this is a city that has many thousands of small businesses. as someone who used to run a small business, the city can do a much better job of nurturing that sector. that is part of the life blood of who we are as san franciscans. >> we could do better. are we on the right track? >> i think we are in a transition right now. we have an interim mayor and a new board of supervisors. i do think we have a new tone at city hall to move things forward. we have a lot of challenges we are facing. i am doing everything i can to put us back on track. >> let's talk about the role of sports in the city's economic future. are you happy with the plans for the america's cup? >> i have been a huge fan of the america's cup. i am proud of this board came together unanimously after a fairly contentious debate to support bringing the america's cup to san francisco in 2013. it is estimated it will not only be an incredible sporting event, not only showcase our city and the natural amphitheater of the bay, but it is estimated to bring in over $1 billion in economic acti

city. to supervisor chiu's point, we have more data. i think now you are in a better position as you enter a new discussion about the budget. you know what we are spending across the department's city- wide on i.t. you will have the baseline data to make better policy decisions about the level and where money is being spent, the level of reductions that can be achieved. i would just like to point out, i guess, really we are dealing with a complex problem of -- we are looking at a budget as a single number. to supervisor david chiu's point, i think he said we spend $200 million a year on i.t. that is not in one pot of money. so it makes it a complex challenge to save that money. i think the data center consolidation approach project is perhaps a template for the city on how departments can come together, pull funds and resources to solve complex problems related to i.t. again, we said at the beginning, the data center of the piece of the i.t. expenditure represents may be less than 10% of the total expenditures city-wide. the challenge for the city now in working together under th

community, as a city. what happened when the 49ers won those super bowls year after year? that was a huge deal for our city and our community in san francisco. what happened with the world series this year when the giants won for the first time in over 50 years? incredible. everybody was celebrating. and that is a huge deal for our community in san francisco, but i think, economically, not only jobs in terms of construction of stadiums and what have you. economically, you know, for those people who do not believe or do not really fully appreciate what type of economic drivers the sporting events and teams are, go down to soma during a giants game. come to the marina when the blue angels fly in town. what it does to the local streets and bridges. come to district 3 and district two and districts 6 and 10 when the america's cup comes to town and see what type of influx of economic activity these events drive to us. i think that is something that is not talk about enough. both the community aspect, the intangi

budget, should i lose hope as our ability as a -- in our ability as a city government to manage these functions in a good way? >> i absolutely do not think that we should do so. i guess the point i am trying to make is that our strategy for achieving those savings in the way that we thought we would get there was through data center consolidation. i guess the next step is to identify other initiatives that we can pursue. hopefully those will yield better savings. the vehicle to get those savings was data center consolidation. that is how wide you did in this particular case. -- that is how i viewed it in this particular case. >> from my -- supervisor chiu: from my perspective, when the next budget submit all comes to us, when the department of technology comes back before this committee, our colleagues will be looking for those ideas. one thing we would like to emphasize -- the big challenge that we have in the city, as a city the department of technology has one-third of the overall budget. two-thirds of the city's budget rests in the several dozen groups of i.t. throughout the city.

we have to look at this as a broad city issue. until we have the satisfactory answer of where the cars will go, i can support this. >> i will make a motion to approve the. we will see the impact of carefully planned. [unintelligible] and the impact the neighborhood with this rush-hour traffic design. the next item to talk about the climate action plan, as we talked about we can't continue to facilitate the streets to make them work fror everyeone. -- everyone . there is a fellow in new york that says you can do something about traffic. it was fascinating when it was first close of two automobiles. i saw it, but as time went on, they had to turn left. it is not nearly as bad as it was when the first started. traffic is not like the weather. it we can do something about it and engineer the streets to make an impact. i am in strong support of this. >> i am in support of that. as long as we can make adjustments accordingly, i am in favor of the. director oka: it has been through most of the projects that have been somewhat controversia

good, solid, business relationships that respect what they are doing and what we as a city are doing. that is what we are establishing with the giants to help them be successful as a business in addition to a great sports team. i think -- i take the same philosophy in meeting with gen york. yes, i have brought him into the office. we have had a good discussion, and we are talking about my 49ers, our 49ers. he lives in the city. so i. we began by asking what we're trying to do here. there are economic realities coming to their, and what i want to do is make sure that the york family feels very welcome in san francisco. they are part of our history, part of our callers, if you will, when we are talking about sports. i think he felt that there was no politics involved. it is something back has a history of being and we want to talk to him about the opportunities we can do together, so look for --

a safe city, a solvent city, and a successful city are the themes i have given our departments to work with. and as we go through the balancing our budget, i said at the outset, there is no magic to it. we have to make some tough decisions coming up. after we

we can coordinate ourselves as a city working together from city departments, part nerg with property owners -- partnering with property owners, community groups and non-profit organization, people from young to old and demonstrate that we can get a grip on this problem and we can stop it. i think what mohammed has demonstrated from an operational standpoint, and i would be the first to admit i would be you should great duress if he was my boss because he is on it all the time. i even made the mistake on asking for slack on saturday during cleanup and he put me down three flights of stairs. i know what strong leader he is. i want to share with you that he's also a mentor. on that day we were out with henry alvarez who is the new public housing director. he talked about the ways that mohammed has mentored him as the department head and to help him get not just a handle on this, but in terms of managing his work force and making a productive environment within the public housing arena. and i think that's something that we don't have enough in city government. i think that too often we g

dorsey has told me and told the sfbaycitcitizencolumnist.or that those remarks are coming from him as a city employee, said they are not to be reflected in any way of the city attorney's position. regarding the appointment to the ethics commission, i wish to reiterate my strong support for allen grossman. he has been immensely helpful to the task force in a couple of areas, one of them dealing with the ethics commission, and i think he would be an outstanding member of the ethics commission. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i am here to support allen grossman. i work for the ethics commission for over nine years. one of the commission's most important duties is protection, and during my time there, i was compelled to expose repeated violations by staff with limited by a license, the commission has not been receptive to such whistleblowing. since i have witnessed crimes being committed to the fulfillment of the agency's mandate, once i tell you today that it is imperative that the of what may be a dedicated, independent, demonstrated advocate for good government, not a play along, g

the announcement that we have -- we are ready to go as a city police spent the time doing this. we covered all the bases. we warned everybody that we could 41. what we created today are a family of contractors who know how to do city work. they have hired people who are ready to go on the job and be ready for them, not only on this project, but for the hundreds of projects that have come through the pipeline that i get to see from a planning perspective for the next 10 years. we made the promise to our public that when we find these things, not only will we get these projects on time, but we will get the people involved and the communities involved in making sure these projects get built and get build with our sweat and tears. it's no longer promise time. this is action time. we have the websites and we have the plans to hand out free we have fulfilled all the conditions upon which we will make this ordinance successful. we have the whole city family working together. there's no reason why they're big gaps any further. the people behind me have put in several hours. you know i wa

that is a weakness for our city as a whole. it is hard when we look at our budget by departments because this is not really show where our city is prioritizing different issues. one area is lost on a certain level. i don't know if you can address that a little bit. >> i agree with you. we don't have a home for -- because the mayor had asked dcyf to work with the youth commission. we had the process which took upwards of a year and a half to talk to all of our community members and stakeholders to develop a plan. within that plan, we stated that this was something that should be a priority for all of the city. we created a structure that had members of those departments coming to the table to really discuss. however, because of the last two years budget, we have not been able to really actualize a lot of the recommendations inside of that plan. we have moved forward on a couple of things such as developing a clear understanding of creating workforce programs to really support the population and actually that is what drove the par

our local economy has outperformed most of the stake, part property-tax base remains strong, and as a city and county combined, we have diversity that others did not have. generally speaking, the fiscal management within the confines of the fiscal year has remained very strong. we have demonstrated that time and again with revenue compared with the budget, the mayor and the board quickly responded for many years with solutions to keep the budget in balance. those are the strengths. the weakness which are driving to downgrade or a mixture of things. ithe city has drawn very heavily through its reserves and fund balances. we have drawn down over $100

as a nonpolitician, i'll tell you, i think that i still have strong values that reflect a lot of those set asides, too. but at the same time when the city is in dier circumstances, sometimes -- dire circumstances, sometimes not because of our own doing but whether the state's cutting back or the fed's cutting back, we need that fiscal flexibility, to be able to relook at what we've done set asides. so i'd be very willing, david, to be quite candidworks with you, to work with the supervises that are allows us the flexibility that in those very hard times we're not holding ourselves strictly to strict set asides, that we have the flexibility to balance our budget and be fiscally responsible. and i think a conversation's going o'on with the board of supervisors already to allow that viewpoint to go forward. again, to me i think this is a time to do it because i'm not looking for votes, i'm looking for honest solutions to the way we do business in this city. and i do think we need to revisit strict set asides so we're given the fiscal responsibilities to balance the budget the right way and still honor the strong values that we have with, w

a safe city, a solvent city, and a successful city are the themes i have given our departments to work with. and as we go through the balancing our budget, i said at the outset, there is no magic to it. we have to make some tough decisions coming up. after we make those tough decisions, is like going to be any easier? nope. the governor has plans to realign things that going to hurt us. i do not believe for one second that realignment means it comes with any funding to realigning burdens that will come to us. then the federal government is going to get there. we have already seen the community block grant funds that were going to be heard in many different ways, so we are bracing for that, trying to come up with ideas to make sure our cities survives and survive as well. with that, no more speeches. i am all ears to your concerns, making sure the you know we are working closely with you and your supervisor to make our process transparent and sensitive to all the ideas that you have. thank you very much. [applause] supervisor wiener: thank you. now, why don't we hear from the mayor's budget director