Good evening. This is the meeting of the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services committee of board of supervisors. My name is eric mar, our colleague david campos will not be here today. City clerk i think we need a motion to excuse our colleague. Its been moved that we excused david campos from this meeting. Can we do that without objection . Thank you. We have five items on our agenda, two liquor licenses at the very end. Item no. 3 is supervisor jane kim is on the health code. My understand is she wants to continue that item to the call of the chair. Well continue item 3. If anybody is here to speak on that, well hear on that during public testimony. Please call no. 1. City clerk item no. 1. Hearing implementation of Civil Service rule 115. Supervisor eric mar supervisor christensen reminded me that item no. 2 will be continued too. I also neglected to mention that sf govtv is televising us today. I want to thank them for televising us as well. Item no. 1 is a continuation of hearings that weve held since 2014 from june 2014 over a year ago. This is a hearing to update this is for Community Based organizations working with the department of Human Resources and office of Mayors Office on disabilities and employee rights. Its also to advance civil rights and Employment Rights for people with disabilities and our goal to increase employment efforts and opportunities for disabled people and also a goal to improve and implement better rule 115 which maybe called by some access sf as well. We are holding a hearing for the anniversary of the passage of the americans with disabilities act and the Disability Rights Movement occupation for the Federal Building here. The longest occupation of the Federal Building in u. S. History but also other occupations in other cities as well. The 504 actions in the movement came out in the celebrations a couple weeks ago. I think the tone and the spirit from the people with disabilities and the movement was that we are patient no more was one of the comments. Thats a great exhibit going on now at the berts campus in berkeley that will soon come to San Francisco state for the exhibit of the activist organizers and leaders of the movements to advance disability rights. Also, the slogan, it doesnt stop here for the ada opened my eyes how a law can be fought for and won and there is still a fight to make sure its implemented right for civil rights in our city. I want to thank those of the Democratic Club and many others of the members of the Members Office on the Mayors Office for Disability Council for keeping that spirit alive and this whole month there is a number of events going on so this hearing is held in the context in on going movement for civil rights for people with disabilities. San franciscos Civil Service commission in 2000 enacted rule 115 which we discussed at length last year at this hearing. Rule 115 was to provide a process for qualified individuals with disabilities going through the workforce without going through a Civil Service examination. The Disabilities Community is diverse in San Francisco and nationwide. One of the form of disabilities, one of the many forms of physical disabilities from physical to cognitive and many are not able to tell. San francisco is a part of the vibrant community and communities made up of tremendous organizations and leaders from our community. They contribute significantly to San Franciscos politics and our progress. I see in this hearing well hear from a number of leaders and organizers from the disabled community. I see them as valuable resources. By San Francisco government hiring with people with disabilities in all of our citys departments we can bring valuable perspective to city hall and into our city to i mprove our work culture for all in San Francisco and communities. We are finding the task force that we reestablished that had done a lot of work roughly 10 years ago and has been restarted again since december. Its been about 6 months of our task force also called employing people with disabilities. I want to thank those from the different Human Resources who are working with Carla Johnson from the Mayors Office on disabilities to advise City Government. The task force has met monthly since december and includes two represents of the community and leaders of the Disability Community many of whom will be speaking today. In a few moments well also hear from the various city departments and Community Organizations and i want to thank donna kit key, the workforce director and the Management Specialist with the department of Human Resources. And donna and ed will provide an overview of rule 115. Progress reports and department of Human Resources plan that they have developed with the task force to hire people with disabilities and the accomplishment short and longterm goals of the task force. Also i would like to thank especially the Mayors Office of disability for their amazing work and support for the task force, Carla Johnson is the director and shell be presenting on the task forces four main recommendation and then well hear from other members of the task force through Public Comment and i want to thank jonathan lions from the club who really initiated this by refusing to remain silent. I will just say that and standing up for the fdr club and bringing amazing Educational Data and slides and really educating me and my staff on a lot of the issues. He really is deserves a lot of credit for raising the issue and in a way that is organized in a new task force and moved the city forward in many ways. Also ann steiner who has been part of the task force and a representative back in the 80s of the original task force that was established by a former mayor that really tried to address the issues of people with disabilities. I want to thank her for here participation in the task force. Sienna hines at the independent Living Resource Center. I think a lot of spirit that will come in september with the prides celebration and the movement. Fiona with the independent Living Resource Center and the movement is part of the vibe sea of the Disability Rights Community today. Kate is a leader for the lighthouse for the blind and impaired and with the library and stephanie is a Quality Assurance supervisor at the Golden Gate Regional Center and i wanted to thank especially formally with the arc Kelly Goodwin from the task force and from our Previous Task force, terry now is a Deputy Director at best buddy jobs as well. Lastly gabriel rog an, executive director at the area board 5 at the developmental with disabilities. And there are a number of leaders and task force that may also be speaking today. Lastly i wanted to say and reaped us from our previous hearings that San Francisco has been a leader in hiring policies and a lot of amazing work from our City Government should not be overlooked. Civil service rule 115 is very important for San Francisco and disability rights. However, its one people of opportunities for people, but our city departments in conjunction with the board and Mayors Office i think must be vigilant to ensure that we are expanding as many opportunities as we can for people with disabilities. Last year in june when we held the initial hearing to discuss Employment Access for people with disabilities there was a lot of confusion about what had been done 10 years ago with the Previous Task force. There is confusion how it was being implemented if at all and even borrow broch urs and others for providing equal Employment Opportunities in San Francisco and there is a lot of work to be done and i think the task force is credited for not only for the past but looking forward to hiring a person with a specific role of ensuring that people with disabilities have equal rights and access in our city employment processes as well. I wanted to also say that there are a number of goals that will come up at the end of this hearing and i think its important that hiring a person with the department of Human Resources was the key goal of the task force. A person that would not be focused on a bunch of Different Things at once but really focus primarily on hiring and Employment Opportunities for people with disabilities. No. 2, a way to gather the data to assess the problems what they are and the tremendous gap that most people see nationwide for the lack of opportunities for people with disabilities who want to work and contribute but dont have those opportunities. So surveys and data with a critical. No. 3, establish goals and time tables for employment of people with disabilities as a key grouping of people that deserve i think many more opportunities. So, goals and time tables. Goals and setting of some bench marks and times that we would accomplish the goals. And lastly, i think continued support and a formalizing of the task force so it doesnt fade away in history after people are gone, but that it continues to build off the movement of previous generations but also the thinking and analysis of people today. Those are the four current goals and my hope is that we accomplish that. First up, department of Human Resources. I want to thank donna cat key and ed wong for the task force and the progress made thus far and then Carla Johnson from the Mayors Office on disabilities. Thank you, i want to thank you for working on this issue and i want to thank my colleagues that weve been working with in the past 7 or 8 months. They are great partners and weve established a really good collaboration and working relationship and can definitely move the issue forward. If i may start with the brief overview about Civil Service rule 115. As you know the citys hiring processes are governed by Civil Service rule which means everybody must pass a Civil Service exam in order to be hired. In 1995 with the passage of proposition a, it provided increased opportunities for the hiring of people with disabilities. Allowed departments to hire people for various positions who are qualified and increase the diversity of our citys workforce. It allows for people with disabilities to enter into city employment without having to take a Civil Service exam and put them what we call in exempt positions. Positions which are exempt from Civil Service. To qualify the person must meet the minimum qualifications and able to perform the essential job function and the individual must have a certificate of disability from the state and department of rehabilitation. After 1 year after successful Job Performance it will be a permanent Civil Service position. It does increase. Its one pass that people with disabilities can come into the the city employment. At the same time its allowing our city departments to hire someone who is qualified in a very quick manner. Thats kind of important for us especially as the economy improves and we have more competition for potential employees. So, if i may kind of stepping back to 2008 and 2007, hr did establish the Advisory Panel who did come up with several recommendations which we were calling the 2008 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 could be done to 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