r0- opportunity. [music] morning folks welcome to the january 17th 2025 regular meeting of the san francisco ethics commission excuse me. today's meeting is live webcast on s.f. gov tv two and live streamed online at s.f. gov tv dot org for slash ethics live for public comment members of the public may attend in person or may participate by phone or the webex platform as explained in our agenda materials. mr. clerk would you please

pl comment will be handled public comment will be available on each item on this agenda. each member of the public will be allowed three minutes to speak for those attending in person opportunities to speak during the public comment period will will be made available here in room 416 city hall for those attending remotely public comment can also be provided via phone call by calling 14156550001 access code is 26633755989 followed by an attendee when your item ofss interest comes up press star three to raise your hand to be added to the public comment line public comment is also available be available via the webex client application use the webex link on the agenda to connect and press the raise hand button to be added to the public comment line instructionw

to interact with the telephone system or a webex client. please refer to the public comment section of the agenda document for this meeting. public comment may also be submitted in writing and will be shared with the commission after this meeting has concluded and will be included as part of the official meeting file. written comments should be sent to ethics commission at self-governance. org members of the public who attend commission meetings including remote attendance are expected to be here responsibly and respectfully during public comment. please address your comments to the commission as a whole and not to individual members persons who engage in name calling, shouting and interruptions, foul language or other distracting behavior behavior may be excluded from participation. >> thank you mr. clerk. and now call the meeting to order. clerk would you please call the roll under item number one. >> commissioners, please verbally indicate your presence by saying i after your name is called sheriff and live.

hi commissioner salahi i commissioner francoi members present and accounted for you have a quorum. >> thank you but i'll call you an item two general public comment does anyone in the room wish to make public comment? not seeing anyone in person mr. clerk would you check if there's anyone on our online platform driven live? we were checking to see if there are callers in the queue

. sheriff i live there are no callers in4y the queue. >> thank you for checking seeing no callers i call item two is now closed. we're going to proceed to the calendar. i'm going to take things a little bit out of order to accommodate some folks are here in person so we'll start by calling agenda item 11 then we'll call the rest of the calendar in the regular order. so i now call again item 11 discussion on possible action regarding request for a waiver of compensated advocacy provision for hans laid off mr. canning thank you chair commissioners. i'll briefly summarize the matter which is a request by hans off for a limited waiver to the ses compensated advocacy

le after i introduce the issue mr. baldauf is present and available to speak as well. section 3.2 24a of the campaign and governmental conduct code prohibits city officers from directly or indirectly receiving any form of compensation to communicate with any other officer or employee of the city with the intent to influence a decision. this rule is an important safeguard for ensuring the integrity of decision making and seeks to prevent situations where city officers couldse their positions to exert undue influence over city officials on the commission, however, has the ability to waive this prohibition for any officer who by law must be appointed to represent any profession a trade business union or association. mr. baldauf serves on seat two of the historic preservation commission a seat that may only be filled by licensed architects that meet certain standards related to historic architecture. given this, mr. baldauf is

eligible to receive a waiver should the commission deem it appropriate to grant him one. mr. baldauf is also a founding partner of the bcd architecture plus interiors. in his waiver request he explains how part of his role requires him at times to speak with city officials on behalf of his firm and their clients which is why he is seeking a waiver to communicate with the departments listed in the request. mr. baldauf has also said that if granted a waiver he would delegate such communications to the best extent possible only using the waiver in situations where other qualified members of his firm are not available. >> when determining the appropriateness of a waiver for mr. baldauf, the ethics commission regulations specify that the commission may consider the following factors. one. the ability for the city to recruit qualified individuals to fill the position in question. if the waiver were not granted to the ability of the member to engage in their particular vocation if the waiver were not granted and any other factors

the commission deems relevant. looking at these factors in the past the mayor's office has requested waivers for seats on the historic preservation commission particularly seat one. a waiver was granted back in 2019. as part of that communication the mayor's office stated that filling these positions can be very challenging given the unique qualification requirements and that not granting these types of waivers could create situations where only retirees or members of very large firms are able to serve on the hpc. to the second factor mr. baldauf has stated that not receiving a waiver may lead to a situation where it's not feasible for him to continue serving on the hpc while meeting his obligations to his firm. >> based on the factors based on these factors and the limited nature of the request especially the fact that mr. baldauf is not seeking a waiver to communicate with the hpc or the planning department or its

employees staff recommends the commission grant the waiver to mr. baldauf that's limited as specified in the staff memo specifically that it's only applicable to the entities listed in the waiver request that it's only applicable to situations where other members of mr. mold ups firm couldn't reasonably make the communication. and additionally the waiver should be limited only to communications made on behalf of bcp plus interiors or its clients. thank you and i'm happy to take any questions and as i mentioned mr. boulder is here and able to speak as well. thank you for that have no quesn just share my thinking and then we can pick up mr. baldauf and that way you have the benefit of what we're thinking as you talk with us. i was just going to ask that madam deputy city attorney can we take public comment now? just so we have the benefit of the extent we have any comment as we move on we don't have to wait too long, right? >> no, you can take great. >> does anyone in the gallery wish to make public comment on

this item? seeing none. mr. clerk, would you check if there are any callers? >> chair from that we're checking to see if there are callers in the queue. >> sheriff i love there are no callers in the queue. >> thank you mr. clerk. mr. baldauf thank you for being here. we look forward hearing from you. my only question is i'll just tell you how i'm thinking. i intend or sorry. right now i very much support staff's recommendation.

i think they laid out the issues well. well, the question should be whether you have any issues with the narrow kind of not narrow but the waiver as envisioned in the recommendation which is based onulleted and the memo. those are my thoughts and i'll just before we speak i'll get my colleagues a chance to talk. >> that way you can direct any comments toward any questions they may have. i have nothing further, dad. >> all right, mr. ball off the floor. >> no. first of all, thank you very much for hearing this first. i appreciate it. i you know, i asked for this waiver out of an abundance of caution. i am trying to not get into any situation where i'm running afoul of the both the spirit and the letter of the rules here. but there are times in just the practice of architecture where you are all of a sudden at a meeting and something comes up and you a supervisor walks into

the meeting and it becomes awkward and complicated and so i'm trying to make sure that i am following the rules and i think very narrowly. i as i say, i'm trying to delegate anything that would to other people in our office. but there are just times where situations present themselves and i or saying something be construed as advocating. as a lobbyist i'm not trying to do that. >> i'm just trying to practice architecture. well i think we all thank you for so thoughtfully raising the issue to me i don't see any real risk of untoward influence in your roles. i think the city is lucky to have folks like you stepping up to serve on commissions and i think it would be a shame if you couldn't do that. so any other comments from my colleagues? >> yeah, i agree with chair finley very much. so with that i would move to

adopt the stf's recommendation as outlined in the memo on agenda item 11. >> thank you and i'll second mr. clerk would you take roll please? >> let's start before we do that. i'm just asking that madam deputy city attorney. do i need to spell out on the record the specific recommendation in terms of how the waiver is kind of framed? >> yes. and that's well, thank you. since that's spelled out in the staff recommendation, if you'd like to just move to adopt the waiver as specified in the staff recommendation that would be sufficient. >> right. thanks. thank you. i think that's what i did. so i think we have a pending vote. thank you, madam deputy city attorney. >> on the on the motion to adopt staff recommendation on agenda item 11 sheriff and live by commissioner salahi high commissioner francois sure. finally with three votes in the affirmative the motion is approved unanimously. >> right. best wishes to you.

thank you. that will go back to the consent calendar i now call item it was item well, so i should say there's one item on the sound calendar i'd like to move which was previously item four. >> i don't know if it's now item five but the executive director's report will move everything else on the consent calendar will remain there unless my colleagues want to pull anything and discuss it separately. seeing none i move to adopt the consent calendar which would be the draft minutes previously item three and the enforcement report item five second mr. clerk would you do any take public comment? yes. thank you. is anyone in the room who would like to make public comment on the concerned calendar? seeing none mr. clerk, would you check if there are any

callers, please? >> thank you. the chair finally, if there are no callers in the queue. all right. thank you. >> on the motion to the to adopt the consent calendar item three and item five a chair from high commissioner salahi i commissioner francois i chair friendly with three votes in the affirmative the motion is approved unanimously. >> thank you. that i now call item can't keep track of the numbers because we the executive rector's report previously item four thank you mr. ford. >> director ford thank you chair for the live. do you have any questions about the report? i'm glad to go through it if you'd like or it could just talk about any items that are of interest. >> noble questions the reason i call it is i was really happy to see all the new staff mentioned in the report and i see some folks are here in the gallery so i want to take this opportunity to welcome you all

to the commission. it's a great place to be. i'm really happy to see you all here. i know the staff has put a lot of work into finding the best and the brightest so welcome here. i'm not asking you all to say anything because this is public and on the record i want to welcome you all and give my colleagues a chance to say anything anything that they'd like to say. yeah, i echo that and that was one thing that really stood out to me some really great additions to the commission staff and so congratulations and thank you to everyone who worked on this and making it happen. you know, i definitely want to recognize gayathri and our h our analyst nikki choo if she's watching they put in a ton of work getting all these recruitments through. it is a lot of work to hire in city and also to all the managers and everybody else in the office that participated in the interviews we interviewed many, many people for these 13 recruitments. yeah and seeing the wealth of experience and backgrounds that people have i think they're going to valuably contribute to the commission. so it's really great to see.

thank you and thank you director void i think i have to take public comment since i pulled this item. so does anyone in the gallery wish to make public comment on this item seeing none. mr. clark would you check if there are any callers? >> chair found that there are no callers in the queue. >> thank you adam that item is now closed. with that i call to make sure i have the number and right■! woud it be number five so just keep the same number separate. i call item number six which is discussion and possible action regarding the push the relation decision and order the matter of randy collins mr. demicco thank you chair. good morning. and so this is a matter i'll give a brief summary and then i'm available for questions. the matter involves randy collins who is a respondent. he was a member of the board of

examiners from 2014 2024. during that time he was also the founder and ceo of ftf■d engineering i the three counts in this case are that during the period in question that is included in the statute of limitations from 2020 to 2024 count one there was one year in which respondent did not file a form 700 as 2022 count two there were five occasions in which the respondent mr. collins did not include paid the various contracts over the $10,000 threshold that ftf engineering received and then count number three there was one year where respondent did not file a certificate of taking the ethics training and did not file a sunshine . now the unique thing about this matter and the reason that our proposed penalties are at 200

per count for a total of 600 is that respondents the board of examiners did not meet at all during the period covered by the statute of limitations. the board met four times during respondent's ten years. he attended two of those meetings. the final meeting of which was held in 2018. this means that respondent did not have a practical opportunity to influence a decision during the period in question in which he did not complete all his relevant filings and trainings. that said, we do still believe a small penalty is appropriate because we do still believe these laws are important especially it's important to make sure that all of one's financial disclosures are complete so that if the board had met both we as regulators and the public would be able to figure out if there were any potential conflicts of interest for example. >> but because the board did not meet we believe it would be unduly harsh to penalize

respondent anything more than a de minimis the importance of the loss. >> but just on that point so the violations themselves are within the statue limitations. >> it's just that the board happened to not me during that time. yes and again because important because in 2020 and 21 and 22 the respondent did not know that the board would not meet ever again during his time there and so he was still required to complete these filings. it's just that he never actually had any sort of opportunity to influence a decision in that time. >> yeah, that makes sense to me. i'm just curious though what is the board of examiners and how do they not have any meetings and that's kind of irrelevant but i guess as a matter of curiosity. >> sure. yes. so the board of examiners they they determine whether or not new construction material or methods of construction are compliant with safety rules around construction and architecture in the city and

ftf engineering, as i mentioned is an engineering and architecture firm that respondent worked at. got it. thank you. thank you for the write up. i agree with the analysis and the outcome particularly given the unique circumstances of the case and one question i had was with respect to the violations outside the statue limitations whether there is anything that you learned in the process of reviewing that about whether they had been flagged earlier or not and whether there's something that could change moving forward to help identify violations before they become too old to take action on. >> yes. so it's something that i i don't want to the someone else may be better to speak about. it's been something that we've started working on and will be continuing to work on is certain not necessarily automation but we're working with our at a department to be able to more quickly essentially scan filings and

again i'm not a technical expert so my language is not correct but essentially automating the process of looking through filings and looking through city officers to be able to pick out people that we should take a closer look at earlier in the process. so that's definitely something that will be incorporated into that effort. >> thank you commissioner francois, any questions? >> i do just have a question. i saw that i was reading that commissioner i think that mike is oh i'm sorry. can you hear me here? i'm moving closer. he said on okay. ust have a couple of questions. we're just really one because it said that he didn't file for 2000 for three years 2017 did i did i misread that there were several years before the statute of limitations covers that he also did not file and what is the process when someone doesn't file for one year rather than 2 or 3 years?

how does that happen? i'm just curious. well, our office sends we send reminders in the lead up to forl filers. we also send out notifications when someone is late on filing and i. i personally cannot speak to what our process was in 2017 and 2018 for dealing with late or non-filers but i know that now we have you know enforcement is working to try and sort of create a streamlined process and we have the streamlined process but also create an expedited process for bringing non-filers and late filers into compliance . okay? so that we don't end up with a situation of multiyear non-filers thank you. is there a motion a move to adopt the item item number six

the staff recommendation and the stipulation? i'll second thank you mr. did wc comment? we haven't done that. sorry. does anyone in the room wish to make public comment on this item? seeing none. mr. clerk, would you check if there are any callers chair filled live? >> there are no callers in the queue. thank you. whenever you're ready you can take a vote on the motion to adoptor item number six chair friendly i commissioner salahi i commissioner francois i chair friendly with three votes in the affirmative the motion is approved unanimously. >> thank you mr. clerk. item six is now closed. i now call agenda item seven discussion and possible action regarding proposed ssab stipulation decision and order in the matter of budget policy because i should say sorry how

do you say sorry? what's the we do say chair i thank you chair commissioners good morning. this is a matter that involves respondent bert pileggi. he's a senior vice president of and community relations at maximus real estate partners and he's been a contact lobbyist lobbyist registered in reporting with the commission since at least january of 2014 and april of 22. acted as an intermediary of the $10,000 campaign contribution and failed to report that contribution on this monthly lobbyist disclosure report for the month of april 22nd through investigation the commission did not find any additional campaign contributions that mr. pileggi failed to report. he took responsibility for the violation and filed an amendment to disclose that campaign contribution on the relevant disclosure report. this matter was resolved on the commison resolution program site where the penalty

amount is $500 plus the penalty modifier of 15% of the unreported contribution in this case that was $500 plus $1,500 because mr. polaski filed that amendment and timely engaged with the program within the initial 30 day span. >> i'm glad to answer any other questions that commiioners may have about this matter. thank you. i don't have any questions. i thought the writeup was very clear and helpful. >> i agree with that. i agree it's well there's public comment. is there anyone in the room wish to make public comment on this item? seeing none. mr. clerk would you check if there are any callers please

? >> chair found that there are no callers in the queue. >> thank you mr. clerk i move to adopt staff's recommendation an agenda item number seven second on the motion to adopt staff recommendation for agenda item seven chair fellow high commissioner salahi i commissioner francois i chair friendly with three votes in the affirmative the motion is approved unanimously. thank you sir john item seven is now closed and i call agenda item eight discussion and possible action regarding proposed step stipulation decision and order and that

julio ramos and julio ramos for college board 2024. >> for the record, eric willett, investigator with the ethics commission enforcement division this matter involves mr. julio ramos and julio ramos for college board 2024. mr. ramos was an unsuccessful candidate in the november 2024 general election. during that election cycle mr. ramos and his committee failed to include proper disclaimer language on campaign communications that they made in support of mr. ramos's candidacy for city elective office. these communications had improper campaign disclaimer language included that was partially correct but ultimately did not meet the standards and requirements. these included communications such as yard and window signs and the committee's website. as a result of the investigation, mr. ramos corrected the website disclaimer within approximately one month of that website being

live and for the yard window signs only through 30 of which were distributed and any future ones he had corrected the disclaimer on those that were distributed after that initial throw with the improper disclaimer this matter was also resolved in the commission streamlined program and that is a $500 penalty when the respondent corrects disclaimers where practicable and within 30 days of contact by the enforcement division i hear mr. did correct those disclaimers engaged with the program timely and first a $500 penalty was applicable. >> welcome. any questions for commissioners? thank you mr. willard. i think this is a good action. i'm just curious the the website issue is tt it didn't list that the financial disclosures were available at as of ethics but what was the specific issue with the website let's trying to sort that out in a paragraph towards the bottom on page six well that's where i was looking i don't

want to direct you anyway. correct. so the website had the following disclaimer paid for by julio j. ramos for s.f. college board ncorrect name of his candidate control committee . okay. and is it all because of the initial correct so he had incorrect community name and he also failedures for the financial statements. >> got it right. and those are important because that's where folks need to go to see the actual transactions behind them. indeed and not the correct committee so the great. thank you mr.. but i don't have any other any other questions nor do i thank you. thank you. all right. i move to adopt staff's recommendation on agenda item i would although i keep forgetting sorry. thank you. is there anyone in the room who would like to make public comment on this item? seeing none mr. clerk, would you check the three callers

please? >> sure. friendly. we were checking to see if there are callers in the queue and live there are no callers in the queue. thank you for checking i will move again. okay. remember forgot to second i moved to adopt the staff's recommendation an agenda item eight so you can second i think commissioner commissioner francois seconds second on the motion to adopt staff recommendation for agenda item eight chair for live i commissioner salahi i am commissioner francois illy withe affirmative the motion is approved unanimously. >> thank you jenna item eight is now closed. i now call agenda item nine presentation the public hearing and possible of actions on ethics commission budget priorities for the fiscal year 2025 through 26 and fiscal year 26 through 27.

>> thank you chair for live for the record pat for detective director got a slide deck mat load up right goodness of gov tv display that great thank you city law requires that we have two hearings on the budget before we submit the budget to the mayor's budget office. so this is the first of those two hearings and the second one will be at the commission's next meeting february 7th. so today i want to give you an

overview of what the mayor's budget instructions are. recap what the ethics commission's departmental budget is and give you the opportunity to have a conversation with each other about what priorities you have in the coming fiscal year and that will help me and guy three as we go through and create a budget proposal to bring back to you at the february meeting. so then you'll actually have a proposal to react to we don't have that today. we just kind of have the landscape for you and then we can have a conversation and then over the next couple of weeks we'll we'll put that together. >> so as i mentioned we'll have to submit the budget to the mayor's office, the proposed budget february 21st and this is the first of those two public hearings that city law requires. this is something that started about 4 or 5 years ago. i think the the board really

wa the public to come in and not to have all that funneled into the board's budget process. the slide shows some strategic priorities that i've identified . i'd definitely be curious if you have feedback on these or if you have additional priorities that are important to you but these roughly track what the commissionsmn■< main operational programs are and roughly aligned with our divisions. but i wanted to put a finer point on exactly what we're trying to focus on in the next couple of fiscal years. so the first one materials and compliance assistance and that's of course to better inform the people who we regulate and i'm talking about political committees, city officers and employees, lobbyists, etc. to make sure that they understand the law and can follow it and also to engage members of the public, people who are trying to learn

about our laws just to inform themselves or to hold public officials accountable always want to make sure they have good information so secondly to conduct thorough and timely audits right now we are revamping the audit process and really making it new and more modern with the goal of getting all of the audits of publicly financed candidates done within about a year of those final filings which are going to be due at the end of this month. thirdly, to strengthen enforcement in particular by doing more proactive investigations and by doing larger and more impactful cases . obviously we've had some of those recently. we want to do more. we want to make sure that we're focusing the resources in a way that allows us to do those big long term cases next to make sure that our electronic disclosure systems are very strong. you may have seen in the id report i had a couple of updates that we just converted our final disclosure program to

electronic filing. so we now have full e-filing of all of our disclosures. that's something that we've been trying to work toward for a really long time. yeah, probably 10 or 15 years and we finally closed the gap on that one. but there's still work to do in terms of going back in modernizing those systems, making sure that they're effective, that people can use them well and then the next bullet point really talks about our policy process of reviewing the laws that the commission administers, making sure that they're working. i think we've got a couple of projects in mind that we could talk about at a future meeting one involving campaign finance ,one involving lobbying laws that would be really impactful and then the final two bullets are really just general goals that we have across all of our operations which are to enhance operational efficiency in particular by implementing standardized procedures using more detailed performance

indicators, increasing automation and using more data driven approaches. these are things that we know we have the tools to do and we want to really implement them more to make sure our work is as efficient as possible and lastly to maintain the staffing that we know that we need in order to get all of that work done. and that's going to be a major theme of this budget cycle which we'll talk about in a moment. so this slide gives a high level overview of the commission's current budget and what we call the baseline budget for the next two fiscal years and i'll explain what that is so the current fiscal year budget for fiscal year 25 which ends at the end of june we have a $6.75 million annual operating budget and we actually have 29 funded positions currently but during most of the fiscal year we were at this bizarre 27.61 number

those are you see things like that doesn't mean we have 27.61 people it means that's the average number of funded positions we have during the fiscal year and that has to do with timing of when we are allowed to hire a position sometimes the mayor's office will say you can hire this position but you have to wait until this date. you can't start paying somebody until then just because that's how much money they're willing to give us. so that's why you get these weird fractional numbers of fte is what the baseline budget is is it's basically a way to say if we continued our current operations and current staffing levels and current contracts that we have at their planned rate, what would the budget be ? the reason why it increases is mostly because of the planned cost of living adjustments that are baked into all of the city's ammo use with the bargaining units. so there's a schedule right now i think every six months for the next three and a half years there's a cost of living adjustment of 1 to 2% every six

months. so that's why even if we keep existing fte count you'll see the budget increase in other similar things like contracts that we have with net file work orders we have with other departments even if we keep those more or less level they can fluctuate over time. so that's why you see these numbers changing but basically you see the fte count remaining right at 29. this slide just shows you how that breaks down again, you see the same numbers you saw in the previous slide for our current approved budget and the next two fiscal years if we were to stay with our baseline and you can see that right now we're just over 85% salary and benefits were very staff heavy organization. we don't have a lot of equipment or grants or contracts that we make with community based organizations or vendors. we really are mostly an organization of people doing

this work and you could see that that actually just deepens over the next couple of fiscal years with those planned cost of living adjustments our budget becomes even a little bit more heavily weighted towards salary and benefits. >> just a quick note because this is always something that's part of our budget which is the election campaign fund and this is how the city's public financing program is funded. this is a distinct fund separate and apart from our operating budget. so whenever the mayor's proposed budget comes out it'll say the ethics commission's budget is $15 million. it's not $50 million. we have the operating budget around about 7 million and then the election campaign fund will actually fluctuate quite wildly year to year because of how the city funds it and because of major expenditures out of that fund during an election year in this last election in 2024 i think it was around $9 million of expenditures out of that >> imagine we can use that

money for operating expenses, right? >> it's we we can in a very limited way in we're actually exploring that right now what is the the full extent of what we are allowed to do? there is a provision in the code that allows us to use i believe it's up to 15% of the balance of the fund for costs that are associated with administering the program. the balance of the fund is a moving target so i think we have to figure out what that means. what is 15% of the balance when that changes all the time and what is the cost associated with administration of the program? so we definitely want to use that to the fullest extent we can but we are fairly limited us operating budget, correct? >> for example the main cost would be the staff hours that go into reviewing those claims for public financing and then on the back end doing the statutorily required audits. got it. >> exactly. but we have for example use that 15% of the fund in the past to pay external auditors. as you remember we've in the

past used external vendors to complete those statutorily required audits. we've been able to usepaign fund to help pay for that. thank you. so more details on that to come as we learn exactly how that works and this is what our divisional org chart is right now ande> you might remember tht we have a new division, the operations division which we created through the last budget. >> so gary three now has a team to help her with all the important budget operational and h.r. work things like running commission meetings all kinds of you know basic department wide functions that we have those are now all subsumed within that division and then you'll see the standard five divisions that we've had for a long time and this is our position or chart and as i mentioned in the report we have

29 funded positions and we currently have all 29 of them filled which is a first as far as any of us are aware of in the history of the commission. i don't know that we've ever had zero vacancies before. the red boxes that you see here those are positions that are technically in our org chart. they are not funded. we have no authority to hire those positions. they are required to be held open permanently in order to meet what's called our attrition savings target which is just a weird feature of how the city does its budget. it says well technically you have 32 positions but your attrition target is going to require you to hold three of them open. so pick three that you want to never hire for. that's what these three are. so you can see there's a senior clerk position, there's a senior policy analyst position and there's an investigator position. so i would consider right now we have no vacancies where we're fall but we do have these kind of weird kind of zombie positions that we can't use.

>> so now that we've talked about commission's operations in our budget i want to segue into talking about what the mayor's budget instructions are and these budget instructions actually came from mayor london breed these came out let's say early december so we did know the outcome of the election at that time. however, she did issue budget instructions. mayor daniel lurie has not issued any additional budget instructions or anything at this time that would change what these are. so we do understand these to be the budget instructions that we will be operating under for this this budget. the only thing that he did which i'al a hiring freeze. so these are the three main high level priorities that mayor breed put into the budget instructions. first one is to maintain core city services including public safety and clean streets.

the second one is to continue significant progr decreasing unsheltered homelessness, ensuring effective mental health treatment and the third one is to propose opportunities to improve operational efficiency and service delivery and reporting across all areas of city service and in furtherance of those priorities. these are the instructions that we're given. the bottom line number here is a 15% cut and that is 15% in both years of the budget. so as you know, every time the city does its budget which is every year it's actually a two year budget. so right now we are going through the process of determining what the budget is for both fy 26 and fy 27 but we will come back in 12 months and we will do fy 27 again. >> that's how the city does budget. >> they call it a two year budget but we do it every year so there's 15% would be across both years so it would be for fy 26 and fy 27.

this is not just a temporary 15% cut. this is going on into the future. the second one is that this doesn't really apply to the ethics commission too much but assessing community based organizations grant allocations for efficiency we don't make grants to cbos third to reexamine all contractual services and non personnel expenditures. we don't have a ton of thoset wd see if there's savings that we can find but we really have very few contracts. mostly we have net file and doc is signed for our e-filing systems. those are our big vendor contracts forth to eliminate vacancies and not add new ftes into hire only for core departmental functions. and lastly to consider a hiring freeze. those were the instructions in december but on january ninth, mayor larry's first full day in office he declared a hiring freeze. so luckily we have no vacant

positions right now or a full 29 member staff. however, if we were to have a vacancy we would not be able to fill it unless we went through a process that the mayor's office is creating right now to request an exception because this is not a complete hiring freeze. the mayor did say that public safety positions and positions that are necessary for operations or something like that can be hired but you have to get approval so if we find ourselves in that situation we will definitely be going through that process and making a request and that separate from the budget that's for right now any positions you have right now. way that this 15% budget cut would translate for our department is that it would be an ongoing cut of $1.1 million and we are required to submit a budget that meets that

cut. we have to input that into the city's budget system and we have to be in compliance as you remember from previous budget years, we can also make a separate request for something that does not involve a 15% cut. it could be something les than that or it could be no cut. but we do have to propose a scenario to them for them to consider of what that would look like to do a 15% cut and because of the fact that we are about 86% staff and a lot of those non personnel costs are things we cannot stop paying for. we can't stop paying the rent on our office. we can't stop paying net file to run our disclosure system. we can't stop paying other departments like da to provide necessary services to us a lot or nearly all of that cut would come out of our staff budget so that would involve a reduction in the number of positions that we have.

so to recap what the process is, february 21st is when we need to have our budget proposal submitted to the mayor's office. i should have added on here that also february 7th will have an additional hearing here with you. but then following that february 21st we need to submit our proposal by june 1st the mayor submits his proposed budget to the board and it is still at that time just a proposed budget. the mayor does not actually have the full authority to set the budget. the board actually does that. then in june the board goes through its budget process so that's when it forms up the full budget and appropriations committee five member committee and holds lots of hearings and departments come in and make presentations so we will be making a presentation at some point during the month of june . sometimes you have to come back for a second round if they want

to make changes to your budget and then by august 1st the board has to pass the two ordinances that constitute the city's budget and that's a piece of legislation just like any other ordinance. and the mayor needs to sign it and for it to become operative. so obviously that is already into the next fiscal year but that's just how they do it. they approve the budget already in the fiscal year that we're approving the budget for. so that's an overview of the process and where we are. be glad to and talk about any of that or answer any questions would definitely be curious to hear your feedback about the priorities that i articulated. >> i could go back to that slide two if you want to talk about that any additional priorities you have what you're thinking here, anything you can you can share. i have a question the the 15% target cut for the commission is that because some of the mayor's office has specifically said you ethics commission

should target 15% or is that drawn from the citywide kind of 15%? >> that would be citywide and this is the approach we've seen every year is the mayor will articulate a single number that just reflects where they want to be. they want to reduce the deficit by a given amount. so they want to cut across the board that amount. they do not give different departments different percents in our experience although oftentimes departments end up■c in different places, some departments get cut more than others. >> got it. and then i was curious to hear the 9% or so that's for other services of other departments is that kind of contract support or what does that go through? >> do you want to talk about that? sure i can. so the services of other departments are work orders with departments such as department of technology. they provide all of the infrastructure to communications as up of tv software licenses and things like that. we also have a quarter of a d a charge for our services but the

comptroller's office, the office for accounting services ,real estate for and things like that. >> got it sounds like those are not things that can be done in-house or enjoyed by so those are like very you know, basic■) operational needs. >> yeah. okay. well the parties you laid out director ford make a lot of sense to me. welcome any comments from my colleagues i agree yeah i agree as well yeah i think i think you're doing good work and i think that's that for our granular input but everything you laid out makes sense. okay thank you. and like i said you'll have something more concrete to react to at the next meeting so that might you know, drive more conversation. also hopefully we'll have two more commissioners at that meeting. we can see if they have any any specific ideas but we'll come to you with a full proposal of of how we think we could best sustain what would be a pretty serious cut to our budget without disrupting our operations more than more than

we can avoid. and just out of curiosity about the process will you have an opportunity to get input or engagement from the mayor's office before you come to us on february 7th or even if it's informal, just a sense of it we're not too sure what that's going to look like there there is a process for that. so when we submit our budget proposal at the end of february historically then there has been back and forth with the mayor's budget office. so we have a budget analyst that's assigned to us that budget analyst reports to the mayor's budget director. the budget director is in charge of putting together the mayor's proposed budget to send to the board so basically during march and april the mayor's budget office is reviewing our proposal and the proposal of all the other departments trying to assess what their priorities are, figure out where they want to spend their time and money and attention. oftentimes in the past i think we have not gotten a ton of attention on our budget.

i think it's been hard to get the mayor's budget office to prioritize the ethics commission. i would love to see that change. i would love to see the mayor's budget office really take seriously the cuts that they're talking about doing to our office and think about the impact that's going to haveb and give us some time and attention on this budget and hopefully avoid some of these cuts because cutting a tiny department like ours does almost nothing to balance the overall budget. we understand it's part of their approach. they want fairness. they want an across the board haircut for everybody. but that just doesn't make sense for a small department that isn't issuing big grants and contracts. we're not spending cash. we're very small staff doing important work so hopefully they will take the time to meet with us, learn about what we do and keep us from having to roll back the services we provide. >> yeah and i think that's exactly right. the cost benefit analysis seems kind of skewed in our situation andd% there's no way that we can do as commissioners to help with that message. >> just let u?

i will. yeah it could be helpful in the past when you've had particularly difficult budget discussions we have involved the chair or other commissioners so i could see that being something where we may want to do but hopefully not and hopefully we can negotiate and come to a good conclusion. >> we won't have to do that. right. all right. thank you director for public comment. does anyone in the room wish to make public comment on this item? >> seeing none. mr. clarke, will you check are there any colors if there are no colors in the queue the clerk that closes item number ten sorry nine a now call item ten discussion of enforcement regulation review project excuse me. >> thank you for the record my name is dr. mico, senior investigator with the enforcement division.

>> this is so our our department, as you know over the last few years has made an increased effort as well as showed an increase increasing willingness to bring cases through the entire process. that's sketched out in our enforcement regulations, especially focusing on probable cause process, the pre hearing process and then the hearing on the merits process in that process we have learned a lot both from the hearing that we held last year as well as from the many cases we have brought to the probable cause phase. we've learned a lot about how our enforcement regulations apply to these areas and how they could potentially be improved the enforcement regulations as you may know, were adopted in the late 1990s

. in the past 28 years they've been amended 11 times. the most recent time was in 2018. so a lot has changed since then in our department's operations and i think regulation ones that were written in theory have now been put to practice and as i've mentioned we've learned about four opportunities to improve those regulations so as part of this we've identified a couple of different types of issues with the regulations that we think we can improve upon. the first two are just very basic updates to reflect current practices as they've evolved. the second two are opportunities to provide clarity currently ambiguities from our experience especially with the hearing that we held last year these are just things like the basic mechanics of how a hearing is held, how and who is appointed as a pre hearing officer and a hearing officer

things like the order of who asks questions to witnesses and again you were all here for the hearing and i think you all experience that in real time as we did that additional guidance would be helpful both for us as the commission and staff but also for respondents giving them clarity on what they can expect as they move through the process. >> and then finally there are a few places where we feel the enforcement regulations contradict themselves or other laws and there can be improvements made on that regard as well. >> so our department is kicking off what we hope to be a six month or so process to revise these enforcement regulations. the past four months we have been working on researching the regulations in other jurisdictions, talking to folks in other jurisdictions about what they do and how they address some of these issues that we've identified. and so we're using this meeting to sort of publicly announce

this project to let you all know what the process will look like. we're not requesting any action at this time, but we'd like to give you the opportunity to weigh in on the process if you'd like and ask any questions essentially for the next few months we will be soliciting ideas and feedback from a number of parties. we're going to do at least one round of ip meetings, interested party meetings to solicit ideas and feedback. we welcome and encourage active participation from you all as commissioners getting your ideas and and getting feedback as the proposed amendments work their way through the process. we've also already started working with the city attorney's office to ensure that we meet all requirements for potential meet and confer throughout the process and we hope to have final proposed amendments before you all by the end of the fiscal year which would be the end of june of 2025 and again there's no

action that we're requesting today if you do have substantive suggestions we're welcome to take them today although today is mostly about sort of announcing the project and going through the process. but if you do have things you'd like us to take note of now or we're happy to thank you. mr. d'amico seems like a great effort. i'd be parcu interested in anything relating to the hearing process after the hearing we did a few months ago which i think went well but there definitely room for improvement and things that we learned a lot of takeaways from that but no other comments from me at this point at this time yeah i agree with jeff and live thank you i'll take up public comment does anyone the room thank you mr. d'amico anyone in the room wishing to make public comment. seeing none. >> mr. clerk, would you check if there are any colors? chair friend that we are checking to see if there are callers in the queue. >> sure. if there are no callers in the

queue. oh caller thank you mr. clerk that closes item ten a now call item 12 items for future meetings. nally colleagues anything for future meetings. does anyone in the room wish to make public comment on this item? seeing none mr. clerk would you check if there are any callers chair friendly there are no callers in the queue out of an abundance of caution let's take public comment on the agenda item regarding the budget that was agenda item i did. >> yes you did. i did. before we close the meeting i want to confirm with the clerk that we have a motion on item four that was pulled off the consent calendar and if not we could you did take public comment on that. i just want make sure we have

the motion directors report. >> i'm not sure there was any action required it you don't need one it's would be consistent with the the past practice i think to to do you cn abundance of caution if you want for the minutes i'm not sure the motion would be i guess would be to because there are no specific recommendations in there now there's there's no action so if you're if you're comfortable there's there's no reason you need to have that i'm comfortable with that. thank you. and then for i think i just say on agenda item 12 nothing from the commissioners on future meetings and i think we check blic comment in the room there was none mr. clerk will you check if there are any colors or none? thank you mr. clerk. item 12 is now closed. sorry. item. yeah, but was closed and i'll call item 13 additional opportunity for public comment . does anyone the room wish to make public comment on item 13 seeing none mr. clerk would you call item sorry would you see there any colors on item 13 chair for that we are checking to see if there are callers in

the queue chair from if there are no callers in the queue. >> all right. item 13 is closed. i call item 14. >> adjournment. thank you everyone

♪ [ music ] ♪ ♪ >> the two largest bridges in the road, symbolizing pioneer and courage in the conquest of space and time. between these two great bridges, in historic san francisco bay, here's tribute to the achievements of our time. he's a dream come

true, golden gate international exposition on manmade treasure island. >> the 402 acre artificial island was build by engineers from 1936 to 1937 on the neighboring buena island. 300,000 tons of rock was used to build a seawall around an existing sand ball then followed by filling the interior with dredge material from the bay which was consistent of modern sand. the federal government paid for construction ask three permanent buildings which would serve as a potential future airport. treasure island was constructed at the same time as the bay bridge and it was a project of works progress administration to construct this island, which was initially used to host the golden gate international exposition.

>> carnival gone big. it was busy. >> it was going to become an airport after the exposition but it was turned over to the navy and turned over to a military base for the next 50 years. >> 1941, the united states army moved to treasure island as america prepared for world war ii. the island was a major training and education center with 4.5 million personnel shipped overseas from triangle. after the war ended in 1945, treasure island was slalthed to be an airport -- slated to be an airport but aviation changed and the clipper were no longer in regular service, and the island was never developed as an airport. the navy continud their presence on treasure island. during the cold war years, the island was a my training center and for military efforts throughout the pacific and asia. personnel trained on and shipped from treasure island

and supported military activities in korea, vietnam and the persian gulf. >> the base was listed for closure by the navy in 93 and the city began a process in 19 forming a citizens reuse committee to look at potentially plans for the island, island's future. after the base closed in 1997, the treasure island development authority was created to develop and implement a reuse plan. >> the navy has completed their environmental cleanup in that area and last week, the california department of public health issued a radiology unrestricted recommendation for that portion of side 12. it's a big milestone for the project. >> the treasure island development facility was setup to implement the master plan that was adopted by the board of supervisors in 2011.

>> given the importance of housing in the city, both the affordable component and the market rate housing, we felt that it was important to review what the housing plan is at treasure island. >> the development facility and (indiscernible) that oversees the implementaf the master plan to make sure that the master plan, which was adopted by the board of supervisors and adopted by the city and after meeting, that's plan that the city approved. the members of the board was appointed by the mayor and the board of supervisors. [multiple voices] >> the (indiscernible) is very detailed plan. looking at the ecological aspects of the island, looking geotechnical aspects of the

island, but also making sure that there is an ongoing of development that's in keeping with what the original plan was, which is that we have up to 8,000 rooms of housing and there's retail and hotels. but also that there is open space that's created so it's an overall plan that guides the whole development of treasure island and the buena island. >> materials the construction of treasure island severely compromises the integrity to build structures. in today's geotechnical engineers standing, treasure island soil is being readdressed for soil stabilization for future development. a mechanical stabilization process is being used to consolidate the liquid fashion of the mud and sandy soil. >> because treasure island is a manmade island, we have to do a significant amount of soil improvement before we can build new infrastructure on the islane

foreground, you see here, it's a process called surcharging we we import additional topsoil to simulate the dead weight of the future buildings to be constructed at that site. so this is mud that underlies island to consolidate over time and we can monitor that and as that consolidation primarily consolidation is complete, then this soil will be removed to the intended finished floor elevation of the new structures. ♪ [ music ] ♪ ♪ >> in the 1989 loma earthquake, the ground level of this island dropped by four inches. pretty much uniform across the island. loose sand material used to build the island, whether it gets hit by a seismic forces, the sand moves and consolidated. >> one of the processes to

further stabilize the loose granular ground, a dynamic rate is used to densify the soil b high frequency mechanical vibrations. >> the rig in the background has four h-piles that goes down through the upper 50 feet of sandy material and as they vibrate, they vibrate causing that san material to consolidate and settle so as we do that process, we observe about 18 inches in settlement so the ground level around that equipment will drop by 18 inches, so this causes that same type of event to happen through mechanical means rather than through a seismic event. >> the dynamic vibrant compaction rate vibrates the soil every four square meters and moved along to the next section. to further assure stability, tamping is followed around the site, compassion takes approximately three to

four months to complete 12 acres. once the compassion and pping is done, it's settled ask using laser alignmentso assure a level service to build on. >> i think that every city when they have the opportunity to do something that is as large as treasure island because treasure island is five hundred acres and it depends on their needs at that time and in 2011 to now, the most important are thing for the city is housing. there's two aspects to that master plan. one, was the new district for san francisco. 8,000 units of housing, which is all levels of stability. t■o other (indiscernible) is 300 acres of open space and parks. and

actually, it's the largest addition to the park system in san francisco since (indiscernible) 300 acres and this is a tremendous gift to the public, both the housing, which we desperately need in san francisco as well as an open space and park system which really is going to be worm class and it will attract people in san francisco but attract people locally as well as. >> cmg architecture was brought to the project once they award the agreement between the city of san francisco and the united states navy. cmg has earned national recognition and numerous awards for merits and design, social impact and environmental stewardship. >> we were a part of the project in the beginning when the

developer initially was awarded the exclusive negotiation agreement or the ena with the city and they partnered with the planning and architecture group and we joined that team to work with the developer around the city and community to come up with a plan for treasure island. >> so there's quite a lot of open space in the master plan and there's a couple of reasons for that that's pragmatic. one is that the amount of area that could be converted for private use on treasure island was very limited, actually it wasn't allowed at all because treasure island was previously public open waters and protected by the dal and trust act to be redevelop for public use. but there was a land swap that was allowed and approved by the governor of california, governor schwarzenegger to be put on a public tst swap to be taken out of the trust to be developed for private use such as residential

and that amount of land was 89 acres which leaves a bunch more space that can't have housing on it and the question was, what to do with all of that space? there could be other public uses that allowed such as conference centers or museums or universities or things of that nature but what made the most sense for this location was t p robust parks and open space plan and that's what led us to the plan we have now. >> planting strategies for treasure island and buena island are to maximize habitat value in the park areas wherever appropriate and where we can to create comfortable at the pedestrian scale. there are these diagonal lines that go across the plan that you'll see. those are wind row trees like you see in agricultural landscapes where they are tall tree that's buffer the winds to create a more calm areas down at the pedestrian scale. so of course, we do have some areas

where we have play fields and surfaces where kids need to run around on and those will be either lawns or like you see in norm at sports field. >> related to where the housing is on the island and its convenience to the walk to the transit hub, i mentioned we're trying to create high-quality pedestrian -- and the innovations of treasure island is called the shared public way and it's a road that runs down the middle of the neighborhoods. it's a curbless street, cars are allowed to drive on it but pedestrian can walk down the middle of the street and the cars are to yield the right-of-way for pedestrian and it's intended there's a low traffic volumes and the traffic speeds are low so while car was allowed, there's not a lot of reasons for cars to go on that street but it's to create a social street that's much more pedestrian-friendly and prioritizes pedestrians and bikes. one of the interesting things is working with all

architects that have been designing buildings in the first phase to encourage them, to create architecture that welcomes people to sit on it. it's wlm like sticking its toe out and asking someone to sit on its toe so buildings integrate public seating and places for people to hang out at their base, which is really, the opposite of what you see often times in this city where there's defensive architecture that's trying to keep people off it. this is architecture that's trying to invite people to come an inhabit it at its base. >> incorporated in the landscape architect of treasure island are wetlands, which are designed to factor in coatal erosion control from incoming sea level rise and natural animal habitation and stormwater runoff treatment. >> there's different kinds ever wetlands planned for treasure island and they have different purposes. they are stormwater wetlands that's treating the runoff from the island and filtering that water before it's released to the bay to improve

the water quality in the bay and the ocean and the first phase of the large wetland infrastructure is built on buena island to treat the storm water from buen we go out there. there are tidal wetlands plan for the northern side of the island where the sea level rise adaptation and flood protect for future sea level rise is held back the edge of the island to allow sea level rise to come onto the island to create future tidal wetland which is helpful for the bay in the future as we see sea level wise flood out existing wetlands and there are some natural vernal pool in■ihe wetland that's captured rainwater and capturing certain habitat so there's three purposes of the wetland primarily around water filtration and habitat creation. >> consumable sustainability was incorporated in the redesigning

of treasure island. innovative urban farming is included in the plans to foster economic viability, conservation of water, and to promote ecological sustainability. >> the urban farm is island. and it's a commercial farm to produce food. it's not community where the volunteers and neighbors grow their own, it's commercially run to maximize the food production and that food will be distributed on the island. and terestingly, the urban farm is tied into the on island wastewater treatment plan which creates recycle use for water on the i■■óando water used to grow the island will be a sustainable force and we're trying to close the loop of water, food, and create a new model for sustainability. >> part of the design for sustainable landscape was incorporate natural form water garden filtering systems, the first of three natural

stormwater gardens is here on buena island. and a total of ten will be on treasure island. water from storms, street runoffs from neighborhoods has the possibility to collect toxic materials as it makes its way back into the surrounding bay. this garden has been a model for future, natural filtering systems through out the bay area. >> whenever a storm comes through, all of the water, you know, it lands on the streets, it lands on the top of the buildings, and at times it often collects a lot of heavy metals and greases and it needs to be cleaned and before sent back into the back. it goes into the pipes and stormwater drainage and put into our stormwater basin and then all of the plants and soil you're seeing in there, they are acting as a filter for all those oils and heavy metals and greases and all things that's coming off the roadways,

coming off the development and so it's treated here in the storm water basin and then it's sent out into the bay as a clearer product and cleaner water which increases our water quality here and throughout the bay area. so the structure in the center of each basin is what we call the for bay. that's the point at which the stormwater exits out of the storm drainage system and into the stormwater basin itself. so the for bay is shaped as almost a gate to kind of push all water out through the pipes, all of those rocks help to disburse it before it's sent into the stormwater basin itself■m. the storm water basin was designed to fill up to the height of the berm of the side you're seeing here. so this is juncus and these are well-known fresh water grasses found in any place around the bay area that you find standing water or in a drainage channel, you're going

to find a lot of these junket species. this is a leave a lifter in the bio treatment. it soaks up a lot of water, to soak up the contaminants and heavy metals, so it's kind of our backbone species. this one is called douglas siana and the common name is mug war. it's a beautiful plant but doing the heavy lift and pulling, those contaminants out of the storm water and pulling oil to help treat the water before its sent back into the system and back into thebay. this plant is known as salvia or hng a lot of value in that it's a strong pollinator plant. obviously, you can see the pink and purple flowers which come up in the springtime and attracts a lot of hummingbirds, a lot of bees which help to pollinate the other species within the garden and throughout the rest of the island and all of those native

plants. all of these plants are designed to be able to take a heavily inundation of water over a several day per like standing water for a long time. all of the plants can withstand that and honestly, thrive in that condition. so all of these were selected based on the ecological and habitat value but also their treatment and functional value for stormwater. >> this is super tiny. >> it's very much a big part of our design and master plan for the development of the island. it was a navy base and a lot of navy housing on this island specifically for around 80 years and during that time, a lot of innovative species were introduced on the island, eucalyptus, a lot of different european and algerians plants were on the island. we wanted to bring in the native eye college

here on the island before the navy started to redevelop it and introduce some of those invasive species so the species you're seeing in this stormwater garden in the basin and the upland area was a part of those types of ecology s that's trying to be returned to this side of the island but different other spaces through out the islands development. so whenever we started this process, we identified a number of species of native plants that seem applicable to the ecology that we're trying to grow. there's 45 species, so a -- there's 15 species so they are hard to find in the nursery trade so we needed to■m grow it ourselves t achieve the biodiversity that's in the design here. as a part that have process, we brought on a nonprofit group called ledge,

l-e-g- which is literacy for environmental justice. they grew those plants and put together the plant palates you see. >> most of landscape was inundated with invasive plant species eradicating species and having the plan on buena island and treasure island. literacy for environmental justice, a community volunteer educational program involved with restoring local habitats and preserving san francisco's unique bio tie varsity, teamed up with the redevelopment group to grow the 50,000 native plants to -- to repopulate treasure island. >> the city of san francisco set up meetings between leg and they came in with high expertise and urban design, and architecture,

and green infrastructure, but they really hadn't worked with flytive plants -- worked with native plants at scale and they were also kind of scratching their heads, like how are we going to grow 50,000 native plants from remnant native plant populations. it was a unique partnership of figuring out what plants can grow, what plants will function in stormwater gardens. not all native plants are ascetically pleasing to landscape architect, so we kind of worked around what plants are going to be pleasant for people, what plants are going to provide habitat, what plants are going to actually be able to sequester carbon, deal with erosion, preserve the island biodiversity as well as be able to manage all of these stormwater treatment on the island. >> there's about 33 naturally occurring native plant species

that survived the last one hundred years on yorba buena island. we were able to go in and get the seed and salvage plants in some cases, some of the development work that occurred was actually going to destroy native plant habitat and we went in before the bulldozers and before the roads were build and the new water tanks were installed and dig them up, divide them, hold them, of the 50,000 plants we grew 40,000 of them in-house and the other ten, we had to rely on our partners to do it. with the 50,000 plants we did, we did 100■m species an 95 of them are from the county of san francisco. about the other five are from the state of california. but the other 95 species really are the native

plants that have been here for thousands of years. we used collection sites such as angel island, the presidio had genetics for the projects in san francisco. we used remnant plant habitats at hunters point and we used a lot of genetics from san bruno mountain. just to collect and process all of the genetics was a two-year process. and then it was about a two or three year process to grow all the species. >> this is the infamous -- it's a low, growing sprawling native herb and it's in the mint family and i'm rubbing my hands on this d extremely aromatic. it feels like a flush of peppermint just came across my face. it's

edible. you can make tea out of it. it's a great digestive plant for settling your stomach. it has been cool to introduce yerba buena to yerba buena. this plant is called dutchman's pipe. when in bloom, the flower looks like a dutchman's pipe. and another thing that's unique about this plant is, it's the whole specific plant for the pipeline swallow tail butterfly. so some butterflies are able to adapt to other species and can use larva and foodm different species. in the county of san francisco, there's only about three or four healthy populations of this plant. these particular plants were going to be destroyed because of the green

infrastructure project needed to put pipes in and needed to demolish all water tanks and build new water tanks for the island, so we were able to go in, dig them up, cultivate them, extrapolate dozens of plants into hund hundreds of plants and restore it through the restoration process. one day one of my nursery managers was down here and she found the pipeline butterfly have flown over from yerba buena island and came to our nursery on treasure ■+isnd and was breeding on this plant. and successfully did its life cycle inside of our nursery. so, it? how that butterfly knows it's out there and find it, this is one of those unique things that we can't explain why butterflies can find this species but if we grow it and put it in the right location,

they will return. so the plants we're looking at here is faranosa known as just dedlia or live forever. the construction is it work happen nothing that area, it's likely to be destroyed. a unique thing about this plant and the unique succulents we have in california and the live forever plant can live to be 150 years old. recently, the state of california just did special legislation to protect this plant. i think in its intact population on the island, there's less than 50 of them, so to be able to grow several hundred of them and have them be a part of the plant palate of the stormwater gardens that was installed recently is an increase of biodiversity and a step forward towards protecting the natural legacy of the

island. >> i moved to treasure island in 1999. i believe i was one of the first residents on the island. i have seen how the island has been destroyed and reconstruct since its beginning to restore the island to its native form is extremely important to me because that will help all the animals come back to the island and make this place even a better place to live. >> i want to be here because these are people i know, so that was my first thing is just, like, i wanted to come here to help out and be with (indiscernible) and to actually put my hands in dirt. i feel like we as people don't work in army -- we don't see the benefits of plants, like, but i just learned about a plant that if you rub it enough, it turns

into soap. that's cool. and we need those things. we need to know about those things. uniquet this project is the scale. to use 50,000 native plants over 7 acres is a scale we have never seen. it really is trailblazing when we think about the 350 or 400 acres of open space that is planned for treasure island, it sets the stage for what is possible. there's a way to use nature-based solutions at scale to meet the needs of climate change, sea level rise, the crisis of local extinction and create natural environment. the first phase of the project sets a stage for what is possible and i just feel really blessed to have been a part of it.

>> one of the main focus on triangle is keeping vehicle traffic to a minimum. for residents and visitors, public transportation is highly encouraged and will be the center point of keeping the island pedestrian-frien an opend providing an eco system that reducing carbon emission >> we need the transit to be successful because if we had 8,000 homes here and everybody was trying to useheir car to access the bay bridge every month, it will overwhelm the system. new on and off-ramp are being constructed but all over the focus of the development is to be very transit oriented. triangle itself is very flat and very bikeable and walkable as a result and so there's a focus on using both bus and ferry service to get from the island to san

francisco in the east bay. there will be a number of transit demand management tools that will be employed of the two new ramps to and from the -- to the island and allowing a limited number of cars to access the bridge and there will be a management toll to encourage the use of transit. >> all the market rate housing on the island, the price for residential unit whether that's a rental apartment or a for sale condo, the price of the unit is decoupled from the price of the parking spot. so people can buy a condominium without paying for a parking spot. they choose to have a parking spot, they would pay an additional price. market rate residents are required to purchase take transit pass each month through their hoa fees or through their rent so the residents will begin the decision of driving or taking transit with a transit pass in hand each month. that transit

pass will function as a muni fast pass allowing people to take muni and transfer within the muni network and function as an ac transit allowing people to take ac transit to the east bay and transfer within the ac transit system and it will also provide unlimited access to the treasure island ferry. >> treasure island is going to take decades to be fully build out. it's going to take some time for it to reach the envelope that was passed by the board of supervisors and maybe there will be changes to it as well. we don't know what is going to happen in 50 years but i'm confident by the fact that the plan that s adopted was fully, fully thinking even for its time and the building the

island to a way it's sustainable, it addresses sea level rise, but also gives the public the open space and parts that are so necessary to fill treasure island. there's economic, certainly, challenges and whether we're going to be able to build out all of what was desired in the master plan, it will -- time will tell, but i think that the last ten years, we've been coming to this point. we are seeing incredible progress and the infrastructure is being finished by the island. market rate housing is being finished. affordable housing is being finished. and so, we feel within the next five years, substantial part of what we had envisioned is going to come to fruition.;

>> welcome everyone. thank you so much for joining me today. the round table discussion. i actually have background in youth work. worked in china town before so having you four from youth commission join today is very

interesting to hear your thoughts and concerns and what you are talking about from the youth commission and your generation your thoughts. let's get into it. start with introductions. your name. grade rkts school. and what ld you to become into the youth commission? could start with emily. >> so, my name is emily, she her pronouns. (inaudible) in san francisco. and i joined the youth commission because growing up i relied on public transportation and a lot of community organizations such as (inaudible) and through these organizations they introduced me to a lot of community organizing movements happening and that is when i learned of the youth commission because my friend was also on it at the time and i was interested because i saw a benefited from a lot of public service in san francisco and wanted to insure all youth in san francisco could have opportunities to benefit from these services as well and these services would

be available to everyone. that's when i applied to the youth commission and i to learn so much about like how local government works and how i could contribute my voice to make better opportunities for all youth in san francisco. >> nice. how long have you been on the youth commission? >> i joined in 20 21 and this is my second term. >> normally the youth commission, what's the age range? >> youth ages 12-23. >> wow! you can be out of high school and on the commission? >> yeah. we have college students and we used to have middle school students on the youth commission too but now they are a freshman in high school. >> nice. awesome. >> (inaudible) >> ewen a senior at san francisco high school. i joined the youth commission. i had beener interested in san francisco politics freshman in high school and volunteered on

local political campaign and district attorney election and got into that process, and from there did more campaigning and got into youth advocacy and activism in the city. and from there i sort have (inaudible) city hall on certain issues and wanted to be on the flip side and see what i could do in city hall for young people and a voice for young people and are the youth commission was the perfect opportunity for that so why i decided to apply. thankfully i was appointed. >> great. how many years have you been on? d term as so beginning september 2021. >> every turm is one year? >> yeah, because people age out so quickly and people go away for college so we try to make it like a school year roughly. >> okay. nice. thank you. >> hi. i'm ha31yden. i'm a junior this year at

(inaudible) my first term on the commission but what drew me to it is like emily i have always been super fascinated by public transportation. since i was two years old i had a baby sitter and she couldn't get a driver license so would take the bus everywhere and it was fascinating to see all the people and places i could go around the city and just as i got older i would explore more and more but realized that you know, like, it is not as simple as buses driving around and i can be involved in getting more ■! buses out there, having more places to go to and like i think especially when the pandemic happened and all government meetings moved on line it was a lot more accessible for me so i was able to pgo and make public comment and see had all the presentations, see all the people on commissions and stuff and also had several friends who had been on the

youth commission in the past so i just saw it as a great opportunity for me to advocate for young people, because i feel we have a lot of needs and sometimes it isn' always represented. >> thank you. >> hi, i'm yoselin. a senior at urban school of san francisco. this is my first term in the youth commission. similar toeveryone else said, i have been interested in politics and public policy and how legislation is made. i are worked for someone who worked with supervisor ronan, he really-i was fascinated with what he gets to do in his job and the issues he gets to work on and people he gets to speak. this is a great opportunity to test what you are interested in and so i applied and got in and very happy. >> how many total in

the youth commission? one per district? >> yes, one per district and 5 from the mayor. >> there is 11 supervisor ones and 6 from mayor office, 5 of it which are specifically for minority community representation and one is appointee so 17 total. >> 17. great. >> (inaudible) one of the bigger commissions in the city, but because youth is everyone at some point in life, every comm important to have enough seats to have a voice for communities and their different needs on the youth commission. >> for sure. let's get into the nitty-gritty of it. i really interested to hear some of the concerns that either the yoh commission is talking about now or even you yourselves personally what concerns are you trying to like advocate for and stuff like that? who would like to start? >> i guess i can

start. before joining the youth commission i'm involved in housing and mass incarceration crimial justice system. i knew these were topics i wanted to discuss and bring up so i'm also on individual committees so two main topics is youth incarceration and substance abuse and gun violence and-yeah. those are the main issues we are talking about. >> for youth incarceration, what are some of the topics? is it more about the resources putting or not putting into it or is it- >> yeah. one main thing now is talking about juvenile justice center. forget the street. and, i think woodside and por tolla. >> it was supposed to be closed last year and has not because there is a lot of uncertainty about what is supposed to happen. i recently spoke to chief miller the probation officer at the center,

so discussing ways we can support them to get that closed and have more equitable resources for the youth who are currently inside still and relying on community members and families and friends instead of like abusive and harmful police officers and the justice system. >> is sthr racial disparities in the youth incarceration? >> yeah. what i heard from the meeting there youth ins range in age but it is all like people of color and people from low income families who are usually the ones more involved in the crimial justice system. >> i read somewhere that like perhaps there could be more money put into the communities to help low income or kids being not targeted but

don't have as much opportunities and end up in those places. >> yeah. >> versus putting money in- >> i think it is better to fund organizations and programs. i think emily you mentioned you are in break through, i'm in the smart program help afford education and help get to college and teach them and offer activities so they have more resources and opportunities for their future. just like putting more money into programs activities and things that like shift youth experiences to a more positive one. >> any other concern? >> i can add on. i think you all said investing in youth early is really important rather then focus on punishment. i think that goes

unsaid. break through helped so much in the education. if not for breakthrough and summer program jz tutorer and mentorship they offered whic$ñh my parents couldn't offer me i don't know where i would be. i think community organizations like break through and after school programs funded by the city are so important supporting youth early and insure they dont go down the wrong pact. coming from under resourced neighborhoods and first generation it was very hard to carve my own path so finding mentorship in organizations like this is important and crucial to my personal development. >> i say the science behind it too backs up the testimony. violence-i do a lot of work in gun violence prevention and programs are often more successful then police are in preventing gun violence in our city. obviously both are a

part of the equation, but i think that we have seen a lot of investment. we have seen them be quise successful and i know i am and think everyone on the commission is interested in looking how to support those programs and have them work specifically with youth as well and get young people into the program early before they have a opportunity to be put into these situations that cause violence to occur. >> yeah. >> i just say also like the education system plays a big part because it is great we have a lot of community organizations, but sometimes it can't always be the most accessible so one thing we are working on is expanding outreach and access so people know about these problems and also within our education system i was looking at data in regards to suspensions and expelgz and similar to

juvenile justice center it is overwhelmingly student of color and lower income students effected by that as well as students who are often miss school and there is a lot of reasons for that. some relate to transportation and such. it is just been exacerbated by have distance learning. not everybody had the same access to technology and such to stay connected and engaged in their education during that time. >> i'll add on, i feel when people think about issues like youth not attending school not doing homework or committing these petty crimes, there is moralization and everyone is like they are just bad people. they have the wrong intentions, they are messing up the city, but i think it is just generally very important to investigate the root causes. a lot of these kids come from under resourced naerbd s and have-for a lot of people it is means of

survival so so important to look beyond the surface and no there is no need to moralize these situations. these kids don't have other solutions so it is important to look the root cause and see how to address prevention rather then punishment and suspension and removal from school. >> it is funny talking about resources and schools. i'm often surprised how many good community organizations are like i don't know how to reach young people and i'm like have you been going to schools, the place where young people all have to pgo during the day? i think i also feel schools dont realize that they have the opportunity to provide resources to young people. they are allowed to connect with outside resources and bring them in and use them as well. that is something i'm hoping to encourage on the youth commission as well. >> right. usually it is outside -i dont want to say non profit

but the-schools themselves are [multiple speakers] >> teachers have become social workers for young people. >> which is why prop g is such a great proposition. i think it is $60 million. increases over time but $60 million goes to public schools for activities, classes, nurses, therapist to support students, which is great. which is what we need. >> yeah. just add on to that or the question, because i know high schools have counselors and probably i don't know if mental health specialists, but do middle schools and elementary schools in the city have that? >> i think it depends on the institution. i am very fortunate to go to private middle school and high school. i did go to public elementary school and there is a huge gap in education resources available in public

and private. i can't speak to that now. >> it has been a huge burden. recently both our school nurse and our ■+school wellness coordinator left and there was an iligez to the fact it was connected to the pay roll issues occurring with sfusd and not just that but they are already paid much less then other public school districts private school districts, like for nurses if they were to work somewhere else so it is really hard to attract people to work in these schools and we don't budget enough positions in the first place. now we have 7 school counselors for like a body of 3,000 kids and you can have questions about college and classes to take to graduate. it is just not enough resources in the schools. i went to sfusd middle school and we had one counselor for each

grade level, but it just really isn't enough and a lot of schools-it kind of-there is pto or lowel-able to fund a second librarian or nurse the full week opposed to 2 and a half days so if you get injured monday, you got a nurse, but tuesday you are out of luck. that's something happening in the schools and i just feel that is crazy because they don't have a affluent enough pta to fund the nurse. that should be basic. we shouldn't have to ask for donations to fund a school nurse. >> that ties into the mental health issues people are facing. covid was detrimental to everyone but especially young people who spnt hours a day online and away from mental health support in a

really difficult time and i think people are beginning to realize now how important those services are. i think there is work to do but advocase hads been relatively successful in san francisco getting more health but there is a huge gap we are now catching up with. it was never priority before the beginning to become one now but there are so many young people struggling and waiting for support and frankly often falling through the cracks of the system that is supposed to help them. >> yeah. speaking from an older person, no mental helt what so ever in anything growing up so to talk in the progress is like huge, but of course it isn't enough still. >> there is also stigma depending on your race religion whether mental health is a real thing. >> and also what your

mental health condition is too. >> right. >> i think mental health issues always existed but the pandemic brought to light all the really bad things haening. not exacerbated i feel no one was talking about mental health before the pandemic and i think often times like you said, a lot of the services are not offered in school so i think in general there is a wide disconnect from students and services, whether that is service in schools or community organizations. all these services exist but students don't know how to access them so there needs to be a better way to connect students to everything that can support them. >> another concern possibly-you brought up gun violence, is that another concern you all have? >> just i think just yesterday the new york times posted a story about how it is officially over-taken any other cause for deaths for young

peop in the united states . >> 19 percent. >> it used to be car deaths and now number one is gun violence. >> gun violence. also the racial disparities there are incredible too. and concerning. i do a lot of work on gun violence prevention. of course there is need for federal action. we are not go toog solve the gun violence crisis until we see senate and house pass safety legislation that prevents gun getting in the hands of dangerous people but there are actions on the local and state level. eve enin california even in liberal san francisco that can help save lives, particularly around things like safe storage of guns. i wrote a resolution on the commission urging all san francisco schools to send home safe storage information and just recently a stay law passed that require schools to send

home safe for firearms. violence intervention programs are incredibly important to help end this crisis: building the community relations. and also mental health is a big part. access to a gun increases-i dont know what the statistic is off the top of my head, but gun (inaudible) in killing the person then any other form of suicide and it is so irreversible. that access to guns can exacerbate the issues too and someone who might be struggling today and tomorrow but in two years from now would be in a much better place with support and medication they need there is a irreversebal thing they can do with a gun then they can in other ways of hurting themselves. >> is it the norm to have drills at school? >> yeah. it is scary having to like go through that

process. >> the data actually-it is unclear but also pretty clear that having these drills doesn't actually save lives. we now in the united states have enough data points of school shootings in schools that have lock down drills and that don't have lock down drills that frankly doesn't make much a difference. there are other policies and things we could work on that are less traumatizing to kids as well that would be better use of time and resources then lock down trills. not advocating against them, but i think that isn't where our focus should necessarily be. r& >> haven't done it this year. it is interesting because i just think our school campus we have so many +"kids and people wander on and off. i are try not to think about it, but it is a thought in my

head, anybody can wander on to here. >> i think it is crazy. ever since sandy hook i literally started doing lock down drills in third grade before i even started sex ed. i think growing up d having to do that every year was really traumatizing. thisany so it is scary and seeing gun violence get worse as i grow up not even an adult it is terrifying. >> too many times i walked out of school and checked my phone and see a story of kids like me in a classroom like me all day being shot and killed in the classroom. it is astonish to walk of the last class of the day and check the news and see that whether it is i michigan and texas and here in california, relatively random it was that school. it very much could have been your

school. that is something we can't-there is a feeling of helplessness around that too i think. >> there was the story about the kid campaigning for (inaudible) he got shot. >> 13 year old i believe. >> campaigning for warnack. i have been the kid açin freshman year volunteering on a local political campaign and lots of people dont like campaigns. that is reasonable, i get it. having a gun in the situation made that 10 times worse. >> right. yeah. >> i was like not knocking on doors just like walking up and hanging door fliers this election and in the back of my head, i thought about what if somebody like thinks i'm stealing a package or break into their house? >> (inaudible) >> especially i feel in some more afffluent neighborhoods i see next door, they are like

this teenager is walking up to my door and must be up to no good. it was a thought in my head. i was like dang, maybe it isn't a gun, maybe it is a dog or they have something on me. >> this is not-i think people think we are in san francisco, we don't have the issue as much. especially in poor communities and communities of color, this is a consistent issue that we are still facing and a lot has to do with the fact san francisco policies don't cover parts of the state and country as well. san francisco lead the way with the ghost gun ban. ghost guns are guns you can buy online and put together yourself that don't require a serial number which gets rid of any system of keeping track of guns we have in the country, and we were the first city to actually make that illegal and in california fallowed through with that as

well. selling of that was illegal. it is things like that, all these ways gun manufacturers and gun industry is going around the policies that we put in place that is continuing the issue. especially with the gun violence we see on the e streets every day. the school shootings acrauz the country and many more kids shot walking home because they live in a community of color that had is consistent issue. it is an astonishing thing and it uniquely american issue as well. >> i guess as the youth commission, what actually do you feel you could bring up or advice-because obviously there are many topics that ■ have a lot of issues, but the gun violence just hits home i everyone, especially for me and everything. as a

youth commission, how do you go about that? >> well, i don't know much about the ghost gun ban but our job is advice the mayor and board of supervisors on sues related to youth. we can't solve the issue of gun violence in a night, two nights but i think what we can do is urge local policy makers to take action and i think by the local government taking action we can inspire the state government, inspire the federal government and that is how change works so i think everything we can do to inspire our local elected officials to take action on things like the ghost gun ban can inspire more counties and states and just the world in general. >> we can bring up any topic. any issue to the board of superrisers and the mayor and whether they take our recommendation or not, we can still push them and urge them to do something about it, so they can't ignore us, they have to realize this is what the youth are writing about and

what they like us to do, we have to do something. >> it is fun because the youth commission in san francisco and relatively unique to san francisco as well. it is part of our city charter so they legally can't ignore us. they don't have to take our recommendations [multiple speakers] they have re■gt the issues and think most people in san francisco are open to work wg the youth commission. there is power behind that and that is where a lot of advocacy work we do gets its power. >> also, there is many board of supervisors care about us and care about the work that we are bringing up, so it isn't like they are just not reading our-or caring. they actually do care about the issues and read them and consider them. >> it is really unique, because a lot of supervisors just like and just like are like hey, what do you feel

about bike parking and they care about what you say. >> they offer resources or do you want to speak to this person or let me introduce you to this organization. they really do want to help us continue our work and really expand what we know. >> the mayor recognizes me places now. that is how you know you are making a im pact, that is that kid. her office is very open to work wg the youth commission as well and i appreciate-i don't think i can think of a supervisor or mayor office that isn't open to us and listening to our concerns. >> it isn't like they just want to take our feedback for their benefit, they want to help you grow as a person. multiple offices offered me internships and different opportunities to be in this ad or help write this legislation or be in the video and that is unique because they want to see you

grow as a person and follow all your dreams. literally the senator was asking what college i wanted to go to and if they could help in any way so very sweet. >> sometimes i look at the youth commission and like, these people are going to be on the board of supervisors in 20 years. this is good we are learning now and doing this now, because we are the next generation of leaders of the city. i really do believe that. of the country. >> any other concerns? >> i think big issue we are also thinking about is of upon us in some ways but climate change. there is talk recently about the great highway and we will have to close a portion of it in 2025 because it is literally crumbleing into threal and here now. there is a lot of the city is ve ambitious when it comes to setting

vision and policies. we have vision zero that in two years i think at this point we want to eliminate all traffic fatalities of people walking across the t, get hit by a car and essentially made no progress since it started. we want 20percent of trips in the city people making them by bicycle and we are just not making any prreall these goals we set out in terms of climate change so it can be frustrating but that motivates me. we set what our values are and how we make sure our policies and decisions we make day to day, make sure those align with what we are actually saying that we value. >> and that's replicated across so many issues of san francisco. we love to be this progressive icon but sometimes when you get down to the nitty-gritty we are not making the progress on issues we need. we are not setting

the transformative policies that need to be done. transit is a great example with vision zero. >> i agree. i think the city can be very ormative an also like-it is like they say they want one thing but they completely do something else and that just gets by-pass and don't think that is okay. als i think specifically with climate change and transportation, there are so many neighborhood disparities people dont talk about like under resourced communities experience the climate change a lot worse xrthen other communities and growing up in the bayview and excelsior and living near freeways and experiencing pollution and not able to bike in my neighborhood in fear of a car crash because of the narrow streets t is really horrible. we can't fix the issue in the weltier communities how do we help the under served communities that experience the brunt of it? i also think people are

so resistant to change. especially with the slow streets program which we have been looking into as a committee on the youth commission. the housing recreation and transit committee. we (inaudible) benefited youth in the city specifically overall, but still the mayor and other elected officials are resistant to it and afraid of change because we are such a car dominated city and think it is important to be optimistic about the future and be realistic but also like slow streets are helpful. this can actually get to where we want of the climate goals and people need to consider that. >> it is kind of like in a sense feel a chicken and egg problem because before i used to be somebody that is mad like i don't understand why are people stuck in their cars but i feel a lot of issue, that is the system. we set up a system that if it will take me a hour to take the bus across town or i will be all most hit biking down a 40 mile per hour

road, the obvious choice is to drive. that is the system we set up so it is hard to convince people that we know this is system and understand why you drive. we are not saying you are a bad person because you drive because there i think there are people out there who are like you are a horrible person because you drive a car and you are killing all the turtles and the children. that's the system we have, so we need to show people that there is a better way and we can get there and it will take a lot of time and there will be inconvenience but in the long run, if we sit and never change it isn't going to work. there has to be a little bit of inconvenience change, people will feel uncomfortable but if we stay stagnant it isn't going to work. >> i think that's something that the youth commission has been pretty big on making people uncomfortable. elected

officials [multiple speakers] i think specifically with free muni for all youth which the youth commission helped create. of course the sfmta was super uncomfortable and like how will we pay for transit for all youth. youth cant afford fares or drive how do you spect them to pay to get to school and their job and since we proposed it we have seen so many positive im pacts. youth and hop and ride for free. they have access to so many opportunities and i think that is so important. making people uncomfurtable and showing change is good and being resisant to change is unhethy. it makes us go in the wrong direction so making people uncomfortable and doing our job to hold them accountable creates positive im pact for the youth in the city. >> i think we make each other uncomfortable too. >> you mean ear each other?

>> i remember-we do a retreat before we begin every year to see where people's priorities are and meet each other and we had intentional uncomfortable conversations recognizing the privilege people hold, recognizing the backgrounds people have and how that impact s how they view the world as well. and think that is important and often missing from the conversations we have in the city. i often see two different groups about housing is the ultimate issue. people on one side saying we have issues of not approving and building more housing and people on the other side saying i'm concerned my neighborhood will get gent riifyed and lack of dialogue and be uncomfortable stops the progress. we have so many unnecessary divides in the city especially in politics are the

reason the issues are not being addressed. people in san francisco agree on the solution. we want to see less homelessness, less crime on the street, we want to see more people getting the services they need and more people getting stable housing, but because we are not willing to sit down with each other and made the stng divisions and so resistant to changing and chging our opinion as well i think that is a reason we are seeing so many san franciscans especially within the last couple elections have expressed this we keep voting on the issues. every politician promises to solve the problem in their own way but it is never getting solved. >> we also see people moving out of san francisco because we can't fix the problems. and those cities are being also like having more housing problems as well. >> to add on, i think fromnot

even two years i have been involved in san francisco politics i see so many patterns. the same prop every year and named a different prop. there is no change. that is why it is important to sit together and have conversation like this and i think that is why being involved in politics as youth has been such an enlighting experience. i it is uncomfortable but i think discomfort brings positive changeism i find arguing with other youth commissionsers. i realize blind sfauts and where i can im prove by listening to other people and think why youth involvement in politics is important because you are exposed to different perspective and your own perspective and it-you are like why do i think like that and have this opinion? that is a way i have grown on the youth commission, being involved in the really intense discourse in san francisco and try to find

myo perspective and being introspective with myself and other people. >> people are often ask me why are more young people not involved in san francisco politics ? there are a lot people doing activism and organizing, young francisco, but because when we have these conversations we try to people into these groups like moderate and progressive and that isn't how issues work and that is such a toxic environment particularly fl young person who is also still trying to learn as well. i think i felt that on the youth commission. t between ourselves but outside the youth committee being put into a box and i am like i dont know where i lie. a big part of the youth commission is learning about the issues. i don't come on the youth commission with a to do research and

talk to people and hear different opinions in order to determine how i felt about something. we often don't give people the space to do that. >> i think in san francisco politics there is a need to put labels on people and especially i see with the whole board of ed stuff with the low admission policy, i remember i was in a internship and t,they reallyb expected me to have opinions right away about how i felt about issues. i'm a ayouth and learning how to have my own perspect and engage. i think with the low admission there is a thing like if you believe we should do lottery emission then you are progressive but if not you are moderate. i th labeling is bad because confining people in a box makes you question-that's not healthy discourse. you are labeling them. that is toxic. >> and there are only

two options. we can do- >> politics isn't multiple choice. >> i think úvthe low admission system is problematic but doesn't mean i want to get rid of it entirely. there is middle ground ts that could be made and we dont allow for that. >> do you guys feel as youth especially with climate change i guess, but is a lot of pressure as youth to-not that you solve it but it is your problem? do you feel more pressure? >> of course. i feel there is a problem with putting all the pressure on people instead of company who are the most responsible for toxic air emissions and things like that. telling us to stop using plastic straws but the big o companies use plastic bags and plastic containers. there is a definitely pressure on

youth to fix the problem because the older people are like we will not by in the world much longer, so why do we have to fix anything? >> crazy how connected every issue is. i was in richmond the ort day which is very under served community and they center the big chevron refinely and smoke in the air and with the free way is by. i think everything is so connected and we need to do so much. when we talk earlier about people getting to school, transportation is a big part and free muni. everything is interconnected. it is crazy. it is like hard sometimes to-i know this is a issue we need to do something about it but it is hard to really-you do need to figure out the root cause of everything and-but i think what yoit is

hard to like when there is a drought and they tell me shave a minute off my shower, i'm like okay, but there are all these people growing live stock and agriculture using millions tons more water. in some ways i understand there is a personal aspect to it, but we need more bipolicy changes. i can't solve this alone and think that is something the commission shows is really like-i didn't come into this work as a part of any big groups or organizations, i was just kind of like doing my own thing and then like kind of like when the pandemic happened there was kind of like this like coalition of people came together to like save muni service and that is when i thought we were getting results and i'm like, this has to be something we all like come together and work on. i think young people actually like realize that and that's one of

the great things is we see this is like a horrible thing, but in some ways unifys us. we all have to deal with this problem so we need to work with each other and move past any labeling of i don't like this person because they are a moderate and i'm a progressive. it is kind of uniting in a weird way. >> to add to hayden's point, that m is a big problem in the capital ist society because everyone is like you can do this by yourself and be successful and solve the world problem but since i joined the youth commission i have been introduced to people power. we are so much more power when we are collective and work together and think about the system rather then our own self-and the youth system taught me to think beyond myself and the world in general. that is something so unique i never found in any other institution. that is why

people should teach kids in school. they should teach them to graduate, make as much money as possible, do whatever you want, buy the biggest house, a mansion, make a family. they should teach kids to feel responsible for the world and im pact they make on the world and that is what the youth commission taught me and it has been the most meaningful life lessen i learned. >> it is funny how often an adult will come up to me or in the youth commission in general and say i'm so glad you are the future. you will solve our problems. you will be part of the solution. these people work in city government too. your job is to solve the issues. i'm part of the solution too, but you can't just give that to our generation. that is expectation we feel the im pact of climate change so therefore we need to solve it. we can't solve gun violence until young people demand it from the state legislators. you need

to be part of the solution too. we need to bridge the gap between youth and adults as well. a big thing i believe in is coalition building across divides. there are things that yoselin and i don't don't agree on and with vote against each other. at the same time we need to work hand in hand to solve the issues we do. and like hayden was saying, there is a thing i dont want to work with this person because we disagree on this iss. need that. >> you can disagree on the issue and also agree on this issue and need to work together to get it done. >> i think that is ■ another thing with teaching youth these things in schools. these are really important life skills. leadership is important life skill. collaboration across divides is important life skill and taught me so much as a peon being able to debate with all these different people. me and you argue a lot, but- >> we are great

friends by the way. >> we are really great friends but have been able to do meaningful things together and that is something we should include in the education system challenging youth to think beyond their own perspective and work with people they disagree with and i think leadership opportunities like that should be provided all across the city so we can cultivate the next generation of leaders that will change the world. >> there is this term that being used a lot by the younger generation. it is funny for sure, and but i want to ask what does okay boomer, that term, what does that mean? what is the meaning? obviously i don't know if you can explain where it came from, but what does it mean and really mean i guess, if there is a real meaning to it. anybody want to explain what okay boomer is? >> kind of a millennial thing i think. >> i don't know. i'm somebody who is on twitter and see it a lot there. it is like-

>> any social media platform you see it. >> it is something that we'll say in response to-sometimes there is a lot of we do face people or adults who they might straight up disagree with us, but they might be people who they say they agree and say i really want to help you and pdo the opposite. they don't really put their money where their mouth is so to speak, so it is like calling them out like okay--i think it is kind of like seeing sometimes people say look at you, you guys are all entitled or the lazy generation or whatever and they e as being rude to them by saying okay boomer, but the realty is, it is value us. i don't get respect from you so why am i going to

go and support whatever you want or agree with whatever you say? i feel like-there is this weird twisted power structure. they always tell you respect your elders but you don't respect me, so-- >> there is a huge gap between adults and youth now a days. they ke our ideas or think you are still too young. we had more life experiences. we have been in school longer and seen more so you don't understand and can't speak about this. that might be maybe true but also our opinions matter and we have been through things and seen things and you should like care about our opinions as well. okay, boomer. >> interesting, it is a funny neme but speaks to the issue of how much space our different in the conversation and gen z is

willing to demand space then others and political movements. >> gen-z is-late 90 to early 2010? >> yeah are. i think everyone on the youth commission now is gen z. >> gen z has stereo type of, never experienced no internet. >> addicted to technology. very loud. >> yeah. they also say a social justice warrior. >> yeah. [laughter] >> some of the stereo types. >> the best thing gen z when needed we come together and unit and fight for what we need and want. >> just fed up. i think there is a push within our generation to be like guys, this is so dumb. adults arguing over the issues, 40, 50

years and so over it and need to move on and solve the issues instead of talk about them and think that is true on the local state and national level and globally. >> i was just going to say, i feel like the term okay boomer is a justification for the massive divides that exist between our generations and we have seen that because there are so many technology advancements happening so it is created wide divides between us and the generation before us but i don't think using the term is a okay to justify that. we don't have to work with these people. we do have to work with these people to achieve meaningful change. these people make the decisions that effect our every day lives and if they don't have perspective how we are im pacted no change will get made and i think that is quhie why the youth commission is so important because the mayor district supervisors, they make decisions on everything that effect our lives so why it is important to have a

voice in city hall because they need to work for us to create better outcomes for all youth in san francisco. >> i think it is important to recognize there is a lot we have to learn as well. i think part of okay boomer can be dismissive of generational knowledge that we need to get as well. i think it is possible to both demand change from a generation and learn lessens from them at the same time. >> right.ú■q >> has anyone said it? >> i never used it. >> we use it as a again each other. i don't think i have been told a person okay boomer. >> i thought it in my head. i feel a lot of times there is a like thing where like it is like a form of like gas lighting. we have a personal experience and like that's my experience and i'll share that with people and the first thing they tell me is stats dont support that. my experience doesn't support that. that shouldn't have happened and try

my personal experience can't possibly be valid because they have done research that may or may not be valid. maybe their research didn't include youth so there is no way the research included my perspective. they will invalidate me. i don't say to them. i don't want to be super rude but i'm like uh-huh, uh-huh. sure. that is what you think. >> i think also for like career expectations one thing i love about the youth and younger people is that we dont let companies--how do i say this (inaudible) we have more salary expectations. that is sometimes companies give you the low ball and people are like, no, we want transparns and want to get paid what we need to get paid because minimum wage living and you can't afford to live in a city

with hundred thousand dollars you need to live well, so i think that for careers it is also which career will give us the most money to survive in this world. which is tech comes in and stem. >> interesting too, there is-very tabu to share your salary but becoming encouraged. i would feel very comfortable-i don't make a salary but post college i think it is important especially as a white male to share the information with others to be aware of disparities and rectify them as well. that might be a generational thing too. i feel it was taboo to talk about your economic situation. we complain a lot about it. we also grow up in a time of incredible inflation. literally everything is so expensive and my parents are like how does it cost

$5 for a cup of coffee? i'm like let me tell you about books in college. expensive. >> it is weird, i work for the city in a job ke, i don know, i just like think it is like cool because it just list the salary when you apply i looked at other jobs and like wait that isn't the standard they don't tell you how much you get paid? somebody was telling me about buying a car and society we are like go to the car dealership and it isn't the price, it is quhoo is the best negotiator. it is a weird thing. i just want simple. i want to walk in and know how much i pay. >> i think i feel aware of the value of my work. especially doing this work as well which is demanding and hard and unpaid because of just how the city is set up. i love it. knowing the value of

the skills you have and being willing to say that's not a high enough salary for me. i need to live off--especially if you have a degree. that's just not what i'm worth and think people in gen z are willing to be aware how the system is taking advantage of people and like low balling them basically and much more willing to stand up to that and because i think there is also this personal dynamic where it is like if i was talking to a employer i would be much more willing to say i know you are not low balling me intentionally. like what you [laughter] but the system is. >> to add on r i love the youth commission. i love the work we do and it is a really fulfilling job and i would love to find a job like this some time after i graduate

college. >> i see myself being a staff member. >> it is also a privilege to be able to know what you want to do and to be able to pursue that because if i wanted to do writing or something because i reading and writing, i probably would want be able to do that because i'm first generation, parents are immigrants and don't make that much money and don't have the line of generational wealth t. is a privilege to do your job and what you love and public service is pretty well pay-it is privilege and think being able to consider that and having privilege to do something like this and having the time right now i'm really grateful for that but not everyone can do that because they don't have time and have to consider salary more then we do. now we are just checking on-is this going to make me enough so i can go shopping but these are really important jobs lives for. >> we talked about-is

there a stigma about youth in c and- >> for sure. >> do you feel it or do you feel it at all? >> i feel there is little like-i dont know if micro aggression is the right term. i got a permit to use the bike room from city hall and i filled out the form and the lady was looking at me and was like, you work here? i'm like yeah, i don't have a city e-mail address but can i write my employee id number. she is like, you have those, that is cute. she wouldn't talk to an adult like that. she wouldn't say you have employee id that is cute. i was like wow, in that moment. i don't want to tell too many stories. >> sometimes they don't take you seriously because you are a young person. >> i remember walking into supervisors office, we were inviting-legislative aids and a couple times they are

like, hello. they are like, why are you here? i'm like this is a public office so everyone can walk into and second of all, we are commissioners. that is the reason we are here. >> i have enmany timeat unbelievable. i'm like man, i'm just trying to do my job. i remember there was a interesting debate i had with this guy. we were doing a trash cleanup and it was me and this other dude talking about this book we read about youth involvement said i don't think youth should be involved in government because they will be sad and disallusioned how much the government can't do. i'm like-i tried my best to argue with him very respectfully but that is such a bad take because i think youth should be taught to be optimistic rather then pessimistic where we can go in the future but a lot of adults think otherwise. a lot of adults believe the same things he believes. they think youth should just do their

little thing, go to school, have fun- creating change why are you there? for the money? >> there is also issue the youth commissioners felt of tokenization and being like a politician with-photo op- [multiple speakers] look at the youth leader i'm promoting and are they leave and there is no mentorship. there is big difference between mentorship and tokenization. i think we do a relatively good job in city hall. i think most people care about us and (inaudible) but there are times too where i'm like from people who i think of as people who are mentors who are like you just want me here to stand next to you for a photo opand don't think i'm will ing to

do that without having a conversation with you about this issue. >> you can tell when meeting someone or being at an event when they are just like using you versus if they actually care what you have to say. >> i think as a youth commissioner, it is so important to find the balance between being used for tokenization but also using that clout. you should take advantage of it. >> you are standing next to the elected official. >> it gives the youth commission more prominence and if it helps us do our job mine as well. it is important to find balance and make sure you are not taken advantage of. >> something else that is interesting is-i feel like i mentioned earlier but i feel like i didn't have any training. i have my own experience. >> before you continue, just saying you do not need experience to come into the youth commission position which i feel sometimes is the- >>b i have no

experience in politics. >> push people not to want to apply for the job because i don't know anything about local government and won't know how do this or that but you don't need it. >> you don't get thrown on a commission. there are people to support and educate you. >> i do feel in some ways i'm expected to know a concern thing or behave the way like the political machine kind of wants me to and you know, be professional and smile when the presenter is obviously like lying to me and stuff and thank them for coming and like, that's just not me. don't feel disrespect m and lie to me and then expect me to be nice because i am supposed to be nice to you. i feel people feel they can get away and that i'm not go toog call them out or not supposed to call them out as a young person. i'm supposed to thank you so much for your time.

thanks for valuing my poor youth commission. no, i don't know-i just feel you wouldn't lie to the board of supervisors like that or if you did you would get called out so i'll call you out. there is this expectation we are supposed to behave like-not saying we shouldn't be professional, we should be professional but i expect the same professionalism back. i don't want to be, yes. >> there have been times people come to the youth commission and are think they forget we are ultimately here to hold the city government accountable. >> an employee of the city. >> that and also it is like, the job of the youths commission is to be a voice for youth. we are going to call you out when you don't know if lie is the words to use, fudge the number, whatever happens. there have been times where i'm like, you forgot this isn't just a group of young people who are interested in this, but a commission who job

is to hold people accountable. >> i think the image of youth in the city is also just really interesting because some people will be like, you dont do any knowledge, they hang out and get (inaudible) they just sit and play video games. a lot of people come into youth commission presentations thinking we don't know anything. we will surprise them when we know these procedures and ask the specific questions related to policies on whatever they are presenting on. it is funny. >> so, is it i guess not youth commission but in general as youth is it a challenge to get more youth interested in politics and anything the youth commission is try toog do to help that? >> i think just bringing more awareness of what the youth commission is and the resources available for people to sign up and join. that is something that our community outreach members are trying to do. >> yeah. last year i

was (inaudible) and we did this thing where we made instagram posts about the initiatives we worked on. we detailed the initiatives and free (inaudible) able to put the work on social media and legislation on social media is important because it teaches youth that you can have a voice in all these city policies that are effecting your lives and a voice in the big movements and think making the youth commission as accessible to avenue everyone as possible is important. >> (inaudible) >> vote 16 is an initiative by the civic engagement committee of the youth commission and works to lower the voting age to 16 age in all city elections- >> san francisco specifically. >> san francisco city elections. it is actually received a lot of support from the board of supervisors, but lost my nearly 3 percent in the first election in 2016-

>>.5 >>.5 in the next election. we are working to get it on the 2024 ballot again wit more voter education, more outreach because we believe it is important youth get involved in voting early because it instills a habit that voting is important. >> i think-i touched on this before, but a lot of young people are interested in politics but also scared to get involved because of how toxic it can be. i feel like i also heard from so many young people their first interaction with politics was negative so they were steered away from it. i had plenty situations happen to me with political activism but i think the environment we have on the youth commission and trying to create more generally within youth advocacy and activism in san francisco is positive and supportive. all of us have different opinions, have different views on issues,

and voted different ways but i also know i can go to any of the people around the table and on the youth commission to say this was a bad experience that i felt x, y, z about or i am in the situation, can we talk about it, because we all are in the same boat of sometimes things don't go our way and because we are young people we have certain experiences we want to share with each other as well. >> i think what is interesting about the youth commission is you don't need to know much about politics to be on the youth commission. my perception of it was that i need to know all of these u.s. amendments and need (inaudible) lot of people think the youth commission is. that you need abundance of political knowledge to be on the youth commission but i realized it was less political. a lot of community coalitions and just speaking from your own perspective and where you come

from as a youth for better outcomes for everyone in san francisco and i think that is important because it is like, i think the discussions in the youth commission encourage people to talk about where they come from and what they truly believe rather then affiliation to a political party. that is not what the youth commission is at all. >> i remember when i was applying to the youth commission, i reached out to (inaudible) i don't know anything about politics and scared. what will happen during the first meeting and you were like no, you will be fine and learn along the way and that is for any youth who want to get involved you dont need to go anything. you will be trained and taught along the way so take initiative, join it, don't be scared. >> also people get turned down from the youth commison. the supervisor jz mayor decides. there are other opportunities to get involved. reach out to youth commission staff. the youth commission seats people on other bodies and outside the youth commission as a whole another area of politics and policy work as well. i also say anyone watching

this being i don't know if i want to be on the youth commission or i want applied but didn't get on, there is still so many ways to get involved. we have a website you can find our information on. i really encourage that because you don't get started until you get started and once you get started you keep going and end up in a seat like this. >> i think it is so funny because involvement in politics is a little ball rolling. there is a million little balls rolling and opportunities. it is just crazy actually because the first thing i did is internship where i cleaned the streets in san francisco and now i'm like on the youth commission. >> (inaudible) if you are not sherbet the youth commission or not accepted to first time volunteer for the district supervisors, try to form a relationship with them or who ever is in the office and apply again to the youth commission. >> i think the other thing too is like, as much as

there are people involved, there are a lot of people who aren't and it is a great opportunity because i feel the biggest thing-you don't have to know anything special. you don't need to have learned anything. just show up and live your experience. you don't need to be on the city commission. we have our meetings are open to the public. you can show up to the board of supervisors and make public comment and speak your truth. just know your own experience and it will get you pretty far honesty. people will recogniyoi was just some little kid who would go to the mta board of directors and are- >> now they know you. >> i was at a random event and they came up to me and hugged me and are like my gosh, you are hayden miller from the meeting. i felt somebody. i'm like wow, these people know me and they don't al to vote, but they listen and they

hear you and that's what government is there for. just remember at the end of the day, it might not always go the your way, the way government works, but for you that is the whole purpose of government is to serve you, so- >> the youth commission has public comment on we ever make. every city commission does. our meetings are open to the public. we want to make space for you. we want to hear from you. please come, share your opinion and you can also even if you can't make a meeting you can write public comment in too. i say especially at the-it is hyper-local the youth commission. we only represent young people in one specific area and one specific state so that is where your public comment will have the most im pact. a couple times people reached out and said this is a issue i didn't know needed to be addressed but it was because i reached out that this is something relatively easy we could address and change too. it isn't a big deal

for city government but it is big deal for this person. >> adding to hayden's point, i think city hall is pretty youth friendly because ewen was talking about running into city hall at 5 p.m. i have multiple occasions where i run down trying to get to the bathroom in city hall and an elected official would pass by or i'm holding a big bag of snacks. i think professionalism is important but like hayden was saying it is important to speak your truth and be yourself because coming into city hall, i didn't know anything about city politics. all i knew is i cared about these organizations, i cared about all these issues and i wanted to make a difference and people here really believed in me regardless how prfessional or elquent i was. they mentored me and come a long way. it is important a place like this is accessible for youth because people have offered me professional clothe to go to this event and they

offered me opportunities to like speak on panels and have speeches in front of crowds of 200 people and i'm shocked people believe in my. that is what san francisco city government is and it is beautiful. >> everyone in the building is still like a person. i remember the first time i met with an elected official and was like i'm nervous if i say something wrong and they came in and was like i'm tired from the last meeting. give me a second while i get a cup of coffee. there are moments where i'm like, it really like-we ultimately are still just students who spend most of our day in high school. elected officials are still people who make mistakes and who are doing their best and who have been entrusted with this position by voters, but also are still people who you can relate and talk to. >> i think before i

would see city government as like blocks. they were machines but it is people operating these machines. people are making decisions and writing these documents and i think realizing that was so important understanding how i make a voice. i think a lot of the role on the commission isn't research, it isn't writing, it is just connecting with people. understanding that city government is all just people and making realizing how important the connections are. it really helps you in your work. >> really realwy appreciate you all coming today. i learned a lot from you all. please please always keep saying your truth, your voice and also encouraging other youth to share their voice as well and i think-we always think we are in good hands but we got to keep fighting the good fight so matter what so thank you for joining us today. >> (inaudible) follow

sfyouth-calm. >> we have facebook too. >> we meelt every other monday 5 to 7. >> thank you to sfgovtv as well. >> thank you so much. >> awesome. thank you. >> thank you. >> after my fire in my apartment and losing everything, the red cross gave us a list of agencies in the city to reach out to and

i signed up for the below-market rate certificate and started applying and won the housing lottery. [♪♪♪] >> the currentottery program began in 2016. but there have been lot rows that have happened for affordable housing in the city for much longer than that. it was -- there was no standard practice. for non-profit organizations that were providing affordable housing with low in the city, they all did their lotteries on their own. private developers that include in their buildings affordable units, those are the city we've been monitoring for some time since 1992. we did it with something like

this. where people were given circus tickets. we game into 291st century in 2016 and started electronic lotteries. at the same time, we started electronic applications systems. called dalia. the lottery is completely free. you can apply two ways. you can submit a paper application, which you can download from the listing itself. if you apply online, it will take five minutes. you can make it easier creating an account. to get to dalia, you log on to housing.sfgov.org. >> i have lived in san francisco for almost 42 years. i was born here in the hayes valley. >> i applied for the san francisco affordable housing lottery three times. >> since 2016, we' had about

265 electronic lotteries and almost 2,000 people have got their home through the lottery system. if you go into the listing, you can actually just press lottery results and you put in your lottery number and it will tell you exactly how you ranked. >> for some people, signing up for it was going to be a challenge. there is a digital divide here and especially when you are trying to help low and very low income people. so we began providing digital assistance for folks to go in and help. >> along with the income and the residency requirements, we also required someone who is trying to buy the home to be a first time home buyer and there's also an educational component that consists of an orientation that

they need to attend, a first-time home buyer workshop and a one-on-one counseling session with the housing councilor. >> sometimes we have to go through 10 applicants before they shouldn't be discouraged if they have a low lottery number. they still might get a value for an available, affordable housing unit. >> we have a variety of lottery programs. the four that you will most often see are what we call c.o.p., the certificate of preference program, the dthp which is the displaced penance housing preference program. the neighborhood resident housing program■a and the live worth preference. >> i moved in my new home february 25th and 2019. the neighborhood preference program really helped me achieve that goal and that dream was

with eventually wind up staying in san francisco. >> the next steps, after finding out how well you did in the lottery and especially if you ranked really well you will be contacted by the leasing agent. you have to submit those document and income and asset qualify and you have to pass the credit and rental screening and the background and when you qualify for the unit, you can chose the unit and hopefully sign that lease. all city sponsored affordable housing comes through the system and has an electronic lottery. every week there's a listing on dalia. something that people can apply for. >> it's a bit hard to predict how long it will take for someone to be able to move into a unit. let's say the lottery has happened. several factors go into that and mainly how many units are in the

project, right. and how well you ranked and what preference bucket you were >> this particular building was brand new and really this is the one that i wanted out of everything i applied for. in my mind, i was like how am i going to win this? i did and when you get that notice that you won, it's like at first, it's surreal and you don't believe it and it sinks in, yeah, it happened. >> some of our buildings are pretty spectacular. they have key less entry-d now. they have a court yard where they play movies during the weekends, they have another master kitchen and space where people can throw parties. >> mayor breed has a plan for over 10,000 new units between now and 2025. we will start construction on about 2,000 new units just in

2020. >> we also have a very big portfolio like over 25,000 units across the city. and life happens to people. people move. so we have a very large number of rerentals and resales of units every year. >> best thing about working for the affordable housing program is that we know that we're making a difference and we actually see that difference on a day-to-day basis. >> being back in the neighborhood i grew up in, it's a wonderful experience. >> it's a long process to get through. well worth it when you get to the other side. i could not be happier. [♪♪♪]

call the december 17th, 2024 regular meeting of the municipal transportation agency, board of directors and parking authority commission to order. secretary silva, please call the roll on the role. director chen. present. chen. present. director. heminger. here. heminger. present. director. hines. present. present. director. henderson. here. henderson. present. director. tarloff. here. tarlow. present. vi