not have pension reform, as they accomplished with the board of supervisors in with people like warren hellman and others that helped us last year passed that very important thing. it is looks better now that we have proposition d that was passed with our street paving bonds and other things that we have done smartly. but with that, we still have a very complicated decisions to make that will reflect our priorities. i want to also thank supervisor carmen chu who is out here tonight. she is going to be the head of the budget committee -- committee. [laughter] that the supervisors have selected with david chiu's help. this is her third. i have committed to six. we are combining as many of the districts together as possible, so we're trying to do this as efficiently as possible. but we will do all six. we know, based on last year's turnout and i think tonight, the turnout as well, if we listen to closely, we go and do our homework, we will make good decisions so that hopefully you are not there the end of may screaming at us in the months of june saying we did not listen. we have got to listen ea

you know, i learned that lesson very vividly when i had a year to work with warren hellman. he used so much of his talent to reach the education gaps for people, to use the success of the concert he did in golden gate park. i learned so much from him when we worked together on pension reform. so when lending of red with tears in her eyes about homeless mothers, experiencing the life of homelessness -- when lynn benihoff read about that with tears in her eyes, about homeless mothers, and she made a challenge -- i think i was in office for like less than 20 days, and she said, you know, i am going to challenge you, mayor. i am going to see whether you can do this. i am going to put up $1.5 million, and if you can match it and get these homeless families, particularly aimed at homeless mothers with kids, not only off the streets, off of your shelter list, i will put in my own money for that. and we went to work. and it was home for the holidays program that we had. we got these families starting to come in, and we're almost finished with that whole thing. i have been smiling ev

it was what warren hellman always said. even when you are doing the hardest thing possible, you have to have fun. i think it is fun when you can accomplish environmental goals for the city. there are so many generations ahead of us that we know will enjoy this. they will enjoy that cleaner air that we have promised generations to come. we are not going to be the same as many other industrialized cities, creating emission levels to the point that people get sick. we have the promise that with the strong environmental goals that we set out, that we can have fun accomplishing them. just a minute ago, i had a chance to tell gavin, thank you for showing such great leadership. we celebrated gay marriage. i can personally thank him for that wonderful leadership that led to an historic decision by the ninth circuit yesterday. we go back to 2008, where mayor gavin newsom had led the effort with the board of supervisors to establish a difficult goal of reducing gas emissions, carbon emissions from our taxis, in 2008. at the time, the