the city budget reflects so many values of our great city. whether it is departments or community-based agencies or whether it is neighborhood groups, we all had to put our focus on and make sure that this budget would be balanced in the right way. so i want to especially thank all of our labor unions in the city for coming together this year. they were fantastic, and they were obviously very forthright in the things that they represented. particularly, i want to think, especially, the police officers and the police officer association and the head of that. as well as tom o'connor and the local 798 and the firefighters. the public safety contributions from we have some $31 million of savings over the next two years. [applause] and that represents a huge sacrifice. [applause] the public safety officers were part of a larger group of all of the labor unions that we have worked well with in the city. i want to thank all the labor unions for coming together, not only on the budget, but also on our pension reform package as well. to the community-b

i will start you out with this fact, speaking of our beautiful city. 25% of our beautiful city is taken up by public right of way, streets, sidewalks, and scraps and parcels that the city leaders laid out to convey people and vehicles. the public rights of way are important. that is what we stoeward. a lot of it was designed more for utilities and vehicles than people. what you have seen over the last few years is a rethinking of the public rights of way. we're here to talk about one small example of movement in a positive direction in terms of how we use our public spaces in san francisco. without further ado, the man you would all like to hear from. he is serving the great city now and once did as the director of public works, our mayor, mayor ed lee. [applause] >> thank you. thank you for your leadership as well. i am up here for the ribbon cutting ceremony. i want to thank all the neighbors that live up here. you have seen corners of the city where grass is growing or people are neglecting these places. along comes a bureaucracy called dpw with others gaining confidence that we can

, our great city of san francisco. you know, we have been courting the chinese tourists and chinese business people for quite some many years and working very closely with our heads of travel, we have just finished what of the greatest international powwows -- one of the greatest international powwows that we have ever hosted in our city. we thank the hotel leaders in our city. we had such a wonderful successful international powwow. i want to welcome the deputy counsel general who joins us here today. he knows very much that people are coming to the council general to try to think of ways in which whole groups of people can come here and experience the bay area of san francisco and make the connections, but i am here mainly because i wanted to see what the breakfast is all about. [laughter] if you have never traveled to the far east, particularly to china, breakfast is, as the hilton has described, one of those important meals. people get up at six or six -- 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning, even though they may have a ful

you combine that with the fact that we have an affordable housing in most parts of the city, it is no surprise ouromeless numbers have gone up in recent years. the city needs to recommit ourselves to the values that our city was named after. st. francis believed in compassion for those who have less -- had less than others. those of us with opportunities have to give back. part of that entails taking care of the most important among us, the folks who have need, including our homeless. >> let's talk about the transportation situation in your district. you mentioned that transit could be better. how is parking and traffic? is there enough muni service now? >> you are talking to the one member of the board that does not only car. i get around my district by muni, bicycle, or hailing a cab. our transit system is truly challenge. our bosses are late one out of four times. -- our buses are late one out of a quarter times. they're still not as clean and safe as we'd like. we can do better and investing in our muni system. we need more taxicabs on the streets. is difficult to obtain a cab. i support the c

our problem. the rest of the solution was coming from the expenditure side which means reducing city costs and pension reform, which the mayor has been working very hard to implement. it means reducing the size of our work force and the cost of doing business as city departments and reductions to the amount that we're able to allocate to the contractors, a wide range of policy approach is designed to close that gap and bring this back into sound basic structural financial balance over the next five years. the approach that the mayor has tried to take is to spread those -- the burden of those solutions out over multiple participants in our cities government and our budget. the idea is that we know there will be sacrifice in order to bring the budget back into balance and the idea is to have an approach that depends on shared sacrifice where we are asking to have revenues be part of the component of that shot agee and we're asking labor to participate in that strategy. we're asking our city departments to participate in- energy. it will not be easy but i think it is a balanced proposal and three court p

different departments under our acting city administrator, including, interestingly enough, animal care and control. they will be caring for stray animals, making sure they are safely transported, and the day from our streets and into shelters, and so forth. the puc, police department, real-estate department, a multitude of some 14 departments, that will have the chance to use these trucks and the way in which they operate. the very essence of city fleet operations. so i want to thank chrysler for allowing sanfrancisco to experiment with our department of energy, and also while we are experimenting with this, we have uc-davis as a partner. we have the director of our plugged in demonstration project. working together with the transportation electrification institute here. with their corporations, getting the data about how these vehicles are used, how they are tested, whether they can go up hills as efficiently, bringing up the cargo and animals and tool that dpw will use, various departments inspecting buildings, streets, all of the different uses for a city fleet, all on the dime of t

vulnerable in our communities as well, but i think those are key questions as the difficult budget for our city comes forward. i will be working with a coalition of family-based and community-based groups and seniors to ensure we protect our community-based services for seniors. >> what are your ideas on dealing with the issue of homelessness? >> i think homelessness has been this structural problem, not just in our city but other metropolitan areas, and i think, at least at the short term level, we have made some progress ensuring there is cleaner and safer shelters so people have somewhat of a transition to transition from homelessness to a stable housing, but when we look at the numbers of affordable housing units that might allow people to get more on their feet or even work force development or educational opportunities to help a mother who is homeless, for example, to get on their feet, we need much more of that, and we cannot cut programs that will increase the roles of the homeless. i believe that the project homeless connect and some of the projects created by previous administrations

our schools. these are hot spots around the city. we want to say, we will join you in that effort, and our police department, and our school department officials, and our transit system. we are working together, we have continued meetings to make sure that we not only post signs, but the police will be out there enforcing this. they will start out by telling people and educating them, not just by issuing a citation or fine right away. educating first so that people know that they have to drive slow around schools. with that, we hope to change the whole way people pay respect to pedestrian safety and school children safety. so with that, thank you very much. [applause] >> supervisor mar is here. he is a regular at the george peabody. he was here with us during back- to-school day last year. to you feel safer this morning? >> absolutely. peabody is one of our great schools in our districts. thank you to all the parents for getting their kids to school safety. by these measures, we can identify key risk factors. reducing the speed limit

, not only our clinic, but the city have all our children in san francisco should have insurance now because if they are low income enough, they get medical. if they actually have a little more assets, a little more income, they can get happy family. we do have family who come outside of our neighborhood to come on our clinic. one thing i learn from our clients, no matter how old they are, no matter how little english they know, they know how to get to chinatown, meaning they know how to get to our clinic. 85 percent of our staff is bilingual because we are serving many monolingual chinese patients. they can be child care providers so our clients can go out and work. >> we found more and more women of child bearing age come down with cancer and they have kids and the kids were having a horrible time and parents were having a horrible time. how do parents tell their kids they may not be here? what we do is provide a place and the material and support and then they figure out their own truth, what it means to them. i see

now that we have got our record of how to do this, i think the next clerk and the city will be much informed with having our process and having our archives to look too. >> and that is how san francisco government worked out the kinks, twists and turns, bombs in the road, to select its new interim mayor, ed lee. san francisco's first asian- american mayor. >> this has been an unprecedented and historic transition of power here in san francisco. i am so happy the board of supervisors came together to select an outstanding choice along many outstanding candidates to lead us over the next several years. >> over the past several months when this issue has come up, it had been agonizing. the board has been put into a difficult situation. there are a lot of differences of opinion on how to run the city, how to mass make a decision, who should be in place, 11 people to agree on that is a challenging thing. i think we have done the best we can do in the process, considering the difference of opinions. >> the people of san francisco can now choose their mayor, the direction they want to go. that is w

and our commitment to continuing our rid of all the projects in the city. there are many important projects that are important to many of our neighborhoods, including district 6. so i am very committed to this. it is an unfortunate situation that we find ourselves in, but i look forward to seeing how this moves forward with all the moving pieces. i do think it is important we move forward and keep redevelopment, here in san francisco. supervisor chu: thank you. colleagues, can we send this item forward to the full board with recommendations? ok, that will be the case. do we have any other items before us? >> that completes the agenda. supervisor chu: thank you. i believe this is the last meeting until we come back from court recess. happy vacation to everybody. thank you. we are adjourned. >> i never thought i would be at a press conference in the city surrounded by a bunch of pickup trucks. here we are. these are no average pickup trucks. these have solid green credentials. san francisco has a long history of groundbreaking initiatives an enlargement of vic

and also to make sure that we are investing and renewing every part of our city, to make sure that the tourists enjoy this area, and even people like ourselves -- those of us now live in the city -- will love it even more. this will benefit everybody. i also want to introduce another champion, someone that i have worked with closely this past year, who has led a very positive dialogue. that is our board president, president david chiu. [applause] >> thank you, mr. mayor. i want to welcome everyone to what mark twain calls a classic summer day in san francisco. i am proud to be here as part of this announcement, and i am here on behalf of my colleague jane kim, who is stuck in city hall. the two of us have the honor of representing the number one place in san francisco where people come to shop, and hello to everyone on the cable cars, spend time in our incredible city. this is an announcement of how we build 21st century city -- cities, how we can create communities on very busy dance streets. we know it takes a village to create a parklet. i want to thank the city department for being

we will continue to do that and to build our city the way we can do it as an international city. so i want to welcome all of you here to this historic occasion to one where we know san francisco can really be very proud of, and that is hosting the 40th celebration of international diplomacy up ping- pong diplomacy, and i want to give this proclamation. i'm not going to shake your hand too hard, but i'm also going to take this privilege and honor on behalf of san francisco to provide you -- please come up to the table as well. you with this proclamation. it has a lot of the whereases that depicts our history year, but i would like to, as the mayor of san francisco, on behalf of the people of this great city and county, in celebration and recognition of the official 40th anniversary, commemorating ping-pong diplomacy, we do provide proclaim july 5, 2011, as ping- pong diplomacy day in san francisco. [applause] >> please welcome representative -- the chinese table tennis president of the table tennis association and vice president of the chinese olympic committee. welcome. [applause

with families and the number of children dropping every year, san francisco must keep families in our city, especially as a family such as this the contribute so much to our neighborhood and city. the families' support this edition and we appreciate how the planning department protect our city from the so-called monster homes. this is no monster home. we see that this addition will retain the scale and character of the 400 block and allow the families to remain on our block in san francisco. please allow them to build this as designed. >> thank you, next speaker. >> i will be reading a letter on behalf of -- "i'm writing in full support of the plans submitted to the planning department and hope that you will allow them to pursue the design they have presented. i'm the owner of the two-story home built in 1913. i have owned my home and i have seen much change. almost all of my neighbors have expanded their homes by increasing the height or the footprint or both. this trend has been to upgrade and expand the homes to fit modern tastes and lifestyles. in the past, they have been one or two be

city. you are part of a work force that keeps our world-class status here. i do not want you to think you are just part of a street cleaning program. you are not. you are part of a world-class city. just like the labor union, the department of the environment. we take pride in connecting everyone up. it begins in our neighborhoods. but it ends with the whole city's world-class status. and we could not do this without everybody feeling the same y. they are part of the work force, some 26,000 people that served in the city, and they are part of a world-class standard. so, i want international tourists to be visiting this restaurant and to know that it was part of sf shines, part of a program at the neighborhood level, but they have world class people to serve them better part of our revelation of businesses along the first street corridor, and i am so proud to be down here to kick this program off with supervisor cohen, knowing that it has the world-class touch to let. we have been feeling isolated, disconnected. we do not want that to happen. we want to make s

that makes our city so special and so great.u all very much for being out here. >> it is my great honor to introduce to you assemblyman mark leno. >> thank you. it is a real pleasure to be here with speaker pelosi and mayor newsome, board president aaron peskin. let me welcome all our local visitors as well as our out of town guests. i want to thank them for choosing san francisco and joining us on this historic 0 caverings and for your sales tax dollars we especially need at this time it's a wonderful san francisco day to recount some of our local history. imagine lily coit having over $100,000 in 1929 to leave to the city and county of san francisco as a bequest. i can't wait to see what bill o'riley does when he recognizes that san francisco is celebrating the philanthropic legacy of a cigar-chomping, card-playing, fire engine chasing, cross-dressing victorian lady. i'm sorry, madame speaker,, but lily coit is the original queen of san francisco values. so i want to -- thank you -- present a little bit of love from the califo

independent filmmakers do not take up permits for our city, do not have insurance on our streets, and also do not aid in our planning process about street closures and so forth, and new york city has a permit fee of $300 for the whole production. new mexico, $25 per day. vancouver, $100 per day. it is a little bit of a competitive nature, but it will mean a lot to our independent film industry, and i want to make sure we show a signal to them that we value their participation here in san francisco and ask for your support in that, and a quick mention, today, across our country is national night out against crime, and i just want to send a special shout out to people, especially jim and sydney. -- cindy. we cannot be here because we are in meetings, but we wish you well. clerk: thank you, supervisor farrell. supervisor mirkarimi? supervisor mirkarimi: yes, it is national night out, and i look forward to being there with the hope of ensuring greater public safety. in light of that, i am submitting an ordinance to fortify the san francisco gun control l

our payroll and fringe benefits for city employees accounts for over 60% of our budget.f we are not willing to look at that issue, i do not think we are going to solve -- i know we will not solve our long-term financial issues. that, to me, is the biggest deal. second, it is about job creation. jobs are not just putting people back to work, which i think is the highest priority, but it is all the ancillary benefits we received, whether it be payroll taxes, an increase in property taxes. people who live and work in san francisco also shop at local restaurants, so shop at the local retail stores. it is a huge economic impact in san francisco. in my opinion, it is getting our costs under control but also promoting economic development so we have a financial engine that will continue to promote us year after year. >> what are your ideas on dealing with the issue of homelessness in san francisco? >> i am one that thinks mayor newsom did a great job thinking proactively about what we need to do in san francisco. when he started care not cash -- but enacted so many things past

whenever our city is working together, we have to find people who know how to communicate with small businesses, drill down to what they need, and then work with our policy makers like the small business commission and their staff, but really help in figuring out what it is that a limited amount of money -- and it is really limited when you are only talking about $680,000 in very tight economic times -- to be able to spread that around to 27 different businesses, help and make sure that a company like mission cheese, which is probably gone through a huge jury just to get here, can be directly helped to be opened and sustained success -- which has probably gone through a huge journey just to get here. we do not want to start things that cannot be successful. the whole game is about not only surviving the economic challenge, but as we recover -- and we are recovering in our economy -- that the small businesses will be successful, and they will grow, and they will sustain themselves, and they will be at the heart of what i think is a revival of the whole of valencia. when you walk valenc

all of the representatives from our city agencies and our nonprofit partners. it takes a village to make sure we are safe and c.y.c. is now a proud part of the village that is here in the bay view and we look forward to years of your service and leadership. i do have with me a certificate of honor that is signed not only from my colleagues jane kim and malia cohen but from every member of the board in recognition of c.y.c.'s grand opening for your continued leadership in providing conflict mediation, educational enrichment and job readiness program to our youth of san francisco. we at the board want to extend our highest accommodation, our appreciation and our thanks. congratulations. >> we appreciate the support we have received from you and all of the supervisors. supervisor malia cohen has been especially supportive and generous with her time and energy to the establishment of this office. please join me in welcoming supervisor cohen. >> good morning, good morning. hi, everyone, friends and neighbors. it's wonderful to see this place packed. i haven't seen i