great memories seeing so many groups here over the

good morning and welcome to the december 9th, 2024 rules committee meeting. i'm supervisor shaman walton, and i'm joined by supervisor aaron peskin and soon to be joined by supervisor ahsha safaí. today's clerk is victor young, and i would like to thank susan enos from sfgovtv for broadcasting this meeting live and to make sure that we get the information out to the public. mr. clerk, do you have any announcements? yes. public comment will be taken on each item on this agenda. when your item of interest comes up and public comment is called, please line up to speak. alternatively, you may submit public comment in writing in either of the following ways. email them to myself. the rules committee clerk at v-i-c-t-o-r-y o young at sfgov. org. if you submit public comment via email, it will be forwarded to the supervisors is included as part of the file. you may also send

your comments via us postal service to our office in city hall one doctor carlton b goodlett place, room 244, san francisco, california 94 102. please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices. items acted upon today are expected to appear on the board of supervisors agenda of december 17th, unless otherwise stated. that completes my initial announcements. thank you so much. mr. clerk, would you please call item number one? item number one is an ordinance amending the administrative code to end certain quarterly reporting requirements by the mayor's office of housing and community development to the board of supervisors and the mayor regarding development of 100% affordable housing and to establish new semiannual reporting requirements. beginning july 31st, 2025. thank you so much. would you like to say anything first? supervisor roanoke and supervisor ronen is also joining us this meeting. good morning. i believe we have

a presentation just a short presentation. good morning. i'm sheila nicolopoulos with mayor's office of housing and community development in 2018, permitting was a significant barrier to affordable housing. the city had fragmented, permitting systems that were delaying important, affordable projects. so in response, supervisor ronen brought forward legislation that required reporting quarterly reporting from ocd that would increase transparency around where permitting was causing logjams and development of affordable units. that legislation became administrative code section 109.3 that requires most cdd to report every three months on four areas. the report must include one. a list of every 100% affordable housing project that is applied for approval of permit or other city authorization from dbi public works fire department, mayor's office, and disability or the planning department. two information regarding the financing and financing related deadlines for each 100% affordable housing project. three any approval permit or other city authorization, each 100% affordable project is

waiting to receive from the department or office, and four the date of any application and current status of each pending approval permit or other city authorization for 100% affordable projects. since these requirements were codified six years ago, permitting for affordable housing has been streamlined through ministerial approvals under state bills like ab 2011 and sb 35. creation of a central permit center, creation of an online database, appointment of the director of housing delivery and other efforts. permitting is no longer the issue that it was, fortunately permitting for affordable housing is now an efficient and coordinated process. it now takes less than five months to complete, permitting compared to more than 13 months a few years ago. working with supervisor ronen mohcd developed the legislation before you today. it will remove the requirement to report on permit status and require reporting every six months instead of every three months. we are confident that this modification will continue to provide useful information to decision makers and the public, while reducing administrative costs, and i want to highlight

two places where you and the public can find reports and data about affordable housing production. one is most cities web page for reports and plans, which has our annual reports, the annual performance and evaluation reports required by hud, the five year consolidated plan action plans, and all of the reports that are required by the board and the second i want to highlight is our mchd affordable housing dashboard. that's a mapping tool that provides current data about complete and pipeline projects. this mapping tool, you can sort by housing programs, supervisorial district, neighborhood construction, status development and type and more. so those provide both of those provide lots of resources on reporting. thank you for your time and i'm available for any questions. and oh, do you want to do a quick can we bring up the screen again. we were just going to give you a quick look at what the that dashboard looks like. right there. so this is

our dashboard website that's available to everyone. and that's where you can do all of the sorting by different categories. and then it'll generate a map and it'll generate a list of all of the projects. thank you. thank you so much. i don't see supervisor ronen. sure. i just wanted to thank the department for doing the quarterly reporting for all these years. it has been very helpful to figure out where there are roadblocks in the way of allowing affordable housing to be built faster and the most efficiently in the city. i know pga, for example, historically has been a real big delay problem, and we were able to, you know, figure that out by by watching these reports. and as supervisors intervene where we thought were appropriate. but it it makes sense to me that we do this only twice a year instead

of four times a year. now that it's been in effect for a while. and now that we do have more streamlined regulations. so i thank you for the work and i'm happy or am proud to be a co-sponsor. thank you. supervisor ronen. it is nothing wrong with being more efficient. i will now call for public comment on item number one. yes, members of the public wish to speak on this item should line up to speak at this time. each speaker will be allowed two minutes. are there any speakers who would like to comment on this matter? there are no speakers. seeing no speakers, public comment is now closed and i would like to make a motion to move this item forward with a positive recommendation to the full board. supervisor peskin, are you trying to speak? no. would you like to send this out as a committee report? yes. as a committee report. thank you. on the motion to recommend as a committee report, vice chair, safaí safaí, member. peskin, a, peskin i chair. walton i walton

i that motion passes without objection. thank you. motion carries. mr. clerk, please call item number two. item number two is an ordinance amending the administrative code to change the sunset date for the mental health sf implementation working group from september 1st, 2026 to the effective date of this ordinance. thank you so much, supervisor ronen. yes. thank you. colleagues, this item just had to sit for a week when we made the amendments last week. just to remind you, we are sunsetting the mental health implementation working group as soon as this ordinance goes into effect and in our next item, we are going to conduct a hearing to learn about all of the positive implementation of mental health. s.f. and what is

left to be done and how the system has changed since its implementation. so i would request that you would move this item to the full board as a committee report. thank you. thank you. so much, supervisor ronen. and i don't see anyone else on the roster. mr. clerk, would you please call for public comment on item two? yes. members of the public who wish to speak on this item should line up to speak at this time, each speaker will be allowed two minutes. are there any members of the public who would like to comment on this matter? there are no commenters on this matter. thank you. no speakers. so public comment is now closed. and mr. clerk, i would like to make a motion to move this item forward with a positive recommendation to the full board. as a committee report. yes. on that motion, vice chair safaí safaí i member. peskin i. peskin i chair walton i walton i that motion passes without objection. thank you. motion carries. mr. clerk, please call item number three. yes. item

number three is a hearing to discuss the progress, successes and provisions left to implement of the mental health sf and requesting the department of public health behavioral health services to report. thank you, supervisor ronen. yes. before doctor cunnings begins the report, i just wanted to publicly thank her. thank you, doctor kunz, for really making the difficult decision of leaving new york, where you led the behavioral health department for so many years and taking on the major, major challenges we have in san francisco. and i believe and have seen very closely that since you have gotten here, the department has improved its behavioral health system tremendously. and, of course, that has to do with your incredible staff. but in my opinion, it also has to do with

your incredible leadership. so i just wanted to thank you so much for all your work, and it gives me much calm to know that you are here leading our behavioral health system and with your incredibly huge heart and concern for the people suffering so dearly from mental illness and drug addiction, but also your vast knowledge. having been in addiction specialist physician for so many years and just being an expert in this, this area, we're very, very lucky to have you. and i'm so grateful for all your work and with that, i'm excited to hear your presentation. well, thank you very much for your kind words. supervisor ronen. i really and my team really appreciate hearing that. i want to thank you and this the entire board of supervisors. chair walton, supervisor safaí. president peskin, we are very

grateful for the leadership of this body and enabling us to move forward in the many ways that we have. i'm very happy to be here to share an overview of mental health. s.f. what has happened and our implementation timeline. i want to particularly highlight our office of coordinated care bed and treatment expansions. follow up care for street encounters, and end with both. some challenges, as well as what we see are opportunities and upcoming implementation. and before i start, i do also just want to acknowledge that the opportunities that the city has given the health department, along with our other sister city agencies, to really tackle decades long disinvestment and decades long policy challenges

at many levels of government, has been extraordinary and not done. so. this is what where we've come and hopefully a little bit of where where we might go. so as as you all know, mental health sf was legislated in 2019. it built upon existing behavioral health services and programs in san francisco. the priorities, as you can see on the top right, were of people experiencing homelessness with serious mental health or substance use diagnoses. the key components of msph included the office of coordinated care, the street crisis response team, a mental health service center, an expansion of new residential care and treatment or beds, mental health sf facilities, importantly, are primarily funded through the voter supported our city, our home or proposition c. i wanted to share

this graphic with you all that describes our implementation timeline, which you can see on the left starting in 2020. launched launch of street crisis response team. the beginning of bed expansion in 2021. we began to expand components of the what was named as part of the mental health service center and specifically expanded pharmacy hours, continuing to expand residential care and treatment or beds. 2022 we launched the office of coordinated care, as well as additional components of what was named as part of the mental health service center, specifically, drug sobering. what became known as soma rise. in 2023, we launched as part of the office of coordinated care, something called the best neighborhoods street care team

teams. further expansion of the elements of the mental health service center, specifically the back, which stands for behavioral health access center hours. this year, we were very focused on ongoing bed expansion and still to come as further work of msph is the mental health service center, including identification and acquisition of a site and our what we are now calling our stabilization unit or csu crisis stabilization unit, with ongoing work to continue to optimize our residential care and treatment availability. transitioning. now, i want to first highlight at a high level, some of the key accomplishments of msph. we have added approximately 400 new residential care and treatment beds we have created. as you just heard, the office of coordinated care to deliver centralized access to care and strengthen coordination of care

for priority populations. this, i just want to note, is an entirely new function for the city. we fully implemented citywide 24 over seven street crisis response team with the fire department and department of emergency management, and we added as that team evolved, the expanded follow up teams to enhance care coordination. and we have been working tirelessly. i think it's fair to say increasing access to services envisioned for the mental health service center, including increasing pharmacy, buprenorphine clinic availability and walk in hours. next, i want to transition in some more specificity to what we have expanded in terms of residential care and treatment. as i just mentioned, we've opened about 400 new behavioral health beds that were conceived of and planned under a mental health sf. and you can see the timeline in front of you, starting with a managed alcohol

program in 2020, psychiatric respite that is the hummingbird valencia program. additional lock, subacute treatment beds 2022 marked adding additional psychiatric skilled nursing contracts, a dual diagnosis transitional care program in partnership with the probation department at the mina, we opened additional residential care facilities, a drug sobering site and additional mental health co-op housing that is longer term care for people with mental illness. 2023 marked our opening of many residential stepdown beds, also known as sober housing or recovery housing. additional residential withdrawal management beds and 2024 so far, we have partially opened our dual diagnosis residential treatment. just as a note, this is for people with

both very severe mental illness and substance use disorders. women's transitional housing, mental health, transitional housing and more of these projects are in progress for early next year and specifically our additional projects include our stabilization unit, additional dual diagnosis treatment, expanded residential care facilities, and transitional housing for people experiencing homelessness with behavioral health needs. we have future plans and what i'll want to just start out by saying is our additional planning was using a bed modeling approach that was done using pre-covid data. that initial bed optimization study, as we have been calling it, informed that first swath of plans with gmsf, along with sort of key informant

key expert input in the last year, we have completed an updated bed modeling study, not only are we have we redone that study, but we are also have built capacity for us ourselves as d.p.h to repeat the study on an annual basis. so right now, using that updated study, and you have heard this before at our bed hearing, we estimate we need about 50 mental health residential treatment beds. we estimate between 55 and 95 locked subacute beds, also known as mental health rehabilitation center or lsat. we estimate that we need between 20 and 40. what we are terming behaviorally complex therapeutic settings. these are. these are to meet the needs of folks that have been for us, difficult to find

appropriate placement with high level, for example, of traumatic brain injury or medical physical health needs. we believe that we need additional 8 to 10 residential withdrawal management beds, including those with serious medical needs and additional residential stepdown aka recovery or sober housing. as i mentioned, i sort of mentioned most of this in my prior in my comments on the prior slide. we have strengthened mtss have enabled dph to strengthen our infrastructure and systems to address ongoing residential care needs. we have dedicated, experienced analyst capacity now and leadership for new bed projects. we have the capacity to assess bed needs in an ongoing fashion. the bed procurement legislation approved by this body will help us acquire in the future, and we've obtained a significant amount of

state funding in excess of $70 million to help with behavioral health infrastructure projects. these systems have enabled us to open additional residential care sites and will enable us to continue to do so as needed and apply specifically for significant amounts of state funding under the behavioral health bridge housing funding. and as you recently heard, the prop one bond projects, the application for which is due very soon. turning to the specific initiatives, i want to highlight work of the office of coordinated care. and again, i just want to reiterate this is capacity, not held by the city. previous to msph and to my knowledge, if it exists in other jurisdictions, it does so in extremely sparse ways, very ad hoc, not incredibly systematize. we launched the occ in 2022 with a staff of one. i would say the

occ provides access to behavioral health services and strengthens coordination of care for priority populations. these priority populations include the following groups. people leaving the hospital or jail. people who receive behavioral health crisis services or involuntary holds i.e, a 5150 people experiencing homelessness. people with high utilization of multiple systems, high behavioral health needs, and people served in shelters, navigation centers, and permanent supportive housing. the occ has two main types of programs. access programs access and eligibility and care coordination. the central access and eligibility services include services that you know about that have existed for some time in the city, but they are now centralized. bal and back. we have expanded hours of back now running seven days a week for access to behavioral health services. we've also centralized under this eligibility and

medi-cal enrollment to have this be a seamless part of how we work with folks coming into car. this is a long slide, but it reflects the amount of work that is happening in the care coordination side of the office of coordinated care. we have two kinds of overarching services. one, we have a triage team which manages referrals and then systematically tracks and ensures connections to care. we also have follow up teams. the follow up teams have specific area of focus. these include the care management teams, bridge and engagement services team, and a further team, best neighborhoods, which is based in neighborhoods working specifically across the city partners and with neighbors and community members. we have a shelter behavioral health care coordination team and a program, permanent housing advanced clinical services. working with

our colleagues in the physical health side or ambulatory care part of the department together to work on providing behavioral health coordination, coordination and medical services to people in permanent supportive housing. some of the key outcomes that sharing with you on this slide. i won't read through all of these numbers, but i will say that we have served more than 8500 distinct individuals in fiscal year 2324. we have hired in the occ more than 45 new d.p.h behavioral health clinicians, case managers and staff. you'll see that in best care management, we have worked with more than 400 distinct clients in this past fiscal year, and best neighborhoods has had more than 9000 engagements and more than 1300 direct connections to services. and again, just to

reiterate this was capacity that did not previously exist. turning now to the street crisis response team and the evolution of the best neighborhoods team, you all will remember during the pandemic, the street crisis response team were skirt launched. it aimed to offer rapid trauma informed care through teams responding to calls about people experiencing a behavioral health crisis. it was launched as a pilot in partnership with the fire department, and has been since scaled to 12 teams, operating 24 over seven across san francisco. it diverted about 97% of eligible behavioral health, 911 calls from a police led response. this is really a great accomplishment. in march of 2023, the team, the skirt responding teams were reconfigured and the and part of occ took on the follow up work

from those skirt teams, as well as proactive and ongoing work in the neighborhoods we called that team or those teams best neighborhoods. the team includes a psychiatrist, clinicians, behavioral health clinicians, health workers, nurses, clinical supervisors, and peer outreach specialists. the goals of these teams are to bridge people into care, providing time limited, focused phase interventions. engage people living on the street, in particular who have highly complex needs, and to follow them and engage with them longitudinally. the teams are place based, so the idea is here that by working in assigned neighborhoods six days a week, the intent is for team members to develop community responsive relationships and interventions. so we have capacity now when community members get in touch with us, for example, or

business owners, to directly feed that information to teams who can be responsive and work with folks in the community. the teams right now are for the gold team was the first to launch, along with the blue team in march of 2023. in, we lost. we launched the citywide team. who who is available for the whole city and we launched the last team, the purple team that focuses on bayview and ingleside. just this last june. turning now to the mental health service center and service expansions associated with the mental health services center. so as you know, supervisors, while site acquisition for the mental health service center continues, many of the key services envisioned for mental health service center are being met through preexisting expanded services and new services. and

you can see them here. in total, we've added 70 service hours per week across these services, enabling us to see more clients and to have more flexible access. so, for example, more than 1700 people visited either the behavioral health access center or the behavioral health pharmacy just during the expanded hours in fiscal 23, 24. alongside the service expansions under msph, we have taken the opportunity to find identify other ways to expand flexibility and access to our services. you can see these here. we've increased availability specifically of on demand telehealth treatment, to 16 hours a day for people who use opioids. we have seen we have offered evening service navigation with our partners, code tenderloin. as a consequence, we have, we believe

we have seen a 32% increase in methadone treatment admissions and a 46% increase in buprenorphine prescription filled at our pharmacy this year compared to the same time period in 2023. and then finally, we have seen a 35% increase in residential treatment admissions for substance use in fiscal 2324 over the previous fiscal year. so both looking forward at our challenges, opportunities, undone work, and our and our thinking about that. so much has been accomplished. and i really want to acknowledge the incredible d.p.h b.h.s team, both within dhs, but also really across the department. our colleagues in human resources, in real estate, in operations have been extraordinary.

supporters of the very important content work being driven by dhs. so next steps for m.h.s. msph envisioned, as you know, the office of private health and insurance accountability. this is an area that we've not been able to tackle. we don't currently have funding identified, and at the same time, we know that having behavioral health access to people with commercial or private insurance is extremely important to our city workforce. while we have seen enormous hiring successes and enormous changes in our operations to identify candidates and get them hired, there is a nationwide shortage of behavioral health professionals, especially behavioral health clinicians and case managers, and we are conscious that we are competing with our colleagues not only across the bay. but really this is a national issue. we are

pursuing a number of staffing improvements, using recommendations from the controller's msph staffing and wage analysis, and will continue to work on that funding needs to be mentioned. the revenue from the prop c business tax used to fund the implementation of msph is volatile and below dfw's spending plan by about 30 to 40% annually. we have sustained or in the near, near and medium term sustained plan programing by relying on one time reserves and this will continue to be a challenge. some both challenges and opportunities. real estate acquisition is continues for us to be an area that we work on. there are lengthy timelines to acquire, renovate, construct sites. we are incredibly grateful to the board for its competitive solicitation waiver

for bed procurement, additional building purchases are in process for the upcoming year, including an additional residential care facility. both challenging and huge opportunity. we launched within behavioral health epic, which is the common electronic health record of d.p.h. we launched this in may of 2024. we are on a pathway to improved integrated data and analysis, and this presents enormous opportunity, though it has been certainly a large hurdle to come to the other side for this body. federal confidentiality laws limit integration of substance use services into a single data record, and this will continue to be an obstacle until those laws change. for us, having full integration. i want to make you also aware that we are we are

always operating in external contexts that shape our work. first proposition one from the from the state is providing opportunities for further expansion under the bond act. and that has been enormous. and we were ready for that because we had good data, a good assessment of need, and we were able to act in the very, very constrained timeline that the state has presented us. we are also in the process of evaluating the requirements under the behavioral health services act funding. so you'll know this as mental health services act. this is state money that comes to the county. it has a new allocation requirements that will need to be implemented by july 2026. so we still have some amount of time, but this may require shifts in what we fund and how we fund it. medi-cal reform

specifically, cal aim is driving many other system wide change in behavioral health. and there i'll call your attention to specifically the work that we are doing across the department around connecting people who are incarcerated with services upon discharge. there are enormous requirements that are coming with this, but enormous opportunities to do better coordination and care. as you also know, overdose is really has been a crisis for us nationally, statewide and in the city. we were fortunate to be able to begin a number of our opioid responsive projects with mh, sf and prop c funding followed with mhsa funding and then settlement dollars. these programs have enabled us to respond by increasing access, increasing accessibility of a

number of high impact services. but there's a lot of regulations in particular around methadone that slow us down. and we are trying to take advantage specifically of a new state law, ab 2115, that will enable us as a city and state to come in line with the new federal flexibilities. finally, just want to highlight a couple of msph specific programs that are coming. mental health service center. we are undertaking site acquisition in part financed with state infrastructure dollars. we are constructing our stabilization unit with intent for it to open in 2025. we are continuing to expand dual diagnosis treatment, expanded residential care facilities and

transitional housing for unhoused people with behavioral health needs. some of that has been funded with our bridge state funding as well. and regardless, we for all our programs, we are continuously doing quality improvement, refining both our. programs and our and assessing our metrics in order to get better. just to say thank you, i'm joined here with a number of people from my team and some who are not here. i just want to very quickly name them if that would be okay. heather weisbrod, who is first director of office of coordinated care, could not be here. eunjung kim and david padding david is here who co-led our new beds and facilities team. chet valentino, our director of data and analytics. and then from the occ team who are here, karen lancaster, maureen edwards, robin candler,

who are leaders in the occ, kelly kirkpatrick, who has been our lead administrator and operations for msph. and valerie kirby, who has importantly served as our department liaison to the implementation working group. there are many, many more to that. i have not named, but we are very all grateful to be here. thank you, doctor koonings and thank you to your team as well. supervisor ronen, thank you. you know, i just want to start off by saying how extraordinary it is, the amount of work and the amount of progress that we've had in the past five years, given that we were basically delayed a year or more in implementation because of the covid crisis. and then on top of that, having the fentanyl and overdose crisis has thrown a wrench in the works. and, you know, we had a the experiment with a tenderloin center. i you know, that's a whole other topic

in and of itself. but that took the bulk of your attention, i know, for an entire year. so to think we've really only had sort of three years focused on implementing mh msph. it's just it's really extraordinary what what the team and you have been able to accomplish. so i just wanted to start out by giving you my immense gratitude. i wrote mental health sf because i was so frustrated by hearing after hearing at the board of supervisors and the street conditions that i saw in the mission, where it felt like a hamster wheel of individuals that were suffering so greatly from mental illness and substance abuse, usually both would just kind of go from the emergency psych services to

jail, back to the street, maybe to the shelter, then to the street, then to jail, then to emergency psych services. and it was just it was just nobody was getting better. no, there wasn't coordination in the treatment. we didn't we didn't have much data available to us. most of the records were inputted by hand. and so you couldn't even get access to any analysis of where was the problem in the system that we needed to correct in order to create an actual system of care, instead of a hodgepodge of services? and i just remember having hearing after hearing that were so incredibly frustrating because we couldn't the right hand wasn't talking to the left. we couldn't get the information we needed as policy makers in the city to even begin to put together a system of change. and so we sat down for a good year

with people in the field, people who were doing the work. and we said, imagine money wasn't an object. imagine that you could start from scratch. how would you reform the system and we put together mental health. s.f. with that, with the, the, the different components of it and to see it continue to come true to a great extent, and to see that it's going to constantly evolve because this is the one of the hardest issues that we have as a country working. you combine mental illness with drug addiction with homelessness, and it's extremely challenging to solve. and one of the most expensive cities in the world. so i just cannot thank you enough. the whole team for the extraordinary work, for your, you know, dedication to really, really understanding the legislation and bringing it to

life. i mean, that does there's especially with legislation like this that sets out a policy systems change and is so big in in its nature, it could its implementation happens or doesn't based on the buy in of the department. and, and the administration in charge of government. and so it was a very highly political process getting mental health support passed. six years ago, we were able to reach consensus on it. we had all 11 members of the board of supervisors and mayor breed buy in to the vision. but but actually seeing it become a reality was never a given. and so i have to say, this is one of the proudest, my proudest achievements having, you know, sort of guided this process and

put it together. but i haven't done the hard work that you all have done day in and day out, in the streets, in the jails, in the shelters, in the hospitals, in the, in behac, you know, making sure that that individuals don't fall through the cracks. so again, my just extreme gratitude. i'm excited by what's more to come. i'm not going to get into the nitty gritty details. i think you provided a really, really good overview of what's happening, and i mostly just wanted to have the chance since i'm turning out to sort of provide a summary of what's happened, and then also to make sure that the implementation working group is able to end with a real feeling of satisfaction, because that work really has produced a, you know, one of the better systems that we have in this country, if

not the best when it comes to behavioral health. so thank you so much, and i really appreciate the great presentation as well. thank you. supervisor ronen. supervisor safaí, thank you. supervisor ronen, for all your hard work. i know this began right when you came into office, and here we are eight years later and we've made some progress, which is an accomplishment when you're dealing with, you know, in many ways a very entrenched way of thinking and bureaucracy. and i agree with you. very happy to have doctor cunnings and such a wonderful team of people, kelly and anna and the tremendous work that they've done to help to advance this, along with all the other people that you mentioned. the one thing i just wanted you to say, just a tiny bit more, and i know we have a long agenda today, but i do think it is important because governor newsom spent a significant amount of political capital, energy and money, along with the legislature, to pass reform of prop one to open up a whole new bevy of potential dollars to create new facilities. and i know that from sitting on the budget committee, we do have

contracts that are out of county. many of them are locked facilities. and i know that then there ends up needing to be stepped down residential facilities. so i just want to give you an opportunity to just say a tiny bit more about what prop one could do for the mental health delivery of services, and also opening up more residential and treatment facilities out of county. and i'm sorry i didn't hear in county or out of out of county, out of county or both or both. definitely. i want to hear a little bit more about out of county. so prop one has provided prop one. bond specifically has provided the county an enormous capital opportunity to think big, go big. specifically, that bond funding allows is very specific. at the same time, it is only available for medi-cal reimbursable services plus locked, subacute or mental health residential mental health

rehabilitation center. both are available, but for example, what is not eligible is recovery housing. just for example, what is not available is transitional housing. that is not medi-cal reimbursable. so there are some constraints to those bond dollars. we applied for a total of six programs, and kelly kirkpatrick has been holding the baton on that application, which is due this week. we will not find out about the results of our application until may, and money is not available until next summer. and what is the application? the application is for the six projects that include. i may ask kelly to come help me. the application is for approximately 100 new locked subacute beds. really trying to meet the unmet need of the city demands. it is. do you want to

come up? i'm going to ask kelly kirkpatrick to come help me with the other four. hi, supervisors. kelly kirkpatrick, director of administration operations for mental health, sf. as the director has mentioned, we are applying for additional funding for dual diagnosis treatment beds. 16 additional beds, a project on seventh street. we are applying for funding for psychiatric emergency services. that funding is eligible under the behavioral health portion of prop one bond. we are additionally applying for funding for the mental health service center for capital improvement, funding for a potential site as well, and additionally a project to expand additional residential treatment, substance use beds. about 40 of those in our project

slated for treasure island that already has residential step down. so we would improve the continuum. so we are applying for, i think it's about $140 million of projects. we'll see what the state awards us. this again is for the behavioral health portion. so there's $6.4 billion total under the prop one bond projects, 4.4 billion for behavioral health projects, 2 billion for permanent supportive housing for people with behavioral health challenges. that's being administered under homekey plus, which h.s.h and mchd in partnership with us, are developing proposals that rfa was just released about a week ago. thank you so much. thank you, mr. chair. thank you sir. thank you. and again, thank you, director cummings. i do just want to thank supervisor ronen for all of her work to coordinate mental health services. with the myriad of issues that we do have here in the city. it was a heavy lift getting to this point, and i know we still have a lot of work

to do, but i know there's a lot of hard work going into mental health, sf and of course, obviously to realize the dream, we have to get the resources. and so we are going to continue to commit to the work of mental health sf. i do just have one question. when we look at the challenges and opportunities slide around data modernization. can you just talk a little bit more about the confidentiality laws that limit the integration? yes. happy to. and just want to extend my thanks also to you all. i mean it really is this kind of work can only happen in my opinion, through lots of political and department level leadership. and so we have very much directly felt supervisor ronan's influence, as well as all of you to really to sort of

carry out the promises, federal confidentiality. so there is a federal confidentiality law that is known as 42 cfr part two. that is a specific confidentiality law related to substance use treatment. when a program holds what is called holding itself out as substance use treatment, we need to get special consent from patients or clients to share their medical information and to share their medical information. in the case of epic, with other parts of the health system. so it is possible that somebody would consent for treatment for their substance use disorder, but not consent to have their information shared in other parts of the health care system, like their primary care doctor, or like their

gastroenterologist. for example. and so if the person says, no, thank you, i want to get help but not want my information to be shared. but these other parts of the health system, we can't have the information all in one electronic health record. we have to partition it. got it. that may be more detail than you wanted, but that is something that we are really struggling with. no, i definitely appreciate the response. thank you. supervisor peskin. thank you, chair walton. and i said it at a couple of other meetings, but i really wanted to say on the record again, that i am very proud of the work that supervisor ronen, as a member of the board of supervisors, has stuck to now for more than a half a decade. and to the team led by you, doctor cannons at the department of public health for making, i think in the 20 some odd years that i've been in

and out of this building, the most progress on this very, very complicated, very tragic, very expensive set of issues that i've seen. and i'm particularly proud because that push actually did not come from the chief executive's office. it really came from the board of supervisors. and i just profoundly want to thank supervisor ronen for sticking to it through two terms to the end of her term and to all of you for bringing it to fruition and sticking to it. thank you, president peskin. mr. clerk, let's go to public comment on item number three. yes. members of the public who wish to speak on this item should line up to speak at this time, each speaker will be allowed two minutes. are there any members of the public who would like to comment on this matter? there are no commenters at this time. thank you. seeing no speakers public comment is now closed. supervisor ronen, any closing thoughts or anything? then i am going to move that this hearing

be heard and filed? yes. on that motion, vice chair safaí safaí member peskin a, peskin i chair walton i walton i that motion passes without objection. thank you. motion carries. thank you so much. supervisor ronen. mr. clerk, would you please call item number four? yes. item number four is amending the administrative code ordinance, amending the administrative code and labor and employment code to move certain employment related provisions, including, among others, certain prevailing wage requirements, apprenticeship requirements and hours and days of labor requirements from the administrative code to the labor and employment code. thank you so much. supervisor safaí. thank you, chair walton and i'm going to be brief. i know we have a long agenda today, but i just wanted to take a minute or two to say, talk a little bit about this legislation and hand it over to director mulligan. really want to commend him for his tremendous work working with

my office through two legislative aides, first, with bill barnes and then jeff buckley and our city attorney, david hostetler. for all his effort for putting this piece of legislation together. colleagues, if you remember, we made san francisco the first city in the nation to have its own standalone, comprehensive labor and employment code. back in january, it covered things like lactation, access it. it worked on all different aspects of our labor code. what it did not get in there this time. and this is trailing legislation, is our prevailing wage laws. and so it consolidated 40 existing labor laws, including some of the city's most and in many ways in the country's most progressive and pro-worker policies into a single accessible labor code that we're all over the all over the city charter and ordinances. this move is designed to simplify public access. it's truly good

government and worker protections and better enforced wages and benefits. and i would imagine, based on the information that director mulligan has given us, people average approximately 30,000 visits to the office of labor standard on on a monthly basis, which is extraordinary. so there's obviously clear public demand for easy access of information. so this legislation will not only meet this need, but significantly enhance worker rights and protections. so just want to thank director mulligan again asked him to come up and say a few words and then also let colleagues know we did have some other substantive amendments, but we're not going to introduce those today. i'd like to duplicate this file and send the duplicated file over to the budget and finance committee. my co-sponsor, supervisor chan, is going to take up the new piece of legislation in the upcoming session. so she will work on

that. and those amendments will be heard then. but so i'd like i'd like to duplicate the file and send that duplicated file over to the budget and finance committee, and then we can vote this legislation out today as a committee report, if that. mr. chair, through the chair, director mulligan. thank you. chair. walton. president. peskin. supervisor. safaí. as noted, this is trailing legislation to the landmark labor and employment code policy that was established last january. again, that was the first labor and employment labor code, municipal labor code in the united states. a testament to the 40 plus different labor laws passed by the board of supervisors and by voters in san francisco. i think the importance of it is that the labor policies were all over the police code and the admin code.

this consolidates it into one location. easy reference for workers, for employers, hr professionals, and also city policy makers and city staff enforcement staff. the reason the prevailing wage was not included initially is because there were some modest changes necessary before the transfer. all of the other labor policies that were transitioned over to the labor and employment code were basically cut and paste. there was no text changes, but there were some minor changes that were necessary here. basically, for the sake of clarification and consistency. but again, i commend the board of supervisors. thank you. supervisor safaí and the entire board for your dedication to labor policies in the next few days, you will be receiving copies of the office and labor standards enforcement annual report and again, thank you for this matter. thank you. thank you, director mulligan. seeing no other comments from colleagues. mr. clerk, please

call for public comment. yes, members of the public who wish to speak on this matter. should i speak at this time? each speaker will be allowed two minutes. are there any speakers on this matter? there are no public commenters on this matter. thank you. seeing no speakers public comment is now closed. supervisor safaí, what is your wish to send this to the full board with a positive recommendation? thank you, mr. clerk. on that. yes. just to clarify, this matter will be duplicated and referred and the duplicated file will be referred to the budget and finance committee. and on this original matter, we will there is a motion to recommend it as a committee report on that motion. vice chair safaí i safaí member peskin a peskin i chair walton i walton i that motion passes without objection. thank you.

motion carries. mr. clerk, please call item number five. yes. item number five is an ordinance amending the administrative code to establish the office of citywide food coordination within the human services agency, charged with coordinating citywide efforts to address the food insecurity among san franciscans, san francisco residents preparing a food security report every five years that examines the scope of insecurity among san francisco residents and seeking the input of community organizations and other city departments to inform the food security report and the ocfc efforts, and resolving the food security task force. thank you so much, mr. clerk, and let me just say on this item, i think there's some components in here that might be useful for us as a city, but most certainly want to make sure that a change like this is vetted and worked through with community and make sure that community and the department can be on the same

page as to how best to move forward. so i am going to motion to table this item. there was going to be a presentation from the department of human service. but unless susie smith, who is representative, wants to come up and say a few brief words, there's not it's not going to be a necessity for a presentation today because i hope my colleagues will join me in tabling this item. but if you want to say something very briefly. thank you. chair walton susie smith, deputy director for policy, planning and public affairs at san francisco human services agency and i just want to say that i think part of our interest in moving this forward at this particular moment is knowing that we have a federal administration that's going to be very much against the safety net, and we wanted to be unified as a city to be able to coordinate and advocate together. and i think the only

other piece that i want to mention is that we did take a number of amendments from community, and we built into the legislation several opportunities for community engagement and presentations and convenings and community research. so this for us was not the end of a community process, but the beginning of a community process to really coordinate and advocate for food security and justice in the city. thank you. and it'll be great when community and department come in here together singing kumbaya. i appreciate that. thank you. with that said, we will take public comment on the motion to table this item. yes, sir. members of the public who would like to provide public comment on the motion to table this matter. i know the motion is to table, so let me know if i don't speak to that. i hope i do. good morning. my name is honest charlie bodkin. i'm a resident of

district five. in 2019, the task force reported that 1 in 4 san franciscans are at risk of food insecurity. since then, according to the 2023 biennial food security and equity report, the mayor and this board have cut from the budget over $32 million in food related funding, including millions slashed from the sf marin food bank, one of the city's most vital food resources. compounding this was the ending of the emergency food programs provided during the pandemic. the federal level and the need for food assistance remains high. i understand the very real concerns of the budget deficit and the choices this board must confront, but it's unclear what the need is for a new coordination office. while existing programs go underfunde, what additional overhead will this office create and how will it improve food security in a tangible way, given this ordinance does not have a co-sponsor from a supervisor? i believe we must also ask whether

this change is aligned with the incoming mayor's priorities. i also encourage the board to carefully consider how this restructuring will impact the city's ability to meet food needs, and these are some things that i hope you consider during your tabling. thank you. thank you. good morning. committee chair, president and supervisor. as you know, my name is marshawn tadman, associate director of policy and advocacy at the san francisco marin food bank. i would like to start by saying we hopefully respect everyone up here and all the work you do to serve the community. we commend the efforts of the creation of the food coordination position, but we also feel something of this magnitude should follow the established and agreed upon process set forth in the recommendations document. sunset in the san francisco food security task force and the

normal process of the participatory process in san francisco. unfortunately, we must oppose this legislation, and we second that you table this legislation. participatory process was not undertaken, a budget analysis was not completed. and this is absent from community input. and to be candid, this legislation is being fast tracked before a new mayor take office before the holiday season start. our ask is simple more time is yielded for people to analyze this legislation, more community involvement and input should be paramount to the process. per the county process, and that we should continue to this work in the new session so we can have ample time to listen and explore the pros and cons of this legislation. so i second that we table this to the next session. thank you. hello, supervisors. i

wanted to also just bring back context because i'm hearing from community as well. is that the civil grand jury report stated that the food security task force was duplicated and the mayor's office issued a letter to this body. it stated that they would not move on any of the civil grand juries recommendations, and that she put out an executive order for this to be more of a collaborative issue, and in more so, president peskin's prop e that passed all of this has been done that we understand that the city is in a budget crisis and that you're maybe purging some resident commissions, but the food security task force should not be that one. the food security task force has been

around for 20 years, and its origin is in the southeast. it was founded by supervisor sophie maxwell of district ten, for which chair walton serves. supervisor safaí was the legislator of this bi annual report, and at the time i was his aide that worked very closely to get the information that's in the bi annual report that we have here for real data that we could use in the community. and we need to also think that this is not also a goal for the human service agency. it is a public health goal. we not only want san francisco's to be healthy, we not only want them to be full and not sleep. one night in this city hungry, but we want them healthier. and this is all from the movement of healthier school lunches and everything. and there's many organizations here from the southeast. some of the poorest sides of the city here in opposition to this. and i just commend you, chair walton, and the rest of the body of

tabling this to make them come to the table and talk to us, and we will be reaching out to the new mayor. hello, committee. my name is haley nielsen. i'm with farming. hope we are a food security and job training nonprofit and we are part of the food and agriculture action coalition towards sovereignty. and one thing that we know about this city is that we have one of the highest densities of michelin stars in the world. food is a huge part of our culture, and yet we're majorly behind on coordinated food efforts to ensure that everyone in our city has equal access to food. the food security task force has been around for 20 years. that's all correct. they have been for the last year, working with the subcommittee to figure out what should be next for the food security task force

and an office of food coordination citywide office was one of those recommendations. that recommendation has been a year in the making, and it has included community at every step of the way, so that this process maybe didn't have community in the last few weeks, doesn't mean that that process wasn't taken into account when this legislation was created by the mayor's office. there's a whole report about what the food security task force did recommend on coordinated food, citywide food access. so i think it's really important to keep that in mind. and we don't know what's going to happen with the next mayor. as people are saying, we don't know what's going to happen with the next board enshrining an office like this means that food security will be at the top of the mind, and who knows what the food security task force will be. it's sunsetting in 2026 anyway. so this would be enshrining food in san francisco. and i think it's really a disservice that we're not passing this. good

morning supervisors. my name is jade and i'm with the food and agriculture action coalition towards sovereignty. and i'm here to express my disappointment that the legislation to establish an office of citywide food coordination will not be continued. other major metropolitan areas like new york, boston and los angeles county already have dedicated offices on food policy and coordination, and they have already demonstrated success in addressing food insecurity and engaging community and adapting to challenges such as federal policy shifts and climate impacts. san francisco's office of citywide food coordination could have been the city's critical step forward to a similar infrastructure, but instead we are passing up this opportunity to protect existing investments in community food programs, leaving us vulnerable to local and federal administrative changes. and for what every passing this up for? what's the plan? instead, how

will we prepare ourselves for the threats outlined in project 2025? how will we ensure we're able to feed our neighbors in the face of an $876 million budget deficit? budget shortfall? we've been asking for an office that would break down silos within city government and an office with teeth that could influence policy and finally develop a long term food strategy. this office could have been that step in that direction, but now it's dead. so again, i ask, what's the plan? good morning supervisors. thank you so much. my name is shakira assembly. i'm here on behalf of booker t washington. we serve about 2000 folks every week and also on behalf of facts. and so today we were supposed to hear about an office of food coordination for san francisco. and i want to amplify my colleague's comments on this is a missed opportunity to be more responsive, organized and coordinated in our food security investments, which are now at risk to the tune of $30 million

in our san francisco city budge. it's also troubling, given the future and inevitable attacks by the trump administration, when our social safety net will be attacked. so that's medicaid. snap, our national food programs, and a community task force with a sunset date without any teeth. and now it's lost. its major staff is not going to be able to be responsive or hold other city departments accountable. and we also agree with our colleagues and our community members that hsa needs to be better and more inclusive with community engagement processes and intentional, including voices from our black, indigenous, asian, pacific islander and latino communities. it's important that we can also understand that this office would be a bridge to a bigger and better solution, which would be a san francisco strategic plan for food and also a true office of food and agriculture like we have in philadelphia, denver, new york city, and other major metropolitan areas. and so that's my question as well. what is the plan? what will we do? i

want to thank each of you sitting in front of me who have worked hard to invest in food security in your specific districts over the past several years, but we may not have any time. so thank you. good morning. my name is katie jackson. i'm the chief nutrition officer at project open hand. i want to just commend my colleagues for coming up here and speaking this morning. i think it speaks to the fact that the community is very interested in this topic, and i appreciate the idea of creating an office within the city. i do want to just encourage the idea of leveraging the years of expertise on the food security task force as a tool for that office to use going forward. so now is not the time to ignore or shy away from the food access issues that we have in the city, but to keep them front and

center. thank you. good morning supervisors. president peskin shamann safaí. thank you for allowing us to be here. i want to start by saying a very famous quote, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere by doctor martin luther king jr. what i stand here representing as a san francisco african american faith based coalition, as we are serving almost 900 households a week and our upcoming feeding 5000, which you all have participated in. so hunger and food security is very important to us. what troubles me is that hsa is fast tracked this conversation and that all of the communities that people have said they have talked to, we were not talked to, and we touched lots of households. i reached out to our pacific island task force, our latino

task force, our bayview community advocates. they were totally unaware of this going on. we heard of an announcement on wednesday at the food security task force and then already on an agenda here today and on an agenda tomorrow with the board. what's the hurry? if you're really concerned about all of us, then let's all of us come to the table and have authentic, transparent conversations about hunger and who all is impacted. it's impacting us all from. as i heard our sister jeffrey say, from our health and our wellness to every part of our being, we need this delay. it's not about the new mayor. it's about what's right and what's fair and what's just. we have a strong voice in this community and it has not been heard. so we're asking, please delay this to give us all ample time to talk about what's real, what's effective, what's feasible, what's respectful so

we can be authentic to the populations we serve. we need your delay so we can all have a voice and that it doesn't just affect a few, but many. thank you. are there any other members of the public who would like to provide public comment on this matter? there are no additional commenters. thank you. seeing no other speakers public comment is now closed and i do one. definitely want to thank everyone for coming in today. i think that there is an opportunity for us to demonstrate what this office could look like with coordination could look like, but most certainly it has to happen with the involvement of community. and we know best policies are adhered to and of course, created when everyone comes in on the same page and talks about how excited they are about how we move things forward, that's not the case right now. but most certainly the plan is to bring everybody

together so we can come up with something to where we're all in here on the same page. so with that, i want to make a motion to table item number five and supervisor safaí, my know, you said everything. yes. on that motion. vice chair safaí i safíi i member peskin, i peskin i chair walton a walton i the motion passes without objection. thank you. motion to table passes. mr. clerk, would you please call item number six? item number six is a hearing to consider appointing one member. term ending march first, 2025, to the sheriff's department oversight board. we have one seat and two applicants. thank you so much. i know we have one seat and two applicants and just want everyone to know, not only just for item number six, but also item seven eight, nine. when you come up to present and talk about your credentials, everybody has two minutes to do that. this is going to be a

pretty lengthy meeting, so just wanted to make sure everyone knows and understands that. and i'm going to call for item number six. the candidates and applicants up as they are presented on the agenda. and first we have estella ortiz. thank you so much. good morning. supervisor walton, supervisor safaí and president peskin. first, i'd like to thank supervisor walton. thank you for creating the office of inspector general and the oversight board to build transparency and accountability in the sheriff's department. my name is estella natalie ortiz. i was born and raised in san francisco, california, specifically the mission and the bayview district is where i grew up. since the age of 12 years old, i have had to visit family that was incarcerated inside the sf county jail for my brothers, my sons, dad, and friends. i grew up with. seeing black and brown men be put in jail has impacted my life greatly. i have sat

front row as a witness to the mass incarceration of black and brown boys and men. through all of this, i chose to be resilient and proactive in getting to youth and child development work to prevent my community from falling victim to the system. i have dedicated my life to serve, teach, and empower young women and men to and expose them to life outside of our hoods. advocating for literacy support in the schools at all grade levels to combat school to prison pipeline facilitated violence prevention groups inside of middle school high schools, youth creative arts as a form of healing, past traumas and constantly providing resources to youth needed. i've co facilitated groups in the bayview district fathers groups in the bayview district to fathers impacted by the justice system. i am currently working as a family case manager and shelter at a shelter and have advocated for clients who have been arrested for over 15 years as a community provider volunteer, i have worked to provide an off ramp from system impact. this work has been

focused on supporting survivors who find themselves trapped in the criminal justice system. my work has brought me close to children who have been incarcerated, parent and family member. unfortunately, i have met young people who need interventions to help disrupt cycles and push them out of schools and safe environments and into systems of state supervision and incarceration. i am deeply committed to enhancing the public safety and accountability within the sheriff's department. i believe that amplifying voices of marginalized communities, particularly women individuals who have been system impacted, we can work towards more equitable agency. thank you so much for this opportunity. thank you. and i know we have another candidate, mr. neil hallinan, who is actually in trial. and so he is unable to attend this morning. so we will go to public comment. yes, members of the public who would like to provide comment on this matter can line up to speak at this time. each speaker will be allowed two

minutes. good morning supervisors. my name is joshua jacobo and i'm here on behalf of the latino task force reentry committee. i serve on the reentry committee as a co-chair and on behalf of the committee, we strongly support mister ortiz for this seat. miss ortiz is the ideal candidate to represent the community perspective on such an important committee. her collective? yeah. her collective experience of the interpersonal nature of being system impacted and dedication of work and collaboration over the years with community to make make her the right candidate for this crucial committee. we look forward to continue working and collaborating with this, with this committee. and lastly, we have mission street vendors association present and echoes our message as well. thank you for your time. are there any other speakers on this matter? there are no no additional commenters, thank you. seeing no other speakers public comment is now closed. i do just want to say that this our sheriff's department oversight board is a

very important body here in the city recently, really just getting up and running the board is going to be tasked again with picking another inspector general, as we just had a current resignation. so there's a lot of work ahead of us to make sure that we're working with our sheriff's department to address issues that are happening in our jails, and i am excited about both candidates, because there's a level of experience that is important and needed on this body. but i do agree with this being the time where someone like estella ortiz should be serving on the sheriff's oversight board, not just your advocacy and the fact that you come from community and you've worked across different communities addressing so many different needs and issues with our communities. but i'm also excited about the fact that we have young people willing to

serve and willing to step up, and having the credentials to do so. so i want to move that. we appoint estella ortiz to seat two of the sheriff's department oversight board. yes. and we can do this as a committee report. this one was not listed as a committee report. okay. so on the motion to recommend miss ortiz to seat two, vice chair safaí safaí member peskin a, peskin i chair walton, a walton i. that motion passes without objection. thank you. motion carries. congratulations. mr. clerk, please call item number seven. item number seven is motion approving. rejecting the mayoral nomination for the appointment of joanna goodman to the board of appeals for a term ending july 1st, 2028. thank you so much. is joanna here? thank you. are you going? you have two minutes. sure. hi, i'm joanna

goodman. i'd like to share that my three year old daughter just had two seizures in the past 18 hours, so it's not easy for me to be present here with you right now. i want to thank you for being present with me and taking the time as the year winds down, to consider my qualifications for appointment to the board of appeals. i've lived in san francisco since 2007. i love this city and i am excited about the possibility of contributing to it by serving on the board of appeals. i've spent many years in government at the california public utilities commission as an analyst manage, commissioners, advisor, and administrative law judge. and i've learned that laws and regulations have profound impacts on people's lives. i've also seen how they don't always work for those who need them most, like the woman who called me in tears, deathly afraid that

her power was going to be cut off. her hiv positive son needed that electricity for his medical care. i also saw our programs deny free appliances to low income families for well-intentioned yet curious reasons, like claiming that a washing machine on the second floor of a building is a safety hazard. i believe it is crucial for government to listen and to use its power thoughtfully. if appointed to the board of appeals, i will help san franciscans navigate our city's processes within the confines of the law. as a judge, i received extensive legal training and across my government service, i learned how to engage transparently with the public balance. conflicting policy priorities, and collaborate to find solutions. i know that sometimes laws don't feel just especially in edge cases. while it remains essential to uphold

basic rule of law, i appreciate the role of the board of appeals in shining a light on those gaps and inviting legislative remedies. finally, i bring years of civic engagement and commitment to building effective organizations. as a sierra club san francisco group executive committee member, board member at the bicycle coalition, and more. i also speak intermediate spanish and beginner cantonese and russian, reflecting my desire to authentically connect with people from all background. thank you again for considering my qualifications. i respectfully ask that you send my nomination to the full board of supervisors with the recommendation for approval. thank you. thank you, miss grubman. mr. clerk, we will call for public comment on item number seven. yes. members of the public who wish to provide comment on this matter can line up to speak. at this time. each

speaker will be allowed two minutes. thank you. my name is raynell cooper, speaking in my own capacity. thanks to the mayor for nominating joanna. and thank you to the chair and the committee for hearing the nomination. i serve on a nonprofit board with joanna, and i've known her for several years and known her to be a great candidate for this position. she's a former public servant, so understands the role of government in serving people fairly. as someone who works in public service myself, i understand that oftentimes, oftentimes it can be hard to separate yourself and separate your own opinions from what's right and what's fair. but it's a muscle that you learn doing this work. and i think it's something my experience with joanna, i know that she's very good at at taking in this input, taking in what she hears from the public and being very deliberate in her decision making. she also asks a ton of questions, more than really anyone i know in terms of talking about policy, talking about the issues of the day and the issues of the city. and i

think that attitude of questioning and trying to get to the right place and trying to get understanding where people are coming from is, is going to be extremely valuable to have someone like that on the board of appeals and she definitely doesn't come to an opinion until she's heard, heard, done all the research and heard everybody out. finally, i think she's got, as she mentioned, just this great joyful exuberance for the city and for serving the city and a love for the city. and i think we need more, more folks with love for the city in roles like this. so respectfully ask you to send her nomination to the full board for approval. thank you. hello. good morning. my name is owen velez. i'm here to speak on behalf of my support for joanna, for the commissioner of the board of appeals. i've known her and her family for the last three years. i run me and my wife, we run a child care home where we've cared for her

daughter for the last three years. she's always been a very active member of our community. she's always raised up issues that affect family and children in the city, within our community, and has always gone the extra mile to take time to make sure that we and the other members of our community are informed about the things that are happening in the city and their rights as citizens and voters. she's always willing to, like we said before, always willing to listen to all sides, and has a very comprehensive approach and being a member of this community also for the last eight years, i understand the need for centering the needs of children and families as they inform policy. the standard that is required for a society to serve the needs of the youngest

and most vulnerable members of our community. it benefits really everyone, all the way across the strata. and i myself. i'm a former vice chair of the child care planning and advisory council, so i've been involved myself and i believe she will be a truly an asset for everyone in this position. thank you. good morning supervisors. my name is anthony colbert. i'm here in my personal capacity. i'm assistant chief judge at the california public utilities commission right across the street. i've worked with joanna since 2015, when she was on advisory staff with me on our proceeding for low income individuals, for energy, for energy programs. i also supervised her when she was

an administrative law judge in 2020 and 2021. she brings, as the previous two speakers said, i think what you need on the board of appeals objectivity, curiosity and a belief in process. so i've seen her do this firsthand in the advisory role and the judge role, and i believe she would be an asset to the board of appeals. and i urge you to move her nomination forward to the full board. thank you. good morning, supervisors. my name is charles whitfield, and i'm the chair of the san francisco sierra club's executive committee. i'm here today on behalf of the sierra club to state our support for joanna goldman's nomination to the board of appeals. joanna is

a fellow sierra club member, and she joined the sf group executive committee at the beginning of this year. from her very first meeting as a committee member, joanna impressed me and all our colleagues on the committee with her attention to detail and her collaborative approach to decision making, including an instinct to talk through disagreements and make sure all parties feel heard and understood. whether or not we reach consensus. since then, joanna has sustained these practices with apparently boundless energy and shown a welcome focus on aligning our organization's processes with our goals. the sierra club believes that these skills and attributes, which have made joanna an invaluable member of our leadership team, would also make her an excellent commissioner on the board of appeals. and we urge you once again to support her nomination. thank you. thank you. good morning supervisors. my name is vijay raghavan. i live in the inner sunset. i'd like to briefly express my support for joanna goodwin's nomination. she is, of course, deeply qualified as many of the other speakers have mentioned. i just want to

briefly add that just based on my interactions with her over the past few years, she would make a very compassionate and thorough and fair member of the board of appeals, and i support her. thank you. good morning. committee members cyrus hall live in the sunset. i want to speak very briefly about my support for joanna goldman. i've recently gotten to know joanna when i worked with her on prop l this past election cycle. her dedication, her passion, her breadth of knowledge around policy, all sorts of policy, both transportation, housing, environmental impressed me greatly. and the board of appeals needs a steady, even handed member like joanna to bring all of that. plus her objectivity, her desire to collaborate, and a belief in the power of positive process. i'd ask you to move the nomination

to the full board. thank you so much. good morning, alan burdell, district eight i'm a small business owner and 30 year resident there, and i just have a brief comment about why we're here, reviewing these nominations from the mayor and for this particular position right now, it's a very important board of permit appeals. the voters said no to mayor breed. okay. she's gone. so why are we entertaining her nominee here? this is a big middle finger to the voting public. setting aside the qualifications of this person. i don't know this person. okay. thank you. are there any other speakers on this matter? there are no additional speakers. thank you. seeing no other speakers. public comment is now closed. i do just want to say that i am always grateful

and excited for someone wanting to step up and serve. i think that it's very important to have folks who want to be in leadership roles, folks who really care about our city. and so i want to thank not only miss gutman, but all of the folks who have been appointed today. i also am of the belief that the city had an election, and there was a mayor who was voted for, and i think that mayor should be afforded the opportunity to make appointments per their duties and one of their mandates of the charter. i also just want to say, i don't want to set anyone up to be in a position where they may be removed by a new mayor, so i just encourage folks to continue to want to serve and to have conversations with the new administration. but i can't in good conscience support an appointment, and the qualifications for me are not even issued. but i know that the

city did elect a new mayor. so i'm going to motion that we move this item forward without recommendation. supervisor safíi yeah, thank you. chair walton and i concur with your comments this morning. i don't intend to judge any of the applicants. i think many of them are. and i've actually worked with one of the applicants before as the chair of the rules committee, and believe that they're immensely qualified. but the timing of this is it coincides with the change in leadership from the appointing authority. and these appointments would last far beyond the transition that's about to happen. so i believe that all all three of the commissioners today should resubmit their applications to the new administration and look forward to working with them. and i will support the chair's motion to reject as well. thank you. i would just add so yeah, these appointments would last

almost to the end of the new mayor's administration. so i concur with that. sounds like all three of us at this moment of transition are on the same page and in some ways concur with the last public speaker. but i would respectfully suggest that rather than sending it without recommendation, that we send it with a recommendation of reject. right, right. let me change my motion. i do agree, a motion to reject. yes, i believe we will need to amend the motions to delete approving throughout the motion to effectively make the motion reject the recommendation for appointment. correct. mr. clerk? yes, on that motion, vice chair safaí safaí. member. peskin a,

peskin i chair. walton i walton i the motion passes without objection. thank you. motion seven i mean item seven. motion carries. mr. clerk, please call item number eight. yes. item number eight is a motion to approve and rejecting the mayor's nomination for the appointment of sarah barge to the municipal transportation agency board of directors for a term ending march 1st, 2027. thank you, miss barnes. good. good morning. supervisors. thank you. my name is sarah bars. i'm a transportation professional, and the mayor's nominee for the sfmta board seat vacated by amanda eken. i'm a mom and a district seven representative to the sfcta citizens advisory committee. my family leads a truly multimodal life here in san francisco and in my free time. i am very active in my community in sunnyside. for the

past decade, i have worked in transportation in both the public and private sectors. i graduated from uc berkeley in 2015 with my master's in city planning and a concentration in transportation planning. i have worked at the city of oakland, the sfcta, the mtc, and now i work with transit agencies around the world in my role as a product manager for transit payments at apple, i would like the opportunity to bring my community passion and my professional expertise to the sfmta board. if appointed, i have three top priorities one. the agency's fiscal crisis, two making our streets and busses safer for everyone, and three building trust with the diverse communities of san francisco. since i became a parent, safe streets advocacy has been my focus with my volunteer time. while i have been an advocate, i am not an ideologue. i have worked in this field for long enough to know that there are usually several possible options

to a transportation problem, and community support is a critical element to any street change. the city charter calls for two members of the board to have the board. the sfmta board to have professional transportation experience. and much like amanda aiken, i would be honored to contribute my professional experience and expertise to this board. i ask you to please consider my qualifications for this position at face value and not delay this decision. sfmta's needs a full board to help the agency face its significant challenges. thank you very much for your time and i'd be happy to answer your questions. thank you, mr. barnes. we will now call for public comment on item number eight. members of the public who wish to speak on this matter should line up to speak at this time. each speaker will be allowed two minutes. thank you. supervisors. my name is peter belden and i live in district ten, and i'm speaking

today as the political chair for the sierra club in support of the nomination of sarah barres for the sfmta board. two reasons that i'll highlight one. sarah has a strong commitment to sustainable transportation, which is critical in the fight against climate change. the city has declared a climate emergency, and i and i think many residents of san francisco believe scientists that we truly have an emergency. and so we must act to seize this opportunity to appoint someone who's so committed to sustainable transportation and would serve for four years. and this is also about clean air. we probably many of us remember that day recently when the sun didn't come up and the sky stayed orange, and just two nights ago we were going to go out to downtown san francisco, my wife and i, for a date night. we looked at the aqi and it said over 150 unsafe for all groups. and so i think that fighting climate change, taking that action for cleaner air really is urgent. and then the second reason, as sarah mentioned, she's a transportation professional, which i think makes her a great fit for the

job. the last thing i'll add, just in a personal note on a separate topic, because this is the most wonderful time of the year, i would encourage folks to check out super bowl supervisor walton's book from juvenile hall to city hall. and the reason i mention that is we're just here in a professional capacity, but it just gives you some depth and some background of someone. so that's an aside. but back to the topic. the sierra nevada strongly supports sarah's nomination for this board. thank you. good morning supervisors. my name is janice park and i'm a resident of the mission district. i've worked in public transportation across both public and private sectors for the last ten years, including at sfmta. i went to uc berkeley for my master's in city and regional planning. that's where i met sarah bars. i followed and admired her career since then, and i, as a resident of san francisco, fully support her nomination. sarah has proven proven dedication on improving the transportation system in san francisco. her passion, expertise and tenacity is

unparalleled and we would be so lucky to have her on the board of sfmta. thank you. hello, my name is zach brown. i'm a resident of district eight. i've lived in san francisco for almost 12 years now, and i'm here to speak on in support of sarah. i've worked in the transportation area at a at a firm working on fair payment for transit systems across the country. and so i've worked with sarah, both at the mtc and at apple, and she's extremely qualified in the transportation space, and i can't think of anyone more, more qualified to navigate a lot of challenging bureaucracy at large organizations and moving them forward in very innovative ways. i've also had the ability to work and see what sarah has done on a community level, supporting safer streets, working with families with children to make san francisco a safer place to live. and i walk and bike and

take muni all over the city. and sarah sarah's work to make the streets safer and more livable in the community, and also on a professional setting with mtc and apple is really unparalleled. so i think she's a phenomenal choice, and i and i look forward to seeing that. thank you. good morning supervisors. my name is bob esfandiari. i'm here just in my personal capacity and as a capacity of a friend of sarah's, whom i've known for several years now. i first got to know her when she hosted some seamless event and pulled me into the massive push to try and get our bay area regional transit agencies to be better about coordinating payment and so on, and so forth. i was going to come here and speak more directly to why i like sarah, why i think sarah is a phenomenal person, why she's dogged about demanding and understanding, like what is the most effective thing that we can be doing to actually achieve results? but based on the

comments from the last nomination, it seems like this is a foregone conclusion. so all i'll say is this people know when a principal is touted. that is, maybe you actually deeply hold this principal, i don't know, but we all probably also are desperately hoping that president biden jams through as many appointments as he can right now, while he can before the next president comes in and so, i don't know, i feel like i don't fully understand whether you all think the next mayor should have a chance to nominate who they want, or whether you just don't support this nominee for some reason or something else. i just find it disappointing and i feel like it's inauthentic and i'm saddened by it. so i'm hopeful that my friend will get a chance before the new board. and with the new mayor, if she's able to get in front of him. thank you. good morning again, supervisors.

my name is sri vijay raghavan. i live in the inner sunset. i support sarah barrett's nomination to the mta board as a former wheelchair user and spinal cord injury survivor who still faces some difficulty walking and especially crossing some of our streets. i hope we're all in agreement that vision zero will continue to remain the policy of san francisco, and based on sarah's support for safe streets, i hope there's no need for this confirmation to be delayed. thank you very much. hello once again, cyrus hall. i stand to speak in favor. sarah barr's appointment as sarah talked about her experience. she's worked in transit and urban policy since 2010 and includes time in paris, one of the cities that is leading the world in

sustainable transportation solutions and transformation today. she would come to the board with a master's in planning and work across the region, including in oakland, our own sfcta and regionally at mtc. i've worked with sarah on a number of issues, including public transit funding and making streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists. her expertise has always shown through, and i want to mention one experience that she did not bring up when she was talking about her experience, and that is being one of the founders of seamless bay area, who has worked tirelessly on the regional level to advocate for better public transit, healthier public transit, transit. that's easy to use, that's actually affordable, where when you change transit systems, you don't get nickel and dimed by the agencies. and bringing that to the board when we're in a moment of critical financial crisis is important. this is one of two positions on the board that has to have transit expertise, and it's vital that we have someone who understands the regional landscape as we

seek funding, both regionally and at the state level. we do not have time. we do not have weeks to wait. those issues will be resolved over the next six weeks, both regionally and at the state level. and we need someone like sarah in place during that time. i would urge you to move this, whether with recommendation, without recommendation, or for a rejection to the full board, for full consideration of the entire board of supervisors. thank you very much. good morning ellen. adele, again, and i would just repeat my last comments simply that it's just reject this, please. today this mayor was voted out. we need the new mayor to make the appointments recommendations. thank you. are there any additional speakers for this matter? thank you. seeing no speakers, public comment is now closed and i do just want to state that. miss

barnes, i think you have an amazing resume and your credentials are great. however, you can refer to my comments from item number seven and i move to replace approving with reject for item number eight. yes. on the motion to amend in order to amend the motion to reject on that motion, vice chair safaí safaí member. peskin a, peskin i chair. walton i walton i that motion passes without objection. thank you. motion carries. mr. clerk, please call item number nine. item number nine is a motion approving or rejecting the mayor's nomination for the appointment of james bain to the police commission for a term ending april 30th, 2028.

you have the floor. mr. okay. thank you. i'd like to thank the opportunity for coming here today. i understand the board's position, and i know the board is aware that my nomination is a replacement for somebody that resigned from the commission after the election, and it was a term that was initially appointed by mayor breed during her term of office. so it's merely the completion. i completely understand the board's position on that. having said that, when i first got the opportunity to serve on the police commission, i wanted to focus my efforts on the tenderloin district. it's not just the fact that his most dangerous area in san francisco, it's not just the fact that it's hurt. in san francisco's convention and tourist industry. it's not just the fact that its streets are filthy. and it's not just the fact that san

francisco's most vulnerable residents, including many children, live there. what is the most important fact is that too many people are suffering and dying of addiction. as a native san franciscan, i've always been familiar with the tenderloin. but what i have become intimately familiar with it was when my wife started working as a public health nurse at the tom waddell clinic. i saw the great work that the city of san francisco was doing. my wife, maureen, has since retired, but she continues to volunteer at the healing well, a nonprofit group that helps people in the tenderloin. the important, the important observation that many of i have noticed is the under deployment of police resources in the tenderloin. the under deployment was made apparent to me one friday evening when, on a ride along with sfpd, as i had done on a number of occasions, i observed two incidents, one involving a mental crisis

incident crisis at an sro and the other a potential domestic violence violence altercation occurring in another part of the district. the sergeant i was with told me that evening that as a result, there were not any police units now operating on the streets of the tenderloin on a friday night. san francisco, despite what many outside observers say, is one of the most safest cities in the united states. but the tenderloin is not safe. the police commission has no authority over deployment of police. the police department cannot solve alone solve the problems of the tenderloin, but they cannot play their role unless they are properly deployed there. as we approach the new administration in washington, i've had the privilege of representing a number of former addicts who face deportation proceedings. all of them have told me of their struggles. the next four

years are going to be a challenge to many san francisco residents who are immigrants. i believe that i can stand as an example to our immigrant brothers and sisters that one of their police commissioners has devoted his entire professional career to helping them. thank you. thank you so much, mr. byrne. mr. clark, would you please call for public comment for item number nine? yes. members of the public who wish to speak on this matter should line up to speak at this time. hi there, alan burdell. again, i would just say that i support the argument that commissioner byrnes just made. that would give you a reason to put him through today, and i appreciate commissioner byrnes for his work and i totally agree with his rationale. so thank you. are there any additional speakers on this matter? i do not see any additional speakers. thank you. seeing no other speakers, public

comment is now closed. mr. clark, i'd like to repeat the motion for items seven and eight. yes, the motion is to amend to delete the word approving in order to make in in order to effectively make the motion, reject the mayor's nomination for appointment on that motion. vice chair safaí safaí. member. peskin a, peskin i chair. walton, a walton i that motion passes without objection motion to object i mean to reject passes. mr. clark, do we have any more business before us? there are no additional items on today's agenda. thank you. we are adjourned.

>> i'm paul. i worked at sfgov for 3 years now. >> as a cylinder kid i was in photographer, i went to college for broadcast journalism. early on i paintd and enjoyed art. artists other most interesting people i interviewed.

they have an interesting take on life and how they see the world. i mean, i find it inspiring. you know to talk to them and show case their work. >> it is hart to be a full time artist anywhere. there is thousands of them and you can only name one or two in the country. the biggest challenge was i did not finish college because the department change and i had got an internship my junior year. i really like today the nbc affiliate and i hung out with the photographers and the editors. and about 2-1/2 months into it than i offered me a job as an editor. this is great. i went to the new department and said, i will not do you know the afternoon classes for my senior year and he said, well, you know, we can't give you the degree then. so i dropped out and started

work. but i did finish. what i would tell the younger audience this has a passion for multiple things is -- you know stick with it, because it is not going to work out t. is first people are going to discount you and -- get in your way, but you gotta believe in yourself. >> [music] art withelders

exhibiting senior art work across the bay for 30 years as part of our traveling exhibit's program. for this exhibits we partnered with the san francisco art's commission galleries and excited show case the array of artist in historic san francisco city hall. >> [inaudible]. call me temperature is unique when we get to do we, meaning myself and the 20 other professional instructors we are working with elders we create long-term reps i can't think of another situation academically where we learn about each other.

and the art part i believe is a launching pad for the relationship building:see myself well. and if i don't try when my mom again. she may beat the hell out of mow if i don't try >> seniors, the population encounters the problem of loneliness and isolation even in a residential community there hen a loss of a spouse. leaving their original home. may be not driving anymore and so for us to be ail to bring the classes and art to those people where hay are and we work with people in all walks of life and circumstances but want to finds the people that are isolated and you know bring the warmth there as much as art skill its personal connection. men their family can't be well

for them. i can be their fell and feel it. >> i don't have nobody. people say, hi, hi. hello but i don't know who they are. but i come here like on a wednesday, thursday and friday. and i enjoy. >> we do annual surveys asking students what our program does for them. 90 plus % say they feel less alone, they feel more engaged. they feel more socially connected the things you hope for in general as we age. right? >> and see when i do this. i am very quiet. i don't have anybody here talking to me or telling me

something because i'm concentrating on had i'm doing and i'm not talking to them. >> not just one, many students were saying the program had absolutely transformational for them. in said it had saved their lives. >> i think it is person to support the program. because i think ida elder communities don't get a lot of space in disability. we want to support this program that is doing incredible work and giving disability and making this program what supports the art and health in different way bunkham art as a way of expression. a way of like socializing and giving artists the opportunity also to make art for the first time, sometimes and we are

excited that we can support this stories and honor their stories through art. we hope the people will feel inspired by the variety and the quality of the creative expressions here and that viewers come, way with a greater appreciation of the richness what elders have to share with us. [music]