we have the city's famous hills. we have for the world comes to work, the financial district's, where the world comes to shop in union square, where the tourists spend time on fisherman's wharf , and the wonderful polk street neighborhoods. my district encompasses the ethnic and economic diversity that exists throughout the city. i think my district is emblematic of the entire city. you can find every political perspective you can possibly want in district 3. oftentimes, the interests of my district and the city are aligned. i do not have to think about those differences quite as often as some of my colleagues may have to. >> let's talk about the budget situation. we have been faced with some tough budget decisions again, including where to make cuts and whether or not to increase taxes. how will you approached these hard choices? >> our budget is one of the very top challenges facing city government right now. over each of the years i have served, we have had to balance budget deficits that were around $500 million.

city run well. for all of us here, i know you have great hope that the city will be able to have decent jobs here that can maintain, that they can spend a good amount of their careers in, and that is why i spend a lot of time with chief adviser kim and supervisor david chiu and the other supervisors talking about how we can sustain the midmarket. that is why we passed a week ago the midmarket payroll tax exemption. we wanted to welcome new companies into the city and understand what it was blocking their ability to stay and to grow. to hear a company -- not just from the cfo, from the president. when i visited twitter, i closed the door and they allowed me to speak to their engineers, to their workers, to the people doing the engineering work atwitter. as we closed the door, i laid out -- ok, kids. what do you really want out of the city? in very plain language, they said, "mayor lee, we like the culture of the city. we like the local restaurants. we like that we can work here for an odd number of hours and we wanted to be safe. we want to make sure we can ride our bikes to work. 25% of them ride to w

have. it is one of the few cities to have its own asian art museum. that is a wonderful reflection of our city's commitment to not only the history of the population and growth and ties to the far east, but also honors the diverse art we have in the city. so many museums are looking at how they can contribute to not only the residents here, but what i think the nation is on course to do, something that i know charlotte and i talk a lot about, that is promoting our international status, making sure that we have an art museum that appeals to the kids in the tenderloin, to the kids all over the city, to the families we have in the city, but also to be special to our international visitors. i think, n.j., your honor, creating -- i think, jay, creating this and branding is a great thing. last year, there was a financial challenges that occurred all over the world. worldwide economic challenges. if the old models of how you depended on certain bonds or going to be challenged, well, of course they became a challenge to our museum. we got together with the cit

we still have the ability to higher across different cities. people want to come to san francisco to work. if we do have retirement spots open, we will do cross hires from other departments and other city departments. >> you are listening to the commonwealth club of california radio program. we're talking with ed lee, mayor of san francisco. speaking of the police department, one of your first moves was to hire a police chief. the head of the police union was overheard saying that he bought the appointment. others have said he is a member of the old boys' network. was that a political choice, that the union got one of their own as chief, that they might be more amenable to renegotiating the pension and kicking back the money in sour or forgoing raises for a third consecutive year? >> none of that injured into my decision making at all. it occurred so suddenly. they were literally confirming the as the vacancy was created. i asked the very same commission that helped to select the last chief to use the same process to come up with the best group

only met with the enthusiasm we have for bicycling but the very indict push that we have to have in this city because it's going to be more than enthusiasm that's going to get us there. it will be leadership, enforcement, all the things that you know we have to do to change culture. what i've been doing is talking with a lot of residents on the west side of this city who are challenged because they're so used to being in their cars and they feel that righteousness of having an expensive vehicle and having paid for it and all the insurance and all of that i used to have when i had my three cars. that we only needed one. maybe a half a car and i had three because i was in that culture myself, and to think back about what really led me to feel that way and trying to pierce that culture that we still have very much in the city, that it's my road and that those who want to introduce something different, it's their responsibility to be more safe than i because it's my road. that's what we have faced up with. and a lot of these corridors do have a direct connection to the ramps that go to our freewa

that was also in contention that the mayor himself -- and as a city, we have a responsibility to ensure that we're supporting the least among us and the growing number of homeless families or families at risk of homelessness is something that the city cannot ignore. i do want to thank the coalition and the families connected with the coalition for coming forward, for telling their stories, difficult stories to tell about being marginally housed oregon difficulties dealing with education situations. there are numerous stores already in the san francisco chronicle and the examiner about family homelessness in san francisco, and people coming forward to tell the stories, it is very difficult. but those types of synergies between advocates telling their stories and media picking up on them are ways that we can actually shed light on our troubles and how we can come up with a response. i was very pleased to see, this morning, the story in "the chronicle" about a family making commitments to help families who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. i think those types of support that come fr

city. that is one end. we have to do what we can use to subsidize other essential services, whether it is transportation or public health, so people can afford to live in the city. then you have another category of homelessness, which is chronic homelessness. it is not just living paycheck to paycheck, but other issues like mental health or drug addiction. that is a much harder population to address. i think -- the district that i represent as many of the community organizations. it continues to be a pressing problem. >> where do you think the attics and mentally ill will go? supervisor kim: first of all, a ton of families live in the tenderloin. people do not realize this, but the tenderloin is a family neighborhood. it in not a proponent for cleaning up the tenderloin. i love the tenderloin. i love what it is right now. you know, i recognize that we have a diversity of folks who want to live there. i do not have a problem with people being out on the streets and socializing. it is part of the character of the nei

but we also realize there are many parts of the city as david mentioned that don't have ready access to public garages. so it was for us a challenge but one that we were very enthusiastic to try to pilot with city car share, and that is to get it into our most congested residential areas, like russian hill and the area. so this is one of at least five spots that are happening and in fact around this area we're going to begin here first because we have a lot of residential support for this as well. and i look forward to the other six spots that we have already identified, have been under planning discussions with our city administrator, with our m.t.a., bring in a neighborhood where i live in glen park and also bay view, also dog patch, those areas as well as the outer sunset and inner sunset. those areas as well where we can really benefit from car sharing. i got educated really quickly over 2 1/2 years ago about a culture change in sharing cars. and while i know in this city we're trying to retain families and i know david is still single, so he's going tible for while to get without

we're having to pay attention to our infrastructure, one of the most important things any city can do. when we are trying to grow a new economy -- and as you know, i have gone around the city selling this idea about how the economy is about tech jobs, but we also have an important infrastructure to take care of. if we do not take care of the infrastructure, these other jobs will not be here. jobs at the transbay terminal, which we are already building, celebrating and historic project labor agreement. we also have a commitment to our growing kids, that we are going to get them there. they are not just going to school to get bored. they have to have those jobs here, and we need them trained and ready for those jobs. so, in this new economy, when we are investing, like our city is, my commitment to the city is making sure we pay attention to infrastructure. we are going to do it right and make sure that our kids know, by fulfilling their educational goals, being exposed to a facility like this, where you are building our labor representatives with the curriculum that the school district

i know that both ed and i have about 120 languages spoken in our cities. i have the windup radios in all of my cars and my closet, and i have water. i usually have flat shoes in my car in case of a disaster. if we can get every day area presented about what they can do to survive for 72 hours, that would be critical if you do not know and want to see some things come and join us on october 20. >> i think we all learned a valuable lesson after katrina. i know we did in our county. from then on, we have had a disaster preparedness and day every year. we draw in dozens of people on that day. we talked to people about, you know, i will use san bruno as an example, we had all the resources you could want or need that evening, but there's no major -- no other major incident happening. if we have a major earthquake, that will not be the only thing happening. we face of a two hours, but we are actually pushing people to be self-sufficient for even a week. they need to have supplies in their house. the other thing we learned from san bruno and what we have been teac

so that if we have programs that achieve conservation in city departments, if we have a place to sell that power once we conserve it and if that pencils out even during the four years we could do things that right now we haven't figured out how to finance but if it becomes financeable, we could do that. >> i would be very comfortable comfortable -- some of the best advice i think is not to let the perfect get in the way of the good and i think this is probably one of those circumstances. i do think it would be important for us to put in continuing rate increases into our financial planning documents so that the city family knows that this doesn't get us where we need to go and we can expect this to continue and it's a gradual rate to reduce pain but that gradual rate will have to continue for some time and that's not a part of this motion, but i think just from a financial planning standpoint as far as informing people of our intent, i think that would be an appropriate thing to do. >> just on the timing, i would love for there to be stronger language at a minimum in this resolution.

we have the division chiefs here representing the city. [applause] i am also joined by my deputy chief. i want to acknowledge him. now here's retired captain jim lead to say a few things. >> i think we have a couple of minutes before we hit the timeline. i want to give the history on how we got started on this endeavor. we were discussing coming together in a joint organization called guardians of the city. there were two organizations that stepped up to move it forward. it was the police officers association, and the firefighters local 798. i would like to commend those two organizations for having the idea and making it happen. they have the seed money to get us started with guardians of the city to create a nonprofit public charity. i like to honor them. tom o'connor is now the new president of local 798. thank you. >> i would like tom o'connor to come forward. chief white. >> i am told i have approximately two more minutes. we did become a paid professional department in 1867. we will see adjacent to station 10 -- i served my probation

we have a housing problem in district 11. it is hard for a city like san francisco to deal with, but we have to figure out how we can improve the housing situation for these people living in the sub standard situations. >> what about the issue of homelessness? what are your ideas on dealing with this? >> we have a long-term plan to combat homelessness through a continual of care. it looks at economics, housing stock, health care support, and all those pieces need to be part of our deal with homelessness in san francisco. on the public health side, we need to make sure we have services that are going to help people stabilize their lives, how they can access mental health services, substance abuse services. a lot of people on the street are suffering from a disease of alcoholism, drug dependency. a lot of them are there because they have lost their jobs, housing. some of them are there because of hiv. that is one cause -- one part of the homeless population, but also, being homeless makes you more susceptible to contract in hiv. so we need to look a

you have not only touch our city government, but you have helped me touch every neighborhood in this city. that is what we need to do in all of our cities. so thank you very much, general, for your leadership on this. thank you. [applause] i also wanted again our honorary chair, former secretary schulz. you have been such a great leader here. i want to thank you for putting this together. i know senator feinstein could not be here, that p is extremell in reminding us that we owe a great debt of gratitude to our armed forces in the city. i'm not to thank our chief protocol officer for welcoming the officials and visitors here as well. i also want to thank captain harnden again for an impressive ship we have here today. you are occupying the space that in a couple years will hold the ships that will raise at the america's cup 34. it will be right here. some of the team ships will be located right here. for now, this is a great occupancy of this particular pier. i look forward to this afternoon when i can see all the equipment located up the stairs as the sun comes shining up. every year

a big difference in city hall. >> great. we have been talking to supervisor farrell from district 2. thank you for joining us on sfgtv's "meet your district supervisor." four episodes when we come back with another of our city supervisors. thank you very much. >> you bet. >> just a few steps away from union square is a quiet corner stone of san francisco's our community to the meridian gallery has a 20-year history of supporting visual arts. experimental music concert, and also readings. >> give us this day our daily bread at least three times a day. and lead us not into temptation to often on weekdays. [laughter] >> meridians' stands apart from the commercial galleries around union square, and it is because of their core mission, to increase social, philosophical, and spiritual change my isolated individuals and communities. >> it gives a statement, the idea that a significant art of any kind, in any discipline, creates change. >> it is philosophy that attracted david linger to mount a show at meridian. >> you want to feel like you

film commission for starting this wonderful collective in the middle of our tenderloin in our city. i have had a chance to work with her briefly as the city administrator and got excited about her new directorship still and things that gavinned talk todd me about. we need to get back to the wonderful film history we have in the city. that is one of those things i want to make sure we do, to resurge that ever. so i am going to be a big supporter of the film industry and particularly this type of innovation here, this thing baitor where you have independent film makers and documentaries coming together. the city can come together here, and we have helped to find space and worked with a land leonard named craig. is craig here tonight? if anybody says he is craig, we thank him because he has given us a great deal here. and also doing it in a way in which it compliments the district here in the tenderloin. i want to thank the v.b.d. are you here? where did you go? >> here. [applause] >> ok, thank you. i am excited about revising and resources and making sure we support our independent film make

a big difference in city hall. >> great. we have been talking to supervisor farrell from district 2. thank you for joining us on sfgtv's "meet your district supervisor." four episodes when we come back with another of our city supervisors. thank you very much. >> you bet. >> hello well concealed need your district supervisor. -- welcome to meet your district supervisor. we are here with supervisor kim. welcome. thank you for joining supervisor kim: thank you for having me. >> tell us where he grew up. supervisor kim: i grew up on the new york city. my parents immigrated to the u.s. i actually started becoming active in the community in high school. ed i went to stanford. -- i went to stanford. when i graduated, i move to san francisco. my first job, i started working developing economic policies for low-income communities statewide in california. i worked with young people, parents, families are around issues that concern our neighborhoods, whether it was communities, affordable housing, public schools, or just planning issues in ne