Recommendations with the down turn of the economy a lot of employees were being laid off and there was not much hiring being done and the work of the task force as you indicated had kind of dropped off. Thats not to say that none of the recommendations werent implemented. In fact many of them were implemented. Some of them include more accessibility and disabled user friendly resources like the dhr lobby, the dhr website job apps and system of people and employees can apply for jobs. We also provided reasonable accommodations training both for our exam analyst as well as to supervisors and Human Resources of professionals throughout the city about the accommodation process. We also did some outreach to the Human Resources community about rule 115 and how its implemented. But of course there is still much more to do. I see this past year being a rebuilding year with a refocus on revitalizing the hiring of people with disabilities. So as you indicated in december of last year, we started the Advisory Panel again working with the Mayors Office of disability to collaborate and review the 2008 recommendations. To see if things needed updating and also determining how we were going to move forward. We began meeting in december and since that time we followed up in the 2008 recommendations. We had a presentation and discussed how Civil Service rule 115 works and what the citys hiring process as complicated as it is and we discussed specifically what improve the hiring process for people with disabilities around education and outreach and Civil Service rule 115 and recruitment and examination and retention and how to obtain a certificate of disability and by the Veterans Administration and we had a person from the city of seattle come talk to us about their program as well. Thats kind of what weve been doing. I would like to talk briefly about some of the recommendations that we have come up with. I dont want to go through all of them but i will highlight some of them. I think we all agree that education is really pivotal to the success of this program. Again some from the 2008 and updating to 2005. What this means is continuing to do outreach among our city departments and hiring manager and informing them about rule 115 as far as hiring people with disabilities. We want to ensure they understand the process and more importantly recognize that people with disabilities do have the required appropriate and great skill sets to get their jobs done. We also need to improve our outreach to the Community Partners and especially Job Developers to understand how rule 115 work and be able to contact us when those opportunities arise. There are several things that have been done to date. First of all rename the rule 115 program which is a boring name that no one really knows what that means to access sf. A path for city employment for people with disabilities. Again to emphasize this is only one way for employment. Dhr in conjunction with the Advisory Panel are currently working for revising outreach material such as the dhr website. We conducted outreach to several city departments and pro actively working on several potential rule 115 placements. We also developed and distributed a list to the cbo, Community Based organization. A list of job classification which do qualify for entry level positions with the city and we also distributed a list of potential city level internships to qualify for. Thats kind of what weve done. We realize there is still more to do. Once the outreach materials are finalized we want to go to our partners and do an Educational Forum about city employment with people with disabilities and we want to also look at developing and are delivering training to City EmployeesAwareness Training about working with people with disabilities. Secondly, i wanted to address in 2008, there was a recommendation to have a specific liaison with the community and since that time we have the department of Human Resources has hired ed wong who is here who is our city recruiter who was hired last year. This is one of his focus areas for recruitment and besides ed and myself we have one additional person, linda who also works with us. So there is three of us working parttime on that. This year the Advisory Panel recommended that a dedicated be hired to work on this focus specifically and again, thank you very much for your commitment to this issue and with the additional funding that you provided dhr is committed to this and we are working on a plan to accomplish this. A couple of other issues. One was the survey of the existing employees. I know this was an item from the 2008 recommendation and again was raised as wanting a baseline to know where we are at in the city around the hiring of people with disabilities. Several comments talked about how the federal government does the survey and i wanted to report that our Human Resources director Mickey Callaghan reached out to her colleagues and received information from the merits system protection board of the federal government who indicated that they do request information about disabilities. However thats done at the time of appointment only. The survey done in 2005 was a specific focus to see if people with disabilities were disadvantaged as far as employing engagement or perception of fairness or other types of topics. It was a small sam sample of employees that they surveyed. However the department of disabilities did do a survey and we are waiting for the legal opinion. However in the meantime we plan to schedule a meeting with the Mayors Office of disabilities to discuss other options to gather some data. Lastly there is pending longer term issues which need more discussion and research and those would be some charter and rule revisions. Again, some of these are raised in 2008 and continued in the 2015 recommendations. Some of these include changing the limitation from entry level job classification to other job classification. Leaving the terms from severely disabled in the rule and possible Civil Service exams. Other services required. Weve moved forward with our Advisory Panel but there is so much more work to do we look forward to work with people with disabilities and much more needs to be done to provide pathways. I would like to have ed talk about some things hes done in the past. Thank you. Some of the outreach i have conducted with different departments with Human Services agency for 115 for Human Service social worker and engineer and working with the department of Public Health with community on Behavioral Health program. Its for designation of positions and classifications in progress right now. For sfmta there is also a parking control officer that we are trying to as well for the rule 115 we are still working on that. So far have reached out to the Public Health, General Services agency. Sfo and other agency to encourage the employment of persons with disabilities and then well discuss the initiative at the upcoming first citywide Recruitment Forum meeting. Also outreach with other Community Based organization such as lighthouse for the blind, the arc of San Francisco and other Community Based organizations. Also weve reached out to department of veteran affairs, the edd for work Service Disabled program. Additionally i attended two job fares. One for the deaf counseling and agency. There was a job fair june 30th, in san lleandro and we engaged 30 candidates and offered career advice onthejob application process and basically promoting San Francisco as the employer of choice. Additional job fares, we also attended the San FranciscoMayor Committee for employment of persons with disabilities on march 18th. And we engaged with about 28 different candidates at our table again offering career advice and encouraging individuals to apply and also offering advice on the process. Thank you. I was going to to ask you, mr. Wong, do you know how many people have applied through rule 115 since june of last year . I dont have that figure yet, but i can look into it. I know in the draft borrow brochures for as well as community and city government. Do you know how many Community Based organizations are on that list . I would have to look at that. I dont have that offhand. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you. Now, Carla Johnson who has been the driving task force for the Mayors Office on disabilities. Thank you, chair mar and supervisor christensen. Im the supervisor for the mayors with disabilities and 2 years ago we signed the americans with disabilities act and we had more than 500 people come and the theme was it doesnt stop here the reason is under the dream of the ada employment is really the portion that is unfulfilled. We really have not reached the numbers that i think the founders really expected when the ada was first signed and much of the public testimony back in 1988 and 1989 about the needs for this civil rights legislation focused on employment as an issue. People with disabilities is only 1 3 as likely to be employed from people without disabilities and their income is dramatically lower than a peer who doesnt have a disability. On average we only earn between 20 and 26,000 a year and nobody can live on that in San Francisco. We cant truly lead independent lives until we have economic independence and meaningful jobs. I want to thank you, supervisor mar for scheduling this hearing today and also for starting this conversation about employing people with disabilities. And like you, i also want to thank jonathan lions for the legwork that he put into this effort to bring this issue to all of our attention. It was also exactly 1 year ago that you held this hearing. In your june 2014 hearing was a catalyst to reignite the conversation with the department of Human Resources. The department of Human Resources donna and ed and mickey and linda, they really deserve a lot of credit for all of the work that they have put into organizing this advisory committee. If you were to go through the reams of paper and email they have distributed they have been the glue that he would this together. I really want to thank them for that. I wanted to talk a little bit about the disability community. We have this saying nothing about us without us if you look at the makeup of the advisory committee. There is over 17 different advocacy organizations included and im not going to list them all but some of them. The arc sf, regional center, lighthouse for the blind, jbs, department of rehab, rams, and the San Francisco library which has really been one of our champions for rule 115 placement and so also have our academy of sciences been a real Success Story for hiring people. I know we are going to hear a lot from our community members. These are truly the experts, the organizations that have employment programs, the folks who really know how to hire people with disabilities and our conclusion, in our Committee Work has really been the city needs to use all the tools that it has at its disposal in rule 115 or access San Francisco is really one of those tools. Other tools include a better awareness and understanding of how reasonable accommodations need to be integrated into the entire employment process. As donna mentioned our primary efforts, our recommendations are really about outreach, recruitment, examinations, appointments and retention. Our committee came up with 30 recommendations. And we actually broke those up into shortterm things that we thought could be accomplished quickly as well as the longterm list. And donna, i think really focused on the larger list, but i wanted to focus really on the four issues. The first is that we designate a new position at Human Resources that is dedicated to hiring people with disabilities. I really appreciate the work that hr has done to working with this responsibility but having a Single Person responsible for this makes it a one stop shopping, allows for accountability and focus and the ability to really build that deep specialization. We look forward to working with the Human Resources as they structure this new position. The second recommends to focus on is hiring goals. Some of the testimony you heard is that we really dont know how many people are currently employed in the city and county of San Francisco who have disabilities and we dont know how many rule 115 placements there have been in the the last 30 years. By setting goals, its really, it gives us that opportunity to really establish a measurable outcome to these recommendations. I know that sometimes there are concerned when we see hiring goals listed as a concept but im sure we can navigate those goals. The third item is the survey to reach our goals. It gives us the opportunity to identify City Employees who might be interested in joining a group. The only way for us to measure success is to start with the baseline and the department has Human Resources i know shares some of the concerns to talk about confidentiality. I feel that our group can constructively address these concerns by making the survey completely volunteer and also anonymous and our office has offered to manage the survey to create a ll so people dont feel their answers are connected to their job security. By identifying employees who are interested in joining Affinity Group to figure out how to make this process better. The last recommendation would be to continue the work of the committee and set up a mechanism to report back to members of the board of supervisors to seek your guidance and support for the next steps. I feel that we have really started this tidal wave, this tsunami of Community Activity with that list of longterm goals. I would argue that continuing to work with the committee might be the support of the recommendation that has come out because we need to act ifl change the culture and perceptions around hiring people with disability. We want people with disabilities to be viewed as an asset to an organization. I know with the people i work for in my office, we are over achievers and we try really hard and extremely loyal. Studies have shown that employees with disabilities are great employees and in my experience, they are the best. So we deserve a chance in the county and city of San Francisco. I have to say we are going to recess this meeting for a short period. Supervisor christensen will have to testify for the commission. Shell be right back. When we come back. Public comment will be opened and people will be allowed to speak. My apologies to everyone. Mr. Evans we are going to recess this meeting for a short period. City clerk noted. Please stand by. Thank you, everyone. The meeting is called back to order. Thank you to speedy Julie Christensen for getting back to us quickly. Now well open up for Public Comment and thank you very much to monica and Carla Johnson, director of the Mayors Office on disabilities. Now well open up for Public Comment and the first speaker is jonathan lions. Thank you very much for bringing awareness to this issue. Thank you, jonathan lions, president of the Democratic Club for people with disabilities. First of all to be totally clear i am a proud city and county employee speaking on my time. I wanted to bring sincere gratitude from our members because of the support from you supervisor mar and the entire board of supervisors have added back in this budget go around to fund a position to actually mobilize and really be the sphere head, the czar for getting support for people with disabilities. A lot has been touched on already and i wont rehash them because i dont have the time. Two of the biggest issues is we need to hire this position immediately. Not to take anything away from the work of the department of Human Resources. But this issue is big enough to warrant a full time position to really sphere head this issue. 8 out of 10 people with disabilities remain outside of the workforce and that warrants at least a full time position for a 30,000 workforce. We need data. The first day of Public Policy school they taught me, you cannot craft good Public Policy in the ab