i have james tracy. ooh. why don't we take a moment to figure out what is going on with the lighting. [pause] [laughter] >> it's okay, we're fine. >> go ahead. >> so, james tracy. dwayne sears. orlan real. michael hanson. anexel rama. stephen tennis. natalie lions. vivian imperial. elihu hernandez. and matthew [speaker not understood]. hi, [speaker not understood]. >>> i would like to make a dramatic entrance. normally doesn't get that dramatic with lights going out and things like that. my name is james tracy. i'm representing community housing partnership. it's been such an honor to work with you, supervisor kim, the ivy league, all of us or none, national employment law project, [speaker not understood] legal services, and also the lawyers committee for civil rights. our organization got involved with this fight because we provide really, really good job training opportunities. but we find that as an organization that hires about 60% of our staff coming from homeless backgrounds at one point in their life,

my name is james tracy. i'm a city college alumni, proud, went there for many years. city college allowed me to work full time while i put myself through college and allowed know figure out the course of my education because in the early 20s should be no surprise, i like many other people didn't know exactly what i wanted to do. and it gave me high quality top notch education in every single way. every single last program that is shaved from city college is picked up -- will be eventually picked up by the private sector. the only difference, the private sector is going to produce education with a profit note i have in mind, meaning that people like myself, young people -- young people that are taking advantage of these different programs will leave with much, much more debt and that is something that everybody left, right and center on this board in the state of california should oppose. we should [speaker not understood] agenda. i have no idea why there is a conspiracy of all these poor profit collegeses getting together and saying, let's influence the state of calif