to reviewing cases and providing pro bono assistance to patients and providers who are at legal risk. we also are looking at potential cases that these lawyers can bring against various states. in these areas that are looking to deprive women and patients and providers of their of their rights. um it is a very dark time in america, and i'm really proud that that barrier attorneys, the legal community care have stepped up
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to answer the call. it's very important that's great. so now the non citizen voting program that was passed by voters just for school boards has faced them court challenges recently, but it was in place for the most recent election that we've had. how do you see that situation panning out? in fact, it's been in place for now. five school board elections. um so a little bit of background in our san francisco schools over one out of three kids. has a parent who is a non citizen who doesn't have a say in the election of the policy makers that dictate the future of our san francisco public schools, and so over a number of years, there has been a movement to allow immigrant parents to vote in school board elections. few things i'll mention about that is our country has a very long history when it comes to allowing immigrants to vote. from 17 76 for 100 and 50 years until after world war. one immigrants were allowed to vote in most states
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in our country on the theory that we want to assimilate immigrants in american democratic values and institutions, and it wasn't until an anti immigrant backlash in world war one that that sort of ended. but in recent years, um cities across america have allowed this to happen. in fact, at this moment, believe there are over a dozen cities that have voted to allow non citizens to vote in a number of context. now, this is particularly important in our schools just given how challenge our schools are, and given that we know that when we engage more parents in her school system, regardless of their citizenship it helps to lift up our schools for all parents. and so in 2016 the voters of san francisco past about measure that allowed this to happen. unfortunately earlier this year, there were conservative organizations that came to san francisco to bring a lawsuit to try to overturn this , and i should also mention it is obviously the perspective of our office and our city that
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this is constitutional. nothing in the constitution prohibits non citizens from voting. and in fact, there's an explicit provision in the constitution that allows chartered cities like san francisco when it comes to school board elections to be able to dictate the time and manner of those elections. and so, uh, we are involved in litigation on this issue. there was an initial ruling that was not good for us that essentially said at the trial court level. we shouldn't allow this. um we appealed it up to the appellate level. the appellate court made an initial decision to allow this past november election to proceed as it has for the last previous four elections. we're going to be in front of that court soon. stay tuned. we'll see what happens. it was good to hear that the city was able to reach a settlement with the center for medicare and medicaid services are meant laguna honda could still operate. how did you manage to reach that agreement? it was not an easy conversation . just a little bit of
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background. so laguna honda has been an incredibly important institution in san francisco for 150 years, taking care of our most vulnerable patients are frail, very elderly patients, many of whom are at end of life. and a few years ago, there were some issues in that hospital. some violations of rules that we very much want to make sure don't get violated. there were folks that weren't using proper ppe, who are bringing cigarette lighters into the facility, who might have brought some contraband into the facilities. we have zero tolerance for that and have made that very clear. we self reported some of these violations to the federal authorities. and unfortunately from our perspective, they took the very disproportionate step of ordering the closure. the permanent closure of lugano, honda. problematic on a number of reasons. first and foremost, there are just no skilled nursing facility beds not just in california but around the country. after their order came down. we literally were putting 1000 calls a day to skilled
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nursing facilities around california and around the country and could find nowhere to move the 700 patients that we had had in the gonna honda but just as disturbingly as we were forced to start moving some of these patients, a number of them died. there's a concept in medicine known as transfer trauma. when you move someone who is that frail and unfortunately, folks folks died and we were at a point where we were five weeks away from the deadline for the federal government. that they had provided to us to close the facility. so uh and we have been trying for months to get the federal government to reconsider their action, so i was compelled to bring a lawsuit on behalf of the city and county of san francisco and very pleased and appreciate that we were able to come to a settlement whereby transfers will be delayed at least until next year. we're going to have at least a year of funding. to keep the facility open, and hopefully we can get
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back up on our feet and ensure that no future violations occur because this is an institution that has to stay open for the good of these patients. quite right, quite right. so finally, congratulations on winning an important public power service dispute with pg and e. um why is it important that the city's rights as a local power provider maintained well, so san francisco has been a local power provider for decades. we are fortunate to have access through our hedge hetchy hydroelectric system to provide electricity to a number of providers, particularly public recipients of that. and unfortunately, pg any has used its monopoly when it comes to private electricity to try to stop that, and to block that, and from our perspective, they violated federal law in adding literally tens of millions of dollars of expenses to san francisco and institutions that we're trying to ensure um, public power infrastructure. put years of
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delays on our ability to do this, and so we had to bring a number of appeals in the federal commission. ah we were successful in those appeals, and there was a decision recently that basically held the pg and e could not use its monopoly to unfairly delay or add tens of millions of dollars of cost. to the city and county of san francisco, as we are trying to move forward with our vision of public power. clearly pgd has not been able to serve not just san francisco but northern california. well we all know that with the wildfires with its bankruptcies, with all the issues that they've had, we think there is a different model to move forward on and we are grateful to the court. and providing a ruling that allows us to move forward. well thank you so much for coming on the show. i really appreciate the time you've given us here today. i appreciate and thanks for your thanks for your questions. thank you. well that's it. for this episode, we'll be back with another one shortly for sf gov t v. i'm chris manners. thanks for watching. yeah.2023.)
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>> tuesday, september 19, 2023. secretary please call the roll, please. >> i'll call the roll and read the raymond. >> president bernal present. >> commissioner giraudo present. >> commissioner green present. >> commissioner chow present and commissioner chow the and commissioner chow the ramaytush unceded ancestral homeland of the ramaytush (rah-my-toosh) ohlone (o-lon-ee) who are the original inhabitants of the san francisco peninsula. irresponsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory.
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