thanks very much. >> thank you, mr. cohen. >>> good afternoon, supervisors. congratulations, supervisor mar, for your brilliant reelection. and thank you, supervisor wiener, for bringing this up. as tim cohen said a little while ag i am concerned also. i do work a lot with the construction industry. i'm concerned if we only allow 375 units to be built, it ain't gonna happen because people -- bankers might say, you know what, this is great, but what's going to happen after this? [speaker not understood]. i'd like to say go forward but i think we really should think about expanding it. thank you. >> thank you. is there any additional public comment? seeing none, mr. chairman, may we close public comment? >> yes, public comment is closed. >> i want to thank everyone who came out today. i really want to particularly thank sarah short and also gail gilman from community housing partnership who wasn't here today who were very, very deeply involved in the negotiations and were really good negotiating partners in trying to work out this compromise. i also want to agai

and mr. cohen held the seat for quite some time and when he was not reappointed by the board of supervisors earlier this year 5 members of the board, two of whom are sitting here in this committee today, voted to reappoint him and i don't recall this issue being brought up. so i'm surprised it hear it being brought up today from someone who under san francisco's own definition of low income undisputiblely qualifies as low income. so i do support mr. wolff and colleagues i ask for your support. >> thank you, supervisor wiener. supervisor farrell. >> to both candidates, thank you very much for coming forward. much appreciated. will looks like we'll have a split here. i associate myself with some of supervisor wiener's comments. you know, to me this is a seat where it's a low income seat but that's a qualification to sit on this, not that you have to be working as your vocation in that community necessarily. and i do believe i am very familiar with the lgbt center, i'm very supportive of that and rebe

mr. bradford. >> thank you ms. cohen. mr. chu. >>? mr. campos, thank you mr. clerk i have a numb of number of items and the first is authorizing the-off real estate for 17th and folsome street park project and i also have a memoriam for man we will spain rod drying guess and he was one of the district's most colorful andby loved artist and is with robert crumb influenced generations of cartoonists and not only in the mission but throughout the city and born in new york to an italian artist mother mr. rod drying guess dropped his first name in favor of spain passionate about his latino heritage created murals with crumb in the late 1960's and 70s, in in addition, to zap economics his works include biographygraphy and dark hotel online graphic novellings, spain was working on a graphic story for the 2004 san francisco hotel workers strike, so, we would like to ask that we adjourn the meeting today in his memory. i also have another item as you know as a city, we have been working with other cities to deal with the issue of homelessness within our veteran populat

mr. cohen. critics have cited a dearth of information, the lack of answers, the inability to move forward -- you have heard that from other panelists. can you talk about the average efforts, the type of assistance you have provided over the past two years? >> thank you. i am happy to do that. in 2012 alone, we have posted over 115 even for different states that total approximately 215 hours of technical assistance. we have done 69 webinars. we have held two in person conferences where people have come in, over 1000 attendees have come to those. we are on the phone literally every day with people from the state's helping them, answering their questions, and enabling them to move forward. >> i appreciate that. >> thank you. i think it has a different experience from past experiences were usually put out that in some regulation and hope for the best. we have been aggressive with our partners to reach out to states and to bring them into parley our decision making, and certainly their decision maki

mr. cohen's response. i sat on this committee with you. the affordable care act was supposed to bring health care costs down. if we wantd to bring costs down, we would have invited governor mitch daniels to this committee and asked him how he did that in his state. 11% reduction in two years. he did it with a health savings account for state employees which was voluntary. he found out that when people spend their own money for health care, something magic happens. it sounds like from your interpretation of the medical loss ratio, that effect will be lost. it is one more failing of this very large law. i will yield back my time and recognize the gentlelady for five minutes of questions. >> thank you very much for your patience and being with us today. i am proud of the work this committee has done on the affordable care act. i want to see every one of the over 30 million people who are going to receive coverage, receive coverage, including the 20 or so million who will receive coverage under the medicaid expansion. a large percentage of tho

mr. cohen, good to have you with us tonight. >> great to be here. >> what do you make of this move?e has been out there that congress has to move on something. they didn't. but now in the 11th hour, he makes this move. how big is it? >> it's very big. it's creative. it's unprecedented. and i think it's by and large going to help the middle class, assuming you're somebody in the middle class who wants to refinance your mortgage or get a mortgage to buy a home in the first place, because what he is doing is lowering, trying to lower long-term interest rates. as he said, short-term interest rates he is going to keep at a quarter of a percentage point. he can't do much more with that. but long-term interest rates he can try to drive down by buying mortgage-backed securities, by buying treasury securities. in a sense, creating artificial demand in the market, which lowers the interest rates, increases the price of bonds. bonds trade inversely to their interest rates. so that will drive down interest rates, encouraging people to borrow more money. >> so what is this going to do to the hou

mr. clerk. >> item no. 5 is an ordinance amending the police code regarding the junk dealer and junk gatherer permit process. >> and the sponsor is supervisor cohen. >> thank you very much, mr. chair. colleagues, i want to thank you for hearing this item. i've spent nearly 8 months working on this legislation with the police department, the city attorney's office, junk dealers and the community members with the goal of curbing and better regulating the sale of metals, copper and other junk materials. now, metals theft is a significant problem in our city. if you recall, there was very much media coverage of it earlier this year. we have seen individuals go to great lengths to steal copper and metal by breaking into public housing units, homes, businesses, as well as historic buildings. we've seen metal thiefs sail small boats and even pull copper line from the cable lines. not only does metal theft cost thousands of dollars in damage but it can disrupt the delivery of critical transit services. unfortunately some metal thiefs have an incentive to engage in this dangerous behavior. junk dealers who buy and sell these materials often pay up to $4 p

speaker, i'm delighted to yield three minutes to the gentleman from tennessee, mr. cohen. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from tennessee is recognized for three minutes. mr. cohen: thank you. i appreciate the time and the opportunity to speak on this measure. i'm concerned about the fiscal cliff, and it's important and president obama has tried to work with the opposition party and go on from what he was elected on, increasing taxes for fairness on people earning over $250,000, to $400,000. but, no, that wasn't enough. this proposal goes to $1 million a year. $400,000 is plenty comfortable, and the president's gone a long way. the fact is there's a lot of revenue that's being lost between $400,000 and $1 million. we need that revenue to rectify the wrongs in our society of which there are still many. this bill would cut funding for the national institutes of health. that is our physical cliff. and i want to talk to you how this fiscal cliff affects the physical cliff. the national institutes of health is the agency that comes up with research dollars that allows for

thank you, supervisor cohen. mr. clerk, can you call the last item? >> item no. 6 is a hearing on the municipal transportation quarterly progress on increasing and improving tax service. >> scott wiener. >> about a year ago i submitted a hearing request to request quarterly updates from the municipal transportation agency about taxi service in san francisco and efforts to reform and improve our taxi system. if we are ever to become truly a transit first system, muni, those critically important, will never be enough by itself. we also have to have in addition to great biking and ability for people to walk around safely, we need to have car sharing and very importantly we need to have a world class taxi system. we currently do not have enough taxis in san francisco. taxi service is not where it needs to be. people still have incredible trouble getting a cab, whether they are visiting the city, whether they are living in the city, and if we want people to be able to live here without owning their own vehicles we need to give good cab service. i know that

mr. goldsmith as well? from commissioner cohen and we'll take without objection. then we have a remainder possibly from district ten commissioner wattling we should move? >> second. >> that is done. thank you for your interest in the cac. we are going to forward to the full t.a. board, mr. aaron goldsmith for district four mr. glenn davis for district nine and mr. christopher wattling for district ten. >> item for cal train to proceed with design bridge with berm design allocation -- public works and environmental connector road. appropriation of 49,000 and appropriate funds for planning and community outreach. this is an action item. >> good morning commissioner. my name is collin i'm the transportation planner with the authority. this item is on page 15 of your packet. it's an update on two projects that we last presented to you in march. one is the quint street bridge replacement project as well as quint-jerrold connector road which is a city project testimony just -- just going to quickly give you an overview. here we're showing over view map of the project ar

it was not mr. cohen in as presented by them. i believe that the struggle is against the imposition of any new tyranny. the egyptian people i don the red lines against any attempt to turn the progress. we are struggling for preserving the newfound freedom. the religious or secular who can deliver on the promise of freedom and democracy, those under estimating the power of the people in egypt. finally, let me say a few words of the civil society in egypt. more than 60% of the populations they are in the rest of the arab countries are 30 years old. it is a beautiful young generation very much welcome the good to the modern devices and demand help and assistance in the march to freedom, democracy and better life. the civil society with this organization, social groups, youth, the political party are indeed the future in my view. it is important to empower so they can succeed in changing the state. as never before, it is now more doable than ever before will be more accepted. so what israel is doing in regard to student development a

mr. cohen's, a lot of it allocated to different guys. guys in, gives them a certain amount of money and says go to it. give me some of your ideas and let's talk as well. how are you different from that? >> it's similar in the way we both back strategists. but his is more -- he's at the hub, great trader. steve is one of the best traders of all-time on wall street. and he's always sharing ideas, best ideas with all his portfolio managers, and a lot of it gets filtered through him. he's very, very involved in the books. my managers are more passive investments, where i'm not dealing with them day to day, month to month, quarter by quarter and sharing ideas. they do their own thing, i do my own thing. >> it is all your money, isn't it? >> correct. >> that's a nice problem to have. and so the s.e.c. in terms of at least, you know, most hedge funds have to register with the s.e.c. you don't have to register with the s.e.c. >> we don't have to register, but we're still regulated by the s.e.c. like everybody else. >> what about the hedge fund b

mr. cohen: taxing their wealth. that's something they should do because it's fair and it gives the over 98% tax relief. but at the same time they're talking about increasing the medicare age from 65 to 67. and that's taxing the wealth of the less fortunate people who are 65 to 67. for them and for everybody, your health is your wealth. jimmy copeland a friend and semiphilosopher said that, your health is your wealth. if you raise the medicare age from 65 to 67, you're going to sacrifice the health of people who are not the most fortunate system of while we tax the income of the most wealthy, we'll be taxes what wealth theless wealthy have, their health. that's wrong. mr. president and mr. speaker should not increase that age and tax the poor. thank you, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the -- does the gentlelady from texas seek recognition? ms. jackson lee: i ask unanimous consent to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. ms. jackson lee:

>> yes. >> so supervisor cohen had started to make a motion. it sounds like mr. gibner is giving us a number of options. i think we need to give dpw a chance to think about how this ordinance may be modified. i heard a suggestion also from supervisor cohen to reject the proposal before us as well, but i'd like to know kind of what the wishes of the body is. >> if i were to vote today, i would vote to reject it. we do have an option to continuing to the call of the chair to get more information, but i'm not, i don't have a strong opinion between the two, although it sounds like we don't have a resolution disapproving it before us and so does that mean that we're not capable of rejecting it today? >> you can amend the resolution that's before you to reject and we could work with the department after the meeting to make sure that that -- what the committee is asking for gets into the resolution. it will be a number of changes. like you said, you could make that vote today, take that vote today. >> i'm curious to know what my colleagues think. >> supervisor cohen. >>

cohen in. aye supervisor elsburnd -- mr. president there are 11 ayes those resolutions are adoptedded and pass the if you could read item six. >> item four is -- excuse me sir, you are out of order. sir you are out of order. thank you. mr. clerk if you could please read items four through six. >> item four is affirming the -- by the planning commission and long rage development plan and number five is reimbursing the certification and number six is contracting the court to prepare findings. >> colleagues you are aware that there have been ongoing discussions about the future of this probability and those discussions have not yet concluded and so i would like to ask at this time to have a motion to continue these items to the second item of the new year this is january 29th motion by supervisor phil seconded by supervisor campos and with that motion, these tolls are continued to the january 29th. mr. clerk read item seven joovment 849,000 state revenues for unified school district to fiscal year 2013. >> supervisor kim. >>> t

mr. clerk, roll call vote on the motion. >> supervisor farrell, aye. supervisor kim, aye. supervisor mar, aye. supervisor olague, aye. supervisor wiener, aye. supervisor avalos, aye. supervisor campos, aye. >> president chiu, aye. >> supervisor chu, aye. >> supervisor cohen, aye. >> supervisor elsbernd, aye. mr. president, we have 11 ayes. >> president chiu: the motion passes the categorical exemption is affirmed. colleagues, why don't we go back to general public comment. and hear from members of the public that wish to speak near generally. if i could ask members of the public to excuse yourself from the chamber quietly so we can continue with business. let's hear from the first speaker please. walter. >> thanks. finally. when are you going to get a movie here? when are you going to get some work for us. i thought of a new movie that a supervisor finishes a long term and then he goes in this movie right to the airport, he's gone. leaves -- you ever seen the movie, the stepfather? it sounds like a good -- a little change of a movie. but it sounds like a good one. he leaves the city, just leaves it after that. and thanks for being here. thanks for your work, supervisor elsbernd. and thanks for elsbernd being in your morning, thanks for being here in our