julie kirschbaum has been with the sfmta for nearly two decades, and she's now poised to lead it into the future. san francisco's municipal transportation agency keeps the city running, with busses and trains crisscrossing the city. director julie kirschbaum, who worked for the sfmta for nearly two decades and until recently led muni, was appointed just last week to her new position at a time of financial turmoil, with a projected $300 million budget deficit by july 2026. tackling that is one of her top priorities. >> the first is addressing our revenue challenges. related to that is rebuilding trust. in some cases where we may have lost it. and then the third is to really be like a force multiplier for the amazing sfmta staff. >> to reach those financial goals, the director said the agency needs to run as efficiently as possible. that includes cutting hundreds of positions that don't directly impact rider experience and being thoughtful about service. >> we haven't restored all of the service that we had before covid, but the service we are delivering, we are delivering at a higher q

ktvu christian captain sat down with director julie kirschbaum and christian. she is a veteran in the sfmta. >> that's one word for it. director kirschbaum has been with the sfmta for nearly two decades, and now she is poised to lead the agency into the future. san francisco's municipal transportation agency keeps the city running, with busses and trains crisscrossing the city. director julie kirschbaum, who worked for the sfmta for nearly two decades and until recently led muni, was appointed just last week to her new position at a time of financial turmoil, with a projected $300 million budget deficit by july 2026. tackling that as one of her top priorities. >> the first is addressing our revenue challenges. related to that is rebuilding trust. in some cases where we may have lost it. and then the third is to really be like a force multiplier for the amazing sfmta staff. >> to reach those financial goals, the director said the agency needs to run as efficiently as possible. that includes cutting hundreds of positions that don't directly impact rider experienc

director julie kirschbaum, who worked for the sfmta for nearly two decades and until recently led munijust last week to her new position at a time of financial turmoil, with a projected $300 million budget deficit by july 2026. tackling that is one of her top priorities. >> the first is addressing our revenue challenges. related to that is rebuilding trust in some cases where we may have lost it. and then the third is to really be like a force multiplier for the amazing sfmta staff. >> to reach those financial goals, the director said the agency needs to run as efficiently as possible. that includes cutting hundreds of positions that don't directly impact rider experience and being thoughtful about service. >> we haven't restored all of the service that we had before covid, but the service we are delivering, we are delivering at a higher quality where people can count on it, where it's clean, where it's reliable. >> transit expert henriette cornet said while the sfmta is looking at the possibility of service cuts to save money, she said the agency should look to increase ridership. rea

mta director julie kirschbaum and new brant thank you for being on call last weekend for executing a successful and coordinated strategy to keep san francisco prepared and safe . and finally i want to thank all of our police officers fighters, our sheriff's deputies, muni drivers, dpw staff, first responders and all of our city workers for their tireless work to make these events a success. my administration is committed to building on this progress. san francisco's comeback is just getting started. thank you, mayor larry. thank you, dana. up next, we'll have our next speaker. the success of the lunar new year parade is really the heart work of all these individuals here and the dedication of the team behind it and leading the charge of the parade is a man who has worked tirelessly to bring to continue our traditions of the parade and all the light of a new year facilities. so if i can have you introduce our next speaker mr. tony lowry, the director of the lunar new year parade. let me go. thank you. thanks and good morning everyone. good morning, mayor larry. good morning president

we have a newly appointed director julie kirschbaum here to make the presentation. welcome ms.. kirschbaum and congratulations from all of us and also our gratitude for wanting to take this on and maybe a little grace because i, i only play a cfo on tv and i did bring our our actual cfo barry marauder is here to answer all of your hard questions. but i did want to present to you all directly today kind of in my in my new role as the as the department head and i plan to make it a continued practice that you hear directly from me on the tough issues that we're facing. i appreciate all of the time you all have been taking with briefings to understand all of the issues that the mta is currently juggling and i look forward to close partnership with the board as well as with your other had the board of supervisors so with that i will start start with some bragging because i think it is important context setting that muni is playing a really a disproportion net role in the region in in terms of transit ridership and the muni system looks a little bit different regionally than it did pr

we have a newly appointed director julie kirschbaum here to make the presentation. welcome ms.. kirschbaum and congratulations from all of us and also our gratitude for wanting to take this on and maybe a little grace because i, i only play a cfo on tv and i did bring our our actual cfo barry marauder is here to answer all of your hard questions. but i did want to present to you all directly today kind of in my in my new role as the as the department head and i plan to make it a continued practice that you hear directly from me on the tough issues that we're facing. i appreciate all of the time you all have been taking with briefings to understand all of the issues that the mta is currently juggling and i look forward to close partnership with the board as well as with your other had the board of supervisors so with that i will start start with some bragging because i think it is important context setting that muni is playing a really a disproportion net role in the region in in terms of transit ridership and the muni system looks a little bit different regionally than it did pr

julie kirschbaum is now the first female director of the san francisco municipal transit agency.fmta's board announced her appointment today. kirschbaum became director of transit at the agency back in 2018, and she's been the interim director of transportation since. former sfmta chief jeff tumlin stepped down last december. >> and facing a budget hole of about $50 million. sfmta is officially beginning the process of figuring out what it is going to cut. three options were presented during today's board meeting. a final decision is not expected for several weeks. muni could do any number of things, from reducing service on its busses to eliminating the school crossing guard program. the board will weigh public feedback before choosing a funding option at the beginning of march. public transit gets more appealing as gas prices rise in san francisco, according to aa. now averages $5.16 per gallon. a month ago, it was 4.60 $0.56 cheaper. last year, drivers paid 4.72. >> well, the markets were closed yesterday for presidents day, but traders were back on wall street today. all thre

. >> now, julie kirschbaum says at this point, she doesn't want to make any big changes, but the calls for cuts are already getting some pushback from members of the community. >> instead of seeing all the time kind of cut into the services to make to spare money, i would love to see how can we generate more revenue and have more ridership. >> now the agency is facing a projected $300 million budget deficit by july of 2026. kirschbaum wants to work with the city controller's office to find possible ballot measures and program cuts that could help manage that budget deficit. >> stanford university has decided to move on from its plans to purchase the notre dame de namur university campus in belmont. stanford says the changing landscape of funding for research programs made it difficult to complete the purchase. stanford spent the past four years negotiating a deal to buy that 46 acre campus. now, notre dame de namur is seeking a new buyer. oscar winning actor gene hackman and his wife have died. the santa fe county sheriff's office says hackman, his wife betsy arakawa and their dog were

julie kirschbaum last tuesday was sort of appointed to be the next director of the mta by both mayor urie and also the f.a. board of directors. >> julie is a person who has worked at the agency for a pretty long time. she's been with mta since 2007 and she served as the director of muni from 2018 to 2024. so that was right through the heart of the pandemic and all the uncertainty and all of the challenges she navigated to make sure that even in the darkest days of the pandemic muni was still delivering the essential services of getting the people to where they need to go in the city. and so this was i think the board and the mayor felt someone we could really count on with some of the challenges that are coming to be a really steady hand for the agency. she has two decades of experience in transportation and i just wanted to share with you her priorities the immediate priority she's setting out for the agency and so that is to rebuild trust with communities across san francisco clearly to focus on ensuring the financial stability of the organization which is so important and then also

the board met in closed session and voted unanimously at item four to appoint julie kirschbaum as the director of transportation subject to a contract to be negotiated and approved at a subsequent meeting. >> thank you. thank you. colleagues, may i have a motion in a second to disclose or not disclose? for item four. item five pardon me? motion not to disclose item five second secretary silva, please call the roll and the motion to not disclose item five director chen i chennai director hemminger i hemminger i director henderson henderson i director lindsey high india director kahana i cookie and i chair tarlov i tarlov i thank you with that motion passes next item that yes secretary silva please call the next item places you on item number seven approval of minutes for the february 4th regular meeting directors are there any changes to the minutes? all right. >> may i have a motion and a second to oh, we'll now open public comment for item seven. >> members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. there will be a warning sound at 30s and a chime when the t

kirschbaum secretary i know we will now close public comment for item six the directors report. colleagues do you have any questions? >> secretary director kahana thank you madam chair. >> julie thank you so much for your director's report for the end due to changes in the pilot program i just had a question to better understand from members of the public to also understand how are we evaluating the impacts of the pilot program on businesses and considering that they're part of the study. i just wanted to see if you could shed some more light on that piece of the pilot. >> yes, we i did have an opportunity to meet with some of the sunset outer sunset merchants and mayor murray on friday. so i received some initial feedback and we're also going to do a site meeting next week . in addition, we received frankly an unexpected volume of comments which is in part why i included it in the directors report. so the public that had taken the time to reach out to us and express concerns knows that it was a four day pilot and we have returned to our more typical operations so we will be collecting feedback both from the supervisors that managed the pilot and the operators as well as look