they have chosen to invest in the excelsior neighborhood. so we are bringing some of the solvency that you mentioned to make sure there is continued investment. we hope to continue community development, planning, work force districts. it is really that third s that you mentioned, and the community coming up with a stronger platform. thank you very much. [applause] thank you, terry, for your presentation. next, we have the district 11 council. stephen currier will become forward. he is also the president of the power -- outer misson district. >> thank you for being out here. there are almost 15 organizations under this umbrella organization. we have met a couple of time to talk about quality of life issues in district 11. not only in district 11, but in surrounding communities. i am going to enumerate them. there are five that i would like to talk about quickly. supervisor avalos, mayor lee, you all were out here three times. our first issue is, back in 1998, our neighborhood started working on the balboa park bart stations, which is the bus

our young people and not so young, these are the youth of our excelsior district. thank you for coming out. you, too, could have been home watching television, but you came out here today to learn how you make your community a better place. for that, i thank you and your parents that brought you out here and made you a process so you can learn how this is done. when you grow up to be 18 years old, you can vote intelligently. know who works for you and know what works for you. so thank you for that. and to the panel that came out, thank you for taking interest in our community. as you can see, our community is very interested in our community. in the pta president of longfellow elementary school. we are 650 students strong. i will 100 students to school every wednesday, and yet, i cannot get police escorts. i have 100 kids that i walk to school, eight blocks every wednesday to help save the environment, help them keep healthy, and alleviate the problems with our traffic. even though i said e-mails, i cannot get police escorts to help keep our children safe as i walk

i am the director of excelsior family connection. our center is located in the heart of excelsior neighborhoods. and the community i serve has the highest population of youth and families. the excelsior family center is the only family resource center. we offer quality family support resources that not only benefit the individual but the family as a whole and as a result, the entire community. we use a holistic approach to meet the needs of each member of the family peer the approach we use allows us to provide financial literacy, computer literacy, job training, school readiness, parenting class is offered in three different languages, support for victims of domestic violence, case management, and much more. these are services requested by the community with the community, and for the community. every year, we survey our families for their needs and priorities and modify our services appropriately to reflect their needs and what they have requested. for example, earlier this year, we offer free tax preparation program services to lo

i have lived in the excelsior since 1999. i have had lots of different jobs, but my main job is doing social work force and a disco, i have been a community organizer, i worked at a labor organization supporting janitor's working in our high- rise buildings. i was a legislative aide before .wr. i got to see how it all work from the outside, community organizations supporting young people, children, families, working for labor, and saw how city hall could be an effective tool for change and then considered running in 2007, 2008, and somehow, i made it. >> you were raised in los angeles, moved to the east coast. what made you want to come back and live in san francisco? >> i love cities. i never felt like i lived in a city in los angeles, but when i lived in massachusetts, where i live, i was close to boston. i had such a great time in boston but i did not like massachusetts so much because it was cold, the culture was foreign to me. when i came to san francisco, the first time i came, there was a rainbow over the bay and there

both communities -- ronald heights and excelsior -- burn all heights -- bernal heights and excelsior. we are also in chinatown and other impacted neighborhoods. this also leads to the relationship between green skills job training and education and improving the public realm. i think we have the local is thickly, systemically, and not be arbitrarily cutting at backs. i think it is really important that you look critically at all of these important programs that dcyf funds for the children and youth especially. i'm going to give you some paperwork on this matter. thank you very much. [applause] >> good evening, everybody. 32-year resident of the english side neighborhood. not a native, as my daughter's tell me, but 32 years is a long time. thank you for being here tonight and listening to us. here are some items i would like you to consider. first of all, let's get back balboa park station fix that. as we do it, let's not forget about pedestrian improvements. we have to make sure that with gas at $4 or $5 a gallon, we will all be walking, so let's make it as attractive and pedestrian-f

but as we pull back from the work in the mission district and excelsior, i'm sure it's the similar thing in other parts of the city, we have not been able to keep up with the amount of trash that has been accumulating. we spoke earlier about ideas you might have and what ideas he might express and how we could have greater upkeep? mayor lee: the short answer is that you and i to saturdays from our going out and we are going to paint the town. we're going to start in your district. as you know, this is a big challenge for the whole city and i'm glad you have brought up. it continues to make me excited about why i came to work for the city. it is to work for these neighborhoods and make sure we are doing our best. it should not surprise you that i have been working as quietly as i can without a lot of money to make sure all of the concerns of the supervisors, particularly when it comes to graffiti abatement and trash and letter get hurt and we try to find solutions even in these worst economic times. there have been 100 your people on the streets for dpw, and that is affecting those condit

we have the excelsior, our mission, like mile, all the neighborhoods in between. it is exciting to see all the neighborhoods here this evening. tonight, we want to take you on a tour of our district. our tour guides include some of our neighborhood leaders, including young people, parents, from my staff, community organizations. we are all represented by many of the collaboration's in our district, including the omi community collaborative, communities united for help and justice. a first thought on our tore his desperation. -- stop on our tour is desperation. we know that low income communities are hit first and worse when economic problems it. our families are experiencing troubles from the immigration and customs enforcement, and are having trouble finding jobs. but we are resilient spirit and that leads us to the next up on our tour. the people in our district are doing amazing things every day, working hard, raising families, helping neighbors, a volunteer at school, celebrating culture, and there are doing it and develop, spanish, chinese, and over 70 other

people who reside in the mission district, in the bay view, sunnyvale, the war, western addition, excelsior, and, yes, all of those. the opportunities to go to san francisco state and support to go to city college. we are so appreciative of this grant, and it supports our young people in their efforts to improve their lives when many other opportunities are not available to them. thank you so much. supervisor chu: thank you. >> thank you, supervisors. i am here to speak on behalf of our economic development program to received three grants funded through cdbg funds. i want to say i really appreciate the incredible care with which each of the department has approached the challenging situation, and the incredible work on the part of the citizens committee. i really feel like there was a deep level of commitment to looking at what services need to be funded and how to try to keep communities fall, and i want to speak to the integrity of the process. i think that we are a unique program in that we're the only economic development programs serving the lgbt community. any% of our clients have no

, three years i have been really paying attention, there have been a lot of trees planted in the excelsior. that is in district 11, which i represent. but 23,000 trees that will be transferred -- are those trees that were earlier planted by the city, or was it planted by an organization or a combination -- >> it was mostly a combination of trees that were planted by both friends of urban forest, dpw, or even in some cases [inaudible] this will be the formal process of turning [inaudible] supervisor avalos: ok. >> [inaudible] what you see on the screen is a map of where privately maintained trees are all around the city. you can see they are all over the city in almost all the neighborhoods. we do have private property owners maintaining the trees. supervisor avalos: it looks like a forest. i wish it was like that. that would be great. >> it should be all green or more green. we're working towards. what you see here, trees that are currently maintained by dpw. in some of these neighborhoods, a good number of these trees were a good part of the trees for tomorrow. you can see quite a number

another iconic street is persia street in the excelsior district. next speaker please. >> good morning. the key word for today is the iceberg. i consider my mother to be a victim of ex-mayor newsom's screening program. in 2008, this letter was received and underlined the department of public works will be responsible for the care, watering and long-term maintenance of the trees. short-term maintenance is my responsibility. as a caregiver, the letter basically said, we do not want a tree because there is no way we can maintain it. the letter was never replied to. phone calls came back with a staff member calling me. the intensity of the phone conversation was fine. it was basically, screw you, you are going to get a tree, whether you like it or not. pole speed ahead. -- full speed ahead. we were never notified that mayor newsom would include a tree program on church street. 30 years ago, my mother did not get a tree. as you can see on our block, there is a tree that had been there. it has been replaced. the sidewalk is going to be replaced again. the

i have been in san francisco since 1989, have lived in the excelsior since 1999. the difficulty is, muni often sees it as an industrial area, not a neighborhood. we have to figure out how to make it work as a neighborhood and as a place that can service the light rail vehicles. i have had lots of different jobs. my main job has been doing social work for san francisco state university. i have been a community organizer, a social worker, but i have also been a legislative aide. i worked mostly for community- based organization supporting kids and families, working for labor. i got to see how city hall could be an effective tool to create change. i looked at running in 2007, 2008, and somehow i made it. i have been in politics for so many ways, doing work around central america, supporting people in central america against u.s. imperialism, their right to live, self determination. i did a lot of work on that on campus when i was in college. a bit of work on apartheid when i was in college as well. >> i never got involved in supporting a candidate. i never thought a

we are talking about a working- class community, the excelsior, the bayview, all of these different neighborhoods are smaller enclaves. we still see the same kinds of challenges. when the schools begin to perform a stellar academic programs, businesses will continue to relocate because the employees will want to live in san francisco and want kids to be educated here. it is a cyclical and symbiotic creation ship. another challenges that we have the highest unemployment rate in this part of san francisco. san francisco before, the numbers are starting to come down a little bit. we have high rates in the latter part of last year, but it is starting to -- it is starting to normalize. it goes back to education. what i would like to see our pathways. not everyone will become a doctor, lawyer, or journalist, fantastic tv host. what can we do? we live in a society where we need engineers. we need sound engineers. we need graphic designers. there are people who prefer to learn with their hands. they like mechanics. we need to bring back some shop back in schools and allow people an opportunity for a diff

edwin ram os is accused of killing tony and two of his sons in excelsior district in june of 2008. he appears to have mistaken them for rival gang members. the 24-year-old murder suspect claims another person was the shooter. >>> the unanimous vote kamala # late last night. the palo alto city council has approved what is believed to be the largest development plan in the city's history. the $5 billion project includes building a new stanford hospital. this is an animation of what the new hospital would look like. the plans also call for expanding the children's hospital and remodeling the stanford school of medicine building. >>> well, it took 13 innings and four and a half hours to do it, but the giants finished their comeback against the washington nationals. >> swing and a flare to right. that's the ball game. >> that was freddy sanchez with the game ending single with two outs in the 13th inning. chris stewart scored the winning run after drawing a leadoff walk and the giants rallied from four runs down to beat the washington nationals 5- 4. earlier in the game tim reached 1,00

they had all these volunteers out helping us repair homes in our mission and excelsior for seniors, so it is a wonderful cooperation we have with wells fargo. how was the right coming in today? >> when a great way to start the morning. i wish i could start every morning like this. we have more than 9000 team members at work, so coming from marin county in the east bay from the south bay, so we are actively working with them and helping reduce greenhouse emissions. one of that is by the commute, so we are actively encouraging bike riding to work appear almost every one of our administrative offices has bike racks outside of it to help support our team members, so thank you, and thank you, mayor. >> joel. travel sf. our tourists and visitors are noticing this experience. what are you saying? >> travel and tourism in -- is san francisco's number one industry. 80 million people come here every year, and more than 1/3 are from international countries that are used to riding bicycles. the more we can make the city accessible for cyclists, the more people can get out to walk or ride the city.

supervisor avalos: plans were in place by the excelsior action group a couple of years ago to do some improvements, switching the bus stop from one side to the other, but nothing has happened since then. i thought that something was in place. >> i am not prepared to talk in detail, but i can send you any information we have. yes, that intersection, there are three that were going to be constructed at that intersection. the other major improvement is the career right hand turning lanes for a pedestrian area in the northwest corner. those are the three or four major improvements, including moving overhead lines and upgrading the pedestrian signals at the intersection. but they are pretty comprehensive. >> good to hear. if there is anything else that can be tackled in the process, especially on the southeast side of geneva, it could use a lot of work. we will make sure that happens. supervisor campos: thank you, commissioner. supervisor wiener: if i could just make a request, since we will be voting on the next month, between now and then could you provide a breakdown, listing the projec

a great deal of the resources go in the center part of the city, and a few would go out towards excelsior and son said, and to the extent that we are able to prioritize and make more things happen out that way, i think we will be getting our goals of being a transit-first city. to the extent i want to encourage you to do that, i would love to see that. >> ok, thank you. supervisor avalos: thank you. we will open this up to public comment -- or, supervisor, do you have questions? supervisor mar: i was going to, on that. looks like the repair for sidewalks and disability improvement programs are based on analysis and prioritizing of the areas that need it the most, and also in conjunction with the mayor's office of disability. i know that a number of improvements i have been seeing already on different -- in different recorders, but my hope is that the neighborhoods with the most need are considered first, and it looks like that is the process. and then, for the mta proposals, it looks like it is based on input from a number of community-based organizations. i am guessing the bicycle coalit

i was a kid who grew up in the excelsior district. i counted on a recreation director to be my father. it meant everything to me. when we had to lay off folks that are the common faces in your facilities that you can relate to on a daily basis, we understand that impact. what we are trying to do is hire some folks back as our budget recovers a little bit. we have been able to generate a lot of revenue. we have prioritized revenue over cuts. we are looking to hire, and faces again. jerry jack came up. he was a recreation director here. we are looking to hire him in a different capacity so that he can be back here at the center. i know that we are waiting for some position authority in order to have an after-school position here. he would be one of those folks we would be looking at to fill that position. he has been a recreation leader, which is a part-time position, which i understand people want to see his face. there were other folks who were here. victor jones is in theck

a great deal of the resources go in the center part of the city, and a few would go out towards excelsior and son said, and to