welcome to the small business commission meeting on december 11th, 2023. the meeting is being called to order at 4:31 p.m. this meeting is being held in person in city hall, room 408 and broadcast live on govtv. the small business commission thinks media services and govtv for televising the meeting, which can be viewed on govtv two or live streamed at sfa tv.org. we welcome the public's participation during public comment periods. there will be an opportunity for general public comment at the end of the meeting and there will be an opportunity to comment on each discussion or action item on the agenda. please note that, starting with today's meeting and moving forward, the commission is discontinue doing remote public comment. there will be special accommodation for individuals who cannot attend in person due to disability. public comment during the meeting is limited to three minutes per speaker. an alarm will sound once time has

finished. speakers are requested but not required to state their names. sf govtv. please show the office of small business slide. to today. we will begin with a reminder that the small business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the economic vitality of small businesses in san francisco. before item one is called, i'd like to start by thanking media services and sf govtv for helping to run the meeting. i'd also like to acknowledge our new commissioner for ron benitez. well i'm ron. hi. we're really excited to have you here and i hope you enjoy your first meeting. i will. so go secretary , please call item number one. item one, roll call. commissioner benitez. president commissioner dickerson. present

commissioner herbert. president huey here. commissioner ortiz. cartagena here. and vice president ziziunas. present. present didn't you have a quorum? thank you so much for the san francisco small business commission, an office of small business staff acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the ramaytush ohlone , who are the original inhabitants of the san francisco peninsula, as the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the ramaytush ohlone have never ceded lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. as guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the ramaytush ohlone community and

by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. please call item to item to approval of legacy business registry applications and resolutions. this is a discussion and action item the commission will discuss and possibly take action to approve legacy business registry applications. presenting today, we have richard carillo, legacy business program manager with the office of small business. welcome, rick. it's on. good afternoon. president huie vice president zuma's commissioners, city staff, members of the public. welcome. commissioner benitez and richard carrillo, legacy business program manager, the legacy business program is a program in the office of small business, which is a office of the small business commission oversees. we'd like to acknowledge michelle reynolds, my colleague in the office of small business, who provides beneficial assistance to the legacy business program. govtv.

i have a powerpoint presentation . before you today. are 12 applications for your consideration for the legacy business registry. each application includes a staff report, a draft resolution. the application itself and documents from the planning department. the applications were submitted to planning in three groups. group one consisted of two applications and was submitted on september 20th and heard by the historic preservation commission on october 18th. group two, consisting of four applications, was submitted to planning on october 18th and heard by the historic preservation commission on november 15th. group three, consisting of six applications, was submitted to planning on november 8th and heard by the historic preservation commission on december sixth. so as you can

see, we normally don't have 12 applications in one meeting. this is. three

it seems like our public mics are not working. so i was told to pause the meeting and call media services. okay okay. hang on one minute, please. apologies his

can on. oh, great. hey it works. okay again, richard carillo with the legacy business program. we are up to item two. a um regarding businesses that that are applying for the legacy business registry. item two. a is earwax productions. the business founded in 1983 and currently located in north beach, does sound design and audio production creating engaged audio experiences across all media earwax productions, designs, sound for film, television, the internet and radio, as well as audio for tours installed actions, toys and electronics as their projects range from major hollywood features to mobile apps and animation to interactive museum installations . as they have worked with local playwrights, filmmakers, artists

and inventors. earwax productions helped create some of the first audio tours as well as some of the first interactive media products, including internet sound design and some of the first digital audio post for film.

text one last time. but i will read that the core feature tradition the business must maintain to remain on the legacy business registry is sound design and audio production as if govtv. if you could go to the powerpoint. thank you. item two b is thai house inc. the business is a family run restaurant located in the castro serving authentic thai cuisine. thai house inc. also known as thai house express restaurant, offers dishes such as crispy money bags, sweet and tangy pad thai and rich coconut curries.

their food is inspired by tradition. thai flavors using fresh and traditional thai ingredients. the menu at thai house is always changing and evolving as they strive to bring innovative dishes to the table. so no two visits will be the same. their dishes will tantalize your taste buds while giving you a unique culinary experience that you won't forget . the core featured tradition the business must maintain is restaurant, featuring thai cuisine. item two c is elixir. the business is a bar in the mission, providing the local community with beverages, community and hospitality in a beautiful victorian atmosphere of mahogany and redwood elixir offers classic whiskey cocktails , traditional cocktails, beer and wine trivia, happy hour, industry night ticketed cocktail classes, tasting events, private group events, a whiskey geeks membership group and a cocktail club. the bar has been doing

business as elixir since 1990. house over. the location itself is the second oldest. continually operating saloon location in san francisco. there has been nothing but a saloon on the north west corner of 16th and guerrero streets since 1858 and a saloon at this location may go back as much as another ten years before that. in 1906, the great earthquake and fire burned it to the ground, but it was rebuilt and opened in 1907. during prohibition. it survived as a soft drink parlor. the core featured tradition, the business must maintain is bar. item 2d is friends of scrap inc. the business is a non profit organization in the bay view neighborhood that was formed in 1976 and later established with the california secretary of state in 1978, known as scrap. their mission is to inspire creativity and environmental stewardship by promoting the

creative reuse of materials that have traditionally been discarded as waste. they operate the nation's oldest creative reuse center, diverting 200 tons of soft salvage materials from landfills each year while providing free and low cost classroom and art supplies to teachers, students, families and artists in marginalized communities across the bay area. scrap is a bay area resource for makers of all ages and everyone who values access to creative experiences. scrap also has a popular arts education program. the core feature tradition. the business must maintain its art supplies and craft store. item two e is heroes club inc. the business is a shop in the richmond neighborhood founded in 1989 that specializes in asian nostalgic science fiction and anime fine art collectibles, including action figures, toys, model kits and more. many pieces

date from the 1960s to the 1990s and include out-of-print vintage model kits. heroes club was founded by robin kwok, who graduated from the prestigious academy of art university of san francisco. he has been custom building sculptor ing and painting model kits for several decades, each high quality limited edition fine art collectible requires an incredible amount of time and designing, modeling, painting and casting all pieces are unique and handcrafted heroes. hero club was robin williams favorite store and other famous clients include nicolas cage, guillermo del toro and michael jackson, the core featured tradition the business must maintain is collectible store. item two f is il palio. the business is an italian restaurant with argentinian influence that was founded in north beach in 1984. palio means

the chicken coop in italian and they do their best to live up to this name by serving some of the best braised marinated and grilled chicken in the bay area. they specialize in grilled chicken cooked moist inside with the skin crispy. they also feature ribeye steaks, lamb and pork chops, rabbits, sausages and a number of other culinary delights. il palio also serves freshly prepared salads and soups daily. the business is a regular dining spot for locals and tourists alike and is well known for its generous portions, reasonable prices and family friendly atmosphere. the core featured tradition the business must maintain is restaurant, featuring italian inspired cuisine. item two g is city art gallery 2.0. the business is an artist owned and operated gallery that supports a community of over 100 local bay

area artists. city art gallery 2.0 known as city art cooperative gallery is structured so that artists volunteer a little time and money. so all of them can have a professional exhibition space with no paid staff. their art is affordable to local working people and they return a minimum of 71% of sales back to their artists on the first friday of every month from 7 to 10 p.m. they have a monthly opening reception where you can enjoy some wine, view the art and meet their artists. although the business is not yet 30 years old, it has contributed to the history and identity of the mission and san francisco and if not included in the registry would face a significant risk of displacement. the core featured tradition in the business must maintain its art gallery. item two is firefly restaurant. the business is a restaurant established in 1993. in the noe valley neighborhood that serves

new californian cuisine as an early example of the farm to table movement in restaurant dining. firefly restaurant prepares vegetarian, vegan and gluten free offerings offered ings that are seasonal depending on the availability of local produce. it is also a favorite among the bay area jewish community for its authentic jewish cuisine offered during jewish holidays. happy hanukkah. one firefly nourishes its community by cooking seasonal homestyle goodness with sustainability, a body and planet in mind. they serve food that assesses the that part of our deepest soul where genuine expression can flow forth if they give their food and service their best selves as honest and vulnerable as they can. muster the food at firefly is constantly evolving. an entire, entirely personal. the court featured tradition the business must maintain its restaurant.

item two i is lamp lighters, music theater. the business is the oldest theater company in san francisco, founded in 1952, lamplighters music theater is the premier producer of the art of gilbert and sullivan and other compositions of comparable wit, eloquence and musicality. they are one of the world's preeminent gilbert and sullivan companies, having produced the entire gilbert and sullivan canon, as well as other light opera and music musical theater classics. in addition, lamplighters music theater has an arts education program focusing on musical theater and opera. lamplighters is passionate about their craft, and they maintain a stimulate atmosphere of growth and support for their performers. production teams and administrative staff. the core featured tradition the business must maintain is theater. item two j is a rally

or rally. the business is an authentic mexican restaurant and taqueria. founded in 1989, in the financial district rally, o'reilly serves traditional mexican cuisine featuring award winning salsa and famous margaritas. their salsa won first place in the 1996 california state fair regional salsa competition. it has no additives or preservatives and is made fresh daily. raleigh is a common interjection in mexican spanish slang, expressing approval or encouragement. it like. all right, so the restaurant's name o'reilly rally means a right or right as indicated on the restaurant's logo. o'reilly rally serves office workers, residents and tourists alike, and also does catering. they are active in the embarcadero community and also support other small bay area businesses. the core featured tradition the business must maintain is restaurant, featuring mexican cuisine. item

two is polly, an ice cream? the business is an ice cream parlor founded in the sunset neighborhood in 1955. polly, an ice cream, serves handmade premium ice cream and a warm, welcoming shop as well as milkshakes, ice cream, cakes, cookies and chocolate. they are known for their wide variety of unique flavors, including durian , red bean, black sesame, oolong tea, kanji milk, lychee and others. they also feature unique adaptations of international international desserts as ice cream flavors such as brigadeiro, a brazilian dessert and anthony bourdain visited the shop in 2001 and enjoyed several of their, quote unquote, kooky ice cream flavors. polly an ice cream is also known for their big flavor wheel. if you can't decide which flavor you want, a spin of the wheel will decide for you. the core featured tradition the business must maintain is ice cream store item

two is san francisco women artists. the business is a non profit arts organization that supports and empowers and expand representation of women in the arts and encourages a diversity of inspiring artists at all stages of their careers. san francisco women artists was established in 1925, though its origin is from an organization known as the sketch club, which dates back to 1887. the organization maintains a gallery in the inner sunset that features 600 artworks annually annually where contemporary art, handcrafted jewelry, sculpture and ceramics are exhibited and sold. the gallery also hosts community art organizations and features a youth wall. the community served by san francisco women artists, women artists in the bay area is a diverse blend of talents and backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities. is the core

featured tradition. the business must maintain its promotion of women artists of all of the businesses met the three criteria required for listing on the legacy business registry and all have received a positive recommendation from the historic preservation commission. legacy business program staff recommends adding the businesses to the registry and has drafted a resolution for each business. for your consideration, a motion in support of the businesses should be framed as a motion in favor of the resolutions. thank you. this concludes my presentation. i'm happy to answer any questions. there are business representatives present who may wish to speak on behalf of the applications during public comment. great thank you so much, rick. that was that was a very thorough presentation that you did that you started several times. so i appreciate everyone's patience. commissioners any questions so far? i'm seeing no questions yet. let's open it up for public

comment. so if commenters want to line up to my left, your right and then come up to the mic, that would be great. good afternoon, commissioners and director tang adam tongs with supervisor middleman's office is speaking in strong support of firefly thai house express and elixir. thank you so much. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is merritt richmond. i am the president of the board of directors of scrap. we're really appreciate the honor of being nominated for this and we just wanted you to know he did such a good job explaining scrap, but just wanted to hit a few highlights. scrap was founded in 1976 by ruth asawa and jefferson award winner anne marie thielen and they were passionate about providing arts education for san francisco youth and putting artists to work in our city. for almost 50 years, scrap has provided affordable art

materials to san franciscans, and we have curbed the environmental impact of wasting those very valuable materials. this mission is still so relevant today as scrap continues to strengthen the cultural fabric of san francisco this year, we will welcome over 30,000 unique visits to our depot in the bay view. we will divert over 200 tons of donations from landfills, and those donations come from over 100 zip codes in the bay area. we will deliver after school arts education to over 1000 students in san francisco's southeast neighborhoods at scrap . we're so proud to help catalyze creative thinking and the collaborative power of the arts and to support the vibrancy of our city. thank you so much. commissioner president, you and commissioners. i'm mary lou larkin, vice president of the san francisco women artists organization. thank you for the opportunity to speak to you

today in support of our application for the legacy business registry. as rick told you, the organization has deep roots that go back to 1887, when women were not allowed to join the arts organizations in san francisco. so they formed their own group called the sketch club , which brought together women in san francisco to curate their art, to support each other, to display their art and to counter the male anti women culture in the art community. the organization went on for many years, and until 1906, when the earthquake destroyed its headquarters, it then merged with another organization and became a coeducational a coeducational coed organized formation that that lasted for a while. and then the women branched off again in 1925 to form the society of san

francisco women artists, which was the basis for the organization that i'm representing today. we have many distinguished members from the organization. ruth asawa was a member, imogene cunningham, emmy lou packard, and we were the first organization to display artwork by frida kahlo in the entire country. so we were the first people to present her work . the organization subsequent has been recognized by the california state senate. senator hillary clinton, when she was the first lady, the to the mayor's office, san francisco mayor's office, the san francisco attorney's office. we started as a women's organization. but today we welcome all sexes, genders, ethnic cities, races to our organization. an also when the organization started out, the purpose of the organization was to support our members art, to

promote their art, to display their art and that is one of our legacies that continues on today. but the other thing that's really important to us, because we started out as an organization that had a lot of prejudice against us, that today one of our main goals is to support diversity, inclusiveness and. what's the other one? i can't think of a diversity, inclusiveness and equality in the arts. so thank you very much . hi there. my name is ari singer and i am here today in my role as vice president of the board of trustees of lamplighters music theater. our company is more than who we were when we started with just two pianos and a group of talented friends. 71 years ago, we are

the 140 artists and craftspeople we employed last year and the thousands of san franciscans who we have entertained and inspired for generations. we are the formal recognition we received in 2021 from then-supervisor matt haney. we are the local collaborators who raise money for mission housing. on giving tuesday. we are the 59 years of original works, including this year's newly commissioned one act operetta by george, which celebrated the chevalier saint george. we are of the city and for the city we hope you will come to see our next show, ruddygore, which is a new take on a classic gilbert and sullivan operetta, which will combine victorian sensibilities with folklorico dancing with english and spanish language subtitles and day. of the dead style ghostly ancestor letters. we hope that when you do come to see our show, lamplighters will have the recognition granted by

you today as a san francisco show legacy business. thank you. hello everyone. i am very happy to be here talking to you. basic basically to thank for the nomination of polly and ice cream to be a legacy business in san francisco. this is a very important moment for our business. and it is not just a business. it is a place that we have built together also with the community to share experiences and to create experiences there. and it is very pleasant to see when we have several generations going together as a family to our store and then they start like to, to remember when they were going to the school, to lowell, to any other school nearby. and and they start asking, oh, do

you remember this person or the other one or, or when they also say, hey, this was my first job. and, and they tell their kids and their kids they are excited and so the grandpa was here. so it's very nice. so i'm very happy and i'm very thankful for to the small business administrator person because i didn't even know about the program. and when actually they went to the store and then i remember that i was told, hey, you should be part of the of the legacy program. and then i was like, i didn't know that that existed. and i was very excited. and then thank you for that. thank you very much. and also to rick and all the team in the in the legacy business program, because it is not something that i had to figure out how to do. i really had very good help to get it done, to gather the information, to put it together.

and so that actually shows what the city is actually doing for preserving the businesses, the legacy businesses in the city and encouraging the other, like the businesses that are that are getting started also to be later part of the legacy business program. so thank you very much for all that you're doing and thank you for the nomination and thank also to the community because as the community is the one that has built polly an ice cream. thank you. bye. still working. good afternoon, commissioners, and thank you for this opportunity. my name is jim mckee and i'm with earwax production and delighted to be part of this process. real quick, earwax began actually on florida street in the mission 40 years ago. since then, we've we've occupied a space at hyde

street studios over here in the tenderloin battery street down in jackson square and natoma street. and so at and south of market and for the past 20 years at the sentinel building in north beach, i want to thank rick for doing such a great job with introducing everybody here. he did an amazing job and wanted his attention to detail. is unbelievable. he was telling me things i didn't know about my own company. so that was the real genesis of the company actually began in when it was working with marcos kounalakis. he came to studio that i was operating for antenna theater down on florida street, and he was doing a program for the world affairs council called spotlight on world affairs. and after a few sessions, he said, you know, you should start your own business. and we had a consortium of musicians, electronic recorder, people from

mills college, graduate students that decided to put together association. so we formally went to city hall and said registered as a as an association. and to that end, i want to give special thanks to chris hardman, who was the director of antenna theater, then ran the recording studio on florida street soon three theater magic theater, one act, eureka act, a bunch of other theaters that helped us as a fledgling business to create sound design and original music composition in the 80s. it was a vibrant scene in theaters since then, lots have happened, you know, with computers and internet and video streaming, and now we're doing virtual reality. and i'm really happy to say that the opportunities, the creative opportunities just keep coming and they keep getting better. and the city is sort of open arms to welcome welcoming that special acknowledgments to the original members of the

group jean-francois danny, bob davis, andy newell, barney jones, my mentor, eric bauersfeld, aka admiral ackbar, david davia nelson, nikki silva of the kitchen sisters. francis coppola. for all of their encouragement over these many years, i want to thank you for your time. um, good afternoon. thank you. good evening, commissioners. my name is angelina. you staff with supervisor connie chan's office here today to speak in support of clemency, legacy hopeful legacy business heroes club. it's truly been a business that has served kids, kids at heart began. enthusiasts and even the serious, most serious of collectors, some of whom have celebrity status in the city but truly is a neighborhood and neighborhood serving spot. it's clear for anyone who visits the store that it serves also as a museum of sorts, where you walk

in, you literally see pieces that are coming to life and really highlight the artistry and the passion and dedication. and frankly, point of pride that the founder, mr. robin kwok, illustrates in his three decades plus work dedicated to shop and his models in the store are truly works of art and so i think when we're looking at the legacy business program and ways of kind of highlighting what's unique in san francisco, not only is it one of the few collectors shops remaining in the city, but it's one of the few and the only actually that highlight asian and sci fi and really promote that niche and space for young asian kids even to kind of have an outlet and have a space that they can call their own and identify with and we also love that it's also a space that highlights that folks are able to customize. if you walk in, you can tailor pieces. and frankly, if you can imagine it, i think he can make it. and so i think there's a lot of exciting potential, not just in preserving the pieces that have

been made and are on display, but really, frankly, what hopeful future generations of kids in san franciscans are able to access when they go to the store in the future. so thank you for your consideration on of heroes club and frankly, the many other sweet and savory and artsy shops on the agenda today. so thank you. good afternoon. my name is shay. i'm the general manager at elixir saloon. on behalf of the owner, myself and our elixir team, we would like to express how honored we are to be here today. i've been with elixir for over 15 years. that's nearly a third of my life. one of the reasons that i've made that investment is the history of the bar has since 1858, our location has been has been a saloon. so that's 165 years of providing drinks. but more importantly, a place to gather, spend time with friends and

possibly make new ones. i met my wife at elixir. i was born and raised in san francisco and i take great pride in keeping the doors of our establishment that has deep san francisco history open, especially in such a difficult time for small businesses. this is why your recognition means so much to all of us. on behalf of the elixir family, thank you. hello my name is robin bordeaux and i'm the owner and manager of city art gallery. i'd like to thank the commission for hearing our application today as many of you know, it's notoriously different, difficult for artists without a proven financial track record to get a gallery show at established galleries as we are one of the few galleries in san francisco that support emerging artists in order to return as much as possible to the artists. we return at minimum of 71. even

though i'm the owner, i take no salary and run the gallery as a service to the greater art community. we. had 112 local artists have at least one exhibition in 2023, and 11 of our artists were accepted to the young open exhibition, which is on right now. we supply a sense of community both to our artists and to the local art buyers because we make art affordable to working people. i just want to thank you all for hearing our application and i urge you to vote yes. thank you. hi sorry. good good evening, commissioners. thank you for nominating thai house inc. my name is paul palmieri yogurt. i am the son of krishna. and sir upon mary yogurt, and they

started their restaurant in 1985, truly as thai immigrants coming into san francisco in 1982 and i was born in 85, so i was born into the business and we are still here. and still alive. and it's been such a crazy ride for us because san francisco's is an ever changing city and i mean, all we can do is ride the wave right? and it's been the toughest. i think it's been the toughest time for small businesses in the last couple of months. and thank you for thank you for letting us become part of this great community. and i hope that we can continue serving, are serving thai food and serving the community or as long as we can. so thank you very much. i appreciate it. any

other any other public commenters, any anybody on the line? oh, no, we have no more line. okay. it's just us. it's just all of us. well all seeing no public no further public comment. public comment is closed. so commissioners, any comments, any questions. commissioner dickerson. now, you know, i don't need a mic. they're all right. there we go. i. i first, i just want to say thank you. thank you to each and

every one of you who have really paved the way, way as business owners and have created these communities throughout the city that makes this city the great city that it is. so i just want to say thank you so much. i love when we have generations standing up, speaking before you even born. you advocating for these businesses that have continued to, you know, carry the legacy of the heart of the one or ones who who founded it. and i think that in itself is the true legacy that the vision can continue to thrive, especially in 2023, like the young man just said, probably the hardest season that we've experienced as small businesses has been in this year. i i am still very hopeful, though i, i am looking at all of these

businesses. one thing i can say is you made it. you survived it. and i believe we have everything that we need inside of us to continue to thrive. and i just want to, if i can just say, just encourage you, just keep on keeping on, because i know right now things, you know, there's a saying that we used to say, you know, sorrow may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. and so i just want to say thank you for not stopping and creating this community. and the last thing i want to say is i'm so looking forward to every time this is my favorite part of being a commissioner on these in these meetings is to be able to hear about these businesses. and i do when i when i see these on here, every opportunity i get to come and visit you. if i haven't visited you before, look out here i come and i always bring a crew with me. so just know we are coming. so again, thank you

for all that you do. you're an inspiration to many of us and just continue to be the light in the city. thank you. well any other commissioners? okay thank you. thank i'll just say thank you, everyone, for taking time out of your workday. family time and you know, everything you provide to the city. um behind the counter or wherever you stand at your small business. and we appreciate you coming down here and reminding us why why we're why we're here. so thanks for being here. and we look forward to voting on you. yes. thank you so much for sharing all of your stories. and thank you so much, rick, for all of the work rick and michelle,

you know, it's such a fascinating thing thing. every time we have these meetings and i get to hear about the history of your businesses, it's really a history of our city and i think it's incredible to me the roots that we have in our city. so i mean, every time it just inspires me to, you know, keep building here and keep living and experiencing joy here. so i really commend all of you for your daily you know, just getting up every day and taking care of the people that you take care of, because i know how that feels. and you know, i also i also do love to go visit like all the legacy businesses on the list. and, you know, i think, rick, you've done a great job of encouraging everyone to visit one another and creating this into like, its own community and ecosystem, too. it's like, you know, if people could look at the legacy business list when you're thinking about services, i mean, the diversity of

businesses that you have on here, this is just today's meeting alone could be like several weeks, if not months. yeah, it's turning into a directory, like a phone book directory. so yeah, definitely. today i think we have all we need. we have audio to help us with our, our our troubles. hey, we have, you know, so many wonderful businesses within our city. so thank you so much for all that you do. i hope that you celebrate tonight and take some time and enjoy this accomplishment. so thank you. um i think with that, we take a vote. it's been a little while since we've had a meeting, so i'm a little rusty. sorry is there a motion in favor of the resolutions? i i am in favor and nominate this for the resolutions. i second the nomination motion by commissioner dickerson, seconded by commissioner herbert. i'll

read the roll. commissioner benitez. i. commissioner dickerson. absolutely. yes commissioner herbert. yes. president huey. yes commissioner ortiz. cartagena yes. and vice president ziziunas yes. motion passes. congratulations. congratulations. all right. uh, item number. item number three. item three, san francisco municipal transportation authority sfmta briefing. this was a discussion item that needs to be continued. our presenter was unable to join today, so we'll need to continue this item to the next meeting. uh, if there's no objection, we can move to item four. great um,

please call item number four. item four san francisco business tax reform. this is a discussion item. the commission will hear an update on the city's ongoing efforts to review the city's current business tax structure and develop recommendations for needed reforms. presenting today , we have amanda freid with the office of treasurer and tax collector. all right. can you all got one work? nope oh, no. this one work. great. try that one. one more time. hello oh, okay. okay this will be fun. all right, we'll do some gymnastics. uh, good evening, everybody. i'm amanda cohn, freed from the office of the treasurer and tax collector. really happy to be

speaking with you all tonight about our business tax reform process. i'll say up front, business taxes are the easiest thing to make your eyes glaze over if you're feeling a little bit of insomnia, i recommend pulling some of this up in the middle of the night. i'm going to do my best to try to explain this as carefully as possible and also point you to some places for those in the room and who will watch this later to catch up after the fact. i know it's dense, so i will try and just a little bit of a summary of how we got here. the supervisor, mandel mann, requested that and then was joined by the mayor and other members of the board to request that our office, the office of the treasurer and tax collector and the comptroller work together to provide some proposed reforms that we could consider for the november 2024 ballot. we issued a memo over the summer, in july outlining

some of the issues with our current tax structure, and i'll go through some of those and then since then we've been meeting with businesses and other stakeholders on about a monthly cadence to hear their input and to present some ideas for reform. um, and in our meeting, our last meeting, we presented a model for some reforms, a package of reforms are in a process now of getting some additional feedback and then we're going to issue our final report to the mayor and the board of supervisors. by the end of december. what this part of the process is about is really what are some good, good tax policy reform forms that we can put in place with a baseline of being revenue neutral. so our two offices are apolitical. all we're trying to figure out what can solve some of the problems that we're having right now in our business tax base. and for the economy generally. so we're and you'll see this in some of

the examples as we go forward, looking at 2022 revenues and everything we propose should bring in the same amount of money that we got in last year from business taxes. just from different ways after we make these proposals, then the conversation necessarily becomes more political. so that's when people will work with the board and with the mayor around different pieces that work or don't work for their community. and they'll be kind of a discussion of viability of whether anything goes before the voters. it's kind of a long process from here. so what i'm presenting to you today is just the recommendations from the comptroller and the treasurer moving forward. as i mentioned, there was a report in the summer that was talking about what are some issues, what are the problems that we're trying to solve. the first was a real risk of tax loss because of remote work and relocation of workers

out of san francisco. the second is an overreliance that we're seeing right now on taxing commercial property uses at a time when that industry isn't doing very well reduced. we want to reduce volatility stemming from over concentrate motion and you'll see this in a slide today that five of the top five tax payers are paying a lot of our revenue for the city. and so the threat there is if one or more of them chooses to leave san francisco, that would have a huge impact on our city's finances. we also really want to promote greater simplicity and predictability from tax payers, which is what i talked to many of you about a lot, and also greater equity for small businesses. so these were kind of our goals as we started the process. s and the first, as i mentioned, is to reduce volatility and reliance on commercial property. so the ways that we're doing that, we're proposing to do that are two fold in the homelessness gross

receipts tax into the general gross receipts tax base rather than have it as a separate tax, it would be included in the rates of the base gross receipts tax and a portion the same portion of that tax base would be dedicated for the same uses that go for the homelessness gross receipts tax. now that same idea would happen for the commercial rents tax that would be reduced by 25. but the revenues for the uses in that case, early child care would remain the same as they are now. and then we're also proposing to reduce the overpaid executive tax by 90. and we would maintain the administrative office tax, which is really for very large businesses. next is really the broad simplification. the first is to increase the small business exemption to 2.5 million. it's a it's a bit over

2 million, right now and that would continue to adjust with cpi. so that's something we heard loud and clear from many small businesses is to make sure that that exemption continues to go up with inflation. we would simplify the business registration schedule. right now, it's a little bit confusing. so just to have one one set of rates for businesses at different sizes instead of two, we're proposing to eliminate $10 million of regular lottery license fees. these are the fees that businesses pay on a bill from our office, from the treasurer and tax collector's office. every spring. these predominantly hit small businesses and they're paid a lot by the restaurant industry. so the fees for restaurants are particularly high, but other types of businesses that that have these fees, you know, massage parlors and. i'm blanking on lots of other examples. gas stations, there's many other businesses where if you have an inspector coming to see if you're still doing what

you're doing and you're paying a fee every year, that's what's kind of included in this $10 million base. and we're also simplifying the schedule down to five schedules. it's currently 14 and adding some additional tiers for very large businesses above $50 million. right now, the tiers stop at $25 million and above. and this is the part where it gets a little a little tricky. so right what we want to do is create some uniformity in how businesses figure out which portion of their receipts get counted for their tax calculation in the you know, the words for these are apportionment and allocation. they mean slightly different things for your purposes. what we're saying is it's very tricky right now. businesses depending on what category they're in, have different rules about how to calculate which portion of their receipts are counted for taxes. this is only for

businesses that are operating inside and outside san francisco. so my complete permission to tune out if your business is only in san francisco, this really doesn't impact you. but for businesses that are operating worldwide or nationwide or in california, this has been a source of difficulty with our current tax. so every business now except for those in the real property category and i'll explain those, we'll go to 75% sales, 25% payroll and the big thing this does on a macro level is it reduces that reliance on our tax base to who has jobs in san francisco. so if a business we don't want to penalty if businesses bring workers into san francisco and we also want to keep revenue if businesses choose to leave san francisco but are still selling into san francisco again, all of the rates are adjusted to achieve that revenue neutrality that i talked about in the beginning.

so just to back up a little bit, how do we do it now? the gross receipts tax was first approved in 2012 and then updated in 2020. prop f and i'm going to talk a little bit about prop f as we get into some of our examples. gross receipts are the total revenue and other receipts of a business. i gave some examples here and businesses file the gross receipts tax annually with a deadline of february 28th of each year to give some context of size, there are about 95,000 businesses registered in san francisco right now, about 41,000 businesses pay the gross receipts tax. so the vast majority of businesses are small and are exempt from the small from the gross receipts tax entirely. this is really a very small portion of our overall tax base. currently, the way that

the tax is calculated, it's based on your gross receipts in san francisco and your business activities. you pick from a list of categories. so those of you who've renewed your business registry have done this every year. so we have some options in food services or retail trade, and then your tax rates vary depending on that category. and as i mentioned, that calculation becomes even more complicated. if you have receipts in san francisco and outside of san francisco. so next, i'm going to attempt to show a video if we don't have technical issues that we created to help understand a little bit of this process of apportionment and allocation so that as i explain the changes, hopefully it makes a little bit more sense.

okay. in the interest of time, i'm going to skip that video and i'll point you to where it is on our website. if you go to sf treasurer.org, there's a business tab at the top and if you click on it you'll see a gross receipts tax overview. that page explains a lot about how the tax works. now and the video is embedded there. sorry for that. sometimes that's tricky in these meetings. so what the main point of the video is to show that if you have two businesses with fairly similar facts, so you could have a clothing retailer and a financial services corporation option and they both have $20 million of sales into san francisco and the same amount of payroll in san francisco at the at when they're done with their

gross receipts tax filing, they're going to have very different bills. the clothing retailer pays significant only less than the financial services corporation. right now under our our current tax law. and that's by design. so we understand that different industries have different facts and circumstances and when the original tax was passed that the rates were different depending on the kind of business that you are. but the rates are one portion of what's different. it's also what's calculated. so right now, many industries in san francisco are based it's entirely based on where your payroll is. so it's 100% based on what percentage of your payroll is in san francisco. that's how we figure out what percentage of your gross receipts to include in your tax calculate options. whereas other industries are 5050 sales and payroll and so that means that if you have to industries that are kind of similar, they're different, but they, you know, you could be in one, you could be in the other, you your overall tax bill is going to be

really different depending on which of those calculation methods you use. and right now, those outcomes are they're somewhat of a penalty for locating your workers in san francisco. so that was sort of a base reason while we're trying to change. so as we move ahead, the proposal shown here on this slide is to reduce to make this whole process a lot simpler. so hopefully in five years when i come up here again, it won't take me so long to explain it. there'll be five categories all of the categories except for one use 75% sales, 25% payroll as the way that they're going to calculate apportionment and allocation, the one that is staying the same is real property. so these are real estate companies, hotels as accommodations. right now in our current schema, there are 100% based on their san francisco sales and they're going to remain. we're proposing that they remain 100% san francisco sales. it's pretty easy for them to calculate that because it's

physical property in san francisco. it's not really like a complex business type where you have to kind of figure out how to do that. it's very straightforward. so our proposal that that is that that stays. but everything else changes. and these are the five categories. and i'm going to go through each category and the impacts of the changes as we go on here are the proposed rates for the categories. it's a bit hard to see this on the fly. so again, you can you can refer back to this as we go, and i'll show you how this impacts different industries is in terms of the impacts by business size. as you can see, the relief for small businesses is quite big. so businesses under the small business exemption threshold are going to see a reduction in average of 37% reduction in what they pay in business taxes for these businesses. they're not paying the gross receipts tax. this is their business registration fees and license fees. so on the whole, a big a

big reduction for the smallest businesses. there's also a big reduction at the top end of the scale. and that's, again, talking to those initial goals that we had around kind of reducing the concentration risk that we have with a few very large tax payers and then it kind of varies in between there. to start again with our majority of our businesses, which are very small. we have two examples here. the first is an artist, their san francisco gross receipts are $150,000. they only do business in san francisco and they're going to see an 8% reduction in that's driven entirely by the change in their business registration fee. take a nail salon. with $750,000 in san francisco. receipt s, they'll see a 10% reduction in in their gross receipts in their business registration fees.

next, we have a restaurant that this restaurant is over the small business exemption threshold. but i think by most standards would be considered fairly small. $6 million in san francisco receipts. this example is different because they do pay the gross receipts tax. so i just wanted to compare that for you right up at the front before we get into some of the other examples is so this restaurant, one thing to note here is that restaurants are one of the categories is when prop f passed in 2020, there were some reductions in gross receipts, tax rates for certain industries that were really hit hard by covid and food services is one of those. so the gross receipts, tax rates for food services are low lower right now than they were originally planned to be. and those lower rates are set to expire right now in 2026. so we've listed here and all of the examples, you'll see what they paid in 2022 if nothing changes,

what they would pay in 2026. and then under this proposal, what they would pay in 2026. so that variance column on the right is between the two 2026. if it if nothing changes or if this passes. but i think it's really fair to look at the 2022 baseline and understand that for industries in those prop f reduced rates right now, it's not going to feel like a reduction in based on based on what they're paying right now. but those rates are already set to expire. so it's a little bit complicated, but just wanted to put that context out. actually, before i get into some of these other business activities. i just want to see if there's any questions about the small business rates, because now we're going to get into some much larger business examples. so i want to make sure that part's clear. okay. i do have a

question, but i don't know if it fits to ask you at the end of your press presentation. i just had a question around the breakdown of the regulatory licenses that you were looking to streamline or and also the process on how the office determines which regulatory licenses need. sure. i'll take that one at the end, if that's okay. when we get to it. you got it. okay. and i did miss one example. sorry. we have a clothing store. $3 million. there are going to see a 13% increase. sorry. i just wanted to say that one. oh, sorry. go ahead. go ahead. oh, commissioner herbert had a question. thank you. i just had a technical question about the restaurant gross receipts. so i'm just want to make sure i understand. and so it looks like the gross receipts stayed the same from 2022 to 2026. and you're proposing that in 2020. i mean, from 2022 to now. and you're proposing that there's a 10% reduction by 2026 in the

gross receipts tax for small businesses for the restaurant example, in 2022, they. paid $12,105 in their gross receipts tax. if nothing changes in 2026. that same business would. pay $24,185. so there's scheduled to be a large increase already between 2022 and 2026 because of the reduced rates expire. the covid rates sunset. right. so if you compare the 24,000 that they're slated to pay in 2026 with the proposal that we're putting forward, it's a reduction in of 31% in their gross receipts tax. yes. okay. does that help? thank you. yes. yes. okay. and then the last example that i flew through was this clothing store. we're going to talk a lot about retail and

wholesale in that section. but just did want to flag here that this small clothing store would see a 13% increase under this proposal. so. okay, the next act city to go through is advanced service. as you can see here, all of the business activities that we have listed here and some of the percent differences again, between the 226, 20, 26 as is, and 2026 proposed listed here for as it's a little bit hard to understand what these mean. we're going to go through an example or two here. we have a package software company with worldwide receipts of $25 million, 30% of their payroll is in san francisco. and about $100,000 of their their gross receipts are attributable to san francisco. so that's what's used in this calculation here. you'll

see they end up with a 25% reduction if you move over to an online data management company that's much bigger, 25 billion. they have 7% of their payroll in san francisco and $1 billion of san francisco gross receipts. and here is the first time you'll see coming into play the homelessness gross receipts tax sunsetting. so you'll see 100% of the homelessness. gross receipts tax goes away, but that's largely put back into their gross receipts tax base. this is also a business that pays the overpaid executive tax. and due to the, you know, 90% reduction, this particular business is going to get a 91% reduction in that rate with an overall 3% change. um, next we have financial services fees and overall this industry would see a 17% increase. and here if you

had a financial services company with 100 million in worldwide receipts, but five of those in san francisco and 10% of their payroll in san francisco, their tax bill is going to go up 64% next, we have the real property category, real estate and accommodations is the difference here between these two types of businesses is, is that the changes for what we call baby c or the commercial rents tax are are are realized for the first category. the real estate and rental and leasing services. that's where you'll see that 25% reduction in the commercial rents tax come into play. but accommodation fees do not pay that tax. so that reduction doesn't have the same impact for them. so you'll see here commercial real estate company. again, their apportionment is 100% based on sales. the you'll

see the reduction in their commercial rents tax. so they go from paying 875,000 in commercial rents tax to 656,000. and that largely drives their overall reduction of 26% okay. and this is where it gets it gets kind of more interesting read sale and wholesale trade. so here you see a general breakdown and you'll see large increases for both retail and wholesale trade. what exactly does this mean for this? these industries, the changes to apportionment and allocation have makes for some very big swings because you're going. to 75% of their calculate coming from their sales and 25% for payroll. so let's start with a

wholesale market out there. are i can't give you specific examples that would violate somebody's confidential reality, but you can think of several big wholesale markets in san francisco selling different things. this one and i'll say all of these examples are made up. we tried to make them realistic, but they are not real businesses. so this example is $50 million a business. 65% of their payroll is in san francisco. but a modest portion, $5 million of their overall receipts are attributable to san francisco, and overall they get a reduction of 37. and here that big reduction is largely because of how much payroll they have in san francisco. that's really kind of like moderating the what's going on here for this company. um, in this example, while this is a large retailer with $10 million worldwide, they

don't have any employees in san francisco. so and they sell about $25 million into san francisco. they see a 78% increase in their tax bill. so this is a company, again, with no employees here. if you compare that to a large retailer with some payroll here, it's very different. the outcome here is a reduction of 60. again, that's because of that importance of that payroll factor here. this business also benefits because they pay the overpaid executive tax. and so having that reduction does net some difference as well. okay. lastly for this category is a large grocery retailer and this is a very large company, $40 billion. they have 2% of their payroll in san francisco and 500 million in their gross receipts. and they see a 160% increase in their taxes under this proposal.

and our last category, see, we're shopping for names. if anyone can think of something better than all other, i would appreciate it. we have kind of a mix of things here. so transportation, fashion, construction, food services, arts, and with a kind of wide range of impacts. one thing that's important to note in this category is some of these categories are very small. so their overall gross receipts are very small. so where you see a difference that looks like it stands out quite a bit, that's usually because it's a handful of tax payers that are causing this swing. um, so, so let's see overall for these examples, like what does this mean? one of our goals was to look at concentration risk of our, our

top tax payers and what that would mean to our business tax base if businesses were to leave. so we went from having 28% of our revenue coming from five tax payers. that's down to 23. and there's reductions in each level. the top five, top ten, top 100, but more so than just those percentages are kind of what i talked to you about, these business as if they are to leave san francisco under this proposal will still pay quite a bit of taxes because of the way that we've weighted san francisco sales in that calculation. so the risk ask is reduced because the taxes are reduced. and also because if they leave, we'll still get the tax revenue from these companies . another portion of this is to improve predictability for tax payers. we hear a lot that this is a really complex set of taxes. it's hard for them to predict year over year what they're going to owe. so we're proposing a number of changes.

one is to move the tax extension deadline. this largely impacts large tax payers is because our deadline, february 28th, is well before the federal and state deadlines, which come in the fall. and so when it's time for them to file, they're like, we don't even have the information they file. and then they end up amending their returns in the fall. and those that can cause some major swings and it causes the comptroller to hold that revenue because we're not sure if we're really going to those those numbers are going to hold or not. so we're proposing to shift it to a later extension deadline and to formalize a voluntary disclosure agreement procedure. these are for taxpayers who realize, oops, i should have been paying taxes all these years and i haven't been. and they voluntarily come forward. we have a program now, but we don't have it. well publicized or explained. so we want to change that and we also are exploring different ways that taxpayers under this proposal could request and

receive guidance up front rather than through audit. and then we're also going to be convening interested parties meetings to get feedback from taxpayers about our online form and um, the other thing that we hear a lot is there's just so many new taxes. so even if you pass this, what's to say that in a couple of years someone isn't going to come and change it again? so the comptroller's office did a scan, a statewide of how other jurisdictions get tax measures on the ballot. it's much, much easier in san francisco to get a tax measure on the ballot. so we're going to be proposing a series of reforms, aims to make getting a tax measure on the ballot in line with a charter amendment right now. and this slide just has a summary of all of the changes i just talked about and we're requesting feedback by december 13th, if you get it in a little later, that's okay. that's just our suggested what we're hoping for

and then we'll submit final recommendations, actions to the mayor and the board by the end of this year to kick off what may be the next part of the process. and that's it. happy to take questions. great. thank you so much for the presentation. you're all awake. that was a lot of information. commissioners any questions? i know we had a question earlier about the license fees so i can go back to that if you'd like. okay, i'll go. commissioner herbert first. herbert thanks again. all the numbers make my head spin. i just like to make lattes pretty much. um, but i was just had a random question, which is how does the office of the comptroller track the remote workers? since there's so much of the payroll tax has to do with the overall tax? sure. so the gross receipts tax right now

, if you have if you're in a business activity category where it matters, where your san francisco payroll is, part of the calculation, you do have to report that to the tax collector every year as part of your filing where it really comes up substantively is in audit. so if there's a dispute around your your payroll number and companies have many ways to sort of show us their payroll in san francisco versus outside and, you know, it's sort of it's company specific how they choose to do that and what we ask for. but in general, we were able and the and the report from the summer really codifies shows what happened when business is had workers working remotely outside of san francisco. what the difference in the tax payments would have been if all of those workers stayed in san francisco. so we really are able to track it and track the impact. it's not i wouldn't say it's lost revenue, but we're

able to compare if all of those workers were showing up in person in san francisco, this is what this company would have paid compared to what they actually paid. great. thank you. and then, um, how can we collect tax? this is might be obvious, but how how does the, uh, tax collector's office collect taxes from businesses who leave san francisco? what? how is that justified? sure. there's is what's called nexus is the requirements to in order to register as a business in san francisco and pay our business taxes back in. i may mess up the year. i want to say 2018 as part of the actually, it was part of the cannabis tax measure. there was a part of that proposal that changed the requirements so that any business that sells more than $500,000 into san francisco , even if they have no physical presence here, has to register and pay taxes and so it's sort of a compliance exercise for our office to make sure that we're

getting you know, that we're understanding all the companies that are operating that might be selling into san francisco and making sure that they're registering and paying taxes. got it. okay thank you. yeah. oh oh, sure. vice president, business is no. yeah, i'm okay right now. thank you for your presentation motion. yes. i just wanted to. i have three questions. one is, if there's a specific list or breakdown down of the regulatory license fees that you all are looking at, i know even in some of us have met with the controller's office around in-depth studies we've done on on regulatory license fees that, you know, should have had audits by this time or, you know, in compliance with reporting or, you know, just needing to be streamline or duplicative with abc or whatever. right? we've worked on that quite a lot. so my first

question was we'd probably love to see any specific fees. um, and i can tell you a couple if you know that we've flagged if that's helpful for you. um and then if, um, any of those are actually to be sunset or if they're being reduced. so kind of the specificity specifics of that. and then, um, how you all, your objective framework for, for deciding what needed to kind of be on the chopping block and whether it was in line with when they were created. did you know, looking at past audits like what types of materials were you all considering in that process to make those decisions? and then, um, yeah, that was my main question for yeah, those were my main two questions. and then i have a smaller one later. sure. so right now, all of the regulatory licenses come out to

about $14 million. so the 10 million we're talking about is almost everything we have on our website. like we have a list of every license fee right now that's charged on that bill. we haven't yet figured out like how exactly this part will work. it's more of a conceptual model saying based on some work that our office did to look at how regressive these fees are for small businesses because they're flat, you know, small businesses pay the same as very large businesses is. and so the impact , if you add the license fees onto the taxes, make the smallest businesses have the highest effective tax rate. and so that's sort of the argument underpinning this is it really doesn't make sense. the rest of our tax structure is really progressive live and we have this outlier with the license fees. so the goal is really to reduce or eliminate as many as

possible through this. i think the question there will be a lot of procedural questions around how exactly that works. businesses will still need to apply for or get permitted get inspected. so that part needs to stay the same. obviously, the departments still need to be compos updated for their work and that all needs to happen. so the question here is can we reduce the annual cost so that it's not a monetary burden on the smallest businesses and instead build that revenue into the overall tax structure so it's spread out among 14,000 businesses instead of the number of businesses that pay right now, which is much, much smaller. wow. that's honestly, this is like the best news i feel like i've ever gotten from this committee sitting on this side of the commission because i feel like this could be something we could market to small businesses as huge, you know, and just like you said, conceptually seeing fees that

increase this with no recourse is why small businesses are mad all the time. you know, and if we were able to show them, hey, you don't have this random line item, you know that would go very far. yeah. so that's very exciting news that you're looking that comprehensively at the regulatory license schedules . um, and i would love maybe we can talk as staff to our staff about or maybe in our discussion on what we can give you all and that would be helpful that we've contemplated over the years in this area. yeah, that'd be great. i mean, i think the complication is going to come in and like, how do we operationalize that? how does it work? i think from like the big picture, it's like, sure, we'll take the revenue and move it here. that's fine. and so it'd be great to have your partnership to figure that out. absolutely. and i think we you know, we've tackled some of the

low hanging ones, too, that i think through amazing staff research have shown and already done the due diligence of showing that cost savings can still be recouped here. but this in itself is just a burden, right? so we've definitely looked at through that lens and i think we'd be happy to send some some of that work to you. um, and then my last question, since we're talking about business taxes, i know small businesses also deal with the real property from the assessor and that's something that's been a lot of confusion for small businesses and calculations over the years. i don't know if that's being considered in this. unfortunately, that's a state law. it's part of state property taxes. and so we don't have the authority to change anything about it. so that's not. yeah. interesting. okay. i didn't realize that. thank you. sorry. no that's good. thank you. commissioner ortiz katona. thank

you, madam. madam thank you for the presentation. great. we're excited. i actually had a question from a small business, so let me see if i get it right. some of the small businesses that contract with the city, they have huge amounts of pass through, right? like during construction or hauling or whatever. so maybe they get they do get reimbursed. let's say it's 20 million, but their actual management fee maybe is only half a million of the whole contract. when calculating this, does that affect the gross receipts or should they just highlight the management fees that they're getting for these pass through reimburse city contracts in general businesses have to report all of their receipts. so it's the whole number. it's not the answer that that business wants me to say. i will say particularly for construction subcontractors, that's an issue we've we've heard about for a while. and i

would definitely recommend them to be engaged in the next part of this process if that moves along, because i think those are the types of feedback and tweaks that i think policy makers, that's really a policy choice could could change. well, i just had a couple questions. let's see, um, how do you think this is going to or will it affect companies in encouraging people to come back into the office for in-person work? i'll try to channel ted egan here. that's not totally my lane. i think in general right now there's a sense and a reality that the way that our taxes calculate make it a little bit harder to bring employees back. whether or not that's really factoring into businesses decisions, i'm not sure. you know, the tax people are pretty separate from from the hr folks. but let's assume that it's you know, it matters

certainly under this reducing the payroll factor would make it easier. you know it's better for the businesses to bring workers back into san francisco or reducing that penalty that exists in our current structure. the other thing right now is we the san francisco becomes more competitive when you look at other municipalities, business taxes. you know, right now they're still going to pay more to be in san francisco, but not as much more to be in san francisco. that's the reality. yeah, that chart last time was during the presentation. the comparison was interest ing. yeah um, and just to clarify, anybody who says in into san francisco should be registering with san francisco if they have $500,000 or more of sales. okay um, and, and oh, just, i don't

know if i didn't understand. i don't know. i didn't understand why clothing retail was like going to go up so much. yeah. so let me actually go back. okay. so if you look at the rates here, i know it's hard to digest this all as you're looking at it, but one thing that's interesting with the whole wholesale and retail category is how progressive it is. and this is tax progressive, not political progressive, meaning that it starts very low. so compared to other industries and then increases. at a different clip than the increases in the other industries is again, these are

all things that could be tweaked in a model, right? you could you could lower the rates for smaller businesses and raise the rates for higher businesses. it's all a bit of a balance. but in wholesale and retail, there's certainly their tax rate is low for the smallest businesses and then and then continues to go up for the retail industry. the move to have 75% come from their sales is pretty substantial for businesses that have workers inside and outside of san francisco or operating inside and outside of san francisco. but the increase is, is just the rates that you see here reflected. so for that small retailer that was only in san francisco, that rate is higher than the rate currently. and that's how it's how it is in the model. and again, something that could certainly be adjusted up

or down in the next phase. so like like businesses that have like just an ecom kind of business, right? like they and they're not in san francisco, they're not necessarily like a registered san francisco business, but they sell over $500,000 in sales in san francisco. how do you go? i mean, are they all registered? i, i don't understand how so many of them there are so many of them. you know, we have we have a team of investigators was it's really a data project because those corporations are doing things like paying sales tax to the state of california and taking other actions that it's not that hard for us to find them. you know, it has over time, like ramped up since. it's a fairly new change to our code, but it's certainly something that we look at quite a bit and follow up on. yeah because it seems like it kind of takes an account the, the larger kind of

businesses that generally operate right on online. right, right. okay, cool. um, director tang. oh, thank you, amanda, for your presentation. an and i appreciate that in one of the recommendations is that, um, it was just, i forgot which slide it was on, but it was discussed trying to put up front more information for, um, uh, businesses to better understand what category or what the rates are and so forth. and just in general, not even with just business taxes. i think we hear from a lot of small business owners the, the need for more information up front for clarity to hopefully prevent issues down the line. so really want to encourage that. thank you. commissioner ortiz cortina just because i'm going to get asked and i want to have an answer, let's say this construction company is about 5 million gross

, 4 million gross receipts. san francisco, a million elsewhere, seven, 5, 80% payroll still in san francisco. what are you thinking? like how can i calculate? how can i give them an answer if you want to email me, i'm happy to mock up an example like that and definitely can't do that in my head. yeah. and construction would be like advanced services now under the new, um, under the five categories, double check if i want to say the wrong thing. wrong construction is an all other. it's an all other. okay thank you. uh, vice president business. i just quickly wanted to say the item of voluntary disclosure agreement formalizing what? so that's bringing people into compliance is what that's meant for. and we really like that here. so thank you again for that because a lot of

businesses feel like they're scared to negotiate with an agency and this opens a door for compliance. so what exactly needs to be done in to make the is it the lookback that is the specific edit on that or it's two things. the lookback is changed. that's that's a that's a clear change. and the other thing is right now we don't this exists. it's but you can't find it on our website. so you sort of have to ask, which is very scary. and i get those calls sometimes. like i'm representing a business. i can't tell you who they are, but like, what would happen. and so the one thing i'll say and this would remain the same under this new proposal , is it it only comes into play voluntary disclosure. if we've never contacted you before, you truly have to be off our radar. so if it's a business and we've sent them a letter saying we think you're operating here, you need to register that, that's not a voluntary disclosure. we already identified the business,

but we do from time to time get businesses that are like, oops, i just realized like i exceeded that $500,000 threshold or i opened up and just like i had, i had a bad accountant, i had no idea. and that happens. and it's in it's a shared interest between the city and the business to get them into compliance as quickly as possible. and so i think this reduced look back in line. this is what the state does as well, is just, you know, would be would be clean and just making the rules a little bit more upfront. okay yeah, i'd love to learn more about how how that is meant to work just because i, i feel like that there's also regulatory license fees that people have ignored because they're scary, they don't understand them, and then they accrue and they don't know how to settle it. yeah. so so anything bringing small businesses into compliance, we're happy to help you with the public facing end of when that

plays out. thank you, commissioner herbert thank. you. in the interest of providing feedback, would it be possible to get a copy of your presentation? sure it's posted online in the controller's office website. they have a section for business tax reform. you can also find it through the treasurer's website. but either way it is posted. and then my sorry, i thought my email address was on here but it's amanda dot freed freed at sf gov .org and then this was also blasted out in the osb newsletter. if you get that there was a summary with the link to the slides and email addresses too, or a website where you can give contact, it all goes to the same place. so feel free to email me or if you know laurel and the mayor's office economic and workforce development or ted egan or ben rosenfield. we're all going to get it and we're all going to

share it with each other. so there's no wrong door at this point. the most important thing is you get your feedback in. great. thank you. well let's see there. does anybody else have any? no questions. thank you very much, amanda, for coming tonight. oh, we need to take public comment, but i just want to appreciate how much work this is because i know there were many, many meetings and this is material that's very challenging , urging for people to engage with in the super abstract. and i think you really kind of honed it into something where people can kind of can give feedback and find themselves within the categories. and even if they gave feedback based on their own experience, i think that would be super beneficial. so i would encourage everyone to kind of consider where they stand, what this looks like, because perhaps you're not the only person that feels that way. so this is the opportunity to really be part of this process. so thank you so

much for bringing this forth and thank you for my co commissioners director tang for attend seeing so many meetings, so many to bring to a feedback thank you so any public comment out if public commenters want to line up my left looks like none. great. thank you so much. have a great night. item number five. item five board of supervisors file 230768. authorizing and permitting neighborhood amenities. this is a discussion item the commission will learn about an ordinance amending the public works code to streamline and authorize the approval of certain neighborhood amenities in sidewalks and other public right of ways within the department of public works jurisdiction. motion to reduce the fees for certain minor encroachments and clarify permitting revocation and restoration requirements for all minor encroachment permits.

presenting today we have beth rubenstein with the department of public works. i'm going to go first. i'm going to hi, i'm beth rubenstein. but jen lowe from supervisor melgar's office is going to go first. oops, sorry. i'll just keep this really brief . thank you so much, commissioners, for calendaring this item. again, i'm jen lowe, supervisor from supervisor melgar's office. we're the sponsor of this legislation. we've been working in very close partnership with the public works department on this legislation in which we have aptly named love our neighborhoods as many of you know how much san franciscans, our community members and merchants really love to give back to the communities that they live in, play in work in and contribute to. and so what we have learned over the years is that many of these wonderful projects in the public right of way and in public spaces like murals or maybe even a shared library, often times have to go through process because they're

in the public right of way. and we have a lot of rules and regulations around that. but they probably weren't intended for painted murals on, say, a retaining wall or tiled staircase walls or that said bookcase on your sidewalk and so what we wanted to do was to make it easier for san franciscans to love our neighborhoods and to create these projects. and so what this legislation aims to do is to create a completely new process for what we call our love, our neighborhoods, permits and beth is going to go through kind of what this looks like. but we're hoping to achieve here is to encourage more projects to go through a better system because right now believe it or not, tiled staircases is considered a major encroachment process, which has to go through the board of supervisors for approval and hearings. and it's already a really a lot of work to get all these neighbors and donors involved to do something wonderful for the community. so we want to make it easier and that's what we aim to do here. i do want to note that we did get some feedback from cuny benefits districts and some merchant groups that we encourage it as

much as we could into this legislation. but supervisor melgar intends to have trailing legislation to iterate on this. this is creating something completely new. like i said before, what we have in our current code is minor encroachment processes, ridiculous permit schemes and a major encroachment processes. this is completely new. and so by doing so, we're going to have some kinks on the road and some questions that come up and we want to iterate. we want to improve on it and we want to get feedback from the people out there who are doing these wonderful projects to benefit their community. so i'm going to hand it over to beth to kind of go into detail. the legislature went through the land use and transportation committee, went to the full board for a first reading last week. it's going to go for a second reading at the full board tomorrow. but as i previously mentioned, we're still going to be working out many of these things in the regulations. but also in trailing legislation. so your feedback is still welcome. and like i said, we want to make this as easy and painless as possible to encourage more of these projects. thank you. thanks, jen. hi, i'm beth

rubenstein. i'm the deputy director of policy and communication at public works and super pleased to be here. and thank you, commissioners, for inviting me. i do want to say as i go through this is that we've been focused on capital projects, so permanent projects, and i know that that small businesses are definitely really interested in activations and temporary projects. and it would be something i said to director tang. it is something that we would like to look at in the future, but it's not in this legislation. so but you'll see there is a lot in this legislation, ian. and as jen mentioned, we really carved this out of minor and major encroachments. and what we're carving out of is community driven projects in the public right of way that benefit the community. so it's not like an construction project, it's not even like a personal property owner who wants to put a enclosure for their trash cans. that's not community benefit. it's for it's for the community. so. just looking at sort of the

let's see. yeah. so obviously, the other thing, the mission of public works is to be stewards of the public, public right of way and ensure sort of safety and accessibility for all. so in this permit and what we've worked really closely with professor i mean, professor supervisor melgar about is making it easier and more accessible to do these projects. but also making sure that we make sure they're accessible to all people, mobility issues, site issues. so on and so path of travel and safety. so we don't want rickety, scary things in the public right of way. so the goal you can see the goal is to is to create a user friendly, inexpensive of and better coordinated with other city departments, permit process is. so in developing the permit and

we started last spring. we did a kind of a listening session, as jen mentioned, we talked to cbds, we talked to merchant associates, we talked to nonprofits like parks alliance, and we talked to other city staff like in the community challenge grant office to sort of see like how things go and what was interesting is we heard the same pinch points from all all stakeholders, which is sort of a good sign in that everyone agreed and also is a clear sign that there is some broken pieces . so some of the things that came up is that wanting a better coordination between departments , you know, community members, many of them who are volunteers who are doing this kind of work, they'll go to public works for a permit and then then they'll hear, oh, we actually have to get approval from the arts commission and actually maybe mta has to review it and maybe puc, you know, it sort of goes on and on. there was a really clear desire for one portal, one

in, one out, which like honestly makes it a little hard on public works because we don't have jurisdiction over mta and arts commission. but it does mean but we can sort of streamline it and we can track it. part of that is also having a permit process that's more transparent. so as a as an applicant, you could we want you to be able to go online and see where it is in the process. if it's being if it's stuck at mta, you should know or if it's stuck at public works. you should know or if you can just see how it's moving through the processes. the other thing we heard was, was the expense and like the board, we the board does a lot of workarounds in terms of waiving fees and, you know, that's, that's a workaround. it's not a long term solution. so we looked very carefully at at the current fees for like minor encroachments and major encroachments. we looked at those and we also looked at the annual assessment fees because and these were developed more for like construction projects and development

projects, not for community driven projects. so you see we got rid of, we lessened the fees considerably. and just to remind you, those fees were only cost retrieval to begin with. we're not making any profit, but we did reduce them. um, yeah. and basically covered like that sort of reducing redundancy. so when we, we have a permit, it's good for all departments like an applicant doesn't find out a month in like oh you actually need extra information for another city agency. so this is a this permit covers a range of projects, small and large, everything from something like a little libraries that's in front of one property owner to a cbd applying for a multi amenity project that includes benches lighting a mural, a street mural and so on. so each one has very different requirements. so the way we dealt with that is we divided the projects into three tiers and the first tier is actually fee. it's only for the

applicant is just a private property owner and the project is in front of that one property. and in fact it's not a permit, it's we call it a registration because it doesn't have a fee like legally our city attorney say we can't call it. we don't call something without a fee permit. so this is a registration and it's free and it doesn't have to go through any other city departments. and basically the applicant self certifies what's what's important. they self certify that they follow the guidelines set out by public works. and what's important is, is that right now people are putting out little libraries or benches in the public right of way. and that's those are lovely amenities. but sometimes they're not in the correct location. they they're either in the path of travel. they get in the way or they're too close to a tree. and we definitely want to protect our trees or they're too close to a parked car. so we need to have very clear guidelines. people need to self

certify. tier two projects honestly, are sort of the bulk of the real projects that our community does. some examples. you can see are like a tiled staircase. the this is kensington bridge over over portola avenue, the painted bridge or the bottom one is a is a sidewalk mural in mira loma the hop skip and jump. so these are the projects that most communities do, and some of them previously were minor encroachments. some of them were major encroachments. we're carving all that out and what they all have in common is that the applicant must be an organization. it can't be an individual. these are projects that are in in front of multiple property owners. they're on retaining walls. they're on existing staircase faces in the right of way. they're along corridors. so the applicant has to be a nonprofit organization,

a merchant association, a cbd, something like that. and the types of projects you can see go from painted and tiled murals, sidewalk murals, commemorative plaques. we tightened up the process for commemorative plaques because it was very confusing and it would go back and forth to and from the board of supervisors. so that's much clearer. and it also includes string lights along commercial corridors like all these string lights that we love right now that are like in almost every corridor. honestly, they've been put up. willy nilly. there's been no permitting done by any department for them from from our i mean, this is what we found from our research and there are some dangers like mta is concerned that sometimes there too close to live mta lines also like i was on valencia street the other day and there was some string lighting that was like hanging low, you know, who do you call? we don't know because we don't know who's responsible for it.

so they need we need to bring that into the permit world. low cost. it's $500 for a permit previously, it was probably around more like $3,000 for like i mean, it could have been it could have been 3 to 5 or $6,000 for a minor, a major encroachment. and plus there was an annual fee that was based on square footage. so $500 is a pretty minimal fee if you think about these projects or even easily eight, $10,000. and these projects also typically have to be coordinated with other departments, but they would be through the one, the one stop portal and then tier three are made like they're the sort of more unusual projects, probably typically done by cbds, that they're they're either multi amenity projects, like i mentioned before, or they're major landscape projects. there are also projects that we that maybe we don't even imagine yet, like one project that we that we

have right now. i think it's in the sunset is for fog catchers, which are these really cool ways of irrigation using fog. but these type of projects need greater engineering review, tier two needs engineering review. but tier three is sort of a higher level scrutiny and the commensurate with that, the fee is $1,000. and these these projects are even more expensive. typically so it's proportionally in relationship. so just the components of the permit. so the legislature that jen talked about and the tiers are all in the legislation and we hope it will be passed tomorrow. it was passed unanimously at first reading, and we have six co-sponsors as there's kind of trailing regulations. our bureau of streets and mapping right now is working on those regulations. those are really the specific types of dimensions and details. and it also lays out exactly how

the process works. and then we have a whole communication plan that includes like an online, very user friendly portal that's very clear. multi lingual brochures, posters and so on. and we also want to do some community outreach, particularly in, i mean, everywhere, but particularly in communities that maybe haven't done these community driven projects because it seems really inaccessible, awful and just overwhelming. and then this is the last this is the last slide. it just sort of shows our general timeline and how we got here and open to any questions for myself or jen. thank you so much for the presentation. um, commissioner, vice president ziziunas thank you. can you maybe give us a sense of how this would interplay with a small business? so like, because i've only heard examples of private like residential property owners or public right of ways, it it doesn't. there's

there's not really an example. we can think of right now. well, i'll tell you the a simple example like a small business might just want to put a bench on the sidewalk, but not to use for commercial purposes. so it doesn't it's not instead of a tables and chairs permit or or a small business might want to put a little library out, you know, in the furnishing zone, not obviously in path of travel. so those would be sort of the only ways that we can imagine like one single business owner. but we do imagine like commercial corridors as as a group getting together to do these projects. okay. thank you. and you said these these are permanent fixtures you're looking at now, but there might be another phase of more temporary. and i feel like that might be something small businesses could then maybe better play into host events and completely. yeah i agree. i mean i know and i spoke to your director that like that's definitely more in your wheelhouse in terms of interest, but definitely did want to let you know this was happening and

get any feedback. yeah thank you. and then my second question was, you said you as part of this study, you been collecting data on fines and that sort of thing that are incurred from public right of way use. did you mention something that you were. i didn't i didn't really talk about fines. no but but fee structure like we looked at our existing fee structure and it was quite it's quite expensive. and typically a community group will go to their supervisor and ask them to waive. and so you have legislation that's a workaround and we were trying to avoid that and just sort of say, let's have a let's have a reasonable fee structure that's well, well below cost recovery. but does make a group have to have a little skin in the game because in most in tier two and three, there's definitely fundraising involved. and we work with community groups all the time and we see that sometimes they get grants from the city or sometimes they raise funds in the neighborhood. okay yeah, yeah. i was just curious

about that, just because i know that that's a bigger topic of, of public right of way incursion things and we'd love to see data on, you know, we, we all want to help better use of our public right of ways. and so if there is part of this where you all are collecting data on use of public right of ways and where there's been, um, you know, where you want to bring people into compliance. so that would be helpful for us to see if there is data around that. okay yeah, we haven't looked at that for this, but i think for maybe sort of the next round of, of different type of legislation. yeah, i think that would be interesting to see. thank you, commissioner herbert. i just want to say thank you for your presentation. these projects are so important to the vibrant city of the city and bringing people together in the community and

it's just great that you're working on reducing the fee structure and just making it more palatable for neighborhood groups. and it's really important work. and thank you. thank you. yeah, i appreciate it. i mean, i think when we when we describe san francisco to our friends or like our visitors, like we want to take them right to the murals or the tiled staircases, i mean, these are the places where that beautiful little garden, you know, in the business district, these are the places that we feel pride, pride , a pride of place. so, yeah, thanks, commissioner benitez. cool. thank you for your presentation. and i concur with commissioner herbert as well that doing these kind of things is really brings like an identity to the neighborhood i think is really great. one of the things you had mentioned about this was that trying to speed up the timeline. i'm just curious what the current timeline is from application to approval. and what do you hope to shave that down to? i've sat in some of these merchant meetings as well where we're just constantly waiting and just waiting for approvals. but what what's the current timeline now and what's your projection of what you hope it can eventually

be? yeah, you know, it depends on the project. as you can see, there's a range. is there? yeah i mean, for the major encroachment projects like a tiled staircase we've worked i mean like jen and i and others have worked a lot with community groups around todd staircase, acs, and because major encroachment projects have to go through the board of supervisors, i mean, we say it takes 12 to 18 months for that to happen. and then honestly, during covid, like everything just super slowed down, you know? so we do have groups that like have been working on this for two years and we have a community challenge grant and then the community challenged grant has is a certain time limit in terms of their funding requirements and then they get out of compliance with their cg grant. so i mean, those are things we were listening to. i mean, for major encroachment, it's because they will not have to go through the board easily, see that being cut in half. i can't say right now. you know, there's i mean, honestly, there'll be a little bit of a learning curve when we introduce this. this will be the it'll be

a new portal, a new staff and so on. but we feel like we know the we know the projects well. so it's definitely going to be considerable different now the other caveat i would say is that especially i mean tier one will just happen automatically, but for tier two and three, where it has to go to other departments like definitely going to the arts commission, you know, a lot of them go to the arts commission, but there are many that go to mta and puc and we can't really control how long they sit there. we can encourage them and we can put we can put pressure on them or my colleagues can put political pressure on them. so we can't you know, we're not in charge of the full process. right. director tang, thank you. i just had a question that i know has come up repeatedly, so just perhaps we could get some clarity on the record. but if a single business owner wants to get string lights on, just say the tree. the one tree in front

of their shop. it seems like it would be tier two too, but let's say it's just a business and it's not a nonprofit, it's not a cbd. it's not a merchant association that's going to be applying for this permit with the single business owner. have to apply for this permit for $500. yeah if you could just clarify that situation. i believe i believe it would be tier one actually, because it would just be in front of one property owner. so so, you know, so one of the things is we're talking about property owners. we're not talking about tenants. so that so that's actually really important. and particularly because many of your business owners are tenants, they're not landlords. but the way this is set up in terms of liability and legal is around property owners. so and we haven't we haven't had city attorney look at it in terms of tenants and business tenants. i mean, that is something, you know, as jen mentioned, it might be something we could do in trailing legislation or a question because when it comes

to, say, things like building permits that are usually pulled by business tenants, what they'll do is they'll have to get a property owner sign off. and so is that something that you would contemplate then, instead of, i don't know that it would need to be trailing legislation, but more of implementation that a small business owner would need to come in with a property owner package. i think we want to keep this as simple as possible. so i think that's one of the questions that we need to answer in the regulations. i think yours is a very specific question to string lights. that's on a public tree. and so i think if we do do a registration process, it's a little different than installing, say, a little library. so i think we'd probably have something a little bit different for that depending on whether or not you know, that string light is going to be plugged in or if it's just battery operated. i think those are like the nuances that need to get worked out in the registration process. but i think to your point, we would like to make it as easy as possible to not have to require, you know, all these different types of regulations if it's not necessary. so if it's not like a

permanent structure, i would venture to think that they would not necessarily need permission from a property owner because it's not necessarily on their property, but in the public right of way and would need to get permission, so to speak, from public works. i hope that answers the question. that would be ideal to make it as simple as possible. so. so again, you're going back to this. you're saying it's most likely tier one, not tier two, or we have to we probably have to. look, i would say that our intention when talking about string lighting and tier two is we were looking at lights down a corridor. we haven't really addressed like specifically lights in front of a store like one one property owner. so we'd have to sort of look at that during the regulations piece. okay. yeah, it would be great because that question does come up a lot. so we have to be able to provide the correct information to people. yeah we will definitely look into that and get back to you. great. i just had a few questions. see for any, i think mostly for tier

one, but maybe you could speak to the other tiers as well. what is the response ability for like neighborhood outreach for the applicant there? there's actually not for tier one, there's no neighborhood outreach as a private property owner, you can if you self certified that you're within the safety and accessibility guidelines, you can register for those types of on those types of projects. yeah. okay and then tier two and three would be whatever it is that they're currently kind of in right now. currently, you know, and this may slightly change maybe when we get to the regulations, but i'm not expecting it to. is that currently we're working off of what the arts commission requires because most of these are like murals and tiled staircases and they require letters of letters of support. they don't require noticing. okay. so and for the string

lights, you know, i was involved in a lot of the string lights that kind of went up in the city. we did our very best to keep them very safe. no, i know. i love them, but i'm just saying it from like from just my public works hat. i'm just saying there was not a permit. full disclosure. but you know, one of the questions is just that the string lights tend to go like through several, several blocks. right. and so and the projects also tend to kind of grow also. so sometimes, like what we've seen and this is where i think the small business component comes in is like what you were saying, the merchants associations or different neighborhood groups get involved and it's kind of like, you know, this stretch, these five blocks, get the string lights and they're like, but like at that time, nobody else wanted the string lights. but then people see them and they're like, now i have string light envy. like, how do i how do i get string lights? you know? yeah, exactly. so the project kind of like grows in scale. so the $500, are

we looking at a $500 for the first five or the first phase of the things and then the next people have to pay another five? where does this begin and end? yeah, i think it's a great question and something we've thought about, but we haven't figured it out. i mean, i think again, like if you go back to the goals we're trying to make it easy and sort of low barrier. so we're not looking for places to like raise, raise money. so i don't i don't know the answer to that, but i do understand it. i think what might become more complicated, what could become complicated for certain commercial corridors, is like, who's taking responsibility for it. so like the merchant association of that corridor may have decided like, okay, they put up five blocks and then like the stores in the next two blocks want them to. those folks will have to convince that merchant association to extend and extend the lights because, again, they have to be an organization. okay and that's

and that's so that there's like an ongoing commitment in terms of maintenance and liability, because if it's just one person who's it's like even it's like a beloved business owner who's been there ten years or whatever, we don't know what's going to happen in three years. and like they may decide to leave or whatever. so we need it to be an organization. sure. um and also in terms of this one stop portal, i'm wondering, like i don't know, i don't want to hearken back to something else except i do kind of want to bring it up is like the, you know, is the graffiti kind of situation for i think it's kind of like where you opt into the program. and then so small businesses had to opt in to opt in to this program. and i think department of public works was that the right agency? yeah would then be able to come out

to certain to the corridors that are in within the legislation to help with graffiti removal and that i was super excited about it. but then the sign up for the sign up i don't know. i don't think it's really a portal. it was like a fax machine. i think. i believe there was like a fax component to it. so i'm just a little bit like a little bit like unsure about this idea of a one stop portal. this was this was last year, if you remember. i know about this program. i didn't know about the fax machine. i do know it was not involved with that program. i did hear that the sequencing of the rollout was not as smooth as it could be, is what i've heard for the opt in graffiti. like we weren't quite ready when people wanted it to start. that's all i can say. i think our desire and jen and i have been working on this a lot is like we've been pushing this forward. we really

want this to happen as soon as possible. we've got like five tiled staircase that are like ready to go and they're super frustrated because it's been like two years. so we want that to happen for them. and on the other hand, we want to do it right. so we want to have that portal in really good shape. we want the regulations and really clear shape before we before we launch it. so, you know, we're trying to balance that. we're trying to balance doing it well and doing it now. okay. well i look forward to seeing the one stop portal. i think that would be really great for all of our agencies and i appreciate that you put that as a priority for this. and if there's any possible way to pass a post-it to whoever's in charge of the fax machine, because i just really want to find out about that fax machine. i want to make sure small businesses like can take advantage of this because graffiti removal is so onerous for somebody to have to come and open their shop and have to remove graffiti from their from

their storefront. and there are still people getting notifications of violations of like graffiti, which is super disheartening in this type of environment. i think you were here earlier when you know, businesses talked about some of the challenges that they're having this year as well as in the past previous years. and it's like it's literally those little things that drive people mad is that, you know, if you're already trying your very best every day and then you get like a notification on your door that somebody's graffitied your place and that it's your responsibility to then remove it asap. you know? so i think, um, i think those kind of things are the things that we hear daily. and i'm sure you hear as a, you know, and so i'm hoping if we can get rid of that like low hanging fruit, if we can get people logged into a one stop portal and like register your business for graffiti removal, that would be amazing. so i know . okay. yeah, i will. i will

definitely go back to my folks and ask them about that. yeah just a little post-it note on their desk. would be amazing. thank you. any public comment? are there any public commenters in the room seeing none. seeing no public comment, public comment is closed. thank you so much for your presentation. thank you for having us. item six legacy business program fund conceptual framework. this is a discussion item the commission will review the current legacy business program, grant structure and discuss a strategy to make improvements to the existing rent stabilization grant. presenting today we have richard carrillo legacy business program manager with manager with the office of small business. welcome back, rick. testing good. good evening, commissioners. richard carrillo legacy business program manager with the office of small business govtv. i have a powerpoint presentation today. i'm going to present a proposal

that the office of small businesses proposing to do that, i need to provide the history of the legacy business program and its grant programs. there are about 20 slides in the presentation. i'm going to try to keep the presentation to about eight five minutes. the legacy business program in san francisco has a history that dates back to 2012. a business in union square gold dust lounge was being evicted, which led the nonprofit organization san francisco heritage to create a legacy. bars and restaurants program within their organized mission by 2014. businesses throughout san francisco were being threatened by escalating rents. in march 2015, the legacy business registry was created by the board of supervisors through a city ordinance to be eligible for the registry. a business must have, number one, operated in san francisco for 30 or more years with no break in san francisco operations exceeding two years. number two

contributed to the neighborhood's history and or the identity of a particular neighborhood or community. and number three, be committed to maintaining the physical features or traditions that define the business. in november of that year, the approval of proposition j on the ballot created the legacy business history preservation fund, which created two grant programs that i will discuss in greater detail the legacy business program is like a toolbox filled with different tools to help longstanding businesses continue and thrive. there are four categories of tools or assistance that we provide legacy businesses, marketing, promotion in business assistance grants and legislation. to today i'm going to talk about grants. as i mentioned, the legacy business historic preservation fund was established by a vote of the people and approved by

about 57% of the voters in november 2015. the fund consisted of two grant programs the rent stabilization grant and the business assistance grant. the legacy business, historic preservation fund has its own section in the administrator code, section two, a243, which is separate from the legacy business registry and section two, a 242. this is important why i'm bringing it up at this point. the rent stabilization grant is an incentive for landlords to provide long term leases to legacy businesses. landlords apply for and receive the grant. the grant pays up to $4.50 per square foot, up to 5000ft!s. so 1000ft!s would be $5,000 per year. and 5000ft!s would be 22,500 per year. grant applications are accepted year round. a biennial consumer price

index adjustment has been added every two years since 20 1719. the business assistance grant was a former grant for legacy businesses as it paid up to $500 per full time equivalent employee up to 100 ftes. so. one fte would be a $500 annual grant and 100 ftes would be a $50,000 annual grant biennial adjustments were also added to this grant. note that there were no dedicated source of funds associated with property mission j. the mayor generously included $1 million for grants and $20,000 $20,400 in the annual budget for the legacy business. historic preservation fund starting in 1617. unspent funds rolled over to the following year. the board of supervisors generously provided additional

funding during several fiscal years. there were numerous issues with the business assistance grant. it was not related to rent, which is generally the purpose of the legacy business program. it was difficult for applicants to produce payroll reports needed to confirm their data. it was extremely time consuming for office of small business staff to review payroll reports. there was a big difference 100 times between the smallest and largest grants, and it was not worth the time and effort for micro businesses to apply. after two years, 16, 17 and. sorry, i might have that wrong. 1718 is what it should be. there was no longer enough money to fully fund both the rent stabilization grant and the business assistance grant. since the rent stabilization grant was determined to be effective strategy to stabilize long

standing businesses in san francisco and the business assistance grant had so many challenges, the sbc directed the office of small business in november 2018 to quote, prioritize the funding of rent stabilization grants to qualified landlords over other grants paid through the legacy business historic preservation fund. the business assistance grant was, in effect only for four years total and was discontinued after fiscal year 1920. the office of small business created a replacement grant for the business assistance grant that we call the legacy business grant. it differed between renters owners was for profit businesses and nonprofit organizations to create four categories of grantees. as for profit renters receive four x for profit property owners received three x non profit, renters received two

x and non profit. property owners receive x. x is determined by the amount of money available and the number of businesses within within each of the four categories. the grant is simpler, easier, less time consuming and more equitable. all we implemented it as a one time grant with $400,000 from the board of supervisors in fiscal year 2122 to create a new grant program, it required that we moved money out of the legacy business historic preservation fund. that is important. with regard to my presentation today, so i highlighted it in yellow because the legacy business historic preservation fund was created by a ballot initiative. we could not create a new grant program within that fund. today the rent stabilization grant for landlords is the only available grant through the legacy business program. the office of small business can encourage landlords to share rent

stabilization grants with their legacy business tenants. but we cannot require it without going back to the voters. approximately 60% of rent stabilized grant landlords share some or all of the grant funds with their tenants. however, 40% do not. on november 2nd of this year, the san francisco chronicle featured a thorough front page article by caleb pershan about the rent stabilization grant and its slightly one sided nature how it favors landlords over legacy businesses and how some landlords share the grant with their legacy business tenants. but some do not. the article was an inspiration. it got me thinking since the rent stabilization grant is the only available grant that the legacy business program currently has. is there a way that the office of small business could require that landlords share some of the grant funds with the legacy businesses without going back to the voters? and this is something we've been pondering

for several years, is there is. we could create a new legacy business program fund in the administrative code. this is possible because the legacy business historic preservation fund did not include a dedicated source of funding. we could then place the funding we receive in the annual budget in this new legacy business program fund, the city attorney's office advised that this is acceptable. i'll note that this would of course be dependent on support from the mayor and from the board of supervisors as required board of supervisors action. the new legacy business program fund would give the office of small business flexibility to create rules that otherwise would not be possible without going back to the voters, we would replicate the rent stabilization grant as a new grant within the new fund with slight changes to the rules and a new, slightly different name. the business stabilization grant. the new grant would come before the sbc

as an action item. ideally at the january 22nd meeting. as we're working on the budget for the next fiscal year, the board of supervisors would have a review period. we would slowly phase out the existing rent stabilization grant over time by accepting re application for the multi-year grants, but not accepting new applications. the proposed rule changes for the new grant would require that landlords share at least 50% of the new business stabilization grant with legacy businesses and eliminate the special contingency contingency provision that landlords are allowed to put into the lease, which allows a landlord to cancel a legacy business lease if the landlord does not receive $44.50 per square foot through the rent stabilization grant. thank you for your time. i'm open to any questions. thank you very much for your presentation.

i see director tang don't have a question, but just want to thank my staff. obviously for this great proposal, as we all know that the legacy business program, when it was first established, was very well intentioned. but like many things that are established through voter initiative, it makes it really hard for us to change things later on. if we find that there are issues. so this was a creative way, i think, around this problem that we see, which is we would love for more of the funding to go directly to the hands of small businesses. so again, thank you, rick, for coming up with this idea. yeah, thank you. um oh, commissioner herbert. sorry well, yeah, thank you very much. and, um, has. has there been any conversation about the timeline or the, um, how how long the legacy business needs to be

existing like it's been, is it always been 30 years for the. yeah. that would be pertaining to the legacy business registry. so that would be 2a2 42 in the administrative code and we wouldn't be would not be making any changes to that. okay. this would just be pertaining to the grant program. got it. but yes, 30 years, there is an exception for businesses that are between 20 and 30 years. if the business is at risk for immediate risk of immediate displacement and getting on the registry would help them. so one of the businesses that came before you in item two today was to 35 years old and eligible for the registry. great. okay. thank you, commissioner ortiz, cartagena thank you, rick, for that. that was great. and i love that, you know, article got your brain working and trying to like live up to the intent and the spirit of what we initially, you know, try to work with the legacy business. my question is

just just because, you know, like as a commissioner. so i know you said the city attorney said it's okay to do and then we're going to bring it up to the mayor and the board of supervisors. i ask because i don't know, but like, is this kind of standard practice for things? i just you know, because if the voters even if it's wrong, i just some kind of responsibility to make sure that we are following the voters wishes wrong or not. you know, more on that. i'm with it. i'm with the whole thing, you know, but i just commissioners i just want to make for due diligence purposes. we feel this is consistent with what the voters wanted because they wanted two grants, one for the businesses and one for the landlords. and so when the business one dropped out, it was a little bit one sided. so we feel that this is, you know, going with the will of the voters, which is to have some of the money going to the businesses and some going to the property owners as well. thank you. um, i guess my question is so right now, this is kind of

like the conceptual framework of the legislation on how else i mean, can we be helpful, i guess, is this helpful for you to kind of just see like how i don't know how we feel about it? what is the next step? i guess is um, yeah. yeah, this is not an action item, but if you definitely have any problems with it, you know, i would expect that you would say so. so we would definitely take that into consideration. so, you know, feel free if you have any issues to let us know at this point. and we are going to bring this off to create rules for the grant. and we'll have a ten day notice period for that and we'll bring that to the january 22nd meeting. um, so it'll be identical to the rent stabilization grant, except for those two items that we mentioned. so that would be an opportunity where you can approve the rules. and if you need to make a motion, okay. um, vice president ziziunas, thank

you. thanks for that, uh, really helpful presentation. and like my co commissioner said, thank you for always thinking about this program and taking it so much to heart. um, i know we, we had some, you know, political involvement from our board and at different points in time with this program. and i want to make sure that if we are asking for them to reauthorize funds at one point or if we're asking the mayor to authorize more funds at one point, that we're also, um, you know, keeping them updated so that we don't get more bad press or whatever. um, so how can we, um, like we said, make sure that, you know, there's alignment with, with how we intend to get this funded? uh, i guess. i think katie could see

him, like, trying to figure out the answer to that. but i just actually, i think it also goes to the previous question, but so in addition, rick mentioned the rules and regulations and having you all see that. but actually, i just want to reiterate, it does require a legislative change. so this is going to be an ordinance that will be drafted, that will be before the board of supervisors that then also needs to be signed by the mayor. so it's going to have a robust public process for it to actually take effect. i mean, it's good it's good that people are vocal and passionate about this program, but i just know that our commission has been in the position before where we've had to you know, i want to make sure we're getting ahead of their political will, you know what i mean? so that we don't get have to do too much back and forth on this. and our ideas are in line. that's all. that's great. also, you know, early on when i first started seven years ago, you know, i was making regular presentations to the commission just reporting, i think it was like every other

month. um, so, you know, now that everything's, you know, going smoothly, you haven't made those presentations. but if you ever want me to make a presentation on, you know, like an update on everything that's going on, i'm always happy to, to do that. um, i'm really big on transparency and appreciate great communication with the commission and feedback from the commission, so i'm always happy to do that. likewise, if there's something we need to relay that you can't, we're, um, all hands on deck for this. thank you both . great. well seeing no other commissioner questions, is there a public comment? any public commenters in the room? please stand up. seeing no public comment, public comment is closed. thank you very much, rick. next item, please. uh, item seven approval of draft meeting minutes. this is a discussion and action item. the commission will discuss and take

action to approve the september 11th, 2023 draft meeting minutes . commissioner is any questions or comments on on the minutes seeing no seeing no questions. all right. any public comment on the any comment on the meeting minutes? none seeing no comments , public comment is closed. commissioners can we take a motion to approve the draft meeting minutes? i'll take a motion to move moved by commissioner dickerson is there a second? i second seconded by commissioner herbert. i'll read the roll. commissioner benitez. commissioner dickerson. yes, commissioner herbert. yes. president huey. yes. commissioner ortiz. cartagena. yes. and vice president ziziunas

yes. motion passes. great. next item, please. item eight general public comment. this is a discussion item allowing members of the public to comment generally on matters that are within the small business commission's jurisdic ation, but not on today's calendar and suggests new agenda items for future consideration. any members of the public who would like to make comment on items not on the agenda see seeing no public comments. public comment is closed. next item please. item nine director's report. this is a discussion item providing an update and report on the office of small business department programs, policy and legislative matters. et-cetera thank you and good evening, everyone. so of course i would like to join everyone in welcoming our newest commissioner, commissioner benitez, welcome. welcome. so since our last meeting, i know it's been a while. we had a few

cancellations. just wanted to officially recognize former commissioners tricia gregory and tiffany carter, who have since left the commission. but of course, i know we all want to join in thanking them for their service here on this commission. and of course, we will also work on getting the remaining vacancy filled. the other update i wanted to share with everyone and you probably read in the news as well, is that we did have a requirement for midyear budget reductions from the mayor's office. this year. this is on top of additional budget cuts that were asked of us in preparing for the budget, going into this fiscal year. already i know there was a lot of talk about our legacy business program earlier in the agenda, and i wanted to note that the office of small business is portion of that reduction was $95,000. we have a very small budget. it's about $3.3 million, which is mostly for staff, but there is a million of that for the legacy business program

because we have nowhere to cut it. meaning even if i were to cut all the money for staplers and paper, it still would not have met our reduction target. and so we had to cut from the legacy business program. but the good news is there was some unspent funds from previous years. so our legacy business program was still whole, but we did have to take originally for the fiscal year 23, 24, roughly $395,000. and then for fiscal year 24, 25, approximately $400,000. so again, this is not something that we wanted to do, but there really was nowhere to cut or else we would have to cut our services, essentially our staff. so we wanted to make sure you're aware of that. and we are hearing that there will be more cuts that will be required of us heading into the next fiscal years if things don't improve. so we are anticipating some instructions on that on that

part. next, in terms of a legislative update, i just wanted to share good news that the small business permitting legislation that we worked on with the mayor who sponsored this legislation and we ended up with six co-sponsors. this would is the one that would make over 100 changes to the planning code to make it easier for people to get through the permitting process. just one of several efforts i want to say this is not the only thing that will make things better, but it's this legislation is up for final vote at the board of supervisors tomorrow, and it already obtained 11 zero votes last week. so this is really exciting. we're hoping for this to be signed into effect shortly and hopefully take effect in mid-june, be the next legislative item is something that supervisor preston introduced recently. and this would waive permit fees for banners if there if it's applied

for by a nonprofit organization until the end of 2026. i want to say. so that is new legislation that was just introduced last week. so it'll still take some time to make its way through the process. and then also so again, i know it's been a while since we've been here, so just wanted to do a very, very quick high level review or recap of apec, which as you all know, took place here in san francisco during the week of november 12th, the largest global event hosted by our city since the united nations charter was signed here in 1945. so, of course, along with it came a lot of challenges as our office, along with food, try to work upfront with the us secret service to really understand the impacts that would be caused, especially to small business owners due to the security perimeters. so we try to understand it, convey that as well as try to promote the small businesses throughout the entire city and in particular those

impacted by the security perimeters prior to and throughout the event and even afterwards. we have done merchant walks and also corresponded with other businesses that have reached out to us through other means to talk about what it is that we can do to better support them. not like apec aside, but really we know so many businesses are still recovering from the pandemic. so what can we do to generate more foot traffic for them and with a lot of people not going into the office, it's really hurt a lot of the businesses in those areas. so that's ongoing work for all of us. and if you have any ideas, suggest questions, recommendations. we'd love to hear that in our office. and then lastly, just more on a fun note on behalf of ric, i wanted to share some heritage happy hour events that are coming up that you're all invited to these are events put on to celebrate legacy businesses. so they are held in legacy businesses. so the one coming up this thursday, december 14th, is at leap lounge

in chinatown, down at 916 grant avenue. and rick, i forget what time they start. i apologize. 5:00, 5:00 pm they start so again, december 14th, leap lounge, 916 grant avenue and then the next one after that is january 11th at pop's bar, and that's at 2,824th street. and then i'll just give a third one here. february eighth, in case you want to mark your calendars. it's at the irish bank bar and restaurant at ten. mark lane so those are all my updates and happy to answer any questions. thank you. commissioners. any questions. commissioner ortiz, cartagena. two comments. thank you for the work on the legislation with the mayor. i know you did a lot of work, especially in my community, so i appreciate you for that. director and thanks to kerry, i forgot to say that. kerry yes, appreciate you both. rick. thank

you for those heritage. they're fun alcohol and getting to know each other outside of here. it's always fun. so awesome. vice president ziziunas thank you, director. i know that different community groups have put out their own surveys around apec. is there a central place in which feedback is being solicited? is it, um, in terms of, um, i, i think a lot of small businesses are under the impression that there will be like a mitigation fund or something like that. is there a way we can more clearly relate to the small business community? what um, you know is being solicited from them and where that information will go? yeah. thank you for that question. we have actually received through our office and in general several surveys or feedback from all sorts of businesses in the area. so we do have those on

hand. and i know supervisor dorsey had also solicited feedback as well. i will say this, this was a very challenging event, but there was no money set aside for mitigation. i also i want to remind the commissioners that every day our office hears about challenges in all parts of the city. so whether it's an mta project that has impacted an entire corridor for months and months and months to, let's say probably a lot of mta, but there are lots of impacts. again also i mentioned pandemic earlier, right? and a lot of people still have not been recovered fully from that. we hear across the board in average of sales being down 30. right depending on where you're at. so um, although again, i recognize how significant it was for the businesses that could not stay open during apec. there are so many needs out there for. so we're constantly thinking about how is it that we support all the businesses throughout the city and we just don't have enough money to go around for

everyone? and i just mentioned the budget cuts that are coming, right? so um, all that to say that, you know, all the money that was set aside by the city and that was privately raised by donors was mostly to meet the requirements from the white house and the state department around all of our obligations as a city to host apec. so security for the venues that had to hold all these meetings and events, but really mostly security. um, the fencing, you know, all those things that really, you know, allowing the first amendment activities to occur. but keeping everyone safe that that's, that's what costs the city a lot of money. and so all that to say those costs, you know, aren't are the fund isn't available at this moment not to say i don't know what will happen in the future if they are able to find some funding. but that's the status at this moment. commissioner herbert so thank you. and um, so, uh, was the

overall thought that apec was beneficial for san francisco or is that too is too much of a pointed question? i think it depends on who you ask. i think from city government leadership standpoint, it certainly was really meaningful just to see the tone of how international countries, you know, how they view san francisco and what they reporting back in their home country. media outlets, really important in terms of drawing tourism here, not just for the short term, but really the long term. and that perception of what san francisco is has really hurt us quite a bit. so in that standpoint, from that standpoint, that's really important as well as the leaders was. and there was also a ceo conference that happened at the same time. so trying to draw investors to san francisco as well. so from the broader perspective, yes, it was helpful

for san francisco, but of course, this is not to say that it was terrible experience for the small businesses within the security perimeter. like we totally recognize that. thank you. so, um, i just had a couple of comments. one was also to welcome commissioner ron benitez . and i don't know what would be an appropriate time if he wanted to say a few words. i know that maybe he i got to say a few words when i first started. i don't know if that's something that we can do that at the commission or reports item. okay next one. just one. yes just to give them a few minutes to prepare, uh, address to the public. yeah. the state of the nation, according to commissioner ron benitez. um i also wanted to reflect my

deepest gratitude for our co commissioners, commissioner tiffany carter, and for tricia as well. so, um, yeah, i'm. i'm glad that they're, you know, they have, i know everybody has other things to do. and so i appreciate all of you also to give your time to this commission. um, and, oh, you know, i wanted to say on apec that i appreciate the way that you've been looking at this, because i, you know, it it's an indicator to me. obviously the concern around apec as well as concern around transportation mitigation, concerns about any other sort of like out side kind of larger project in impact kind of thing. like what? how those impact small businesses. i think the biggest indicator for me is

that that means that we're so close to the edge right? like small businesses are not working with a big buffer there. and so things like that, you know, one weekend, one week of revenue is a really important. it's important to their bottom line. it's important for their survival. and you know, i think it's good to look at it in the bigger picture because this was one of the questions that we asked in our survey during pandemic was really how much of a buffer do you have? how much cash do you have in the bank to get you through the next week, the next month, the next six months? and ideally, i mean, you should have several months on hand, right, of cash on hand to be able to cover your payroll expenses like all these different things. there are best standard practices. but if you look at like our san francisco businesses, many businesses, and it may not be even across the board, but many businesses are living with very little cash on

hand. and that may be same for residents as well. right. and so i think for us, like these are all you know, it's hard to see because oftentimes it's like people come at us with a lot of like their own issues. right and for us as a commission, it's really seeing kind of the patterns and where what are the bigger levers that we can enact in order to help, uh, you know, create more long lasting change versus being a help desk for everybody. i mean, i appreciate that. that's what you, you guys do for everyone. but i definitely see that that's something that you consider in your thinking. did you want to. oh, yeah. actually i just want to thank you for raising that because let's just say that there was a mitigation fund for apec, right? as an example. but there might be some structural issues with a business as, as you alluded to with many of the small businesses we encounter. so we give them a stipend for one month to cover rent. is that

going to help them long term? right. we want to make sure that whatever the structural challenges are, we can assist them with that so that they can be here for the longer term, not just so that we can help them survive one more month. so i think that was, you know, that's that's part of my point of we want to make sure that, yeah, we're looking at holistically what can we do to drive more foot traffic, to get more of that presence of the business out there so that people will support them and how do we bring back, you know, with the lack of office workers, how do they generate new customers then or maybe rethink and pivot their business a bit so those are all the things that we want to help businesses with and i think are more important for the long term stability. right. well is there any public comment on the director's report? no. public comment. public comment is closed. next item, please. item ten. commissioner discussion and new business. this is a discussion item allows the

president vice president and commissioners to report on recent small business activities . make announcements that are of interest to the community and make inquiries of staff. um commissioner ortiz, cartagena. thank you, president hui. i wanted to report regarding the street vendor van that went into effect on november 27th from 14th street to cesar chavez on mission street. um, i want to give a thanks to glitch event. cuatro. they were not part of the band. however, they reacted to find accommodations for the vendors that were affected and the glitch team. they worked through thanksgiving, actual thanksgiving to get a space ready in time for the band. so there's two locations. one indoor location at 2137 mission, which is in between 17th and 18th. and then gaia has another location on 24th and capp street, the former vaccination site. um, and there's still tunnel space. it's not full

despite whatever the media says. and i want everybody to support the vendors shop there if you can. we had an awesome event on sunday. it was packed. it was fun. we had cookie decorations. santa claus, snow, you know how to throw a party so it gets lit. and also supervisor ronen is also providing some financial assistance, direct financial assistance to the vendors that were affected. so it's a lot of community work with the supervisor there and we're trying to mitigate the impact it's had on street vendors. and the ultimate goal is just to gain control of our streets again. i mean, the mission, i grew up there and it was never like that. it was never like that. and our brick and mortar merchants, they're just they're thrilled. like the street is clean. our elders could walk. you could get off the bus. now you know, children are not scared. so i also want to thank the mayor and department of public works because they've thrown a lot of resources behind

it. and it's working and it's working. and quality of life in the mission is improving. so i appreciate everybody. if i haven't named you on this, sorry , but i appreciate you to. bless you any other commissioners? um i guess i will go with my. oh, actually, you're. oh you have your state of the nation. sorry i'm very happy to be here. no, well, you know, this is my. my first meeting, so just obviously soaking it all in, um, kind of getting the gist of how everything works. but i really, truly am excited to be here. you know, i've known about the commission for a long time. and finally being able to represent rent the neighborhood or represent now, you know, help represent the majority of the corridors from a different perspective. is something both really exciting and engaging and a challenge that i'm willing to take on. um, so yeah, i'm just

really, really excited to, to be here and learn from all of you and work with all of you collaboratively, you know, on this commission, um, trying to think if there's anything else, you know, as you guys know, i work closely with our divisadero merchants association, so we just got a new president on there. so just trying to reestablish and revitalize that neighborhood. and so really excited to partner with them again to get everything really excited in that corridor. so that's a big news. oh, yes. also went to the white house this weekend. for a reception. it was a holiday reception with vice president kamala harris. our relationship with her, though, has been, you know, we were fortunate to meet with her for a small business roundtable with other aapi businesses back in february. and from then on, it's always been a really great relationship with her staff. um we were invited to apec, obviously to watch her keynote. we were recently invited to a reception at the white house holiday reception, which turned

out to be a california delegation really did see jenkins there. supervisor stephanie from district two and just a few other people that i recognize from san francisco. and then i realize, oh, this is a california get together. so while it was fun and exciting, it was great to just kind of get to know everybody on from a different perspective in a less, more formal setting. so it was really fun. but, you know, there's still a lot of work to do and so, you know, that's where i was this past weekend, turned it into a fun little weekend getaway, too. so we had to take our daughter out of school. but we said, hey, we'll take pictures in front of all the monuments and show it to your teacher. so she's got her own history lesson that she's excited to share. it's amazing. see, this is what small business can do. you can go to the white house. this is amazing. run list, run list. well, my news sounds really not that exciting. no i you know, i think going

back to what we were talking about, i don't want to go back to another agenda item, but presenting a new agenda item, looking forward into the new year. i'm wondering if a survey or something like that might be possible to put on kind of like new agenda items. i know, you know, for the past couple of years we've been doing the small business survey, but now i'm thinking perhaps we can hone in on not having so many questions, but we can get like five questions or something where it's like. for us to be able to take a pulse on how small businesses are doing and that way we can see year over year change because i love making goals that are like, you know, lofty, you know, why should we not dream big and think like, can can 99% of businesses or whatever, 100% of businesses

like, you know, i don't know why i left out the 1. i assume a 1% maybe doesn't want to participate. that's why. so but a 100% of businesses, you know, they should have enough cash on hand to be able to feel really comfortable that should something happen this weekend or something happened in the next week or two, whatever it is, doesn't set them off course. so i think these are some goals that we can, you know, put next to best practice courses and kind of see, you know, i think there should be a line moment, i think, between what we want for the businesses in our city with like overall best practice is and oh vice president susan did you want to go now or after her or did you have a comment? i actually had a response to oh, sure. oh, good. you're making me think also about how we maybe should survey unless this is already happening. but at the

success centers, the renaissance centers, you know, our sbdc. i'm curious, like if there's a space, maybe the sbdc does this convening or is there a way that we're getting a pulse from our small business service providers . to and maybe we can, you know, better identify, um, how we as a city can support those in the field that we're referring small businesses to. i don't know, maybe there's some trends we can pick up from that angle. i would, i think would be interesting. yeah. um, director tay, i'd be happy to look into that. that would be our colleagues over at wd within the community economic development division that holds the contracts with the technical assistance providers. so would be happy to ask them as well as our colleagues at the small business development center. and

any other things. i don't have any other things to report. i think that's it. okay, great. oh, public comment. is any anybody here want to make public comment? no public comment is closed. next item, please. item 11 adjournment sf govtv. please show the office of small business sli we will end with a reminder that the small business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the economic vitality of small businesses in san francisco. if you need assistance with small business matters, continue to reach out to the office of small business. this meeting adjourned .

please welcome to the stage omer dvd ceo be hero and our moderator for this discussion, helena humphrey. presenter of bbc. well, good morning to you all. great to see so many of you here for this session of fireside conversations talking about leading with vision to create sustainable change. looking at but not limited to how we ensure that our food systems are sustainable ones going forward. great to have so many of you here with us talking

about what's at stake. i'll just give you one number to start with. 9.8 billion, that's what our global population is expected to swell to by 2050. so the question is, how do we make sure that we feed those 9.8 billion people while making sure that our change is sustainable while confronting things like climate change? so i'm delighted to be joined today by omer, the ceo of b hero, to talk a little bit about that urgent change that needs to happen. omer, just to start with, you're here in san francisco. i know it's an offbeat way to start this conversation in. i hope you had a good cup of san francisco coffee to start with every morning, every morning. and you know where i'm going with this, because that cup of coffee, to boil it down to its very essence, it wouldn't be possible without the honeybee population, a population that is under threat right now. tell us more about that. so i think you

touched exactly the point. the population is growing. we need to produce more food in the next 50 years, we will need to produce more food than what we produced over the last 10,000 years combined. so the challenge about food production has become a big thing for everyone. and i think one of the things that we did not realize in the early days is how much we depend on bees, even the fact that we call them honey bees focus is on the fact they make honey and this is what we use to take away from them when they were foraging and pollinating plants. so we took the honey as a as a sweetener. but as the farming system becomes more intense, this in order to support the growing population, we need more pollinators. ears and bees is considered to be the most efficient one. so we hear about mortality rates and the fact that more than 40% of bee colonies collapse every year. but we do not necessarily realize how it's going to affect food production and if we do not introduce technology in order to support beekeepers efforts and farmers efforts to get good

pollination, we're going to see the result at some point. i mean, this is nothing to do really with, you know, a critical shortage of honey in the future. that's not what we're talking about. obviously but just talk about your role in that, what you're doing at bee hero to try and address that, using and harnessing the power of innovation, technology or ai. how do we confront that? so i was privileged. i didn't come from the from the beekeeping industry or i wasn't an expert in the bee world. i came from cybersecurity. i'm a serial entrepreneur. i founded and sold two companies in the past and six years ago ish i met itai, one of my co-founders, who is a second generation commercial beekeeper, and i was quite keen to understand why we don't see a lot of technology in this space. like what's what's the missing part? and we decided to try a different approach and focus on low cost sensors. the fact that the technology is more

affordable, the fact that we can use strong models, generative ai and different tools in order to build prediction models and early detection models allowed us to focus on low cost systems that can can be installed in every single hive over the globe and to make sure that we get real time indications about what's happening. so we developed those sensors. it's a small unit, as you can see. it goes into an existing beehive. so you don't need to adjust or change the way that beekeepers are running the operation by collecting things like temperature, humidity, sound and so on from inside the hive. we can understand whenever the queen is in danger, whenever you have a problem of mite starvation situation, viral disease, bacterial disease, all those stressors and things that will cause those colonies to collapse if not addressed on time by the beekeepers. and since then we practically became the largest players in this industry. being the largest pollination provider in the us as well as in australia, and expanding to more apac countries

now. i mean, that sensor that you're showing is fascinating. it works, if i'm correct, using the internet of things is the technical term here. when i think about beekeepers, though, i mean, i think many of us think about people, of course, with their rudimentary technology smokers wearing their white suits, for example. so how do you make sure that something that's small but powerful, like that gets into the hands of people who need it to really make that change? you know what i'm trying to get at here is accessibility. i guess. i think in in one word, it's seamlessness. so like we need to make sure that the solution that we introduce to more of an old fashioned industries is seamless to the way that they used to run things before. because if you need to involve market education and they need to adjust the way they do things, that's where the adoption takes a lot of time. i mean, we've seen companies in the arctic spec, the agriculture technological solutions is not

something new. it probably started 810 years ago with small irrigation to save on water. and so on in areas where we require significant operational changes, things do not scale fast and trying to build a startup to be an entrepreneur in this environment, you have to show scale. you have to make sure that the solution is seamless, that it doesn't affect the way they do things, so they can only benefit if it drives the value that you claim to bring. and once they see the value, this is what you start to see the change in the way they operate. well, on that point, then i guess of value, i, i do also want to touch on the economic point of this because as bees and bee systems and colonies, i mean, they seem to speak to something that's almost a allegorical when it comes to capitalism anyway. right? this is the beginning of organic ization, whether, you know, the worker bees, the honey bees, the queen bee and so on. so how does something that makes pollination more efficient? what is the economic payoff? can you point to that and say this is

how it's worked for farmers, this is how it's improved harvests. for example? sure. so maybe to give the context, because most of us are less familiar with with the pollination industry in general, we have millions and tens of millions of hives moving on trucks at nighttime, several times a year, bees to visit different crops. bees are physically brought to the fields during the bloom time to ensure good coverage of bees. when we are facing low quality beehive, unhealthy beehives, dead colonies spread in the field. first of all, we spend a lot of efforts of moving empty boxes in a way, and then we are not getting the pollination activity that we need. so the first focus using the systems is to ensure that the hives that are being introduced to the fields are strong, healthy and efficient. and the difference between a dead colony which will pollinate zero flowers to a strong colony that can pollinate tens of millions of flowers a day is

very significant. we've seen impact on when it comes to cross pollination on the quality of fruits. you get bigger apples, for example, you get more outputs. if we talk about berries and if we talk about almonds or even canola seeds, those are the things that can we can see increasing outputs as well as quality. and we need to ensure that we tie all those things together. we support the beekeepers all year long in order to introduce strong colonies to the fields, and then the farmers can benefit from this critical short time frame of pollination that can be done in the most precise and efficient way. and just tell us a little bit about the markets that you've managed to roll that out, which countries are we talking about? where have you really managed to see that positive of ecological environmental impact? so we start this. it started as a project, right? we started this project in israel six years ago, and once we got some good sense

that the technology, we can make a difference, we came here, you know, it's california specifically is probably the fifth largest exporter of food in the world. and we want and you see a lot of advanced technology used in this food system. so we were keen to address pollination and we started with the almond industry in california, which produces 80% of the almonds in the world. and started to spread since then we've seen drop of approximately 20, 27% drop in mortality rates of bee colonies. we've seen increase in outputs in different crops almonds, apples, cherries, canola berries, sunflowers and so on. and once we gain some confidence and work with some strategic partners here, we decided to expand geographically . so we spread to australia recently and now we're in discussions with places in south america where we can introduce a lot of value to the avocado industry and the berry industry. so tell us more then about that collaboration. i mean,

technological advancement never operates kind of in a in a vacuum without it, right? essentially so, you know, bee hero, as i understand it, was founded by not just veteran beekeepers, but of course, serial entrepreneurs like yourself, data scientists by ologists. i think it's a really interesting group of people to come together, not perhaps people who had worked together every day. so what kind of collaboration did you get with governments, whether that is subnational, national and so on, and what kind of leadership is needed on that? i think i think it's a critical point. when we first started to look into this space, we reached out to some of the universities, some of the governmental institutions to try and see what was already done. like people are looking into colony collapse disorder for 12 years already. so like, what was done? how could this be addressed? opted by the by the commercial domain and we learned that there's just lack of data. no one was in a position to build strong and solid data set

that can support the entire research community, whether it's governmental institutions or whether it's, you know, universities and so on. so the first effort and basically the first year and a half of the company was about building a data set and it keeps building. since then. so it became huge. and now that we have access to a to the data, we are building collaboration. one of the collaborations that we recently built was with with the usda. so the usda is dealing with one of the threats of the spread of the asian hornet into washington state. and they were looking to identify the spread. it affects bee colonies. it affects other pollinators. and that's what we learn and that we have data samples of wasps attack and we can deal with it in order to support their efforts. and now we're doing a project with the government in order to mitigate this risk. and we've seen many projects with different universities across the globe. and i think this is what we need

to put more efforts. we need to pull in more leaders in this industry. so we can share with them our data and they can introduce value to the to everyone. and on that point, then, what more do you think? i mean, you're playing one role, of course, in food security and sustainability, but what more do you think that other leaders, businesses as governments need to be doing to pull their weight essentially on one of the most critical issues of our time? i think a lot has changed. so if we look at the farm bill, for example, in the in the us, it's a good example of how the government is supporting the adoption of new technologies into the food system. the last farm bill was approved five years ago. i think. how much changed over the last five years in terms of the technology, the affordability of the technology and so on. so that's where we are spending efforts with governments. official not specifically for big hero for

different companies and not specifically for pollination, for different solutions that can drive improvements. we are talking about a slow moving industry in effect that is seasonal aspects. there is a it takes time to validate the value proposition, sometimes even years. the startup ecosystem is not built for it, right? it's built to move fast. you need to show double or triple traction every year. otherwise, investors don't really know how to assess. you and this is where i think we are getting a lot of support from governmental officials. and we need to see how we can leverage those new technologies ages to at least be explored by the commercial domain because things that works well in the lab might not necessarily translate well into the commercial domain. and that's a critical part. and talking about those challenges, i mean, startups by their very nature, they start out scrappy me. i mean, you're a serial entrepreneur yourself. it doesn't mean to say, of course, you know, there are always

challenges, right? what were some of those challenges that you faced? and i guess what what advice would you give to other entrepreneurs, innovators coming to the field of sustainability about what they need to do to successfully carry out and bring their vision to fruition? i think in a way, california is a very interesting example because, you know, you have the silicon valley where a lot of tech is coming from, and then you have the central valley where most of the food is being produced in in the in the state. and people in central valley might not look at people from silicon valley in a in a in a good way like, you know, they don't they don't have boots on the ground. we don't really understand what we're doing. i think that's maybe a critical component that one of our co-founders is, is the boots on the ground. he's the guy that grew up in this industry. a second generation person. and, you know, for us, it introduce some some challenges in the early days that you don't even

think of like how can i be accepted in the central valley as a silicon valley company. so those are the small things i think my advice would probably be around get out there early on. you know, we tend as tech people and i'm a tech guy to spend time in the lab to make sure that we can do what we want to do and then we want to come to the market with something that is strong enough, with a proof of concept that we can stand behind. there are so many things that we've learned out there in the field that we didn't know. even though we have someone that grew up in this industry that the sooner you get out there, the more mistakes. i would say you avoid. and every mistakes in this space might take another year to solve because you might need to wait for the next season. so when it comes to agriculture, when it comes to food production, get familiar with the market as soon as you can and use as many design partners as possible. we got general mills to join be

here in the last funding round. the amount of activity that we've been doing with them in order to support our efforts to improve our solutions is significant. talking about biodiversity, you know something that we don't do as a revenue stream. we're not selling anything related to biodiverse city, but that's a big threat that they want to address. they have the resource to address. we have the tools to support it and that navigates some of the priorities that we have within the company. so your message then essentially would be get out from silicon valley. if you're there, for example, in your case, get out into the central valley, get your boots on the ground, get your hands dirty, put yourself in a beekeeping suit, open the hives, spend the day sweat. understand what they're going through. small thing. you know, a product guy will develop an app for a beekeeper, not even thinking of the fact that you're covered with honey. you have gloves like it's not going to work. you're not going to take your phone to the field when you when you work

the bees. and that's just a small example that, you know, working in the office, everything looks clean, everything is easy going to the field does reception, honey bees, gloves. it just doesn't work. i think a powerful message, a reminder to us all, there from omer davidi, ceo of bee hero. thank you so much for chatting to us. thank you so much. thank you. thank you. welcome to the stage, ambassador ertharin cousin, ceo and managing director. good to see you. food systems for the future . ambassador, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today on the stage. you have a distinguished career in humanitarian affairs, not least as the executive director of the united nations world food

program. i want to start with something that you've said, something i personally found inspirational. you said when it comes to ending global world hunger for yes, we can, an inspiring statement. you say? yes, there we go. yes, we can. something people need to be reminded of when we see die dire situations all around the world. before we get to the how and your vision, i want to touch on the obviously, we understand the why, but i want to understand why that's your personal mission. oh, mia, i was born this way. i was simply born this way. i keep saying i'm going to write a book and that's the title. i was born this way. the reality is i grew up in a family where i had a mom and dad who were committed to making change in the world. my mother was a social worker. my dad was a community organizer before barack obama made it popular to be a community organizer. and we lived in the heart of lawndale, which some people would call a

ghetto or slum, but they wanted to live where they worked to provide an opportunity for their children to know how blessed we were. and so we were the place that people could come. they were always balls and bats that anybody could take, but you always had to bring them back and they wanted us to understand because we had been given much, that there was much we were responsible for doing. and i always say my siblings grew up and went and had real lives and got real jobs. i made a career out of trying to help change the world. and in doing that, it's taking you, of course, right across the globe, places like dadaab refugee camp, for example , where you've said before, unfortunately as laudable as the humanitarian affairs system might be, we are still feeding the same people. drought after drought, because that is the cycle of what we're facing right now ever increasingly, unfortunately, due to climate change. now, i say this coming from the humanitarian system myself. i was a former un worker and it's true we do end up

giving very sadly food assistance to the same people, the same women trying to feed their children essentially. how do we change that and what is your vision for changing that so that we don't have to keep giving assistance to people who are living in on the front line of climate change in this way? well, we know that that of the 800 plus million people who are food insecure today, those who are are in an acute famine situation. four out of five of those people are victims of conflict. they are living in conflict situations. and the challenge is providing for resilient food systems in conflict situations. what you need is peace, right? in order to do that first, as we look at ukraine and what is happening in the gaza in gaza and with israel today and other places, afghanistan and other places around the world. but we also know that climate is driving a

great deal of this. and some of the most vulnerable people in the world live in climate vulnerable places. and the opportunity there is to invest in sustain able food systems that will produce, use food that is required to feed families not just during at the time of harvest, but all year round. and the last piece i would say is we need to realize that when we talk about building sustainable food systems, we're not just talking about in sub-saharan africa, we're talking about in countries across the apac region, including here in the united states, investing in the food systems that will continue to produce the food that is necessary to support that 9.5 billion people that you talked about by 2050, when fao tells us that we need to increase food production by some 50. and just on that point, i mean, you

mentioned there it isn't just sub-saharan africa because the knock on effect of this is food insecurity around the world. this country here in the united states, 35 million people, food insecure, are right now. right now, 35 million people are food insecure. and let me give you another number, 41 million people here in the united states who can't afford a diverse, nutritious diet on a daily basis. and that number is part of the 3.1 billion people globally who can't afford a diverse and nutritious diet on a daily basis. but what we need to realize is that the food system is complex. and so the answer is will require a diversity of solutions. it's not about about just sustainable agricultural production on the farm. it's also about sustainable livestock management. it's about agro forestry to support our environment as well as growing food in those places where our forests are so important. it's about alternative proteins being

a part of the solution. but not the only solution. so i can go. it's about aquaculture and having sustainable aquaculture systems and all of these is all of the work across, across the food system, across the value chain is necessary century to ensure for that sustainable durable food system that i talked about whether you're talking domestically here in the united states or across the globe. ambassador, you just sketched out there, i think a five pronged, at least approach to those shoring up sustainable food system. how do you do that? a in terms of collaboration and then, b, let's talk about the money piece right? it's expensive, but how do you do it and where does that money come from? the money will come from not just the traditional sources. you have government subsidies. and what we subsidize becomes very, very important. and right now, we many would

argue that what the $700 billion in agricultural subsidies globally is being misspent. not all of it, but we can can repurpose subsidies to support smallholder farmers to support regenerative agriculture to and carbon sequestration. we can support the investment in what is often too often called specialty crops, which are more fruits and vegetables, oils. and so repurposing subsidies is going to be quite critical. but the other quite critical finding initial source is private sector . what we need is private sector investment in the food and agriculture system. only 4.8% of all climate finance dollars from the private sector goes to ag and food for point 8. yes and food represents 25% of the greenhouse gases emitted every year. and it is the most the system that is most vulnerable to climate change. why is that right? why is that? i look out

on this audience and ceos and say, why is that? the reality is that agriculture and food have already have always been deemed risky. we're not sexy enough as transportation and energy, but we are critical because even if we did everything that that that has been suggested on the in the energy system, if we and transport nation if we don't address the challenges of the food system, we won't meet the paris accord. the agreement of the paris accord. well, you're making a strong sales pitch for it. but you know, just looking at the fact that our global food systems right now, i think they contribute something. around 25% of the world's greenhouse gases. and you can correct me if i'm wrong on that point. and we know that through climate change that ends up having a disproportionate impact on those who are then on the sharp end of it as well. i mean, it is one of the great ironies of this system

right now. so how do we make sure as well that that capital flow goes to those people as well? how do we advocate for them who are really particularly in lower income countries, for example, disproportionately impacted? right. we will need to invest in our smallholder farmers. we have 500 million smallholder farmers who feed 80% of the of the population in the countries where they work. and farm. and so by investing in those smallholder farmers is going to be critical. but it's also important that we invest in large farms. we invest in farms that can efficiently and productively and sustain, stably, provide the food that is necessary to support not only the food needs of the populations in the countries where they harvest, but also to support our global trading system, our global agricultural trading system is quite critical to our food security system. and we're not just talking about globally as well. i mean, when

we look at the united states, for example, i think it's something around 50,000 black farmers who remain in this country operating there. less today. wow. that was at the end of 2021. we had 50,000 black farmers in every year. we're losing more and we're losing more because of the lack of access to the financial resources that we're talking about here today, the lack of access to the tools to ensure that they can compete at less than 1% of the agricultural production that is traded, that is sold on an annual basis in the united states, is produced by black farmers and it is not because blacks don't black farmers, the black farmers don't want to produce less. it is because they have not had the investment, the access that is necessary for them to produce. we have the same thing with women farmers. we know that women farmers don't have access, whether you're talking here in the united states or you're talking globally, they don't receive the access that is necessary to the finance, the

tools, the capacity building. but we also know that in particularly in sub-saharan africa, some 40 to 60% of the farmers, depending upon the country, are women. and if women receive the equal access to the those tools and finance and capacity building that you would increase production by 20% just on the african continent. so these are not problems that are that are are limited to any one country. but that's what's exciting about conferences like apec, because you bring together economies who are looking to work together to develop the responses that are necessary at the global level to ensure that at the national level, there, implementing the policies and the regulations that will support their ability to assist their their, their, their farmers and their populations. well, let's touch a little bit about then the international impact and an upshot of all of this. then, you know, we're here at apec. if we start to get a

handle on some of those challenges with some of the suggestions that you have mentioned, is the upshot of this more global trade? i would hope so, but global because global trade, global trade with rules is rules based, global trade, open free, fair, free and fair trade that's governed by rules, rules regarding the environment, regarding human, human rights, as well as the protection of jobs. you and i had a similar experience coming in here today where there there protesters outside who believed that this type of a conference is detrimental to livelihoods in countries around the globe. i would say it doesn't need to be that way that we can we must have a global trading system that supports ports where food grows and where food needs,

where imports are required. but that system must be based upon rules. it must be open when in 2007 to 9, when i first became us ambassador, we had a high food price crisis because of trade embargoes in in some of the apec economies that affected net importing countries in west africa as far away as west africa and haiti. even and as a result, there were a discussions and that that resulted in a better understanding of what was necessary to keep trade open. and during covid, when all you had a few spikes with some problems, they were minimal. but you did not have a disruption of the global trading system. and as a result, babies didn't go

hungry. you didn't have have the kind of while we had higher food prices because there were other problems that we could talk about that affect were affected by that covid affected in the in the in the in the trading system, even local systems. but at the long line trading systems of commodities stayed open. and we were able to ensure that the level of problems that we saw between 2007 and 9 did not occur as a result. and that's the what you need is that type of partnership and based, as i said, but based on rules ensuring that there is access to the food that is necessary to feed the global community. well, i just want to talk about where, lastly, the civil society comes in on. we're talking about those. well fed babies. i've read that you've also, whilst you were at wfp, have said that

you didn't want your your media team to take pictures of amazing hated babies, babies who were ill because of lack of food, because you wanted to show these chubby, well rounded babies in lower income nations to show, yes, this is possible. we just need to have the commitment. so i guess my question to you is and cognizant of the fact that i myself am a member of the media, what role does media need to play in this? what role does academia need to play? the whole roster of civil society? when we talk about a food secure world, we need a narrative that. says ending hunger is possible no matter where we are in the world . and that narrative starts with the media, the and those with voice who are willing to tell to speak truth about about women and families is in tough places

around the world. because i have been, as you noted, in somalia to sudan, south sudan, yemen, every family feeds their baby first, whether it's in on the west side of the city of chicago or it's in in the it's in the a slum in in nigeria. right. and the reality is what we know is that when people are given the resources to support their ability to grow the food that is necessary or the resources to purchase food that is affordable and available, that their children are fed, that they have the opportunity for prosperity and that's all that is. the that narrative is too often not told. it is we lean into the story with the baby, with the flies on their eyes and we fail to

magnify the mother who is working hard every single day to feed her children, no matter where she is in the world, no matter how tough it is. and they're not asking us to save them. they're asking us to help them save themselves as well. ambassador, thank you so much for bringing that narrative and that reality to us. ambassador cousin. thank you. thank you. thank you so much. please welcome to the stage, michael punke, vice president for public policy, amazon web services. as. ambassador great to have you with us today. great to be here. we've been hearing from our various panelists already about significant challenges in agriculture. you and i are sitting here having this discussion, obviously not as as farmers, but nevertheless, i

mean, the scale of the problem is clear. whether that is talking about pests, whether that's talking about varying crop yields, which we're increasingly seeing now in the face of climate change and coming to you, amazon web services, how can we harness something like artificial intelligence, something like remote sensing to make a meaningful impact to those people on the front line, taking on those challenges his day after day? so one of the really fun things about my job is i get to travel around a lot and i get to see the way that a technology like cloud and artificial intelligence is used by literally hundreds and thousands of creative companies around the planet. and having the ability to have access to those powerful tools. i'll give you an example of since we're talking about agriculture, and it was really interesting to hear the conversation already today, but

there's a swiss company called one soil that uses a combination of satellite technology and artificial intelligence. it's all brought together on cloud to help farmers do a micro analysis of their land. and so when it comes to things like trying to figure out how much water needs to be put out on the land, how how does the seed need to be distributed, how much fertilizer needs to be put on the crops or pesticide they can make remarkably micro adjustments in those calculations as and instead of just doing a big broad cast of water seed, fertilizer, pesticide, they do very micro adjustments. s so that's one example of where artificial intelligence is being used with those kind of remote sensors that you're talking about in agriculture. another example in a slightly different

area, a company called brainbox, that helps commercial entities better use their hvac systems, heating, ventilation, an air conditioning and again, with these kind of micro remote monitors makes adjustments throughout the course of the day. and when this technology is applied, these companies are finding that they're saving 25 to 30% on their hvac bills in a matter of a couple of months. so those are just a couple of examples i think that are interesting of we tend to hear about, you know, companies like chatgpt when it comes to something like like like i and certainly that's an interesting company. but there are thousands of these companies that a lot of people have never heard of that are doing these really interesting things. i think those are two pertinent examples . how widespread is the use of something like that? the uptake, and i guess you know, how do you

scale up something like that? and that's something i've been saying to all of the guests today. how how do you make it accessible? well, for the people that could probably actually most benefit from it. so the whole concept of sort of democratize access to technology is in many ways the most fundamental thing that cloud brings to the table. and i'm not a i didn't come to this job as a technology person. so i've had these various little aha moments as i've been learning about cloud over the course of the last seven years. and one of the real aha moments for me and understanding why cloud is so important, it was in a description i heard about what the typical chief information officer had to do before cloud in figuring out how much technology to literally buy at the beginning of the year. and when it came to a ceo at the

beginning of the year, were trying to figure out how much data to storage and processing capacity do i need for the for the coming year and before cloud, you had to buy your own server. and we all remember the server kind of down the hallway that one of our coworkers kind of was responsible for managing. and the trick of that is if you bought two little stores, storage and processing capacity, you risked your system crashing. if there was a spike in use. and we all remember examples of when systems crashed because of a spike in use. and so oftentimes to avoid the risk of that system crashing companies would go to the other extreme. they would buy too much technology. and what cloud brought to the table is the ability to rent capacity v to storage and processing capacity, literally by the

minutes and if you if your use spikes up, you rent more for that period of time. when it spikes down again, you rent less and it solved a really fundamental problem. but your question was about how do we create more access to the technology? and one of the reasons i mentioned that is because it was particularly hard for small and medium sized businesses to solve that problem because they don't have a lot of capital right? they don't want to miss invest their scarce resources. and so that ability to rent, access to storage and processing capacity is really fundamental. so that's one aspect of it. and talking about that point of renting access, for example, what i am hearing over and over again in all of these pieces with regards to innovation is data. huge amounts of data overwhelming to a layman like myself, if i think it's fair to say so. just help us understand how something like generative ai for example, can pass these reams and reams of data to in a way that has a

positive ecological benefit. so if we're talking about decarbonization strategies, for example, if we're talking about predicting flood risks, how can we use that? how can it be useful? well, let me give you a couple more examples from sort of actual real world applications, because i think they help to it's also abstract, but otherwise. and so some of these real world examples i think make it more understandable. well, so one of is customer is qantas airlines. and obviously we figuring out how much fuel to use, how much by which path a airplane should follow. is rich with potential for applying data about all sorts of different factors at the same time and what qantas is doing is using ai to literally be able to adjust their flight

paths as they're flying and make these small adjustments in order for the fuel economy of the plane to be better and so, i mean, that's a sort of a real world example of fuel conservation. in another example, i love, i live in montana where forest fires are a real issue in the summer, like like here in california, india and california is using a combination of drones and ai technology to be able to monitor our vast forest lands and detect outbreaks of forest fires much earlier so that they can be they can be fought much earlier. so there's all sorts of examples like that. you're talking about data sets. there's a company in my hometown of missoula, montana. i like to hike, and there's a company called onyx o x that that makes a map

technology that you can carry on your phone. and it literally has access to all of these public domain maps that you can carry around with you. you can be in in remote backcountry areas and see on your phone where you're at and keep yourself from getting lost. and so let's talk a little bit about the impact of that then between on ai and the cloud in terms of you've gathered this data, you've collected it through ai, it then lives on the cloud and, you know, how can that be used by whether it's subnational national governments, for example, in terms of, you know, predictive strategies? i mean, it must be of use for that kind of thing. sure and i mean, there's a lot of different aspects about the interrelationship between the cloud and ai, between the cloud and generative ai. i mean, the way that i think it's most useful to think about it is the

cloud is really the foundation on which all sorts of other really critical technologies that we think about and talk about all the time are built. so ai is built on the cloud's capacity to store and process a lot of data. quantum computing is relies upon cloud. five grams relies, relies upon cloud. so cloud is really the foundation for all of these other things. and then when you talk about generative ai and especially the ability to train these large language models that that in particular requires very large amounts of storage and processing, capacity processing capacity. and so cloud is essential in that. how borderless is something like cloud then and you know, and how

important are cloud first policies you know particularly cognizant of the fact that we're here at apec and going beyond, you know, the us and member economies. so how borderless is something like cloud? well well, certainly the ability of data to move around the planet is a big part of the idea behind the power of the internet in terms of the ability across national lines to have access to the to the world's data. that's what we think of with, you know. ww world wide web. it's all it's supposed to be world wide but i'll pick up on a couple of different pieces of your of your question separately because you mentioned you mentioned cloud first and cloud so-called cloud first is a policy that many governments around the world have embraced based as a way of saying that in their own operations they will default to using cloud first because of all

the advantages that cloud brings to the table in terms of security efficiency. et cetera. and one of the really interesting dynamics we've seen is as covid resulted in many governments around the world accelerating their use of cloud tools in the face of crisis, and which i think historically you see lots of examples of a particular crisis accelerating necessity, being the mother of invention. exactly. yeah, exactly. and so during covid governments were all grappling to help their citizens be able to work remotely, be remote education, have access to health information and in some cases, by necessity, they turn to cloud as a way of doing that more efficiently. cloud first, as i said, is kind of a step of making that a much more deliberate and less reactive

type of, of policy prescription. and it's important because it signals that the cloud is a safe way to store and process data. well, let's touch a little bit on the collaboration part in all of this, because it never happens in a vacuum in terms of technological advancements. so how does amazon web services collaborate with other stake holders, be it business, government and so on, to make sure that these technological advances are impacting ecologically in a positive way when it comes to the environment. so there's a bunch of different aspects of that question. i mean, the starting point at amazon, i think when it comes to sustainability is, is our climate pledge, which we undertook a couple of a few years back, a pledge to meet our paris obligation of being net carbon neutral ten years early.

so instead of 2050 meeting that by 2040. and then we invited. other companies to sort of join us in that pledge, recognizing, of course, that it takes it takes a broad community to truly have impact. and so more than 400 companies have joined the climate pledge since amazon took that initiative. there's in addition to companies making their own pledge about accelerating their their their work, there's also all sorts of cooperative initiatives between the companies. so for example, amazon works with rivian, which makes green vehicles. we bought 100,000 delivery vehicles, green delivery vehicles from rivian. so there's that type of cooperation. but but one thing i really want to emphasize when it comes to sustainability is the significance of cloud itself as a as a way of achieving our

climate goals. one thing we can almost certainly predict is going to happen is the amount of data that all of us around the world use is going to continue to increase and we all carry around in our hand a cell phone in which we see minute by minute our own personal uses of data. and so that that use of data is going to increase. and so having the most efficient way possible to store and process that data is going to be critical to the planet's ability to meet our climate goals. cloud and because you can think of cloud in a lot of ways as the public transit of data and the storage of storage and processing because it's pooling this effort. so it's the equivalent of taking taking the bus as opposed to the old

fashioned way of driving your own car to work having, which is having a server down the hallway. so there's a great study that shows that the day that that entities shift to the cloud, their carbon footprint for data storage and processing drops by 80, which is an incredible number when you think about it to get that type of a gain from a single change like that. lastly ambassador, i think we've got about a minute left and i've got a massive question for you, which is basically with your extended background in international trade and as the us ambassador to the world trade organization, how do you envisage envisage opportunities, you know, to harness ai to boost global trade? you know, keep everybody fed at the same time and contribute to green economic growth? what's a huge challenge? and in many ways the global trading system has not exactly been shrouding itself in itself

in glory in recent years in terms of demonstrating the ability to help problem solve. but i think there are, on the one hand, it's critical that if we're going to see the benefits from a technology like ai, which i believe very much are there, we have to also address at the same time the legitimate concerns that people have about a powerful technology like ai. and governments have a huge role in in in in helping to build that trust. i think there are some really positive signs lately with things like the white house voluntary commitments on ai, which have been carried forward also by the g7. i think that is an organization that is that is helping to build that trust. but it's going to be difficult as the group of countries gets bigger and bigger to not have it be the case that we slow down

the speed at which we move or watered down the quality of the standards. so that would be the challenge for groups like apec. yeah, huge challenges and opportunities, hopefully. ambassador, thank you so much for being with us. thank you. great to talk. thanks. thank you. thank you. please welcome to the stage the honorable gavin newsom. governor, a pleasure to meet you. thank you so much for being with us. good to be here. a real fireplace. it's amazing. nothing less for a proper conversation. what is this by the way? ouch. i haven't asked that question, but glad you have . hello, everybody. governor newsom, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us as a particularly busy time, of course, for your state. we've been talking about sustainability, of course, california is a state that knows firsthand the challenges of climate change. so we were talking about the pressing need for sustainability in the food

system, but it's not limited to that of course, all sectors of the economy. tell us about how your state is dealing with that pressing need and your vision. i mean, it's if you don't believe in science, you have to believe your own eyes. you know, california in the last few decades has been burning up, heating up. our children are choking up. unprecedented droughts, unprecedented wildfires, record breaking, this record breaking that we are the tip of the spear in terms of the impacts of climate change. but also the tip of the spear in terms of the strategies to dramatically change the way we produce and consume energy. and just for folks that may not be so familiar with california in relationship to the issue of sustainability, our leadership goes back to the 1960s. it goes back to then governor ronald reagan. it goes back to the

partnerships that we advanced with then-president richard nixon. california created its first regulatory body, the california air resources board, in 1967, and we became the first state in the united states of america to regulate tailpipe emissions. and that's allowed us to maintain in a position of leadership. and it has allowed us to maintain in a position that has some permanency, regardless of what happens in washington, dc, california is able to establish a constancy in terms of its regulatory structure that allows partnership. it allows investment point and allows a sense of certainty that policy will accelerate our change to change the way fundamentally we produce and consume energy. so i'm really proud to be part of that, proud tradition. in terms of california's environmental leadership. but there is no state again, the western united states, but particularly california, more impacted by the consequences. absolutely i want

to touch on something you just said there, saying regardless of what happens in washington, dc. okay. so you have your policies in your state. what kind of pace do you think all states need to be moving at? how aggressive does it need to be? how quick does this change need to happen? well, we're the pace car of modern environmental movement in the united states of america. we feel a deep sense of responsibility to be first mover. we love to say about california, the future happens here first. we're america's coming attraction. and when it comes to policy setting on the climate, we have no peers. and the remarkable part about california's leadership again, is established under the framework of our regulatory body, the california resource board, is that we impact that the influence other states, the power of emulation success leaves clues and what we've been able to achieve in california is not only nation leading environmental policy, but the application of that policy has allowed us to dominate as one of

the most robust economies in the united states of america. and i think that's really the principal point. i want to emphasize here today. our economic success, california's economic success is not despite our environmental leadership. it's because of our environmental leadership. we're a large fossil fuel producing state that already has six times more green jobs than we do fossil fuel jobs. just think about tesla. tesla exists in california for a reason. it was the policy as we established that created the conditions for the kind of risk taking and investments that elon musk and his board have made and we've now exported that technology around the rest of the globe. 56 are headquartered manufacturing companies in the zev space, one of our biggest exports just in that space. we're the first jurisdiction in america to require all purchases of new vehicles to be alternative fuel vehicles by 2035. we saw then

other states follow that lead at the pace that's required of this moment. and that pace setting is to me, where the real opportunity lies. and i'll tell you, you listen to the president yesterday in our climate assessment came out, there was not a lot of good news in there. i mean, everybody needs to wake up this this climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis, period. full stop. it's the burning of carbons and we have got to get off our addiction in california is in the how business is. and we want to prove that we can do that and signify efficiently grow our economy. and we want to dominate. we want to dominate in this next great global industry. talk to me a little bit more about then your vision coupling environmentally sound policies and economic growth because, you know, to play devil's advocate here, some people would they could say, well, that's a challenge. it's a challenge to grow the economy in this way,

taking into consideration all of these factors with regards to sustainability, you've just said it's not. you're saying it's an opportunity for growth. yeah. talk to me more about that thinking and how you achieve it. the challenge is the status quo. it's bankrupting us. i said we're burning up, heating up and choking up. people are having a hard time getting property insurance that's impacting new home construction. the cost of living is going through the roof . taxpayers are getting fleeced every single year. i mean, how many billion dollar catastrophes can the taxpayers continue to absorb and subsidize the cost of inaction is the insanity of the status quo. i'm for the fresh air of progress versus the stale air of normalcy. i mean, this is the greatest economic opportunity that's ever been presented. so we have to disabuse ourselves of this mindset, this lazy mindset that somehow this impact it's economic growth. let me just give you a proof point. in 2021, we had 7.8% gdp growth in the

state of california. we're the fifth largest economy in the world on our way to be the fourth largest economy in the world soon. if you're from germany, we're right behind you. we're coming. we just took out the uk. thank you. brexit and in my no comment, that was a that was a shot that wasn't but the point is the point is you see i mean if your world your entire world is just gdp. and consider california in the last decade, consider california before the pandemic, five years before the pandemic, california outgrew all western democracies. in fact, globally, there was only one economy, and that was china. that outperformed the state of california. in the five years prior to the pandemic, as we were accessing generating these environmental policies. and i want to underscore that as we were accelerating this transition mission. so i just i call bs on this whole idea, which, by the way, is an idea that's brought, bought and paid for by the arbiters of the

status quo that are buying off politicians like me left and right. well, we all run out with our stale talking points. california is about innovation. it's about change. it's about entrepreneurial ism. it's about pushing out the boundaries of discovery and new thinking. and i want to invite the world to this state. and again, it goes back to the state of mind that i had in the reflection of your question. and in fact, being no matter what happens, i want you to all please understand this. no matter what happens in washington, d.c. we are a stable partner when it comes to investment in this space. the trump administration and let me call balls and strikes the trump administration tried to vandalize our leadership. we were involved in over 100 lawsuits with the trump administration, and we beat him back in every one of those cases . we will continue to maintain our leadership no matter what happens. and that, i hope, invites investor talent and invites the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that defines the best of our state. governor, talking about that

entrepreneurial spirit, you've spoken about the need for fast paced excel operation for leading the way. i want to ask you, how do you make sure that no one gets left behind in that as well? because we were speaking to our guests, ambassador carson, who was saying we have a dwindling number of black farmers in this country. we have 35 million people right here in america who are food insecure. when we look at california and we think of silicon valley innovation and then we look at the central valley, for example, and we think about the agriculture there and the challenges that are also faced there because of climate change. how do you make sure that no one gets left behind? well, that's the economy we've created. it was the left behind economy. that's why i want to disrupt the status quo and advance a construct of not just growth, but inclusion. and we build that in the answer is very specific. and it's not even complicated. you write it into the rules and regulations. we have the first fully functioning cap and trade program in the

united states of america. interesting a republican governor signed that legislation in the cap and trade legislation . when we require the cap and trade revenue to go back into communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the change, and i'll give you another example, very specific example we have and my staff hates when i refer to it as the saudi arabia of lithium. but down near the salton sea in the southern part of california, we have enough lithium reserves to basically provide for a third of all the lithium in the world. we just established a new rule, making 100% of all the fee and tax revenue that's generated from the extraction of lithium has to go back to this community that has been disproportionately left behind and impacted by our fossil fuel economy. so you write the rules and regulations. again, we overcome applicate this. it's pretty straightforward and we address the mistakes of the past because we know the fossil fuel industry has socialized those costs and burdens on the rest of us. the health care impacts in the

central valley are disproportionately being felt in terms of bad air quality, asthma rates, life spans, all of those things are factored in in the context of all of our rules and regulations and our workforce development strategies and our long term sustaining mindset in terms of addressing, again, the inclusion part of that growth equation. i mean, as you sketched out at the beginning of our conversation, you have been on the frontlines of this in california. whether that is water scarcity, whether that is wildfires that you have been battling now for years, increasing in ferocity as well. how has that inspired your vision when it comes to sustainable leadership and taking that from it? sometimes from a local level and then bringing that onto you know, a global stage as well here at apec in it's rather extraordinary. i was in beijing recently and they had a similar experience at record breaking drought and then record breaking rain back to back. that's

exactly what happened to us this year, in december and january. and february, march, these pineapple expresses these atmospheric rivers, these rivers in the sky, massive flooding after three years of some of the worst drought we've ever had in our history, this whipsaw. but what you just laid out is more impactful. it's people, it's lifestyle styles, it's traditions that are being destroyed and wiped out in real time. grizzly flats, california almost wiped off the map because of wildfires. parrot california. 85 people lost their lives. the first time i met donald trump was on a flight to paradise, california, where he saw firsthand the ravages of mother nature. of course, he doesn't believe in climate change, but he again had to have believed his own eyes. he said it was a forest management issue. little simple in terms of his mindset. he also said we should rake our forests and that would solve it.

and i mean, actually in real life said rake them with rakes and just rake it 100 million acres. i don't know about your raking policy and your respective countries, but that was a serious, serious proposal from the president, united states, former president. he lost the election, by the way. so, look, when you when you go to greenville, california, it's gold rush town like grizzly flats and paradise. that's literally dropped off the map. it's pretty sobering. and the folks up there, that's trump country as well. a lot of concern of folks up there. and it goes back to my fundamental point. there's no republican thermometer in american politics or a democratic thermometer. there's just real life. and in california, what's happened and i think you're seeing this growing consciousness around the world. this is no longer ideological. it's not even through the prism of politics.

it's through the prism of people loving their families, loving their communities and are just desperate to address the ravages of what we have created in this manmade climate disaster. and the fact is, we have the tools. and i just if there's nothing else i want to leave with you when i say we're in the how business, we're through this. we're in this process. we call it the great implementation. we've moved away from ambition. i don't know what else we can do. i guess we could pull some of our ambition closer, but at the end of the day, i'm done signing any commitments to 20 this 20 that it's like we've got to go, we've got to invest, we've got to make things happen and i think people are now seeing that they're part of that future and they see a brighter and better future. and that's why i'm very enlivened and optimistic. did you take that message to china for example, you were recently there. tell us about those conversations. look, there is no you're never going to solve for the planetary realities of climate change unless california or rather the united states, in partnership

with california and china, work together. you know, just just think about the united states and china alone, over 40% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, just those two countries. and so it's all about partnership. i said it when we met with president xi. it's not a closed fist. it's an open hand and it's sharing best practices. it's partnership, it's scaling technology, it's sharing technologies. i left with the climate envoys you saw with climate envoy kerry and minister was down there at sunnylands, and we had an opportunity to showcase some of the work we're doing out here, some of the modern work. but but we've been trading best practices for decades between our respective countries and the planet is a beneficiary. our economies are beneficiary. so more of that and that's why i'm here at apec, more of that again, open hand, not a closed fist divorce. this is not an option. we have to live together and advance together across our differences. we'll manage our strategic competition, but at the end of

the day, we all share the same short moment in life. and the climate is the ultimate equalizer here. and to me, it's so foundational in terms of finding of connecting our fate and future in a way that should invite us all to the same table and so i was really proud of that trip up. i was really i'm really proud to see our two presidents meeting as we speak to trying to turn the page, turn down the volume a little bit. and i just think it's a very healthy thing. so you went there with a message of an open hand from california. yes. how was that received? what kind of partnership through the silly season of politics for folks that on that other side of the political aisle? that's one thing the folks that are actually thinking through stuff and i think received very well. it was certainly i don't know, i can't talk about how it was received in china. but you know, look, it was received well in my

home. i got four young kids. i got a seven year old boy, dutch. and you know what? i think he'll you know what? i think he'll be proud of his dad. 20, 30 years from now. said, you know what? you know, when i was his age, i was jumping under the damn desk at school because we're having some nuclear war with russia. i don't want him to grow up like that. i mean, literally, i lived through that anxiety. the late 70s and 80s. we all did. we don't need that. there's too much anxiety, too much stress in this world. i mean, it. and so i'm not interested in the situational politics. and that's why i was out there with the with president xi yesterday welcoming to california, welcoming back to the united states. we need more of that. and again, that's why i'm proud to see president biden down there on their teams working together. i'm looking forward to the readout today. and i have all the confidence it will be very positive and constructive. and so, again, our lives are too short and i really mean this.

the issue of climate presents itself as an opportunity for the commonwealth and it creates an opportunity for us to build trust and relationships, because at the end of the day, that's all that matters. governor newsom, thank you so much for being with us. thanks for having me. i appreciate it. great to see you. thank you. thanks, everybody. (clapping). >> like my brother who said we have 86 thousand 4 hundred seconds every single day. we have to make sure that we use every second critically in our lives to save lives it goes for everybody out there and 86

thousand 4 hundred seconds in each day how will you use your seconds every second what? make it count $86,400 in your pocket i'm going to bring up my brother and my homey and play for us, please. >> good morning, everybody. and good morning. >> lord, we thank you. everything we love you so much and please take the loved ones and families and kids and please protect our city. and the world always please. we love you and please bless us all always our families and kids. and our

friends at the so much love you lord, we thank you. amen. >> thank you. >>. amen. >> that's any brother right there. and having a conversation. >> yes. thirty days out in the community and before the mayor gets here i want to acknowledge several people everett butler did a life sentence in prison and had an outreach when 20 lifers that is doing the outreach for the - the pieces out here industry the guns this brother everett a phenomenal amazing brother 19 of his brothers and sisters who did a life sentence behind bars out right now that changing lives in the sense to end gun violence give the brother a hand

(clapping.) thank you. >> the mayor should be walking in shortly there people here and want to acknowledge the community-based organizations my brother damon front line and ground zero. >> my man and sister alex right there maybe 5 feet tall by 5 feet tall in the gang and matte scott where you at (clapping.) i got to shout out to nancy pelosi team where you at? >> you need it come over here. >> come on, man part of take place team shout out to governor gavin newsom where you at raise your hand.

>> thank you, guys, for showing up and our district supervisor matt dorsey where are you at before (clapping.) also all we got the private sector developers and sfpd and the mayor here we got this is what makes the community. what is is definitive by the enclosure buy back we have law enforcement we need you sold dart with our partners and all hands on deck this is what it takes for us to end begin violence all of us or none of us and here together in solidarity to industry and eliminate to anility this gun violence we had a gun massive shooting

curiodyssey yesterday will not end but one gun off the streets will save not only one life but with that said, i want to bring up our mayor london breed the leader of the city does phenomenal work thank you mayor for showing up. >> first of all, let me express my gratitude to united players and to rudy for all the amazing work this organization does. to elevate the conversation on a regular basis in terms of what we need to do a community as a city, as a society to end gun violence in the city and in this country. we are here and i come every single time because the

impact of gun violence the main reasons i got involved in politics in san francisco in the first place and growing up in the fillmore western edition community with ms. matte scott and other folks in the neighborhood we had a great community. yes, we lived in poverty and yes, there were challenges around hopelessness and despair but a community that was a community of people that port and loved one another. and if modify of that frustration we saw were many of those smiles, much of that joy, go from that to a lot of death and construction when we saw and a significant influx of guns in our community and we saw a significant loss of life and most of that loss of life was people who grew up with one

another and people who were connected in so many different ways, people's families were related and in almost every single instance was a a. man, i went to school them the playground and look at did photos i come here over and over i know everyone in the photos and people who have families, who is where kids are kids, who have loved ones, and the reason why we come here is because whether we have been impacted directly in our lives or not there is always a group of people who want to see us put an end to sense unless gun violence i can say so much who kids

nowadays are going through grouping the schools were our safe zones and now mass shootings at schools and elementary school and universities where our we went right away away from a community that was built with death and destruction go to school it is safe and that is no longer what have very come to people are fighting and developing in gun liberties in the criticize to protect people's right to bear arms over kids rights to live and survive this is where we are and this is why so many of us are here and grateful to our attorney general for being here because (clapping.) he carries are them the ability to use the law to protect and to

save lives against gun violence? the lesson we'll use to make sure that young people are growing up the city in the state and in the country in safe environments and appreciate especially all the mother here and folks on the community who are here, all the (clapping.) people and elected leaders because the people that you see here are the people that how always see here you also don't see what these people go on the ground every single day how they go 80 soovpt to fight against the laws that are imposed that make it easier for people to get guns on the street we're fighting the fight so many other things are the people who are the ones that show up that show up every single time and they're going to deny to be on the ground whether the councilmember detoy are there or not this is

good for the loss of one life to senseless gun violence so too many we'll stand behind and grateful to the cannibis destroy year after year we support we'll not give in and give up go up we can get those guns off the street and i'm looking forward to making sure that we are there the san francisco police department will be there and stand ready to do whatever it takes no questions asked to get guns off the streets of san francisco. thank you. (clapping.) right on. >> thank you, mayor. london breed. >> now jeer i'm not against the second amendment you have the right to protect your families but with the senseless gun violence going on people are not

mentally stable and have issues and guns more weapons because we - that's what we're not going to happen i got to shout out to my brothers to east pd and folks i see you, chris 10 and other brothers back there support the outreach team thanks where you are at. in the pen of our saving lives for the young people and elementary to the penitentiary and ground zero front line soldier so i want to bring up another part of our who stands with us the police. work with the police the police works with us and i'm a taxpayer and the thursday one to call the

police. so bring up our brother the chief (clapping.) (unintelligible). >> i know you guys are safe we're going to make you wait hold own all right. >> i'm being puffed up, up here hey i'm a survivor of gun violence shoot on howard god got me here to know right london those are our people those pictures photos don't discriminate you're black or white and whatever religion be one one bullet will tear up a whole community having said that i'm going to bring up the

attorney general (clapping.) (laughter). >> well, good morning and the say thank you to rudy and united players for bringing us together and the people in the room partnership with the collaboration that representation of the folks in government and advocates and yet again got together and reached out and a testament to the power and possibility of this organization but this coalition so i'll say thank you to mayor breed who shows up and rudy with united players and chief scott and brady at a governor gavin newsom office and nancy pelosi office i'm proud to stand with all of you and work together that's our path forward in partnership and coalition and fighting for one another as we

face our common challenges. we have a shared society and common picture we need to go forward and thank you, to the united players and missed the hope and the transaction and the rotation and the optimism and the rehabilitation and is packet forward to make our community better and doing the work hands counsel and cameras on and off i'm proud of that and thank you for it and let's move forward (clapping.) and, you know. i know in this room have folks who have experienced tragedy. and of the great sadness and seeing things and experiencing things we hope

people will never experience thank you, for the stories they're important and they're hard but necessary. and we all bring our experiences to our work. and part of why i'm passionate about gun safety and addressing gun violence is one, when i was first elected in 2012 had the authority and ability to make a difference and legislated out a month after i was elected to me one of the most unacceptable heart wrenching gut wrenching tragedies that ever occurred in the united states of happened it was sandy hook elementary school we cannot - what are when i doing? and the

fact that the federal government refused to act after president obama made it safer and helped us with the fear of gun violence made me realize we can't wait for the calvary we are the calvary we're the ones that b will get the work done. you see the calvary up here. >> (clapping) and i also want to share that when i was an essential member a few years ago later i was proud to have the incredible kids with the general manager request general a honor and privilege to have ask that title the most important title to me and father and when i was in high school we shared schedule whether they was

doing her homework and chores for my and my wife and lauren tebszed us to school hi was away and dad i'm in the school lock down because of that. and, you know. i thought what parents think thank you, how can i help? who can i call i felt helpless miles a away and stopped by the galleries we waited and i got on the side and texted to see what we could do and she was able to text back. and it is an all clear i'm safe and a sight of relief one of the lucky ones and

no one got hurdle and no child should go to school with a fear (phone ringing n really we're william in guns too many guns too much gun violence we can have power and agencies that have to change the feature. and that's what that movement is doing i'm grateful are you to take guns off the streets we'll never know but that's how prevention worked we don't need to know but guns off the streets so we're safer thank you for your work at the department doing everything we can we have a office of gun violence prevention programs making sure we're using gun violence and

hoping to keep our communities safer and have the gun violence laws it as challenge. that is an organized effort to strike down california gun laws thirty year ago one of the states with the highest mortality is one of the states we're the lowest it is because of our common sense gun laws have gotten us worth any to protect lives and health and futures. our magazine our as a result weapon ban struck down by a federal judge put those decisions on hold and we'll defend them to keep us safe in the hands of those who own a gun or prohibited under the law with mental illness or a retraining order we'll continue to do our part. and i'm proud of our team

can't do it alone we need for example, of collective action of the power that thank you, united players and we'll not stop i know you'll not stop. thank you. (clapping.) we have several more speakers i want to bring up the chief of san francisco police department my brother william scott (clapping.) thank you, rudy. you know. it takes a special type of person and leader to bring together people from all walks of life we have the leader of our city mayor let the record show and our attorney general and rudy and united players keep putting

in the work and the attorney general we lost three 2 people in is this state i'm talking about criminal gun violence and many, many oats took their own lives we got to get better we got to stop. if you have a gun, sitting around turn that in bringing it on saturday. because what we find a lot of the guns we recovered that are used in crimes they're stolen from people's houses and in the dresser drawer guns or night stand guns and they get stolen from cars. we got to get those guns off the street we have to saving lives everyone it effected twice this week on

college campuses and lock done people are slaughtered by guns and gun violence it affects us all we all look over our shoulders and puts us on edge we don't want to live like that support in efforts turn in our guns notice questions asked. but more importantly stabilize i want to thank the united player and all supervisors who do this work today in and out and thank you, firing leadership see you on saturday thank you all (clapping.) i have two more profound speakers you want to hear and the chief talked about mothers

this is matte george c scott so matte come up here and share. give her a hand you all (clapping.) thank you, rudy thank you, to our mayor. thank you to our chief and attorney general. our courageous rulers nancy pelosi and our leader governor gavin newsom for all he's done and each other in support us and eliminating gun violence in our nation and in our city. i love my son i lost my son 28 years ago from gun violence 28 years ago. i wouldn't have made it without my mother who is one

hundred and two (clapping.) i wanted to rei can't let and go back and get the person who did it i was urge and full of rage my mother said that's not the way it belongs to god you're going to have to forgive that young man western so ashen in order to move forward and the health of my mother and god can and prayers prayers prayers. i wanted to say month mother said to me we can stop 23 violence we can stop it night and 35e7 pier 50 open pain and suffering they need to hear the prescription god gave us in second chronicles

417 if any people which are called by any name wearing called pray and seek my face. yeah. >> and turn from our wicked ways. >> turn from the hatred and bigotry against luth and turley, inc., and people of color and turn from our wicked ways including children and turn from hatred and self hatred if we turn in our wicked ways we'll hear from heaven and he'll heal our land that's the prescription or right there love, love. love. >> because he loved us first we're here because god woke me up this morning he loved you and here today because we are chosen for is this fight and chosen

vessels we are connected heart to heart soul to soul, spirit for spirit for justice and merry and grace for ending gun violence in the nation, we can't do it lesson alone we need our elected officers and need moms and brady and thank you, governor gavin newsom for signing the brady bill thank you for that and signing the gun bill mayor london breed and with the legislation thank you, we're doing the work thank you to attorney general to make our schools safer. and this is about all of us or none of us i don't want another motto go to throw i continue to go there and 140u7b8d be having gun drills

but kids should be learning i want to go to congratulations i'm tired of going to few minutes i want to go so congratulations our children need to be safe and teach one that is about all of us or none of us, we have the elected officers and have our mothers and power in the room we are the power. we are the power we can stop that violence together. i know for a fact that we will one day if our nation be rid of the gun violence epidemic and educating our children will live free without someone shooting them going to church w to a prayer meeting or someone disgruntled shooting everyone my

heart goes out to the luth and turley, inc., this is how would you all people are hurting. hurt people hurt people but heal i want to thank each other for healing i couldn't stand here today without you have (clapping.) without all of you. all of you what you do every single day i appreciate 2 my brothers and sisters on the inside it is our r0e7b8d to lift each other up and hold each other because we can break this chain break this chain of violence in our nation and hatred in our nation yeah california is the leader we want to infect the whole nation that becomes contagious. let's pray you all we can unit with united players thank you, united players thank you. thank you, (clapping.)

all for what you're doing god bless i love you. >> give it up for matte scott (clapping.) thank you, we're to name a park after her matte scott what she did i'm going to bring up the last speaker before i do i want to ask everyone raise your hand show those brothers were in prison got a guy that are doing the outreach for the gun buyback and behind the walls that one 87 out after doing 25 and 36 and 45 years straight. og 45 years straight this. 1970 got out in

2013 right here against the gun violence. so don't wait until someone you know and love gets shot or hurt before have to do something. right now you heard me that's i want to thank all the brother and sister on the front line on ground zero and end gun violence bring up my brother did a life sentence has an incredible story he'll share with you my brother omar hello omar. >> (clapping) thank you, rudy. good afternoon, everybody. i'm here the president of - and thank you, mayor. and - all the public um,

officers. all the organizations fighting this big fight of getting rid of senseless gun violence my story that's i acknowledge the younger stare i didn't say any recommendations head on right and ended up in prison and spent years in prison and took a while to lesson to them by the embrace of god i started to change and by the grars grace god was speaking to governor gavin newsom and from a man that party would never get out of prison boots on the ground fighting the good fight. going to schools and shaping

those young minds together we are on the streets every single day and teaching them the right way this is not the right thing to do and it is meaningful fight i truly building as my sister said we came out here to do this fight and a blessing to be part of this so bless as someone would industry a community now we hear from the community and build up the community and i understand gun violence and show up on saturday so no questions asked we can get the guns off the street and let's get those guns off the streets that is passionate for me and no talk but dead serious 100 percent the kids is our future if we don't

get them the needs to reach their potential you're society will be messed up so thank you, everyone in the room that came together and thank you and takes us all to do do work and welcome. >> (clapping) jerry make. >> thank you, guys, for showing up this saturday december is 9 at 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon no questions ask the within homicide dollars for a handgun and goes up. i have to shout out to felicia for helping this put this together. (clapping.) ; right? >> all of us or none of us you all to end gun violence thank you, guys for showing up end gun

violence (clapping.) >> good morning, everybody. >> let me start by triathlon all 6 it to bring attention how

big tobacco trying to hook the new generations on tobacco produces and tobacco companies appeal to the public with with threatening decades of people. a few years ago san francisco put children first and young people first and banning the sale of flavored tobacco products to rest our space and city have enforced against brick-and-mortar rashlt by online arrangements are the nexus next frontier on the study was experienced today, our city attorney's office has announced a lawsuit against three california companies by selling flavored tobacco products online to people in san francisco and

you'll hear the press we have some of the products in front of us and after the press veteran you will see the three meanwhile, one incorporated the technical an llc and the smokey an llc sell a variety of tobacco products and e circumstances to commissioner green and one of the online sellers with not ship products to the jurisdictions the website of those have two indication will not ship the products. in study by office each defendant sold to our office and fruit or flavors designed to appeal to young people like strawberry and have an he will and all monday and shipped them to the city in violation of the law we are bringing reputes i lawsuits to

clear message to the tobacco retailers will not be tolerated in san francisco. we're going bringing to lawsuit to protect the lawsuit especially you from the health risks of tobacco this year alone mill middle school high schools students have currently using e significance with 89 percent of flavored products over 20 percent of our high school students have tried e cigarettes we're bringing to lawsuits to shop the tobacco companies through their flagrant disregard of the law and seeking the defendants past violations of the law. now to address this public health crises the advocates and health professionals behind me in the city and state have worked tirelessly, tirelessly against

the tobacco companies and a number of people i introduce each of the affair speakers but thank you for the organizations campaign for tobacco for kids represented ken gibbs today thank you and a little known fact i worked with this organization they're work as literally saved miles of lives i want to thank the to for the work (clapping.) and for its work in meeting and global listed advocacy because of our vocabulary our first speaker will pass a law that is critical to the lawsuit. working with my preserve dennis herrera and spear hesitate did local law in retail of e cigarettes thank you for being a vocal champion

(clapping.) thank you, city attorney good morning, everyone you first of all, we know how along the fight has been. tobacco big tobacco that's been in the city and nationwide go back to in 1998 we had all the first first commissioners to take resources from tobacco and equate young people not to use tobacco and then come to find in 2018 that true lab is here in san francisco targeting our children and making sure that they can doing everything we can to addict them to a lifetime of tobacco use we gathered together and figure out hard and goat egging e on the other hand, cigarettes band from san francisco and across the state and across the country and

eventually internationally and everyone who understands their directly targeting our young people seen the data and demonstrates that at the focused on making sure the youngest children in our city will become and i indicted and now we have every responsible company doing the same thing and articulating our residents and articulating our young 0 people by trying to skirt our laws and by products online three come directly into san francisco we're not going to take down for people skirting around our laws and thank you, city attorney chu for bringing this lawsuit and want to thank all of my colleagues, all my sports here with us today for fire hydrant because this lawsuit is important. because we need to make sure that not only

do those big companies not 25eshg9 our residents here but didn't happen anything in the nation and for too long that people are being using online platforms to skirt laws and target residents and in different cities we're going to make sure they don't get away with that here in san francisco. we have it continue to protect people we understand the harms of the cigarettes and what is necessary do to the target young people and lead them to a lifetime of tobacco so just like we passed a law in 2019 and fought against big tobacco to make sure they don't over turn laws we're going to do did same thing with the tobacco companies and thank you, for coming up in support of this law and fight and let big companies and

corporation know we'll not tlofrnt targeting our young people thank you, (clapping.) thank you, supervisor walton to your leadership we had a number of policymakers part of fight. >> thank you leah accordingly our extraordinary banning tobacco products and someone next in the city attorney's office like to invite up matt dorsey chp you thank you, city attorney chu. and, you know. more than 25 years ago there was a former city attorney that filed had becomes a groundbreaking lawsuit against big tobacco and hold them accountable and in starting that created a altercation it's city

attorney's office of leadership analyzed against big tobacco and the chambers has harms is causing something that dennis herrera continued i'm proud and grateful it is something the city attorney david chiu it the national leader against big tobacco honored to be here as someone working with the district attorney's office city attorney's office for years and occurred to me a furious i had the opportunity to stand with another important leader my clearance shamming anyone walton and the labs was proposed to spend this city got ground and spending millions and shadow shoulder to shoulder with some a ragtag bunk 7 advocates we didn't know governor 0 bloomington burger about coming come up but i'm proud of

shamming anyone it stands in history as is biggest 2023 as lost for big tobacco several thousands of dollars we spent per vote a losing effort sends a powerful message how much san francisco protects kids and others from the harms of tobacco thank you, very much to be port of that and hand side. >> shoulder to shoulder with folks for years to come. thank you. >> thank you. matt dorsey and would not be successful without the leadership the san francisco medical associate and past president the leader in our stay and country (clapping.) >> thank you doctors. >> is always the national heart

association and cancer society. >> (calling names.) >> and others and take a a moment to thank the department of health staffers with the endorsement of laws and the next who represents the doctors leading this work please join me in welcoming the san francisco health officer. >> (clapping) good morning. my name is did susan philip the health officer for the city and county of san francisco and the direct the population health against or distinction at department of health i'm so happy to be here with the zoo david chiu and others and our wonderful leadership and all of you for decades the department of health has sought so reduce the access to public tobacco and provides services to help people to quit

in recent years enforced the restriction of product sales in san francisco. this labor library mu-n thalamus and cheri are marketed to our communities of color and including other vaping products this restriction is critical to protect the happy earth day of those in 20 percent of high school students and others eying e seconds are a high concentration of nick tone and can harm the developing brain. adversely effecting the attention and additional starts lifetime addiction before 18 continued to have serious illness of heart disease and flavored product is easily to start and harder to

quit i applaud city attorney for protecting the health of san franciscans and for the continued advocacy of supervisor walton and dorsey with the leadership. san francisco adults can go to sf quit.org and call at 62867678 request a director howard together we'll continue to help the community if tobacco smoking related issues. thank you. (clapping.) thank you, dr. philip and colleagues for your tremendous work and our efforts will the no be successful without the grassroots for young people the first nonprofit board i joined

in any 20s which for decades to train young people to lead comments and stand up for generations i met the next speaker was one of the young applicants come on up. >> (clapping) good morning, everybody. um, you know. the youth leaders institutes along with the city of san francisco buildings in the voice tobacco is an issue and a justice issue we've come a long way reducing the access it critical for targeted from the to destroys and culture vat another generation of young people the to destroy masks the

hash environment and um, young adults to think they vap and sentencing them to a lifetime of vaping and this may sound harmless but have done traded ingredients and dangers to our community and public health. an interesting fact vap are three times more likely to somebody cigarettes within a year and the lierpdz like the folks support of efforts of david chiu and those on stage to reducing accessed to the abstract retailers and again, it will not stop we can't either thank you, (clapping.) thank you. so our last speaker

is the more important here because of impact of the actions everyone or of omicron tobacco retailers and the next generation is the leader. >> (clapping) good morning you my name is (unintelligible). >> i'm 23-year-old i was born and raised in the bay area i will be congratulating into college and have been in the er merging community leader with over a year. i help lead the community action model program where people are working to address the negative feedback and the policy alternatives that protect the community health i'd like to not referring to the

ceremonial use the problem is that tobacco that the tobacco destroy prioritizing the young people tobacco retail marketing strategy specifically charges the next door communities more than any other. and current as of policy young people are still using commercial tobacco products when i was 5 i opposed my first book history one of my interests i was 7 when the ceremonial tobacco was introduced i had to navigate negative associations that came from culture bias and presentations. i was 11 many i saw the impact of commercial tobacco products. that commercial products had on my

peers and had consequences. and at 13 my turn to learn about tobacco. how significant to indigenous communities and the simple truth it is introduced and promoted and became a wide commodity. i have seen this circle happen to my young people. the young leaders in and the program have believed in a commercial free tobacco generations and commercial tobacco anyone born after january 1st, 2005, would suggested policy implementation within the next 5 years or by january 1st, 2026, with our support with we can unite and have solutions for people now and a positive change for future

generations. thank you. (clapping.) thank you. i have a couple of closing comments one thanks to the incredible legal professionals from our city attorney's office had folks from three teams in the office our teams are investigation team and the healthcare team and specifically shout out to julie iceberg and julie. >> (calling names.) >> carol constituting for your great work thank you, guys. >> at the beginning of the session we have some of the products available here in the media wants to take photos of them and i will reiterate products not only not welcome in san francisco, they are legal to sell or distribute the last thing to say thanks to everyone

who is standing with us and the folks have been working on the issues in to throughout the years together we will hopefully have some day soon a tobacco free generation. with that, thank you for being here. and folks are available for questions and interviews if you like. thank you very much. >> i'm alice king this is my husband shawn kim and we other ordinance of joe's ice cream in san francisco. joe's ice cream in rich mondistrict since 1959 and we are proud to be registered a san francisco legacy business since 2017. and we offer more than 50 flavors of homemade ice cream.

and delicious home style burgers, sandwiches, hot dog, salad and more. we have a lot of different ice cream flavors both classic, long forgotten but classic and asian flavor inspired flavor like 3 red bean and black and now we also brought the korean i'm from korea. korean coffee krooem. we mix our traditional and trendy flavors all together. shawn and i are the first generation of the immigrants here in san francisco. so as immigrants, we have a special connection to this diverse community, san francisco richmond district. so we made this place our home. that is where we are trying to build our business as a place

where everybody can feel welcome like we felt when we first came here what really makes fisher or joe's ice cream we have been growing together with our community. so we support our local schools throughout the fundraiser. we provide job opportunity for high school, i hire them every year. built a beautiful parklet outside funded by donations from over 200 neighbors and friends and i think this really shows how joe's ice cream and our community like lives together. so -- you see our mission is to serve as a fun community hub in san francisco and richmond district. so, i hope that we can stay this way for many years. .

hey, good afternoon and welcome to the san francisco historic preservation commission hearing for wednesday, december 20th, 2023. to enable public participation as of govtv broadcast and the streaming, this hearing live and we will receive public comment for each item on today's agenda. the each speaker will be allowed up to three minutes, and when you have 30s remaining, you will hear a chime indicating your time is almost up. when your allotted time is reac i