mr. phil ginsberg. (applause) >> illustrious? thank you, john. illustrious? it's a great day for parks and for park users. so, we're thrilled. we get to be the beneficiaries of all this hard work and all this partnership. and it is appropriate that we're here at balboa park. mark, john, and the mayor all talked about the improvements that have happened in this really, really important piece of open space. it's a dense neighborhoodv. it's in a transit corridor. and thanks to partnership and thanks to community support and thanks to the leadership of our elected officials we've made some incredible improvements here in the last few years. behind us, our new playground thanks to the support of the trust for public land. behind all of you is an incredible new skateboard park which is both a public -- another public-private partnership partially funded with bond funds. behind us even further is balboa pool which thanks to the 2012 parks bond will be renovated with a state-of-the-art swimming pool in a few years. the theme here is meeting evolving community needs.

mr. phil ginsberg. (applause) >> i don't think we appreciate how amazing phil is and how lucky we are as a city to have him. but today how lucky are we to be san franciscans standing here today? (applause) >> you know, today i have a number of thank yous i want to go through. but first i really want to comment about our parks and our support for our parks not only in city hall, but with the voters of san francisco. you know, we fight that battle every year in city hall with our budget and we're going through it right now to make sure we prioritize our parks for our families, for our children, for our seniors, for everyone. and the voters of san francisco have done it year in and year out. and parks are for everyone. they're for young people and old people. they're for large people and small people. they're for dogs, they're for everyone that we care about here in san francisco. i see a number of seniors here today. i know one month old emma is here today. this is for everybody and my three children are