or to find parking in north beach, or people to be dropped off in north beach. so, i think you have to deal with -- you're forgetting that these small -- the difference between union square and north beach is that union square closes by 9 o'clock at night. it's dead. and you want to go out to eat after a movie, after a concert, you go to chinatown -- outside chinatown and north beach, it's not going to happen and people are going to go out of business. >> thank you. next speaker. >> roland salvato, denise dan, john bollinger and [speaker not understood]. >> good afternoon. >>> hi, roland salvato. thanks, directors. some mistakes are very expensive, and i'm afraid that's what's going to culminate here because there are and there have been a few mistakes beginning with things that are obvious in the documents that have been circulated. so, for example, the brief description written by i suppose the director describes community meetings that were held back in august. was there something obviously incorrect about that? because those community meetings didn't take in

north beach, lot of the little business in north beach are going to go broke. i'm not going to go broke. i've been there for 42 years. the business already, they're feeling already. you go at 2 o'clock in the morning you have roaches this long on the sidewalks and they go inside the businesses. you've got to think about it. i know it's a big project. i know a lot of people are involved. big money involved. you cannot look back. you leave the machine there and everybody will be happy. and then you -- next 10 years from now, god bless, you can go to saucelido. [laughter] >>> you understand that? leave the machines in the ground like they do in new york. don't come with the machines so long, this, we cannot do this. you are doing a project for $1,700,000. machine is only $11 million. that is reusable. in new york they use the machine there for 18 years. i have nothing else to say. but we are all adults. we all understand. you start a project like this and you do half, [speaker not understood]. [laughter] >> okay, thank you. next speaker. (applause) >> claudine cha

i'm a resident of north beach. and i want to say a quick thing about comparing this to downtown to north beach to the disruption. as you know i'm sure, north beach has lots of restaurants with outdoor seating. the mess and the noise would [speaker not understood] anybody outside. i hope you're getting it. there is a lot of fear what the first option would do to the neighborhood, to small business owners there. they will not recover if they're having a difficult time already. and also i know you're hearing a lot of different ideas, opinions and i guess that's democracy, messy, but that's the way it is. but i think the one thing that is consistent and unanimous to north beach is that nobody wants that first option, the excavation on columbus and union. or i think if that's the one you end up doing, i think there are a lot of problems. it will unite our neighborhood in a way we may not always be unite and had adjoining neighborhoods as well. it's just so damaging for the people who are trying to make a living there an

to north beach for north beach or not. the current approved project that has, that has been fully designed, that has been funded, that has been environmentally cleared already contemplates a tunnel going to north beach. so, that's part of the current project. we're not recommending a change to that. as mr. funge mentioned, discussions about an extension, whether it should happen or not, what the alignment would be, where a station in north beach would be if there were to be one, would be subject to a separate process that would require its own community process, its own environmental review, its own planning, engineering design. so, i want to make it very clear that that's not what's before you today. what's before you today is a recommendation that would allow us to pursue alternatives. one, in just where we remove the tunnel boring machines half a block from where they're currently proposed to remove them, or alternately, to leave them underground. so, i just want to clarify that up front. i do want to acknowledge that t

some of the residents and business owners in north beach expressed concern that the north beach retrieval shaft work if if carried out as planned would impact the neighborhood without providing benefits of an enhanced public transportation system. the community [speaker not understood] project team to evaluate options and the options evaluated includes included a number of criteria. and including the impediments to a potential but not yet planned future t-line extension. each option was also evaluated based on the impact to the approved project's cost and schedule. as you know, the sfmta has entered into a $233 million contract to construct the tunnels. the tunnel contract is currently on schedule and on budget and any delays to the tunnel contractor exposed the agency to significant financial risk of a contractor claim. now to walk you through the options as shown on the slide. now, the project staff evaluated several options for the tbm including leaving the tbms in the ground. now, bearing the tbms would require removing some of the tbm's internal components and encapsulating the balan

and this part of the city. even more important, this project, this fight about the north beach branch library, about joe dimaggio, fundamentally was about whether we were going to be moving forward as a city. whether we were going to focus just on the past or also on the future of our city. whether we were going to focus on what recreation was like 25 or 50 years ago or what needs to happen today and in the future in san francisco? and we won that battle and we sent a clear message that that city has a strong future for everyone and we're going to make it happen. thank you and congratulations. [applause] >> thank you, scott. appreciate it. i did mention that the library is thriving? did i mention that last year we had 7.2 million visitor to our libraries? it's exciting to know that and it's the only larguishan library that did not suffer any reductions or cutbacks during the economic downturn. you provided that stable funding and thank you, again for all of your terrific support. with that i would like to call to the mic our great partner, the department of water and the folks