Start with brinkman. Thank you, very much, chair board and its going to be hard for me not to always call you director rubke and thank you for all the hard work you put into this and were a thoughtful and careful director and you have such empathy and i appreciated serving with you on the board and getting to know you as a friend and now we can talk and travel as long as we want and we wont have to sensor ourselves at all. Thank you so much for your years of service and i will miss you very, very much on the board. Director eakin. Thank you. Christina, director rubke, its been such an honour and privilege to serve with you. You bring an important perspective i hope you will stay in touch with us and weigh in on board items. You are always welcome to call and share your perspectives. Ive learned so much from you and i really join director borden to be sad that this will lose perspective and your insights. Thank you so much for your eight years of service and encourage you again to please, please touch and share your vital thoughts with this board. Thank you. Thank you. Are there other directors who would like to speak . I dont see any on the chat. Ill open it up. Madam chair, can i say awe few words . Absolutely you can. Thank you. Christina, i, like our chairperson, deeply regret the circumstances that are causing your departure. Truth be told, i would regret any circumstances that led to your departure because youve been an excellent colleagues and to me for a short time and my colleagues for a long time. I encourage you and i dont think i need to remain engage in our City Government despite its ups and downs. I think you have a lot of valuable Service Still to give and i look forward, personally, to running into you in Golden Gate Park very often in deed. So thanks again, christina, for all youve done for our board and our city. Thank you. I cant find the chat to say a few words. Its ok. You absolutely k its your last meeting. I was hoping it was not going to be christinas last meeting. And i so enjoyed working with you, christina, especially on our trip to new york to look at the Transit System. You just amaze me at how you get around all over any city, much better than i could at times. I just believe that you have brought such an interesting perspective and a needed perspective and i hope that the mayor seeks to appoint someone with your back ground, someone with your commitment to the disability and coming off this board board tomorrow there was a tremendous amount of knowledge around the dais and people who are committed to transportation issues to transit issues and your commitment to a community. You had both of those so i just want to wish you all the best and great sailing ahead for you. Thank you, director torres. With that, director rubke, are you able to say a few words now . Hi, i dont know if you guys can hear me. Im not for speeches but it was a privilege and honour to serve alongside of you and it was an amazing experience to meet the impressive and talented staff of the sfmta and i feel confident the sag i agency is in great has with your leadership and the skills and dedication of the staff. Thank you so much for the kind words. I will leave you to your meeting and good luck. Best to you. We hope to see you again soon. With that, well have to move on to our agenda to the approval of the minutes from the april 21st, regular meeting. Do i have a motion. So moved. Seconded. Before that, item 3 announcement of prohibition of soundproducing devices at the meeting. There will be no such announcement. Great, thank you. [laughter] madam chair, you have a motion and a second. It would be appropriate to see, open the phone line for Public Comment. Yes. Are there people who would like to comment on our the further communication. For members of the public watching this meeting by sfgtv who wish to address the board with respect to the Meeting Minutes, call 8888086929 and then press 9961164 and finally 10. The moderator will let us know if anyone is on the phone call who wishes to address you under to summon each question press one and zero. This is just about the minutes of the april 1st meeting its not a time to comment on other matters. Looks like we have a questioner. You have one question remaining. Ok. All right. So, please give us your name and your two minutes and well start when you Start Talking, this is about the Meeting Minutes. Hi, my name is zack is this about the comments that were just mentioned about the departure of the director is that separate from the Meeting Minutes . Its separate. We will open up from general Public Comments after this. Great, bye. You have zero questions remaining. With that, is there a motion to approve the minutes of the april 21st meeting. You have a motion and a second on the floor. Im sorry, im sorry. Calling the question. All right. Director borden aye. Brinkman. Aye. Eakin. Aye. Ham. Torres. Aye. Madam chair, thats unanimous. Item 5, communications. Madam chair would you like to go to Public Comment . Yes, well do Public Comment and then i will actually maybe i should do this Communications First because its kind of in the relationship to. Due to covid19 issues by the San Francisco bother of health and they have lifted restrictions on teleconference. This meeting is being held for all members of staff and Via Teleconference. Well ensure the safety of the. On the web page, we ask the public to participate remotely by writing to the board or leaving a voice mail message. For all comments received in advance of the meeting, we have appreciated those comments. Thank you for honouring our request. Going forward, we urge to reach out to the board at sfmta. Com or to contact us at 415 6464470 in advance of the meeting. While this Technology Allows you to hold meeting Via Teleconference it may not work seamlessly as we would like it to be. There may be gaps, some dead air and some staff transitioning between technology and speakers. Please know were doing our best we can and ask for your understanding and patients as were still learning this new technology in our way of working together. If you havent done so already, mute your line to minimize the background noise. Board members and presenters unmute to comment and there is staff in the background and so we can switch from any slide presentation to whoever is speaking at the point and lastly. I want to thank the people who have been working long hours to make this meeting possible starting with our board secretary and including warren lamb, sean cunningham, art wong, jack chen, and tom of sfgovtv. Caroline, and everybody else who put together all of the hard work to make the meeting happen so we knows are not unusual times so we appreciate that and at this point i will open up to accommodate Public Comment at this moment and in response to an accommodation request from the public. All right s if the informed rater could please open the phone line right now, this is an opportunity for members with disabilities to address general matters not on todays agenda. Anyone else who wishes to address the board under general Public Comment that topic will come up will come up later in the meeting. This is for a computation and request. Mr. Moderator, let us know when someone is on the line. Bless one then zero. Please started with your name. Madam chair, we will ask the commenter to give their name and their two minutes will start when the person starts talking. Your time starts when Start Talking. My name is zachary. Im really concerned at this last meeting it was supposed to take place on may 5th and it was canceled. There was just a cancellation put up on the website. I requested an explanation from roberta boomer and the covid19 makes it only urgent action items necessary for publichealth should take place and during a live meeting and sending an email. I think its very that disabled people have been treated very poorly by sfmta for a number of years. There are hundreds and hundreds of ada disability complaints filed with sfmta every year and i published them on my website and documenting the mistreatment of disabled and videos if you searched or if you search on issues and this is a longstanding problem and we are treated absolutely horribly by the ada grievance procedures that are in place as well. I brought these issues to the attention of the sfmta executive board on october first, 2019 in great detail and so far nothing has been done to remedy that. Additionally, im concerned about the fare hikes and the attacks on the muni union and trying to say that muni union jobs will be removed if fears are nofaresare not increased ans ridiculous. There are people on staff with a sixfigure salary and have a nice Office Building that could be relocated. Doesnt need a multimillion dollar building and spending millions of dollars on new Construction Projects and buses left accessible to disabled people. Your time is up. Thank you for your time. Thank you, very much. Your complaint has been registered. You have one question remaining. Hi if you could give us your name and your two minutes will start when you Start Talking. This period is only as an accommodation for people with disabilities with regard to general Public Comment that item will be called a bit later in the agenda. Hi, this is michelle. What is your name, maam . Im michelle. Thank you. Go ahead. Your time is running, maam. Please address the board. Who is this . This is the mta board of directors. Oh, ok. Do you wish to address the board of directors . Anyway. Yeah. All right. Please credit, your time is on. Start speaking. What . If you would like to address the board, go ahead. Oh huh would you please identify yourself. Are you making a comment or do you want to call in later for the general Public Comments. Yes. Great. Its time to let her go. There are zero questions remaining. Thank you. So, this meeting is being televised by sfgtv. For those of you watching the livestream, please be aware theres a time lag between the actual meeting and what the members of the public are seeing if you are watching and you wish to comment on an item, please call the phone line. When the item is called. That will ensure you are in line when the chair calls for general Public Comment. For members of the public, please the phone number to use is 8888086929. The access code is 9961164. Make sure you are in a quiet location and if you are a livestreaming the meeting via sfgtv, please mute your sound. This will reduce any reverberations so the board can hear you. Again, at the appropriate time, the chair will ask the phone lines be open if you wish to comment on an item, you will be prompted to press 10. Then you will be added to the speaker line and there will be an auto prompt that the callers will hear that says question and answer time but this is your Public Comment time. You will be cued up in the order you press 10. This is an automated voice to tell you when its your turn to speak and your microphone is unutted you will state your name and to make your comment. I will start your two minutes when you begin talking. I will let you know when 30 seconds are remaining and your time suppose, well say thank you, next caller, please. At that point the moderator will put the speaker back on mute so i will repeat these instructions. Madam chair, for how to make Public Comment again as i am aware some of the members of the public may have joined the meeting after we made this announcement. Great. Thank you, and well move on to item 6, which is the introduction of new or Unfinished Business by Board Members and i will just briefly start by noting that today is director t torres last meeting. He was em pointed by the mayor ed lee in 2017. Director torres has had many titles in his lifetime. Im sure his favourite has been director of the sfmta board. [laughter] i just want to thank you for your service and your time. Its been so much fun having your breadth of knowledge and expertise of politics and State Government and you know, longer term perspective on things and its just been incredible and its been fun sitting next to you and trying to mind your interesting comments. You will be missed but not gone. Are there other districtors who would like to make comments . Director brinkman. Thank you so much. Senator, were going to miss you so much on the board. As our chair has noted, you are on to bigger and better things. All the best to you and we will miss your perspective and we will miss your sense of humour and its been lovely to spend time with you and get to know you so all the best to you. Director heminger. Its almost unfair we have to say t bye to two colleagues on e same day. You will be missed. Your sense of humour and i think your sense of reasonableness in occasion whats ouoccasions wheo the flights of fancy. For what its worth, going on to your new role at the university of california, ill just be the first person to lobby you for a cal stanford Football Game in the next season. [laughter] ok. Director eaken. Just worried what side of that game you would be on . [laughter] i just want the game. Its all you want. I know where i would be. Well, i cant believe i join director heminger and i cant believe were saying goodbye to so many colleagues in the last couple weeks, its been a privilege serving with you and ive also enjoyed your stories and your sense of humour and one my favourite things is your seekelly Endless Network of contacts. It seems like every time we brought up a memorial or a plaque you said i knew that person, i go back and back with those people. Its remarkable. Your experience and the perspective you brought to this board so we will miss you and dont be a stranger, please stay in touch. You get to close it out, i guess. It has been a pleasure to work with you and get all of your perspectives on transportation issues but the city and county of San Francisco. I know i leave at a time at a crucial time during this crisis and the challenge thats will face you are almost insurmountable but i cant think of a better team to do that for the future and county of San Francisco who i love very much. My hometown is los angeles as many of you know but since 1996, ive been a resident and taxpayer of San Francisco. And im in love with this city and always have been. Thank you again for the honour of serving with you and i will troy to work on those tickets, steve, but you have to report them as a gift. [laughter] with that we thank you. One final note, a special thank you to roberta boomer. I cant think of anyone who shows more patients ove patiencr years of service and its been an honour to work with you. Thank you. And you as well. Madam chair, next scheduled on your agenda is. I wish to nominate gwen to serve as chair of our board. Shes served with distinction and i cant think of more meaningful and wonderful notion as my last act to nominate her to be the chair. Are there any other nominations . All right. Hearing none, well close nominations. Its appropriate at this point to ask that the phone lines be open for Public Comment on the election of chair. To summon each question press 1 and then 0. If members of the public wish to make comment on the nomination of director borden to serve as chair of the mta board, please press 10 and mr. Moderator, please, let us know if there are any on the line. I need a second. No, nominations, director torres do not require a second. Oh, ok. You lucked out. [laughter] is there a commenter . There is. Ok. There are no callers on the line. There is one caller now. Just a moment. Theres one caller. All right. You have one question remaining. All right, so caller, this is an opportunity to address the board on the nomination of director borden to serve as chair and not on any other business. We will start the timer when you give us your name and start to speak. Please do so now. Hi, my name is zack. I just want to say director borden, i really hope that you can review the concerns of disabled people if you are going to be chair that you can take our concerns into consideration and lead in a better way than those who that have proceeded you. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else on the phone line . You have zero questions remaining. If you could please end Public Comment for this item. All right. So, on the motion to elect gwenth borden as chair. Director borden. Aye. Brinkman. Aye. Eaken. Aye. Heminger. Aye. Torres. Aye. Madam chair, its unanimous, congratulations. Thank you and now we open up nominations for vicechair. Yes, this is Cheryl Brinkman i would like to nominate director eaken. I think she will do a fantastic job. She showed our talent and commitment to the board not only in her past actions but handling the Search Committee and broad us and would like to nominate director eaken as vicechair. Any other nominations at this time. Seeing none, we open to Public Comment to see if theres any Public Commenters. Your conference is question and a mode. Press 1 and then 0. This is an opportunity to serve as vicechair. Are there any callers on the line . There are no callers on the line. If you would like to close Public Comment and we will do the roll call for the votes. On the motion to elect amanda eaken as vicechair. Borden. Aye. Brinkman. Aye. Eaken. Aye. Heminger. Aye. Torres. Aye. Madam chair, directors, its a unanimous vote. Congratulations. I look forward to working with you worklesley. I dont know if you want to make comments before we do additional directors remarks. Did you want to make any comments first . Im stumbled to assume this role anhumbled and i think thisi look forward to work with chair borden and the staff to navigate our way through these times. Great and i similarly want to thank everyone for their vote of confidence and look forward to working closely to make sure our Transit Agency stays on track during those critical times and we restore faith in Public Transit in the way we need to because we know many people count on our system to work well and effectively and we also need our streets to be with open space finding opportunities for people to get around so we look forward to working very hard in the next forever but for sure in the next year to make sure that we become the Transit Agency that people need for the times that were in. With that, im going to move on to other board comments or questions. And director brinkman, i think as some. Yes, thank you chair borden. I recently was sent the lasco, the local Agency FormationCommission Report that was the findings of a survey from on demand ride hail and delivery workers in San Francisco. And i had a chance to read the survey results issued regarding on demand ride hail and delivery workers and i look forward to centimetre mfta working and supporting lasco to accept and implement the recommendations of the report in particular those pertaining to health and safety of the workers and the public. We have a lot of opportunities to make sure that these services, which the public has shown that they value a lot, can be delivered in a way which is not harmful to the workers or the city. I think that helping move delivery workers to more sustainable modes, such as electric assisted bicycles from cars, fits with so many of our city goals and making sure the workers are being treated fairly is just basic human rights. I look forward to staff being able to work with lasco on that. Great, thank you. Any other additional directors comments or questions at this time . Secretary, do i need to open that up . You should. Ok. If members of the public would like to comment on anything the directors have said. To summon each question, press one and then zero. So this is for members of the public. This would be for only comment on director brinkmans comment as Public Comment on the motion to elect the chair and the vicechair was previously opened and taken. Moderator, please let us know if theres anyone on the phone lines. You have one question remaining. All right. So caller, this is Public Comment for items expressed during the directors new and old business only. Not on items that are within the jurisdiction, not previously discussed nor on items that are on the agenda. So, please state your name and your two minutes will begin when you Start Talking. I believe i may have called an incredit time. I was hoping to talk about management. I apologize. Thank you. Item 7, directors report. If the moderator could please close the phone line. Item 7, directors report. Good afternoon Board Members, i am jeff, the director of transportation and we have been very busy since we last talked. So let me go through a whole bunch of items that we should update you on. First is were expecting, some time this afternoon, supervisor peskin will introduce a Charter Amendment at the board of supervisors, a ballot measure to be placed on the November Ballot that would limit the sfmta board sole board to establish fares. Last we heard, there were still details to be resolved with that amendment and so well provide you with a detailed memo on the topic after it has been filed presumably today and we are able to review the final copy. We have also ive been spending a lot of time on the budget. As you know, the current publicHealth Crisis has turned into a dramatic and deep fiscal crisis. Weve been able to track revenues to the agency on most of our own sources of revenue are down between 75 to 100 and were now starting to get more detailed information about the state of the general fund and getting on going updates about how much our general Fund Contribution to the agency will be cut as a result of losses to the federal fund, which is dependent, as you know, on sources of revenue like hotel tax which is down dramatically. Were expecting to be submitting an interim budget along with other city departments to the board of supervisors on june 1st. Final budget will be submitted to the board of supervisors on august 1st and in order to get to august 1st, well be coming back to all of you on the sfmta board on june 16th with proposed revisions that reflect what are the latest estimates from the Controllers Office on the impacts to the general fund. Well also be able to update our own protections before shelter in place continues to be extended and that continues to have a deep negative impact on our parking fees, our transit fare and other sources of revenue. In the meantime, weve continued to make deep and painful cuts at the agency in order to save money. We have basically eliminated all non essential unscheduled overtime. Weve put a hold on all non essential hiring. We would want to continue like the back First Programme for our bus operators. But canceling these at this time, is going to be essential and through this crisis without much more painful cuts including to our workforce. Were putting a hold on all discretionary travel and non Mission Critical training and everything that we can cut that doesnt get in the way of us being able to directly deliver essential services to the public. On the goodnews side, we are positioning ourselves to receive money from the federal stimulus and in order to allow that to happen, the metropolitan commission is establishing a Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery Task force so look at ways of distributing the second amount of federal funding in ways that are most equitable across the 26 different transit agencies and also, to tro try to take some leadership on making the 26 transit agencies in the bay area more seamless from a user perspective. This is quite different than the approach and Assembly Member in the seamless transit bill but its been set aside by the state legislature in order to allow tem to focus on covid19. Were trying to lean on this at an agency level including and work at in order to figure out how can we take a more customer Oriented Approach and Work Together without being forced to do so by the State Government. One of the efforts is this blue ribbon Recovery Task force. Our first meeting will be on may 29th. I will sit on that task force along with the general managers and the larger transit operators and mtc commissioners and stakeholders throughout the region. Were expecting the sfmta to receive 197 million. This is hugely helpful and allows us to close out this fiscal year without layoffs, which we are deeply indebted to House Speaker nancy pelosi for her strong leadership in making that happen along with advocates from all over the country who helped push that funding all the way to final approval in congress. In addition to the cares act, as you probably know, the house is currently debating the second potential traunch of federal funding called the heroes act and the current measure includes another over 15 billion of funding for transit relief. Theres an increasing recognition the success of Public Transit is essential for the over all economic recovery of all of our metropolitan regions. If essential workers cant get to work, the recovery cant happen and if essential workers are all expected to get in their cars and drive to work, the Transportation System simply cant handle that and were already seeing this problem in parts of east asia and well talk a little bit about more later in this presentation about our efforts to get ahead of the problem. We did have one fatality in april. It was a singlevehicle crash, vehicle ran off the road on april 21st on the hill and that crash is still under investigation by sfpd and we have implemented some temporary barricades and other Quick Response efforts to make sure that never happens again. A key thing we want to update you on is the slow streets work that sfmta has been working on since the middle of last month. Im sure all of you know by now, in response to the shutting down of three quarters of muni transit lines, the sfmta stepped forward to try to identify corridors that would allow more san franciscans to feel safe walking and we start offtherecord with a modest effort focused on neighbourhoods that have lost the most Transit Service, specifically the our initial efforts around our push to move things forward and our lack of communication they are complaints why cant we have this in my neighbourhood and why cant you move more quickly as of may 8th, we had 15 miles of slow streets and we expect in our phase 2 planning is complete, it will have an additional 35 miles. Were soliciting input for phase 3 and hoping to have slow streets scattered throughout the city. I should remind all of you that slow streets are very much a temporary experimental Pilot Programme using very quickly installed easily removable we are changing things around in real time as we learn Additional Information and all of our work is being coordinated through the cities emerge see Operation Centre including collaboration with police and fire who have helped us make a lot of changes we have updates on micro mobility . Lime has been acquired by jump, which is a product of uber and lime stopped operating scooters in march due to the covid19 crisis but theyre how as of yesterday, starting to bring back a limited amount of scooter service. Meanwhile, spin, which had been our only operator for quite some time, s to join and expanding its fleet and expanding its geo cover nearly the entire city. We continue to be in litigation with lifts which operates bay wheels which is wanting to establish a monopoly for bike Share Service in San Francisco and meanwhile, they are working on rapidly expanding the availability of electric assist bikes shared electric assist bikes throughout San Francisco. Bay while and lime will be offering increased, micro Mobility Services and that will work well with our gradual expansion of the slow Streets Programme. I should also note that we are looking at some potential were looking at some additional quick build bike lane improvements including new bike way between baker in order to off load some of the pressure from the panhandle bike way. The panhandle path is experiencing a higher level of utilization that we have every seen since weve been collecting data. As more and more people are using our slow streets and taking advantage of walking, biking, skate boarding and scooterring in order to state during the covid19 crisis. A couple of other updates, the most recent or the health drick tivdirective earlier this monthn authorized new construction to get moving again and so we have been taking advantage of that to take care of some deferred maintenance in the muni metro subway ask taking advantage of the fact that trains are not operating there. Were watching up on some of that work as well as completing the westportal cross over that the former director advocated for. We should be able to complete the westportal cross over in time for the restorative rail service allowing us to be able to potentially offer threecar shuttles in the subway between westportal and embarcadero stations. Were also moving forward rapidly on the van ness Improvement Projects and the lack of transportation on van ness avenue and it has been able to allow the crews to accelerate the sewer and water work thats been the source of so much of the disruption on that street and that work is continuing quickly and it means that well be able to start the sfmta portion of that project and the transit portion starting this spring. Ill remind you all, that while the sfmta is in the lead of the brt project, none of our work has started yet. The work for creating the bus Rapid Transit line so were very much looking forward to that work getting moving and many of you also know about the cal trans 101 deck replacement. Cal trans replaced the bridge deck of 101 and as they have done before, thanks to the innovative contract structure that offered significant bonus for the contractor to finish early, that project happened extraordinarily quickly and it happened several months ahead of schedule taking advantage of the fact that traffic is so light right now. Were very happy with our partners at cal trans and their contractors for taking care of that critical projects so quickly. Were also moving forward on the geary rapid project and over memorial day weekend, this coming weekend, well be demolishing the pedestrian bridge at geary and steiner and that will cause disruption as most of you know, that pedestrian bridge is very steep and it does not need the american with disabilities standards and so instead we will be replacing it with an atgrade standard crossing helping to turn that portion of the geary boulevard back into more like a street than of expressway that it was conceived of in the 1950s. Were also moving forward rapidly with the project and that will continue to will end with better speed and reliability on the altera dock. I wanted to let you know we have carefully been watching how other cities around the world have been responding to covid19 since the very beginning of the crisis back in january. We had seen that the increase in covid19 transmission tracks very well by timeline to what we were experiencing as well as what the impacts would be on the Transportation System. We are now following the cities that have been most successful in crushing the curve and where transportation in particularly Public Transit is leading in the recovery effort and though the cities that were most inspired by for transit, has been sole and taipei. So two weeks ago, our departmental Operation Centre met with all of their equivalent, the city of taipei and taiwan, including a surprise visit from the mayor of taipei and we learned a lot about their visions as well as all of their operational details of what theyre doing in order to position transit to be a primary force in reopening the economy. Including realising that six feet of social distancing at a certain point simply does not work in Public Transit and so learning from them about how they had done things like ridgedly enforcing the facial covering standards, doing various Contact Tracing, doing very strong testing of their operators, doing te temperature checking of the members of the public having thermal standards at key rail stations has allowed them to analyze the risk factors, the mitigation factors, the time factors on Public Transit and compare that against the value of the activities, allowing them to create the case that full restoration of Transit Service was a relatively low risk and extremely high return activity. I would like to close with some gratitude. Gratitude to the entire sfmta staff who have continued to work excessive hours. As all of you know i. Spent my career in the private sector and i have never seen harderworking, more skilled people than im seeing throughout the entirety of the sfmta. This team has come together beautifully during this crisis, knowing that the public is completely dependent upon what we do and we need to get ahead of the problems that are facing us. Their strong effort has meant that the sfmta has one of the lowest covid19 transmission rates of transportation agencies in the country. Weve not had a covid19 positive case in two and a half weeks now and our total covid19 positive cases stands at 12. Which for 6,000 employees, while its too many, it is a very low rate, particularly for frontline workers. This is do you to the fact that all of our workforce are following the guidance and taking care of them sells, each other and their families to reduce transmission and we are continuing to have our staff maintain this Strong Health record. Im grateful of course to now former director rubke for her leadership, compassion, practicality and the deep experience she was able to lend to this board to help us understand the specific needs of people in wheelchairs and her experience will be deeply missed. To senator torres, another thank you to you as well. Your advice from deep experience, the way you bring both a sense of fairness and justice but also reasonableness to your leadership at the board, i cant think of anyone better than you to help the uc board of regions also get through this deep financial crisis with a sense of fairness so thank you again for your service. You are an inspiration to me and with that i will close. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you director. I want to say theres an echo but i want to say thank you to you and staff for all the hard work during this really difficult time and just all the efforts that youve made to keep everyone safe and to keep our population safe so i wanted to reiterate that at the end of your comments. At this point im going to allow directors to ask questions of your reports and then ill open it up to the Public Comment so maybe some of the questions of the Board Members ask might answer some of the questions that the Board Members are going to talk about. So director brinkman. Thank you. Thank you very much. What you said at the end of your report, thanking directors rubke and torres. Ive been so impressed with how the staff has managed to work through so many issues on this. I think its sort of like the duck analogy, where it lukes all serene on top of the water but under theyre paddling furiously because we cant see everybody and people arent working together and we dont get that glimpse of it. Its really impressive what theyve managed to do and i have been, im a huge open streets proponent but what ive seen on page street and lake street has just take not my breath away with how quickly people have come out to enjoy those streets. I just want to say thank you to all the staff. Im sure you and everyone in the agency are working so hard and just because we dont see it doesnt mean we dont notice it. Thank you to all the staff, thank you so much. I know the challenges you are dealing with working remotely and childcare at home and uncertain Financial Times all around us with your partners with your spouses and your families. So thank you all very much. Its much appreciated. Thank you, director heminger. Thank you, madam chair. Jeff, a question on the next wave of transit funding that might be coming from washington. My understanding is in addition to the total dollar amount being 10 million smaller the formula under credittatio considerationr allocating those funds around the country is quite a bit less favorable to the bay area. Maybe in part to make up for the fact that new york didnt do too well in the first one. Can you just give us a sense of where that issue is and whether we might be able to make some progress on it . I think its exactly right. So, the previous formula did quite well by the bay area and new york, which has a huge share of the entire countrys transit ridership did worse and so i think the the chances to make up for that problem while also helping all the rest us continue to survive in fiscal year 2021 so weve got we will get some money probably about 30 of our allocation will be available for the next fiscal year but that will not get us through without very deep cuts to the Transportation System sometime in the coming fiscal year. Does that conclude your questions director heminger. Yes being maam. Director torres. Thank you, very much. Thank you, jeff. I was honoured to serve on the Search Committee with steve and amanda, the chair when we recommended you to the full board and thats the decision i have never regretted. You have fulfilled, beyond expectations the challenges that are there. I most admire the fact that you get out of your sacrifice to run this agency and translate to San Francisco and part of leadership and always reach out to those people who are your constituents and employees so let them know that you are a stakeholder too and you are in this with them together. Its very, very commendable. And their planning and my work is never done were having a meeting to discuss how i can be of help to the staff. My hat is off to the entire staff of this agency. They are committed, they are making tremendous sacrifices, especially our drivers of the constant harassment theyre getting from people who dont want to put on their mask and dont want to abide by the orders in this provision. Good luck and im sure i will talk to you soon as a region of transportation issues. Thank you. Director eaken. Thank you so much. I just wanted comment as well on this programme. And agree with director brinkman, its just really just been remarkable how transformative these couple of sandwich boards and bones and barriers have been to neighbourhoods. I wanted to echo i think theres a lot more appetite. Were surprised by how much more appetite there is for these when people have gotten a feel for them. And i just know in los angeles, theyre taking a slightly different approach and theyre asking communities to step up and apply to host the slow street and in one woke theyve gotten 120 applications from communities for slow streets and so i just hope that we can find someway to allow communities and neighbourhoods to express where they have preferenced for more of these slow streets because i think theres a lot of excitement and interest out there. So for anyone wanting to express interest in slow streets, please go to sfmta. Com covid and click on the link for slow streets. Were still accepting requests for phase 3 of our experiments. And yearly looking forward to making sure that we are trying this in all corners of the city, particularly the corners in the city that have the least access to public parks and that are farrest from essential Services LikeGrocery Stores and pharmacies. Were also needing to recognize for some neighbourhoods, particularly the tenderloin, we need to do more that its important for us to collaborate with communitybased organizations to make sure that social services are included in those and they work and that theres a higher level of management given the great need in neighbourhoods such as the tenderloin so those places are unfortunately taking us a little bit longer because were needing to do the additional collaboration that is necessary to make sure they will be successful. Great. Did you have anything else. I will just close out, im thrilled to see that you are accepting more slow streets. Theres a lot of interest, i hear every single day, and i seem that north Beach Business Association voted to close a portion of their street and i know haze valley is working so im hoping that do these people go online and apply at the slow streets that you mentioned, yeah, o jeff . Whats the best process for jeff . What is the best process . Getting more requests than we have capacity to deliver. Another thing that is effective, in addition to putting the question orequest on our websitg through neighbourhood associations and through your board of Supervisors Office that is a really helpful were delivering those in greatest need and those that are suitable. We look for low volume residential streets that are not Emergency Response routes and where theres not special activity that needs truck delivery and we also like a fair amount of con census and we have limited resources so its in our best interest to make sure were delivering the streets where theyre most welcome. Great. And then i had a couple other questions. Its great weve escalated projects including van ness vrt which is very important. One of the questions that people asked me is about our street repaving and i know thats not really our function, its more of i department of public works and i was it came up yesterday i saw a person on my street that bit it whether or not theyre taking advantage of the work related to the streets and the other projects were talking about but any street repaving work if we talk about slow streets and some of the obstacles to using the streets are the fact that they are very not well paved and and if you are on a bike or a scooter and in a wheelchair its uncomfortable to be on some of these streets. Dpw is accelerating their paving programme again. Were coordinating closely with them. Theres been another some of the moving around of corridors weve done have been a result of coordination with d. P. W. Great, and the other question i had, you mentioned this mtc past force for recovery and you talked about for the next town e money and focusing on the core it needs and not on some new programme related to working together. I just wasnt clear on that. So all the operators have been really clear. Look, we just need our money. There is an existing sta formula that works well at divvying it up. And it should be tied to financial losses. As you go into the details, there are questions about the margins of should you get this much money or this much money and so there is theres some discussion about how traunch 2 gets divvied up but it will be directly tied to our actual losses. The task force, however, will continue well beyond when the last of the cares act funding is distributed. Im really focused how we establish priorities for transit for the whole region and how do we help make the system more seem less from a user perspective. You know, and opening up many questions in that regard and i think theres so much we can do that is relatively lowhanging fruit. If we had a good forum for helping to make that happen. Great. With that ill open it up to Public Comment. This is the time for members of the public to have the line open so they may ask questions of the directors report only and obviously the related comments the directors have and questions to the directors report. For members of the public who are watching this Meeting Press 1 and then 0. For members of the public who are watching this meeting, who wish to address the board on topics that were discussed by director tumlin or commented on by members of the board, please call 8888086929. Then you will dial 9961164 and then finally, 10. And moderator, please let us know if there are members of the public. You have two questions remaining. So, members of the public, when its your turn to speak, the system will prompt you automatically and so please give us your name, your two minutes will start when you Start Talking. First caller, please. My name is zack. And i am i the first caller. Im disturbed with the way that sfmta is manipulating the covid19 pandemic to weaken the Drivers Union to cut back driver contracts and jobs and programmes that have helped drivers on the back of the bus is helpful for social distancing and as a person who uses a wheelchair on the front of the bus i do not want all the public running past me. It doesnt help social distancing for those at the highest risk on the front of the bus and theres no discussion about reducing the sixfission salaries that administrators and Communications People have at sfmta or other measures that can reduce the cost lowering or canceling expensive Construction Projects or other things and its very, very concerning to see that this is being used and manipulated to weaken a union which has always been the goal of sfmta and im very concerned about that and additionally, when people keep commenting about the work the previous director did for wheelchair users, i imagine theyre not wheelchair users and its a real slap in the face to those of you who have had to face tremendous discrimination for sfmta for being in a wheelchair and i would really ask that people stop making comments like that because it shows that you are not even listening to us or taking our concerns seriously and its hurtful. I really hope that sfmta will consider other measures instead of punishing contractors and drivers who only make 26 an hour driving muni buses, its very low pay for the hard work they do and the amount they have to put themselves at risk during the covid19 pandemic where as many people in administrative positions do not and earn a lot more money and there should be things talked about for relocationing funds that way if needed. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. You have four questions remaining. So this is an opportunity to comment on topics raised during the directors report when you give us your name we will start your two minutes. Next caller. Hi, this is eric roseel. Im a resident of the tenderloin. I would like to thank the board of districtors and director tumlin for your efforts in see during more slow streets and support of that. As a tenderloin residents for over 15 years, theres a growing need here, a desperate need to be quite honest for open space to be provided and i am a little confused as to why on the most recent map that was provided showing projects that were being considered why the tenderloin was deferred to the tenderloi td so it seems to be a back and fourth and uncertainty as to who is going to be assisting tenderloin and residents and securing slow streets or projects, community streets, whatever they may be called. Since theyre not the same. But just kind of curious as to who really is overseeing that project and who, we as a community, can lean into as the mta to provide support for what is happening here in the community and thats really all i have to say. Thank you for your time and best wishes. Thank you. Next speaker. Chair borden. You have three questions remaining. This topic is very dear to my heart. Since go ahead with barrie, ill come back. This is barrie toronto. I first off want to say that the slow streets are a little frustrating. Theyre not designated until you come upon it. It is really behove you to provide signage the block before to let you know that the street is closed. Because as a cab driver, i drive two days a week and i dont do more even though the business is there because of limiting my exposure and to be focused 11 to 12 hours in order to make money and to serve the public. It takes a lot of energy and motivation. Because of my age and diabetes, i have to limit my exposure. And im a really concerned that our inability to be able to manoeuvre the streets due to the slow streets is a problem since its not always marked well until you come upon the street. Also the traffic has increased. Ive noticed seven weeks ago when i started back driving again, once or twice a week, that the traffic has increased exponentially and if you want to make money get the double parkers on the main muni thorough fairs on the peak hours of 8 00 a. M. To 8 00 p. M. And theres a problem with delivery and tnc drivers and not pulling over when theres obviously parking. Theres lots of parking in certain areas because a lot of businesses still arent open or theyre limited opening. So i think theres an opportunity here to improve the flow of muni and also to generate some income. I know its thank you. Thank you, barrie. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Next speaker. You have three questions remaining. Your time will start when you Start Talking after you give us your name. This is hayden miller. Just wanted to say i would encourage you guys to expand the slow Streets Programme with mask and Face Covering enforcement work most closely with sftv to ensure everyone is wearing a mask because as some directors have said, operators are being harassed a lot and its not fair when really theyre coming to work providing a Public Service and the public is just harassing them and theyre getting more sftv on the buses. Thank you. Thank you. And do we have speakers . You have two questions remaining. Next speaker, please. Herbert winier and i have two questions to ask. The cutbacks in bus routes, bus stops, and services we contemplated even if this pandemic existed or not. I get the impression it will be cutbacks and service that have been contemplated months before and basically theyre destroying muni in order to save it. The second thing is i am wondering if the closer of streets or the slow streets doesnt add to Traffic Congestion. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have one question remaining. All right. Please give us your name. Joh john lisovsky. Im not sure if you saw over the weekend, there were dozens of illegally parked cars on great highway in the bike lane and that was very detrimental to cyclists being able to access San Francisco and exercise in a safe manner. The balance address are placed very, very far apart so the cars can easily drive between them. I would encourage mta to keep them closer together and to increase enforcement in places like that knowing that by closing the parking lots next to ocean beach, which was a correct decision, there will be a desire to find adjacent locations whether in Golden Gate Park or bike lanes. Just make sure through better infrastructure and enforcement that that doesnt happen, thank you. Thank you. And i think thats our last caller. Is that correct . If the informe moderator cous know. Members of the public. There are no additional speakers. Thank you. Moderator, please close publiplease closePublic Comment. I would like to address a couple comments. In the tenderloin, its from a Traffic Safety perspective its our highest priority in the city given the fact the tenderloin has the greatest concentration of Vulnerable People in San Francisco and Traffic Volume and speed and it shows us on every street. The healthy streets Operation Centre is the lead for coordinating that planning work and the sfmta is in a very prominent information in terms of the planning and implementation of that work so we are coordinating with them directly and our Vision Zero Team is working closely in order to figure out that combination of management and design. Were also learning a lot from the work that weve done on ferill street and ellis street in collaboration with communitybased organizations and then, the other thing i want today say is yes, were aware of the parking problems on great highway near the cliff house. Just as our muni operators have been hit severely by covidrelated leave. Having our parking patrol officers on the weekend. Were expecting this week to get a significant increase in parking control officer availability. That will allow us hopefully to restore our grea greater amountn the weekend and they know to target not only that portion of great highway cliff house and also south near as well as a few other locations that have created a lot of parking. Thank you. With that well move on to our next item, is there madam chair, our Citizen Advisory Council report theres no report today. Moving on to item 9, general Public Comment. This is an opportunity for members of the public to address the board on matters that are within the jurisdiction of the sfmta board but have not been already discussed by director tumlin or the board or that are on the remainder of the days calender. If the moderator could open the phone line for general public to summon each question, press one then zero. So, moderator, please let us know if there are members of the public who wish to address the board under general Public Comment on matters not previously discussed. For members of the public who are watching this meeting by sfgtv, please call 8888086929id9961164 and then 10. Moderator, are there members of the public . You have six questions remaining. All right. So when it is your turn to speak the system will prompt you. Please, give us your name and your time will start when you begin talking. First caller. Hi, this is barrie toronto again. I am first wanting to give a shout out to phillip. He works taxi essential services. He just got a new member to his human family and we congratulate him and i wish him all the happiness. He has been helpful to the taxi industry and he cant wait until his return to continue helping until theres a void right now. Also i want to thank director torres for all his support for taxis. He has been a big friend to us and i wish him luck. Congratulations to chair borden. I think her humour will help. Considering i believe torres did have a very important jobs at the state legislature. And also help for director rubke who is great work for the disability. I want to mention, taxis are still very important essential service. I i see an increase in business and in the need to be taxis for people who have to go to their jobs. Like security guards, store workers, people who work late at night. So theres definitely a need for taxi service and i hope that you will do a better job of promoting it and the essential programmes. So i would hope that you would help support it and unfortunately the mayor has not mentioned taxis in her press conferences and its a little disturbing because people i hope you promote the dispatch der advises with the etc people to call to have more taxis and the better disattache dispatch servt there because they need to get cabs and unfortunately not a lot of drivers are out there due to the impression theres no business because the airport is basically a long ways. Thank you, very much for your time. Thank you, mr. Toronto. Next speaker, please. You have six questions remaining. Please give us your name. My name is richard rothman. Im a resident of the auto Richmond District and i think the board needs to get more involved in the operation of sfmta. I was watching the board the budget hearings and realised that there is no oversight or independent oversight. How some harvey rose doesnt examine the budget and speak to all these people who need it for jobs like marketing . Why isnt so many people in the Marketing Department when they contract out some of the work. Some of my friends do contract work for marketing people. Do we really need all those people there . What is Innovation Department do . I dont know. Do you know what it does . The department that needs the most help is a sustainable Streets Division and livable streets in the Engineering Department need to be divided into districts so we know who were talking to. And the favourite word in engineering is no, they wont even put in stop signs or cross walks in the Outer Richmond and everything is a fight with these people. Fortythird and full ton there was a serious accident over 10 years ago before i moved back. It took over 10 years to fix the light. Every time i talk to the engineer, he had a different story. I could have wrote a book about him. I work for the city 26 years and some of the staff i would have been looking for a job and instead, they get promoted. The board needs to have a more hands on approach to the operation of sfmta. Thank you. Thank you. Intention speaker, please. You have six questions remaining. So the next speaker, when you give your name you are two minutes will start. Go ahead. Thank you, chair borden. Alena dupres for the record and my pronounce are she and her. Thank you, very important. I think we had some technical problems and i was not recognized for the directors report. I guess ill write you a letter. Anyway, on to general Public Comment. I heard a lot of good things but i have concerns. Im interested to see what will happen with this resolution that supervisor peskin is introducing because people are not happy about theirs and im not happy because this recent socalled Clipper Equity programme really sad to say, hurts more than it helps. It hurts people with disabilities and people of lower income of which i fall into that category. And im also a veteran so it hurts veterans who call into that category and it hurts those who have to travel and it needs to be simplified and only system because budget is really a forecast. When you look at elasticity, they dont always pan out so i want more people to ride muni but we have to help the people who need the help most. Which is the disabled, the seniors, the veterans, and the hardworking folks, especially those who travel on multiple systems who are participating in the clipper programme. It makes no sense to have expensive means of collecting feafare that results in a lower bottom line so why in this stage of covid19 we still have ticket offices. We have vending machines and clipper cards so we need to develop this programme that ensures equity for all the people of this place in this bay area. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Give us your name and your two minutes. Go ahead. Give us your name and well start your two minutes. Hi there, my name is Peter Hutchinson and im calling on behalf of the teamsters local 665 president tony. I wanted to thank the staff at sfmta for the time and attention helping us to stabilize as many of our members as possible during this uncertain time. Thank you for all your help. Thank you. Next speaker. You have five questions remaining. Hi, this is Jayden Miller calling. I was just calling to say thank you guys for the closed Streets Programme. Ive been enjoying the slow streets and im looking forward to the one on 23rd avenue. I also wanted to say that i hoch we do more to keep social distancing on the bus. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have four questions remaining. Next speaker, please, give us your name and well start your two minutes. Good afternoon, my name is pie ra with senior and disability action. Im here to comment on the recently approved muni fare hike. First, i would like to say how much i really appreciate all the great programmes who have been putting out there and response to this covid19 reality. We really appreciate that. Now this comment is the followup to sdas examiner oped published a week ago aftee decision to increase the fare and it was submitted to your board about two weeks ago. Sta and its disabled and Senior Community wants to again, repeat why the fare increase is wrong for the city of San Francisco. As far as i know, sfmta is not good at soup slaying. This is in the past when mta fare and in 2009 and the midst of the last great recession. Now in our new presence, or new future, reality, more factors and questions have come into place in predicting future fare increases or fare revenue actually. Such as what will covid19 economy look like . Will there be a second wave of infections and will people abandon Public Transit to go back to sheltering car transportation. So, to predict what your fare revenues will be like, its really basically a scientific wild guess. If anything that can be predicted is the fare revenue will be reduced significantly with or without a fare increase to the point that the fare increase will have little effect on the budget. Second on the city and ensuring the health and welfare of the citizens while this fare increase is doing just the opposite. Its actually throwing the poor under the bus. Time. Thank you so much for your input. We will have your letter and well read it. Thank you. Next speaker, please. You have three questions remaining. Next speaker, give us your name and your time will start when you give us your name and Start Talking. Hi, my name is decker and just a quick thing. I was told by Roberta Bloomer of the sfmta board that Public Comment happens at the beginning of the meeting. This is what i was told over email just yesterday. And we had to wait over an hour and 20 minutes into this meeting to give Public Comment. Thank you. Are you done with your comment, sir . He provided comment under communications earlier in the meeting. Next speaker, please. You have two questions remaining. Next speaker, please, give us your name and well start your time when you start speaking. Good afternoon board of directors. Hello . Good afternoon bother of directors. Can you speak up. We cant hear you, sir. What about now . We can hear you now. Can you give us your name and well start your time over again. Good afternoon board of directors my name is im calling to draw your attention to what cities elsewhere are doing in response to this pandemic and were seeing a lot of cities across the world respond with bolder responses than in San Francisco and in particular like paris, berlin and ma lynn well see pop up like lanes. Im heart end to here mta is planning a quick build temporary bike lane. Its a great idea. I think director tumlin suggested that more might be in the works which would be welcome. I would like to point out that San Francisco is playing catch up here. Im looking forward to seeing catch up but for now were dealing with a net loss of bike lanes given what is happening on the great highway and i cannot wait to see that reversed because just here and everyone where else, bikes are selling out. Demand for biking and sustain ability transportation is really going to increase as people are moving away from transit to other things and moving away from driving. So i hope we can catch up and take bolder steps like our neighbours in oakland and international friends. Encourage people to bike. Thank you. Next speaker. Are we all done . You have one question remaining. Great. Thank you. Hello. Am i on the line . Yes, you are. Thank you. My name is ben bowl and i have recently been thinking about things we can do to make this city safer. And actually before i start, id like to thank you all for the work youve done to make San Francisco a better place in light of the pandemic and also in general. So, it occurred to me that adding Hand Sanitizer on buses would make people feel better about Public Transportation and theres been kind of a worrying trend as a lot of companies are urging their employees to take ubers and lift and its important for our environment and various other things that people dont stop taking buses after this is all over. Ive done the math and it turns out that you know, i fair increases would pay for not only the Hand Sanitizer dispenser but the cartridge you put in it within the first 1,000 uses. Which is the amount that comes. That is bu one idea. Another thing ive been thinking about. 10 seconds. Maybe having drivers handout face masks at the front of the bus for like 50 cents or something and i dont think people would have to pay that built into their fares because it seems like a lot of money. Thank you for your suggestions, sir. And i think were done with Public Comment or do we have another speaker . You have zero questions remaining. Well close the phone line. If you would like us to move on at this point. Lets move onto the consent calender and close the phone lines. Thank you. So, consent calender theyre routine and will be asked upon by a single vote of the board and there will be no separate discussion of these items unless the member of the board or public wishes to severe an item and to discuss it separately. Madam chair, item 10. 1 resolves various claims and to file complaints with metro pilot and for allocating ex existence in the Transportation Development acts state transit assistance and sales tax regional measures for fiscal near 2021 to support the sfmta operating budget and 10. 3 authorizes 608,000 in Transportation Development act funds for the San Francisco act communities plan and 10. 4 authorizes the director to execute unilateral contract modification number 10 to the van ness quarter Improvement Project with Walsh Company for additional costs related for modifications for sewer, water, and the amount of 2,187,655. 23 and item 10. 5 authorized the Steve Heminger to the Bond Oversight Committee effective june 1, 2020. Madam chair, thats your consent calender. Great. At this point, we will take Public Comment on any items on the consent calender. Is there Public Comment . Well open the phone lines. To summon each question, press one and then zero. Basically, you have a comment we will remove the item from the consent calender and hear it separately. Let us know if members of the public wish to address the board on any of the consent calender matters. You have zero questions remaining. Ok, well close Public Comment. Ill entertain a motion at this time. Motion to approve. Second. Second. All in favour. Roll call. Yes, madam chair. Director borden. Aye. Brinkman. Aye. Eaken. Aye. Heminger. Aye. Torres. Aye. Madam chair, districtors, the consent calender is unanimously approved. Moving on to your regular calender 11 presentation and discussion regarding the sfmta covid19 recovery and restart planning process. Great. Could you bring up the slide presentation, please. So before i begin this, i want to just pause for a moment to recognize that the last two months have been really hard. Not just for us as an agency and all the Technical Work we need today do our plan needs to meet the Transportation Needs driven by the Health Crisis and also to address some longstanding problems. Its difficult to create change in San Francisco. Despite the fact is world is changing around the city. We want to set things in place in order to allow the Transportation System to be able to return better than it was before and to serve customers and support longterm economic recovery and social equity. Next slide, please. We see some really difficult problems on the horizon. As we look at what is happening in the east asian capitals that are further along in their recovery they are experiencing Traffic Congestion that exceed in the pre covid19 economy. It only takes a relatively small shift of travel demand from Public Transit to driving alone to completely gridlock the entire Transportation System. A relatively small shift here in the San Francisco bay area would gum up all movement cutting the ability of the Transportation System as a whole to move people. A modest increase in congestion would cut person through put in half putting a halt to all of our efforts to support a strong economic recovery. In order to be the economic recovery to actually occur, we need to continue to focus on all of the most spacey efficient modes of transportation. And thenc means walking, biking, scooterring and wheelchairing and Public Transit. And as we look at the data here in the San Francisco area, you can see on the screen, the rates of driving are ticking up steadily. Our own data here in San Francisco is already seeing a return of congestion and some key corridors. We believe we have a very narrow window of time in order to set Transportation System up so the citys economy is not strangled in Traffic Congestion and we believe its two months. Between now and august. We have to make a lot of tough choices. Next slide, please. And so, we want to previous slide. So, as always, our highest priorities is protecting the health and safety of our workforce and the health and safety of the public. We also know that we need to make sure that the Transportation Network evolves to make and meet the ever changing mobility needs as the area progresses out of shelter in place. Travel patterns have changed dramatically and we expect some of those changes would be long lasting. The last job to come back support tele commuting, office jobs in the financial district. The places where were seeing the strongest travel demand is in neighborhood commercial districts and the key institutions that are not downtown. We need to make sure that the Mobility System we bring back supports these changed travel behavior so as a result, we need to use our actual data in order to bring the Transportation System back purposefully, the Transit System particularly. Allow the Transit System to reflect current travel behavior. Next slide, please. As always, everything comes back to our values. We have limited resources as an agency so we need to allocate those limited resources in order to best achieve the public good. And that requires deep clarity we need a laser focus on social equity and our role in supporting the economy. We cannot forget our environmental sustainability values, our Customer Service values, and the other values that are embodied in our strategic plan. Our infrastructure and Services Must be a reflection of the adopted values here in San Francisco. Next slide, please. So were developing a clear plan looking at all of our lines of work and how each needs to be adjusted in order to support the economy. We are, again, continuing to rely on the advice of the publichealth experts of the department of publichealth. We need to make sure that everything that were doing is a living document that continues to be adjusted based on evolving Health Conditions and what we learned as we go along. This agency is operating and implementing, perhaps faster than it ever has and so all of our documents have a useful life of two weeks before they need to be adjusted. We need to continue working to bring our workforce back to work while understanding the Health Science and minimizing the health risk to our people. We need to make sure that we are sequencing things in a logical way to bring back Transit Service and coordination with changes to Street Operations and we need to focus on all of the most efficient modes of transportation and that means not just transit but also investing in better protected bike ways and slow streets and transitonly lanes and improvements to paratransit and to regulated taxis. We need to support Small Businesses. Our neighborhood commercial districts that are essential to quality of life in our neighborhoods and as always, we need to be doing this quickly and on ex per mental and trial base is, learning from our mistakes and making sure to respond to customer feedback. So, with that, what i really want to do is to introduce to you dan howard. He is the Technology Assistance manager for the sfmta Transit Division and he is spearheading our Recovery Efforts as part of our agencys Department Operations center and he will tell you about his great work. Next slide, please and on to dan. Thank you, jeff. Good afternoon, directors. The transportation Recovery Plan consists of the six levels you can see on the screen there which layout the sequencing of how the sfmta will bring back transit theyre with our state and city health offered we can expand and were working with closely with our sister agencies as well as the economic Recovery Task forced to make sure that our efforts are coordinated. And our plans will of course be steed steed by the citys over all efforts to recover. Were currently in level two right now and as of may 4th, we still have the shelter in place which continues to limit the travel for essential trips as some outdoor businesses reopen and recreations restrictions ease and we still allow retail with Curbside Service as well as restaurant, quick up recovery and as we are able, muni and Street Operations will increase the levels of service to coincide with the increases and permitted activity where foe sure as the citys economic and our ability to increase muni service and Street Operations as publichealth restrictions ease, is depending on our of our staff which is experiencing trouble as jeff alluded to. To the first through levels were basically keeping a policy of maintaining the core Service Routes we establish at the beginning of the crisis and increasing the capacity and the frequency of service along those routes. Rather than looking to expand them right away. The Recovery Plan will function as a living document that will adjust continually based on the evolving Health Conditions new transportation data as we see it as well as input we receive from stakeholders, elected officials, members of the public. The implementations will be on a trial basis that will essentially expire at the end of the emergency at which point well pursue a legislative process to keep improvements in place or will remove the restriction thats were put in place. The Recovery Team will monitor and make adjustments to the plan as the conditions warrant. Next slide, please. In the process of the recovery our plan addresses the following challenges while meeting our core objective. The first is a quick return of Traffic Congestion and as jeff alluded to, traffic initiatives could return above pre covid19 levels and more quickly than we anticipate. We received data parents and Traffic Congestion is coming to the city with the latest relaxation of health order restrictions and the resource issues we have are an issue as we call them upon to move a large number of people despite the Health Precautions requiring more space per person as well as contending with the reduces revenues that are caused by a depressed economy. Lastly, Staff Shortages which could make it difficult to keep pace with covid19 absenteeism which is related to people falling sick or requiring to be quarantine or some of the structural mismatches between how our staff has been assigned and the new operational realities and its all of a sudden we need car cleaners in order to maintain our level of service much more than we previously did and pre covid19 and additionally, concerns about personal health and safety are in effect and a threat to this plan. If we find our employees are afraid to come to work and they stay home, using their sick time or vacation leave. In addition to the challenges, the plan will require careful consideration and mini trade offs and adjustments. So to meet these we have new and existing strategies and implementation of the measures will be during the emergency as we roll them out we look forward to learning from our constituents what works and what doesnt work and continuing to adjust the plan as we need to. Transit lanes, for example adjust Traffic Congestion and theyve been for 40 years. The transit lanes, as many of you know, improve media travel times and reliability but they also allow our buses to complete their routes faster which means that they can turn around more quickly at the terminals and the same number of bus actually help us provide more service or higher frequency if we protect the service from congestion with these lanes deploying transit lanes on more routes will save our customers time and the agency money which is something that weve always known but when we approach it with this crisis, we found they will allow us to provide the Similar Service with the vehicles that the staff that we have. With fewer cars on the road, the shelter in place actually simulates the street conditions across the city that we would see as if every muni route had its own transit lanes. And so on average, what were seeing with the data is that peak muni travel times were reduced by 15 on average except in corridors which had transit lanes where we observed no change between pre covid19 travel times and now. So, we can attribute that 15 change to the effects of Traffic Congestion and this is the most conclusive evidence or the most effective study that we can divide on how effective the Muni Forward Program has been in protecting our Transit System from congestion. Simply put, were finding strong evidence in this crisis that the investments weve made prior to it are working. The unusual circumstances have allowed us to use the new data to pinpoint specific locations where we can add new transit lanes and achieve even larger time savings. As we adjust to the effects of covid19, we do anticipate that service cuts will be necessary down the road and the distancing requirements also that are unique to this pandemic means that even if were running all of our pre id Service Today we would serve about half of our ridership. These two reality mean theyre never higher and adding these new transit lanes is a Cost Effective way inform allow us to turnout more service under the present conditions. Another new strategy is the slow streets that jeff has already referenced. The program meets our distancing requirement force recreation as well as as promotes walking and biking by meeting the travel needs and limiting traffic on certain residential streets. More space and lower speeds allows distancing and allows biking reducing demand for money or driving trips. It is couns them to use them in a way weve never seen them before. Its responsive to the neighborhoods which the sfmta has provided so jeff mentioned well continue to i am not more slow streets to move them forward in response they from stake hold and our multi label survey. While it was established as an emergency measure, we will continue to monitor the performance in responding to the citys needs and value wait it as a future tool. Next slide, please. The Recovery Plan includes strategies to support economic recovery. Sfmta stands ready to support neighborhood business corridors but adapting streets to meet their emerging needs. They will be vetted in advance so they dont conflict with media routes, vision zero goals or other access to needs and well provide more dedicated space for bicycling as well as a network that will help san franciscans be more comfortable as well as help reduce crowding on muni and the Traffic Congestion in the streets. In addition to physical infrastructure, like lanes, we are focused on a number of efforts and programs. In particular we want to engage with city staff as well as private businesses on various transportations and demand strategies and promote alternative modes of transportation during this crisis. Micro mobility has an Important Role to play and well partner with bay wheel to provide bake Share Services in the future, we expect to see up to 4,000 new ebikes and well also focus on completing our bike share Station Network so we can support a complete role out of the classic and the ebike share parking. As jeff mentioned, our work have also ensured they continue their operations particularly in support of essential workers and Community Concerns by expanding there to include the whole city. And of course we have additional bike infrastructure which will be important to support not only bikes but also these forms of micro mobility. Were implementing quick fill projects add bike lanes and other treatments to some streets as part of this Recovery Plan and were looking forward to engaging with our elected official and ski stakeholders to determine that location for additional bicycle facilities that go beyond those that have been in the program. Our plan includes taxi and accessibility Transportation Service which feel key gaps now as we scale it back to the core service plan. They help seniors and people with disabilities take essential trips and they minimize crowding on muni. The trip card supports our plan by helping to pay doortodoor service for seniors and people with disabilities. They still require Transit Service. This program will be conditioned throughout the Transportation Plan and we will continue to evaluate it for longterm continuation. The sfmta will continue to promote taxi trips as an alternative to minimize the crowding levels and as we scale back our service. We have cleaning and were work to go introduce for drivers and passengers. The framework that we have for Transportation Services and operations and scaling them up as restrictions on activities ease with the publicHealth Orders and as economic reassumes its called the transportation Recovery Plan. As we implement measures to support the economic recovery on the trial basis we look forward to learning what works what doesnt work and real time accordingly to what were hearing. In terms of next steps, i have our framework for the board and we plan on a dialogue on elements of what you heard and we would like guidance from the sfmta board on how bold we should be in advancing the various elements like the bike lanes and transit lanes you just heard about it. Within our budget constraints, how quickly we should advance the sequence of implementation and given what weve proposed will be on a trial basis, how do we approach the Public Engagement in this time of covid19 given our needs to implement these changes quickly but also understanding the limitations of not being able to do inperson meetings and relying on technology. By recovering from this crisis purposely, the sfmta will be better positioned to address longstanding problems, serve our residents and workers and help suppose sort the economic recovery. Thank you. Madam chair, would you like to take general Public Comment or Public Comment on that matter or go to Board Members questions and comments . Someone muted me. Of course, sorry. Id like to go to Public Comment first. Members of the public who wish to address the board on this please call 8888086929 if the moderator can open the phone line for Public Comment. Its in question or answer mode. Press one and then zero. Well wait a moment for members of the public to dial in. Let us know if there are members of the public. I have one question remaini remaining. Please give us your name and well start your time or two minutes when we begin talking. Go ahead. My name is herbert winier and any concern is are we going to get our buses back. Are we going to get our muni back after this pandemic and i dont like the idea of cutbacks and services. Theyve been cut back long enough and you are going to have crowded buttses, less people willing to take the bus service, decrease revenue and basically its a loselose proposition. All this you have contemplated to be put on hold and the money should be placed on Public Transportation. And basically you are going to need Public Transportation and right now, its one disaster preparing for another. I ream think you should focus on Public Transportation and these other projects are peripheral. Thank you. Next speaker, please. I have one question remaining. Please give us your name and we will start your time as soon as you begin talking. This is barrie toronto. I appreciate the presentation by both mr. Tumlin and his staff member. I also appreciate the mentioning of taxis and the importance of them especially with by evaluate hog is using the card and how quickly and the time of trips theyre doing and i think expanding the program was a great idea and im concerned theres not enough promotion done. It should be more promoting long the public and also among the cab drivers. As part of the presentation, you need to include what happens when the loan payments start coming due with the credit union. Right now a lot of drivers are not working and theyre taking their contacts ou cabs out of sd how will they make these loan payments. Take this as an urgency as part of the program presented today. Also, there is a lot more business and traffic has increased immensely and so its something that has to be dealt with and maybe more enforcement. Concerning the use of taxis is important you work with the major dispatch de services and u actually that there is business out there and then you encourage them to come out there and work and also to provide more cleaning supplies. We need more masks, and we need more disinfectant spray to keep the class disinfected and cleaned for our passengers. I appreciate you take these suggestions to heart and thank you for in concluding taxis as part of this plan. You have zero questions remaining. If theres anyone left who would like to call in press 10 now. We will close Public Comment. Moderator, let us know if you have anyone else. You have questions remaining. Next speaker, please. Give us your name well start your two minutes. My name is jody and im an executive director of walk San Francisco and i wanted to thank the presenter today for the transit recover row program and thank the sfmta for this program and for publichealth during this pandemic and one thing i want to make sure is we are not losing sight of vision zero and we are more reliant on our for getting around and we should we have not seen a traffic related fatality in the last weeks during our shelter in place and last thursday and we had close to 100 people sign a letter and sent a letter to director tom lynn and the sfmta board and asking for three core priorities and we node to have the sfmta focus on to keep us safe. We would love to see more read light cameras and we need to see more dynamic speed radar signs to were tracking speed and speeding in San Francisco and also we outlined three simple implement policies to keep people safe in the crosswalks and theyre focused and we see people driving that impact people walking and biking and so, we love to see these things addressed by this board and ask them to move forward and hear more about these very practical low cost ways that we can be keeping our eye on the vision zero prize and keep people safe while walking and biking. Thank you, very much. Next speaker. You have one question remaining. Speaker, as soon as you give us your name we will start the two minutes. This is robin calling in and thank you very much for getting through a difficult time for all of us, i appreciate your efforts and helping us all do that and i have a couple comments today and i would like to see as many routes as possible restored because people need to get around and without them i think theyre going to be stranded so my recommendation is to get all routes going but maybe with less frequency in the beginning if its a budget matter. So well all understand that. Help us get around. Second comment i want to make is one about air circulation in closed vehicles. Im wondering whether theres concern about that because the virus can be passed around in a closed area. Could there be windows open for cross ventilation or any other ideas that you have to keep fresh, clear, clean air in these closed vehicles and im just going to ask that question for your transportation engine engineers whatever you know to keep the public and drivers as safe as possible because we never know if people are still going to be getting this virus around so lets keep us as safe as possible with the closed areas situation. And number three, i heard the backs First Program got canceled and i understand that this Program SupportsWorkers Health and your workers need that support and it will cause workers in the city more if workers get injured and hurt and so for financial reasons and humans id like to see the restoration is so i recommend you restore the backs First Program so that our workers can be the best supported for their health in the city so thank you for your time Going Forward and i know you all have challenges. Thank you. Are there any additional speakers . You have one question remaining. If there is anyone else on the line who wishes to address the board call 8888086929 code 996116 for dial 10 in order to make a comment. Next speaker, please, thank you. Well start the time when you Start Talking. My name is rob and i want to thank the staff for all the work theyve been doing through the pandemic and the streets and like lanes and i wanted to especially highlight the proposal in this presentation we just saw for more transit only lanes and its great to here that natural experiment that happens during shelter in place to prove what we are expected to be true and than its only lanes and they speed up by a lot. I have seen the evidence of that from my kitchen window and the streets and go up in the recommendation and implement and transit only lanes in the next few months and we have before all hell breaks loose, particularly in places that have been in the works, approved or brought up for approval soon so im thinking of praise places like fourth street, 16th street, and also other locations that are in dire only lanes and i hope that we can due to the fact theres not altright now and theres not much of a need to cause to get this done. Theyre doing work outside of my house and theyre working from 7 00 a. M. To 3 00 p. M. Here on geary. Thank you. Are there any additional Public Commenters . You have one question remaining. See, all right. Please, give us your name. Give us your name. This is zack. Hello. Yes, we can hear you. This is San Francisco and really want to echo the hard work, thoughtful and challenging experiences within our sfmta and im thankful for all their time and effort to make sure we have essential trips in this challenging time. Thank you director tom line and howard for this report and i want to echo rowens support for transit only lanes. We know these gender only lanes remove with cards reducing collisions and getting them out of traffic. With Better Service and more buses we can make up for the few vehicles and fewer operators who will see in the crisis and make sure we can condition to provide essential trips. We look forward to working with sfmta for more transit only lanes to make sure transit is safe and accessible for everyone as we recover from this crisis. Thank you, very much. Any final questions . You have zero questions remaining. We will close Public Comment then and i will move on to directors when i hear the moderator say its closed, i guess. The line is closed. Wonderful. Well move on to director heminger. Thank you, madam chair, i do. And first of all, id like to thank jeff and dan for really excellent presentation and i think theyve made a good first passat the subject. At the same time, were just seeing it for the first time today. There is a lot of meat on those bones. Im sure each of us probably has a few more bones wed like to throw on the pile as well. Thats why madam chair, i would like to request you schedule a board workshop on this subject. I think not only do we need to dig deeper in the areas that jeff and down have outlined but there are probably some instances where we need to look wide are as well into other areas. Let me mention just three of them that come to my mind. Jeff mentioned it takes a little bit of movement from transit to autos to make things really bad. It works in reverse though too. That is if you can just get five or 10 of the transportation off the road at a given time, you can dramatically increase mobility and reduce congestion. Where i used to work at mtc we call it the columbus day effect because its a holiday hardly anyone gets. On that holiday, traffic is a lot better. Every year consistently. So, that is just one example where maybe this is a partnership that we could pursue with the board of supervisors and we seem to be in need of a little partnership with the board of supervisors lately. Is there a policy approach . Is there an ordinance or a city policy that we can put in place that would encourage more employers to maintain some level of teleworking . Which is being used extensively. I dont think we can keep it at the levels forever but we dont need to. We need a modest and sustained increase to potentially have a significant beneficial effect the second idea is whether or not we should be accelerating the project to put a price in downtown San Francisco and if in fact were going to go through a period of depressed transit ridership and increased auto use, then we really need tools at our disposal we can have and its a very powerful tool that right now is not at our disposal and we need to get permission for it to happen and should we move faster on that if its one of the tools we need to deal with this recovery. And ill mention a subject that jeffs presentation touched on but not as much as i would like to see and that is, how can we mainstream the quick build approach. Since ive been on this board, ive seen us use it from place to place. I dont think were yet into the regiment of using it systematically. And just to draw annan algae to the publichealth community, which right now has the ball, and is running down the field and as fast as they can in developing a vaccine we heard thoughtful ideas from walk sf as well as the public and ideally we would do this inperson meetings. Maybe thats not going to be in the cards. In the near future. If it is someone needs to mute themselves. Someone is actually on the call and they dont realize theyre not muted. Thank you. Go ahead. Sorry about that. No trouble. I was almost through. If we can have such a workshop, do we need to do it virtually as weve been meeting for the last several weeks or are we going to be sprung lose by the mayor and maybe we can do it inperson. It can be more free flowing than our formal Public Meetings and just the nature of the technology requires us to be a little bit more formal when we do the meetings virtually. But ill leave that to the staff and in your good hands and i would hope that you will consider scheduling such a workshop and when we can deal with a subject that is one of the most important ones this board has dealt with in the 20 years of the mta. Thank you, very much. Director brinkman. Fantastic ideas all around and i want to just second all of them. If theres a way to get the congestion or decongestion charging moving more quickly, you are right, it will be key. It will be key in our ability to control Traffic Congestion and keep our transit moving. I think that you are right, the quick build project has been really good but it was developed for a precovid time when quick was relative to what we were able to do then and now we need sort of super quick. We need a moon shot for transportation in San Francisco. So, two specific requests. One is that its going to be its probably going to be a big lift for staff to get everything ready for us to give them the legislative scope knowing what we need now is going to be a lot of work for them to get together. I agree that we need a really good freeflowing sort of openjawed meeting in which to discuss this and im hoping we can do that at the june 2nd immediating and if we all commit to spending the time that we need to spend, my hesitation is calling it a workshop, i know how much time and energy staff puts into our normal workshops that we do and im just worried about them being able to get that together particularly for the june 2nd meeting and then with enough time to follow through. I would love to hear your thoughts on this and if we can have, at the june 2nd an agenda item that is open jawed and we would all commit to spending the time we need to do it and i wish we can do it inperson and maybe because there will only be four of us and it will be easier to do social distancing so that we can be in some scenario with where were facetoface and i leave it up to staff and the city guidelines to decide if that is fees ability or not and we get better conversations and we get better interaction when we are able to be inperson so those are my two things. What else do we need to build on our existing quickbuild legislation and are we going to be able to legislate that and get it together in time for hopefully a june 2nd which can be a regularly scheduled meeting that we kind of shape shift to give us that workshop feeling. Thats all, thank you. Thank you, director brinkman. Director eaken. Thank you, so much. So thank you, dan, and jeff for the presentation. And also just for the hard work that went into creating it. I want to start by just echoing the comments from my colleagues about setting aside in real time and space to explore all the implications of covid19 for the Transportation System. I would absolutely make the time and i dont really think that there could be time better spent in terms of facing some of the these challengeds and looking at some of the opportunities. I heard you ask, dan, in your presentation, for guidance from the board on how bold we should be on transit lance and bike infrastructure. I want to reflect the way i think you laid out the issues, i start to feel convinced that the bus lanes are not just a matter of running in efficient Transit System, theres also a bit of a publichealth imperative to run more buses along a given corridor along a certain amount of time to allow for distancing and some of our Public Commenters have asked on those transit lines and they also seem to have a bit of a financial imperative, if we can save money for our agency at this critical time by avoiding our operators and vehicles sitting in traffic. I want you to be very bold and take those publichealth and financial imperatives in mind as you progress. As regards biking and walking and slow streets, i am delighted to see the progress and i also am very encouraged to hear you say that a bike network, a complete network is in the mix because you know, just personally i took a trip with my family by bike this weekend and we were so delighted when we saw that most of that trip was going to be along lake street. Its just so relaxing when you get to a place where due have to worry about cars for a minute. Especially when you are riding with kids. And if were serious about encouraging people to bike, i think we need to give people that continuous low stress network all over the city. Not just on a couple streets. And i think cheryl was talking about how wonderful it is to see children and see people coming out and exploring the public realm and their streets and i think thats a little bit of an cater, its like, if a 4yearold kid is comfortable riding a bike on a street, its a safe street. We need to look how our infrastructure does or does not reflect our values and a colleague told me and its not, theres not a commitment made to make it a safe trip and a comfortable trip so you ask how bold to be. I want to answer that question directly and i want to encourage you to be very bold and if we think about our infrastructure having to reflect our values, we also heard from director tumlin the safety and health of the staff and the public is our top priority and i just wanted to share i thought i heard from a colleague at the green lining institute and he said he doesnt believe that the covid19 pandemic presents us an opportunity but it presents us with a responsibility and i really, really love that reframing and i think our current street system does not adequately reflect our values and i believe its our responsibility in the recovery to make it so. Thank you, very much. Thank you. Director eaken. You had another comment. Yeah, i just briefly wanted to respond to director brinkman. I share her concern about overloading the staff. At the same time, workshops in my experience, others, over my career, they really go better if you do have preparation going into them and i know jeff is in the cue to speak zoom so he may have some thoughts about this and they may have done work already. But i do think for the workshop to have value, we at least need a concentrated period of time whether its during a or a special meeting and we may need more than one bite at apple to get the work done. Again, as i said, i think and those need to be briefed out and prepped. I think for us to have a useful discussion. Great. Thank you all for everything youve said. I agree with everything thats been said here. The only thing i will take with director heminger of Small Businesses and traffic for us to recover as a city and so i think that the sales tax revenue which helps us so while its what is actually been harder is a lot of this have decided to have their people tele commute for the rest of the year, twitter and goggle have made similar announcements and it will be devastating on our revenues in the longterm and short and longterm because of the fact were not going to have this sales tax purchases locally so we need to balance how we get people back to work and using alternative modes of transportation and making it more attractive and easier for them to access them and as opposed to encouraging people to tele com out commute. I did want to talk about how we can do Something Like a workshop or spend some time drilling down on these key areas and allowing more community input. I had a question around the masks and the cleaning and one of the things we need to do and it would be helpful if we had a more extensive demo and showing of the public of how were doing that. Theres a we have a fogger machine we work with and we have masks but maybe you could just put a fine point on some of the key things were doing in that area and i also saw the Transit Riders Union was raising money to give mass to drivers and i would love to understand what were doerg in terms of providing masks for shifts and those basic issues to help reassure the public and help better education us. If you can address that and all the topics we brought up and how we can do a workshop or drill down on the topics that weve talked about, that would be great. Ok. All right. Let me just dive in. There were a lot of points that i was able to take good notes. There we are and back. Why dont i take this in reverse order. In terms of masks and cleaning, it appears that sfmta is i dont know that were the National Leader but were among the National Leaders on cleaning our vehicles and keeping our operators safe and it born itself out in our virus transmission rates. In fact, were one of a very small number of operators where theres not been a single incident of workertoworker transmission of the virus. This is phenomenal. And so, a lot of it has to do with the fact that we are providing personal protective equipment to all of our operators and in fact all of our frontline workers including our car cleaners, our mechanics have access and were doing a lot of work around protecting the operator cabin and these are of course the reasons why we eliminated the cable car and fline service at the very beginning of the crisis to make sure were protecting our workforce. And over the last couple of weeks, we changed all of our operational schedules. Both to provide every operator with the consistent shift but also to make sure that each operator can return to the yard at the end of every shift and so that the bus can be cleaned before another operator takes the bus out for service. All of these things have enable us to [please stand by] Transportation Team management, we have a team working on this and we want to support probusiness, so not imposing new regulatory requirements on business, but, basically, providing them with helpful resources because what were finding is that businesses have a lot of builtin incentive to do transportation demanded management largely rooted in elevator capacity. , which is quite interesting. So the Office Building owners are doing work to spread out the peak which is helpful for us. Were providing some Additional Support including the taxiride home programs and other things that Partner Agencies are supporting elsewhere. So well provide you more information on that and maximizing the economy. One way is by spreading out the peak. And on the idea of a workshop, we have interested in this, but we need to do it very differently than weve done workshops in the past, and so the budget workshop weve put together for you, that was a massive behind thethe scenes staff effort and all of that was very carefully staged and we had all of that put together. If were going to do a workshop, you get to do it in the same way our Department Operations center is doing business. So weve expanded our Work Production output by a full order of magnitude and in order to do that, it means things are messy didnt in realtime and its a little chaotic. But i think if you and the public can handle reallife, realtime messy planning, we would love your engagement. This may be this is definitely a new way of doing business but everything requires a new way of doing business, so this will be an experiment and it will not be pretty. So that said, i think theres a lot that we can do bringing together core staff and revealing all of the data which is fantastic and hunkering down what are our priorities and it would be go good to understand w things are working. The last decongestment crisis study got plans in the 2008 recession. And this recession, however, is different from the last one in some fundamental ways and i think theres a recognition, particularly given the ffctas emphasis on using pricing in order to advance equity and Small Business success rather than raise revenue and i think theres a way that we can help frame the conversation in a different way and show the urgency doing the pricing now in or to forestall the real crisis of congestion to prevent further economic recovery. We know that this is moving forward with their study and we know that because implementation of that work requires state legislative approval, that its not a shortterm solution. Put one thing that we might want to have you all consider is things that would be shortterm solutions, like changing the Bay Area Toll Authoritys approach for pricing on the bay bridge. So as you know, mtc in its form as the Bay Area Toll Authority reduced toll rates on the bay bridge as a result of traffic and traffic will come rip roaring back and our current policy as a region is to balance the demand for mobility by using peoples time rather than using their money. And this would be a good time to experiment with actual decongestive pricing on the bay bridge, particularly given Health Impacts of storing the cue for the bay bridge in west oakland. That cue dumps a lot of particular emissions on the children growing up in west oakland and they have a Life Expectancy less than kids growing up in other neighborhoods. So, perhaps, it is time to have a real conversation about how to manage the Transportation System regionally for the public good. And i know that pricing is unpopular as you all know from the fair conversations that we weve had at this board and its how we balance supply and demand for all other public goods and that wasting peoples time as opposed to asking them to spend their money means we dont have the resources to invest in improved services for the people who need it the most and so ill leave that with you. If you want to take a role in that. Another key issue that could help us to move forward moving on to the topic of quickville, the emergency directive has eliminated a lot of pointless bureaucracy and most of the way most of the rules set up around governance are set up to slow progress and most of the rules that we have to follow are about maintaining the status yo so that corrupquoso that corrupy Department Heads cant move forward with stupid ideas. And there are good reasons for all of the of those reasonel rules and yet, they dramatically slow down our ability to do business. Under the emergency directive, weve been able to move very quickly, but we will soon run into problems as we try to make these temporary pilot emergency measures into permanent change. So, for example, something thats been talked about for years is creating a statutory exemption in sequa for transportation projects in the existing public rightofway so why should we continue to have to spend a lot of time doing that analysis on a bike lane striping project in the rightofway that doesnt represent a dire threat to the california environment. These are bureaucratic steps that slow us down and limit our ability to do good work. I think weve been able to demonstrate these last two months that government is really capable of getting stuff done if it is clear about its values, if it understands and can measure the public goods and if pointless bureaucratic rules are temporarily set aside. Imagine what we could do if those rules actually supported doing good work in order to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions, support public equity, support Small Business economy and support quality of life for all those in San Francisco. So all that said, i think that werelerring a lowere learningo institutionalize even within the constraints of the bureaucratic rules we have to follow and we are eager to demonstrate that for muniprojects as we have with some of our bikeway projects. With that, i would just close by saying to director eakin, i love this idea of just not taking advantage of this crisis, but acknowledging that we have a deep responsibility to ensure that we are directing our very, very limited financial and Staff Resources to protecting the Public Health of this crisis and establishing the basis of a strong and resilient and equitable economy coming out of this crisis. Thank you. So with that, i dont know if theres any final questions ors, director brinkman. Thank you. Just one final comment. Yes, i think that we do want to be bold. It sounds like we do want some type of nesty, down and dirt workshop scenario that doesnt create extra work for staff, but actually gives staff and gives you the opportunity to get our feedback so that you know were fully in support of the decisions that will be made and the direction that will be taken and again, ill agree with you, director eakin doesnt create a responsibility for us to respond to this whole situation is keep things going. So thats it and yes, lets we can figure out a way to do a down and dirty workshop scenario, lets do it. Director hemmingger. Dr. Bringingman stole the words out of our mouth. Our director was challenging us to down and dirty and i think we should accept the challenge. I would remind him the variable toll we had on the bay bridge before covid was something i put in place. [ laughter ] so maybe it just needs to be higher. [ laughter ] so director, i guess well talk offline about what that means, this down and dirty process. We, obviously, have a june 2nd u anticipate taking that meeting to do part of the process . How do you see that out of curiosity and maybe working through the secretary, as well, to think that through a little bit . I think ill want to make sure were collaborating with secretary boomer to making sure that my ambition is grounded in reality and one thing that we may want to do is rather than trying to do one workshop so look at a sort of rolling workshop pattern through the summer. And things need to move far more quickly than they typically do at this agency and so, having a workshop component of each meeting might allow us to move forward quickly and also reduce the burden on staff for preparing them. And that way, we could present to you in realtime what were working on, the guidance as we go along. So maybe we can pick the area that is most eminent in terms of what we want to address, whether its a quick build or things to get done in the near term as the first topic. Secretary boomer, i know that you want to weigh in. Thank you. , madam chair. So while youve been talking, i received an email and staff is being coordinated to bring a transit Recovery Plan to the board on june 2nd. Originally, we had not thought that meeting would be necessary given the lack of essentialtogovernment items scheduled for that meeting. We would still have those items all on consent but like you did today with this meeting, we could focus the rest of your time and most of your time in a workshop type of fashion, an informational item, and i think it may be too early for final decisions to give staff a little bit of time to get the information from you, you know, bat things around and come back at subsequent meetings for key decisions as staff is ready. So i think the june 2n june 2nd meeting could easily accommodate a messy down and dirty idea and just really focusing staff towards that at this point. Great, so if we can target those items that we like done more quickly, right, the things we want to work for that are much more eminent, that would be ideal, think i think, for june d june 2nd and we could phase out the stuff thats the Bigger Picture of how to be in the future versus the things we want to do in the near term. Yes, madam chair. We are very cognizant of dr. Tumlins sense of urgency and need to get not only decisions in place in the next two months, but also to put the disdisthedecisions in the groun, the earlier to start the dialogue with the board, the betterrer. Better. Whatever we can prioritize before we are reopened, so to speak, we have a real opportunity to do things and a real desire and if we dont make any changes and people just go back from completely shelter to how it was before, well have lost this opportunity to capture peoples idea and the spirit of creativity and desire to see Something Different because we will revert back to old patterns. So whatever we can do and if theres ever agencies and other people to engage in the process sooner, even have at that workshop, have the conversation and the second to think about, lets do that, as well, and maybe even tap into the mayors Recovery Task force and other things worked on there that intercept. Because i think because we were just talking about the way the Toll Authority works, i think there is a intersection of how we can best capture some of these economic violat vitality s that intersect with more open space and street space. Madam chair, that concludes all of the business before you today. Wonderful. So with that, we are adjourned and everybody have a safe couple of weeks and memorial day and well see you back on june 2n june 2nd. Thank you, director torez. As a woman of color who grew up in San Francisco i understand how institutions can have an impact on communities of color. I think having my voice was important. That is where my passion lies when the opportunity to lead an office in such a new space came up. I couldnt turn it down. I was with the District Attorneys Office for a little over nine years, if you include the time as an intern as well as volunteer da, all most 13 years. During the time with the das office i had an opportunity to serve the community not only as the assistant District Attorney but as director of community relations. That afforded the opportunity to have impact on the community in an immediate way. It is one thing to work to serve the rights of those without rights, victims. It is really rewarding to work to to further the goals of our office and the commitment we have as City Employees and advocates for people who dont have a voice. I dont know of anyone surprised to see me in this role. Maybe people have an impression what the director of the office of cannabis should be like, what their beliefs should be. I smash all of that. You grew up in the inner city of San Francisco. My career path is not traditional. I dont think a person should limit themselves to reach full potential. I say that to young women and girls. That is important. You want to see leadership that looks diverse because your path is not predetermined. I didnt wake up thinking i was going to be a prosecutor in my life. The city administrator reached out and wanted to have a conversation and gave me interest in the new role. I thought you must not know what i do for a living. It was the opposite. She had foresight in realizing it would be helpful for somebody not only a former prosecutor but interested in shaping criminal Justice Reform for the city would be the right person for the space. I appreciate the foresight of the mayor to be open how we can be leaders in San Francisco. I was able to transition to the policy space. Here i was able to work on legislation, community relations, communication and start to shape the ways our office was going to reform the criminal Justice System. It is fulfilling for me. I could create programs and see those impact peoples lives. I am the change. It took truants youth to meet with Civil Rights Movement leaders who fought to have access to education. Being a young person to understand that helped the young people realize this was an important thing to give up. What we find is that young people who are truanted have a really high homicide rate in our city, which is a sad statistic. We want to change that. Coming from a community we are black and brown. I dont reach out to other people. I dont think they feel the same way. I had the great opportunity to work on Prison Reform issues and criminal Justice Reform issues. We created a program at san quentin where we brought district opportunities t to lifs and talk about how we are all impacted by the criminal Justice System. We brought over 40 elected das to san quentin for the situation. Now we are inviting the police department. Our formerly incarcerated group born out of this programming asked for the opportunity to work on a project where we could bring the men in blue on the outside to come speak to the men on blue inside to start the healing dialogue around how the criminal Justice System specifically in San Francisco impacts the community. I was attracted to the role. There was a component of equity that was part of this process. The Equity Community here in San Francisco is a community that i had already worked with. Before i took steps to visit cannabis businesses i thought it was important my team have a chance to go inside and speak to men who ha had been impacted. That conversation needed to happen so we know how we are making an impact with the work that we are doing. The das office as we were leading up to the legalization of marijuana in the state we started having conversations on the policy team what that could look like. The District Attorney was really focused on the right side of history for this. We realized it would be quite a heavy lift for individuals who have been negatively impacted by the war on drugs to expunge the record. It was important to figure out the framework to make it seamless and easy. They put their minds to it after some time and many conversations the data analysts and other policy walk throughs on the team came up with the idea to engage the Tech Community in this process. Code for america helped us developed the rhythm to be used for any jurisdiction across the state that was important to create a solution to be used to assist all jurisdictions dealing with this matter. The office of cannabis is the first office to have a completely digital application process. We worked with the digital team to develop the online application. There are going to be hiccups. We are first to do it. It is one of the most rewarding parts to offer a seamless to offer a seamless approach. That is how they can find solutions to solve many of the community challenges. The best way to respond to prop 64 was to retroactively expunge 9,000 cannabis related records for San Francisco. It feels like justice full circle for my personal experience. In the past i was furthering the war on drugs just as my directive. Really coming from a place of public safety. That was the mandate and understanding. It is nice to see that pass a society we are able to look at some of our laws and say, you know what . We got it wrong. Lets get this right. I had the privilege of being in the existing framework. My predecessor Nicole Elliott did an incredible job bringing together the individuals superpassionate about cannabis. The office was created in july of 2017. I came in early 2018. I have been able to see the Offices Development over time which is nice. It is exciting to be in the space, stickily in thinking about her leadership. Looking for the office it is always we might be before my time when i was working for the board oforboard of supervisors. I learn new things every day it is challenging and rewarding for me. We get the privilege to work in an office tha that is innova. We get to spearhead the robust exprogram. I am excited she came on board to leverage experience as a prosecutor 10 years as we contemplate enforcements but approaching it without replicating the war on drugs. I was hired by cam laharris. I havent seen a District Attorney that looked kind of like me. That could be a path in my life. I might not have considered it. It is important that women and certainly women of color and spaces of leadership really do their part to bring on and mentor as many young people as they can. It is superimportant to take advantage of as many opportunities a as they can when they can intern because the doors are wide open. Plans change and that is okay. The way this was shaped because i took a risk to try something new and explore something and show that i was capable. You are capable, right . It was about leaning in and being at the table to say my voice matters. You find your passion, the sky i love teaching. It is such an exhilarating experience when people began to feel their own creativity. This really is a place where all people can come and take a class and fill part of the community. This is very enriching as an artist. A lot of folks take these classes and take their digital imagery and turn it into negatives. There are not many black and white darkrooms available anymore. That is a really big draw. This is a signature piece. This is the bill largest darkroom in the u. S. There are a lot of people that want to get into that dark room. I think it is the heart of this place. You feel it when you come in. The people who just started taking pictures, so this is really an intersection for many generations of photographers and this is a great place to learn because if you need people from different areas and also everyone who works here is working in photography. We get to build the community here. This is different. First of all, this is a great location. It is in a lesspopulated area. Of lot of people come here just so that they can participate in this program. It is a great opportunity for people who have a little bit of photographic experience. The people have a lot, they can really come together and share a love and a passion. We offer everything from traditional black and white darkrooms to learning how to process your first roll of film. We offer classes and workshops in digital camera, digital printing. We offer classes basically in the shooting, ton the town at night, treasure island. There is a way for the programs exploring everyone who would like to spend the day on this program. Hello, my name is jennifer. My name is simone. We are going on a field trip to take pictures up the hill. Cmon, cmon, cmon. Actually, i have been here a lot. I have never looked closely enough to see everything. Now, i get to take pictures. We want to try to get them to be more creative with it. We let them to be free with them but at the same time, we give them a little bit of direction. You can focus in here. That was cool. If you see that . Behind the city, behind the houses, behind those hills. The see any more hills . These kids are wonderful. They get to explore, they get to see different things. We let them explore a little bit. They get their best. If their parents ever ask, we can learn they can say that they learned about the depth of field or the rule of thirds or that the shadows can give a good contrast. Some of the things they come up with are fantastic. That is what were trying to encourage. These kids can bring up the creativity and also the love for photography. A lot of people come into my classes and they dont feel like they really are creative and through the process of working and showing them and giving them some tips and ideas. This is kind of the best kept secret. You should come on and take a class. We have orientations on most saturdays. This is a really wonderful location and is the real jewel to the community. Ready to develop your photography skills . The Harvey Milk Photo Center focuses on adult classes. And saturday workshops expose youth and adults to photography classes. Were here to raise awareness and money and fork for a good accuse. We have this incredible gift probably the widest range of restaurant and count ii destines in any district in the city right here in the mission intricate why dont we capture that to support the mission youths going to college thats for the food for thought. We didnt have a signature font for our orientation thats a 40yearold organization. Mission graduates have helped me to develop special as an individual theyve helped me figure out and provide the tools for me that i need i feel successful in life their core above emission and goal is in line with our values. The ferraris yes, we made 48 thousand they were on top of that its a nobrainer for us. Were in and fifth year and be able to expand out and tonight is your ungrammatical truck food for thought. Food truck for thought is an opportunity to eat from a variety of different vendor that are supporting the mission graduates by coming and representing at the parks were giving a prude of our to give people the opportunity to get an education. People come back and can you tell me and enjoy our food. All the vendor are xooment a portion of their precedes the money is going back in whats the best thing to do in terms of moving the needle for the folks we thought Higher Education is the tool to move young people. Im also a College Student i go to berkley and 90 percent of our folks are staying in college thats 40 percent hire than the afternoon. Im politically to clemdz and ucla. Just knowing were giving back to the community. Especially the Spanish Speaking population it hits home. People get hungry why not eat and give you can find out more information about this data and on our data tracker, on our online data sunny skies sf. Org covid19 for full details. I want to just kind of update all of you on a few things and get to dr. Colfax and some important things that definitely need to be discussed. First of all, this past monday dr. Colfax and i had a monday was yesterday, right . It feels like monday every day, but yesterday dr. Colfax and i, along with dr. Susan phillips, had this great conversation about what it would take to reopen, and we talked about the indicators and the hospitalizations and a number of other things and the various phases. It was a very good conversation, and i think it is needed. What we found from that conversation are, of course, a number of questions, and many questions centered around when will we will able to get child care open, summer camps, schools and other things centered around children because i know many parents are anxious to not just get a break from their children but to get back to work and to get their kids involved in activities, and i know kids are anxious to play with their friends, and so this friday at 11 30 i, along with bill ginsburg who is the director of park and rec and others will have a conversation around some of the options that we have available and what you can expect for the future. It will center around opportunities mostly for the summer and transitioning kids into, you know, a place where we can allow in some cases some summer activities, and we will be able to speak to more details about that on friday and hopefully get to some of the questions that so many of the parents have. So we appreciate you all tuning in. We decided to cut back on some of the press conferences and really focus on the conversations with a lot of the leaders who are leading around Public Health, who are leading around support for children, youth and families, folks who are helping us to make the decisions about economic recovery as we move in our new normal of covid19 this provides us with an Incredible Opportunity to really get to the heart of, you know, what is of most concern to the people of San Francisco and answer your questions so that you are able to make plans or arrangements as information is provided to you. So we know that its been probably very challenging that we have not been able to provide you with specific dates or times around the things that you want to know the most, and as we have said before, this is a fluid situation and things can change at a moments notice, but because most san franciscans have complied with the orders, people have been wearing their masks, socially distancing themselves, and again i say most people. I didnt say all people, but most people have complied, and because many people are taking this directive seriously, we have seen a decline in the curve, and that is something to be proud of, but our goal is to get rid of it entirely, and thats going to take continued work. Yesterday was the first day that shops were able to open for Curbside Pickup, and some offering delivery. I stopped by green apple, a bookstore, in the inner sunset, and they have another location further out. I was so happy to buy a book. I just didnt know what to do with myself. It felt good to go out to the community and to support this incredible institution. This past friday i picked up dinner at the golden mira. I stopped by, you know, the garden center, and it just you know, to be able to support these businesses was really incredible, and i think that its important i know that we are all sheltering in place, going out to run errands and do essential things, but heres an Incredible Opportunity. We want to support our businesses, and this is a way that we can do that. So rather than making that next purchase on amazon, maybe consider finding a place in your community and trying to shop at the local stores that may have availability for pickup and delivery. I am really i needed a cord, and so i made sure that i checked in with the local Hardware Store. They didnt have the cord at the Hardware Store that i called, but i found it at another place. So i like the idea of making sure that we are purchasing things from businesses in our city that are able to offer their services, but i think its going to take a lot more effort so we can make sure that after we get through this hump those businesses are able to open they are not able to bring back their entire workforce. They still have to pay their rent and bills. Its been a really challenging time, even though they are raising private money and were putting public money together and were trying to support our Small Business community, and there have been a number of other initiatives, its not always reaching the people who need it the most because we still have our hair salons, our nail salons, our barber shops, our masseuse, people who do services that require direct contact with people, they are still not open, still not in business, and this is a really challenging time for so many people. So whatever we can do to support our local economy, our local businesses, i really want to strongly encourage you to think about supporting the businesses in your neighborhood and just maybe seeing whats available, going online and doing some research to see whats available to support Small Businesses in San Francisco. Another way that we are able to help some Small Businesses in San Francisco and help our seniors is through this great plates food program. And im really excited about this because we know that, first of all, when we first issued a before we issued a shelterinplace for everyone, we specifically asked that vulnerable population, our seniors and those who have underlying Health Conditions, to stay home. And what we found, of course, you know, there are some seniors, for example, who qualify for calfresh, some concerns who qualify for meals and wheels and are lucky to have those opportunities, but there are a number of seniors who are just above that threshold. They may even own a home but are on a fixed income and can barely take care of themselves and take care of their home. And i do think its important, regardless of whether or not you have the means to make sure that all of our seniors are taken care of. And so this program is a program that partners seniors with local restaurants, and what were able to do is provide three meals a day from local restaurants. So it not only helps support our seniors, it helps support our restaurants. And it provides a nocontact delivery. It makes it so easy for them, and i am so excited that along with all the other programs that are available, including the food bank, the San Francisco food bank, meals on wheels and a number of other initiatives and people who are doing it on their own, the fact that we have even another program that will provide food to our seniors and also support our restaurants is really great and i want to thank governor gavin newsom for his support for this program. I want to talk a little bit about testing because i know that comes up. The great news is weve come a long way. The fact is, if you are a san franciscan and you exhibit one symptom, you could have a cough, you could have a temperature, call 311 or go online to sfgov. Org and sign up and youll get sent to a Testing Center to be tested, any san franciscan. But we also will test any essential worker, whether you are a San Francisco resident or not. If youre an essential worker in San Francisco and you dont exhibit any symptoms because youre on the front line, whether youre selling groceries or driving muni or out there as a paramedic, those are the people who are in contact with folks on a daily basis, putting their lives on the line to provide us an essential service, so we wanted to make sure that you know that testing is available for you. Weve expanded the number of sites, and in addition to a site in selma area, in the Western Addition and bayview and a few other sites scattered throughout San Francisco, we wanted to make it a lot easier for communities where we know testing is needed. We specifically announced a few mobile sites, including the mobile site in the tenderloin, a site in ocean avenue and the omi, the lakeview area, and another site in the bayview Hunters Point community, and the site in the bayview Hunters Point community, the testing will be over the course of a few days, specifically in hunters view. But anyone from the bayview is definitely welcome to receive a test. We did this in collaboration with a number of communitybased organizations, similar to what was done in the mission, because we know that there are high rates of covid19 in the bayview Hunters Point community, and we know that people need access to testing, and we also understand that sometimes they may not call or they may not go online to figure out whether or not they should be tested. And we also want to make sure we detach the stigma associated with getting tested, and so on friday, myself as well as supervisor walton, we will be going to the bayview Hunters Point. We will be tested, and the goal is to show people how easy it is and to make sure that folks feel comfortable and they feel safe, that they can be tested whether they have insurance or not, whether they are documented or not. The more that people know they have access to testing and they feel comfortable when they exhibit a symptom or if they think theyve been exposed, the better well be. And so our goal is to get to a certain level of testing in the city because its gonna be critical to our ability to reopen. And thats why we want to make sure we set up these mobile locations. We hit all of the neighborhoods and we make it easy for people to get tested, and this is another opportunity to do that. So with that, i just want to, again, thank all of you for your patience and your cooperation. We have come a long way, and i just want to appreciate how far weve come. There was a time where access to testing was very, very limited, and now were at a place where we have expanded testing, and this is absolutely critical to reopening. There was a time when we were having discussions about requiring everyone to stay home, and now the pickup and deliveries and other things are available. Were going to have a conversation, as i said, this friday about the options available for families because i know that there are so many parents who are anxious to figure out what is gonna happen for their kid this summer. We want to make sure that kids have, you know, a great experience. It has been challenging and will continue to be, but its important that we make sure that there are options available, and so our goal is to have an indepth conversation on friday at 11 30, so i hope you will tune in, and with that, i know dr. Colfax has an update of where we are as it relates to Public Health overall, as well as some information, the latest on laguna honda hospital, and so, again, thank you so much for your cooperation, and with that id like to introduce dr. Grant colfax with the department of Public Health. Dr. Grant colfax good afternoon, everybody. I want to thank mayor breed for her leadership, and mayor was just a great experience to have that conversation with you yesterday on zoom, of course, about where we are headed and the phases of the potential phases of reopening and the key indicators we are going to be looking at Going Forward. So id really encourage people to watch that. It is available. It was recorded. Ill allude to a few of those points today, but if you really want more detail, please go to that conversation. And certainly well be sharing more information in the future as we move forward together. So as of today, as the mayor mentioned, there are 2179 San Francisco residents who have been confirmed with covid19. Sadly, 36 san franciscans have died from the disease, and again, my condolences to their family, friends and community. And as we move into a new phase of our response and recovery, i would like to thank you all for doing your part. Everything that you have done has truly saved lives and slowed the spread of the coronavirus in our community. You have protected each other. You have protected your families, and you have protected your community. And most importantly, you have protected the populations that are most vulnerable to this virus, the populations over 60, people with comorbid conditions who we know, both on our local data and from our national data, are unfortunately most likely to die from this disease. Today there are 62 patients with covid19 hospitalized in San Francisco across our nine Health Care Hospital entities, and while this is an increase since yesterday, the curve has been remarkably flat for many weeks now and steadily declining since may 5. Although, of course, and youve heard me say this many times, but its i will continue to say it, this could change at any time, but we must acknowledge that big accomplishment that, again, all of us have made major contributions to. You have all been a part of this, and for this i thank you. And lets continue to flatten and push that curve down together. We are certainly making this measurable progress in our fight against coronavirus, and because of that, we are starting here locally under the mayors leadership and across the region with regard to the gradual process of reopening. Yesterday we issued new Health Orders that allow Curbside Pickup for most retailers in the city, and we are taking steps in this regard with caution as our focus on Community Health remains a top priority. We will need to watch, continue to watch for the effects of increased movements that this opening will bring. We know that before the shelterinplace went into place, order went into place, the more we moved, the more the virus moved. And we are certainly hoping, based on the data, the science and the facts, that as we continue to take the precautions necessary, the masking, the social distancing, the intense hygiene that i think weve all adapted to over these last few months, i dont know about you, but my hands are a little red from the washing, and ive used a lot of hand gel recently, but as we adapt, we are hoping that as we move more we will not see increased movement and transmission of the virus. And remember the virus has no timeline, and our new stayathome order reflects that reality. We are in the second inning of a long game, and most scientists expect that this long game is going to be with us for 18 to 24 months. So the new updated health order will allow for future expansion and the reopening of additional businesses provided, again, we continue to flatten and even see a decrease in that curve. And again, the Health Indicators need to continue to look good. This new order doesnt have an Expiration Date so we can act with maximum flexibility and not be penned in, literally, by artificial deadlines. And i have hopes, and i think we should all have hope and good reason to believe, as i said, that if people continue to take precautions we will continue to make progress. But at the same time, if needed, we will dial back. If that curve starts to go up, if we start to see indications that the virus is spreading in the community at an alarming rate, if our intensive care unit numbers start to go up, the hospitalization numbers over all start to go up, we will need to take a step back and decrease our activity in our community. I hope that doesnt happen, and again, the more vigilant we are in our preventive activities, the more likely it is that we will be able to make incremental but sustainable progress Going Forward. It will take resilience. It will require that we stay nimble, and it will require that we continue to monitor the evolving health situation, you know what i say here, using data, science and facts. So in terms of our reopening phases, and i think we have a slide up to show this, this is the focus of our steps will be aligning generally with the states plan that you see on this slide. We are currently in stage 2 a , which is really, again, focusing on that allowing Curbside Pickup and then having the manufacturing and supply chains to support that Curbside Pickup in place. So again, this is just the beginning, and over the next period of two to four weeks, we will continue to watch the data to see if we can enter into that next phase, the 2 b phase. Again, if things go well, we would then be, over time, moving into stages 3 and ultimately into stage 4. But this is, again, an iterative process. Its going to take nimblism, and its going to take a lot of vigilance on all of our parts. We are working locally with the economic Recovery Task force, the office of economic and workforce development, and the community the Business Community and other stakeholders to design smart ways, to design smart ways, ways that are informed, again, by the science, to help businesses come back while protecting Public Health. These things can go and will go hand in hand. I look forward, we look forward to bringing the next steps together and will continue to provide updates in this regard. And again, we will continue to study these indicators over a two to fourweek cycle, which will give us sufficient information to determine whether we can gradually open up into these next stages. So one of the key things we will be doing in this, the vital statistics, as it were, for this staging, is looking at the five indicators that i have mentioned before, but we have another visual for you to see here. As we move towards this reopening, the five indicators we are going to be looking at are cases, the number of covid19 cases, our hospital capacity, testing, Contact Tracing, and p. P. E. , or personal protective equipment. The mayor mentioned these indicators earlier, and as i said at the beginning of my remarks, we had a very good conversation, along with dr. Susan phillip, about how we will be determining and following these indicators as we go forward into these new phases. So again, i would encourage you to watch that session, and we will be coming back to these indicators during this next phase of reopening and onwards. Many of these indicators are also represented on our data tracker, and so i would encourage you to follow along, if you havent already, particularly that hospital curve that i continue to look at every day. I know many of you are doing that. You can also look at our testing data. As the mayor mentioned, we have dramatically scaled up our testing over these past few weeks, and that information is, again, available on our website. So those are the slides, and im going to talk more specifically around testing in one of the most vulnerable populations in a setting in our Health Department, which is laguna honda hospital. And one of the most important testing expansions we have launched is to require universal testing of residents and staff at all Skilled Nursing facilities in San Francisco, including, of course, the largest Skilled Nursing facility in the region, and one of the largest if not the largest in the nation, laguna honda hospital. Id like to provide a Progress Report on how our universal testing is going at laguna honda hospital, and well have final results next week on this. But we were as we initiated the universal testing order, laguna honda was the first Skilled Nursing facility in the city to begin universal testing, and that started on may 4. Resident testing, so the people who live in the facility, the residents, resident testing is now complete, and staff testing will conclude next week. So far we have of the approximately 2500 staff and residents of the laguna honda, we have completed screening, the universal testing of 2,087 people. So just in this facility alone, over 2,000 people have been tested, screened if you will, tested on a routine basis because they either live or work there. This testing allows the hospital to proactively protect residents and staff from exposure by identifying covid19 cases among people without symptoms, and we know that many people have covid19. They may not show symptoms, whether its because they dont show symptoms at all during the course of the infection or whether they are in the early stages of covid19 disease. As of yesterday, 718 residents and 1369 staff have completed the universal testing, and weve had just four positive results, two among staff and two among residents, as, again, a result of this universal testing. That is a less than 1 Positivity Rate for in fact, to be very specific, i know im throwing out a lot of numbers today, but its a 0. 19 rate. That said, with increased testing at laguna honda, we do anticipate additional covid19 cases. We know these institutions are highly vulnerable to infection with covid19, and while we are being extremely vigilant, we know that it is likely that there will be more cases. The key thing is that we do as much as we can to prevent cases, to detect covid19 cases when they are in the facility, either amongst staff or among residents, and then take aggressive action to limit the outbreak and, of course, care for both the staff and residents who are found to be infected. The people who have followed up who have tested positive, excuse me, we have followed up with Contact Tracing and so far have tested additional residents and staff based on the possible exposure from these four cases. This past weekend that followup enabled us to small a outbreak in the south two neighborhood. These neighborhoods are historically been you may think of them as hospital wards. Its a neighborhood because these are longterm residents and certainly goes beyond sort of the traditional hospital ward, but its an area of the hospital where residents live together and where staff Work Together. So we did identify a small outbreak on south two precisely because we implemented this universal testing, this universal screening process. We had found two cases there through the universal testing in that neighborhood, and Case Investigation led us to test additional contacts as a result of that. This additional testing resulted in four positive cases in residents who had previously tested negative. So again, because of our vigilance and repeated testing, we were able to identify four positive cases of residents who had tested negative before. This is an example of the systems that we have put into place working in the way that they should and in the way that they must, enabling us to take action quickly and to move quickly in response to testing results. Staff who test positive are immediately sent home to selfisolate and provided with supports. And residents who test positive are immediately transferred to the new dedicated covid19 unit at laguna honda where all best practices and best medical care is provided. All staff and residents who have tested positive, im thankful to say, are in Good Condition, and we have quarantined south two and continued to monitor, test and investigate contacts. So these new cases bring the total confirmed covid19 cases to laguna honda to a total of 29. Again, thats going all the way back to march 22. Eleven residents and 18 staff. Several of these cases have fully recovered, and im thankful to say that the rest remain in Good Condition. Im also thankful that to date there have been no deaths from covid19 at laguna honda hospital. And im really just so personally grateful to the residents and the staff at laguna honda who have worked tirelessly to continue to contain the spread of covid19. This universal testing, which will now become routine at laguna honda, a huge lift, something that took really a great amount of investment and time, and im just so grateful to the leadership at laguna honda and the staff there who are not only doing the work that they did so well before this pandemic but now being resilient, being flexible, being nimble and ensuring that they are protected they are continuing to take the best care for residents possible. I am proud of our work and really want to thank the ongoing collaboration with the cdc, the centers for Disease Control and prevention and the California Department of Public Health. The improvements that weve made at laguna honda not only benefits the more than 700 residents of laguna honda and the workforce there, but we are also sharing what we learn with other Skilled Nursing facilities across the city. In San Francisco, approximately 40 of all Skilled Nursing facility patients and residents have been tested through universal testing to date. Five facilities have completed universal testing. Four are under way with our support, and the remainder are planned in the next coming weeks. So in conclusion, over the next weeks and months, we will continue to focus on vulnerable populations and expand universal testing to more congregate settings, including shelters. We will continue to focus on the five indicators that i and the mayor have emphasized. We will continue to Work Together with Community Businesses and other stakeholders across the region and coordinate with the state to accomplish as much restoration of activity as we can. And we know that the coronavirus is still here. But we are going to find a way to protect each other and enter a new era for our city, for San Francisco, for our community. We continue to rise to this occasion. And San Francisco, i cant thank you enough for your dedication to the entire health of the entire community, and i look forward to moving forward together. Thank you. Good afternoon. The first questions are for dr. Colfax. The first question is from mel baker, San Francisco public press. When will San Francisco residents and staff of all San Franciscos nursing facilities be tested for coronavirus . Dr. Grant colfax so as i detailed in my remarks, this effort is going well. I dont have a specific end date for you, but i can tell you that with our health order and with the aggressive actions that we are taking and supporting in Nursing Homes across the city, i expect that it will be done soon. And again, this is an iterative process. Its not as though we do one round of universal screening or testing of all residents and staff. This is a process that will be ongoing because we, again, want to support the staff and respects in the Nursing Homes in Early Detection of covid19 to prevent it from spreading through these communities. I would also add that the Health Department is supporting many of these institutions. They havent had the technical expertise, the capacity to test residents, and as we enter this new normal, one of the key things were working with them to do with support and engagement of the state, is to make sure that they make the investments necessary so that routine testing becomes part of their model as they support the communities in their Nursing Homes. Next question is from joshua sabotini, on testing at laguna honda, you mentioned there was an outbreak at south two but there was also an but was there also an outbreak in north four . So that was a prior situation which has been contained, and again, i think in that earlier outbreak one of the key things that we did was bring in our own Infectious Disease experts, experts from the state and the cdc who helped us provide the best techniques and monitoring efforts to contain the infection. That did contain the infection in that neighborhood, and so now were using that evidence and those guidelines to now mitigate the outbreak in this new neighborhood. And again, these Lessons Learned will be applied across nursing facilities, not only in San Francisco but i expect across the state, if not across the nation. So this is hard work. Its challenging work, but as we expand our testing and our ability to care for people and detect the covid19 virus early, im hopeful that we will be in a much better situation than we would have otherwise been. Since the patients who tested positive are outside of the initial outbreak detected in south five, are you concerned about how widely the virus may have spread throughout the facility . Dr. Grant colfax well, this is exactly why we tested all the residents and why were testing all the residents and all the staff. So you heard, this is exactly why we issued a health order to require this testing and, you know, needed to make sure that we were following our own orders, which is why we started with laguna honda. Its also a very large facility. You heard me say, you know, we found a relatively small number of patients and residents on im sorry, of staff and residents on that routine screening, but the system worked because we found a few and then that helped us focus our efforts in a specific neighborhood where we were able to detect more cases and take aggressive control actions, as well as ensuring that the residents who tested positive who were in Good Condition and might not have otherwise been detected get the best care possible. So you know, yes im concerned that we need to be vigilant and this vigilance is paying off in terms of ensuring that were protecting the health of the residents and the health of the staff to the best of our ability based, again, on the data, signs and facts. The next question is from ron lynn, l. A. Times. Can you update us with the percent of people testing positive for coronavirus in San Francisco compared to the worst point . So i think if you go to our data tracker, you can see the percent of people testing positive in our system of care, and that percent that test positive varies depending on how testing is being scaled up, whether there may have been an outbreak at a facility or in a setting where theres likely to be more positives. What i think we really need to focus on in terms of i think the gist of the question is how do we know that were doing better, thats really best reflected in the hospital data. Those are the people who are living with covid19 who are the sickest. Thats the curve that we really need to be looking at. That curve, again, is flat or going down. As we expand our testing, and i think this is a key point, as eexpand our testing, we will surely detect more cases in the city because if we test more people we will get the numbers will go up. We will be watching that percent, that Positivity Rate over time. The last few days that Positivity Rate has hovered around 7 per cent. The next question is from jamie har with the associated press. The governor floated the possibility of having live sporting events without spectators as early as june 1. Is this in any way possible for San Francisco . Well, i think we need to, again, look at the data and monitor carefully work with the sports Business Community and determine whether that is something that could be done safely and commensurate with best practices. I cant speculate on a date, but i would say that i know many of us are looking forward to getting back to watching sports, and its certainly something that weve been discussing. The next question is from sf chronicle. Given sfs grim budget projections for the coming fiscal year, is the department of Public Health bracing for big cuts to its own budget . Dr. Grant colfax so, look, were in a situation where we have an unprecedented Public Health emergency and we also have a major fiscal crisis. And were looking across the department to figure out how can we accomplish the goals of ensuring that the pandemic that our Pandemic Response is robust while also looking at how do we continue to provide as Many Services possible for people in our clinics, in our hospitals, Behavioural Health services and so forth. So were taking a hard look of where we can make adjustments. I will give you a key example of where things have accelerated, for instance, because of the pandemic. Our telehealth work has accelerated in primary care and Behavioural Health services. So we are looking at how do we shift our response and whether there are commensurate cost savings in that work. So a lot of work to do Going Forward with ensuring that our budget goals are met, but also ensuring that our Pandemic Response and that our ability to provide care to the safety net populations is continues. Specifically this is a followup. Specifically, should programs within the Behavioural Health care system, like drug treatment programs and Mental Health facilities, prepare for reductions in service they are able to provide . Dr. Grant colfax im sorry, could you repeat the last part of the question . Ill read it again. Specifically, should programs within the Behavioural Health care system, like drug treatment programs and Mental Health facilities, prepare for reductions in services . Dr. Grant colfax so you know, i think its too early to speculate on that. Right now we are looking, again, at multiple factors that will help determine what our proposed budget will look like in the future. I think that certainly as we look at the intersection of the covid19 pandemic and the Behavioural Health challenges that we already have in the city, we will certainly be looking at what programs need to be supported that intersect with both the Behavioural Health needs and the covid19 response, and increasingly, you know, as we enter this new era, one of the key things we will be looking at across the Health Department is how do our services not only continue the strong work weve done in supporting health, but how do those intersect with our ongoing Pandemic Response, and those will be particularly those will be services that we will particularly focus on adjusting and maintaining and in some cases i think strengthening. Thank you, dr. Colfax. Our final questions are for director Abigail Stuart khan, homelessness and supportive housing. Dr. Stuart khan, your question is the mayor tweeted on friday about the newest safe sleeping site and said the city is looking for new sites. What are the sites that are currently still being considered . Thank you. So as the public may be aware, and just thanks for the opportunity to revisit things that are happening for residents who are unsheltered on our streets, when the epidemic began, the healthy streets Operation Center, which hsh is a part of, paused shelter encampment excuse me, encampment resolutions. This is because moving people into shelters was no longer possible given that congregate sites are a difficult location for people during a pandemic caused by covid. And so we know that this means that there are more People Living unsheltered than there were before, and we know that even before the pandemic we didnt have enough space for people. We also understand that in a crisis people, unhoused and housed, want to be together, that community is what makes us feel safe during times of high anxiety, and so similar to the physical distancing that i need to create with my colleagues or people who are not in my close family, we worked through our partnership to provide education, outreach, access to hand sanitizing, access to sanitation, access to food, and we continue to work in an ongoing way with the unsheltered population. Its become extremely clear that that is insufficient given the number of People Living unsheltered and how difficult it is to physically distance on our sidewalks. And so as you note, kathy, the mayor tweeted about the first sanctioned safe village in San Francisco. This is not something that the department of homelessness or the city has ever approved before, even though many, many cities across our country have done so. And this is really related to the pandemic and the need to provide safety for People Living unsheltered during the pandemic. So to the specifics of that site, it opened last week. It is seen as a shortterm solution. It is run incredibly well by urban alchemy with our deep gratitude and all of the partners working together. The intention at that site via our hsoc partners is to move people out of it as quickly as possible, whether that is into our traditional housing, if they are housing referral status, or into a hotel if they were known to our system of care before april 1. And then to find other solutions and resolutions for other individuals so that that location does not remain long term or even longish term. There is another location that has been identified thats been talked about publicly in the hate, and we are looking forward to its opening in the next couple of weeks, and to our partnership with larkin around that site and their subcontractors. Each site needs to be taken on a casebycase basis. Based on the needs of the unsheltered individuals, the community, the community input, and we look forward to that. The healthy streets Operation Center and the emergency Operations Center remains point on evaluating and looking at future sites. For example, we are looking at a site to serve the mission and the castro districts, and we look forward to that partnership and the role that hsh will play. And other sites will continue to need to be evaluated based on the need in the community, Community Resident input, and the specifics of each location. Followup question how can local residents participate in discussions about the site . Yeah, thats a terrific question, and for those of you who know how we do our Community Process around navigation centers, you know that it is robust and it is extremely time consuming before the covid pandemic. And so we will not be able to do that we cant come together in meetings, Community Meetings of 100 people and share all the details because we cant all be together. But i know that the healthy streets Operation Center and the emergency Operation Center, as they look at each site, partners with local leaders, takes a look at the neighborhood, tries to understand how to mitigate the impact if, in fact, a site is important. Listens to the residents and reaches out as quickly as they possibly can for that engagement, understanding that given the crisis that were in we need to move in an expedited manner. Thank you, director stuart khan. That concludes our questions for todays press conference. This is one place you can always count on to give you what you had before and remind you of what your San Francisco history used to be. We hear that all the time, people bring their kids here and their grandparents brought them here and down the line. Even though people move away, whenever they come back to the city, they make it here. And they tell us that. Youre going to get something made fresh, made by hand and made with quality products and something thats very, very good. The legacy bars and restaurants was something that was begun by San Francisco simply to recognize and draw attention to the establishments. It really provides for San Franciscos unique character. And that morphed into a request that we work with the city to develop a legacy business registration. Im Michael Cirocco and the owner of an area bakery. The bakery started in 191. My grandfather came over from italy and opened it up then. It is a small operation. Its not big. So everything is kind of quality that way. So i see every piece and cut every piece that comes in and out of that oven. Im leslie ciroccomitchell, a fourth generation baker here with my family. So we get up pretty early in the morning. I usually start baking around 5 00. And then you just start doing rounds of dough. Loaves. My mom and sister basically handle the front and then i have my nephew james helps and then my two daughters and my wife come in and we actually do the baking. After that, my mom and my sister stay and sell the product, retail it. You know, i dont really think about it. But then when i sometimes when i go places and i look and see places put up, oh this is our 50th anniversary and everything and weve been over 100 and that is when it kind of hits me. You know, that geez, weve been here a long time. [applause] a lot of people might ask why our legacy business is important. We all have our own stories to tell about our ancestry. Our lineage and ill use one example of tommys joint. Tommys joint is a place that my husband went to as a child and hes a fourth generation san franciscan. Its a place we can still go to today with our children or grandchildren and share the stories of what was San Francisco like back in the 1950s. Im the general manager at tommys joint. People mostly recognize tommys joint for its murals on the outside of the building. Very bright blue. You drive down and see what it is. They know the building. Tommys is a San Francisco hoffa, which is a germanstyle presenting food. We have five different carved meats and we carve it by hand at the station. You prefer it to be carved whether you like your brisket fatty or want it lean. You want your pastrami to be very lean. You can say i want that piece of corn beef and want it cut, you know, very thick and i want it with some sauerkraut. Tell the guys how you want to prepare it and they will do it right in front of you. San franciscos a place thats changing restaurants, except for tommys joint. Tommys joint has been the same since it opened and that is important. San francisco in general that we dont lose a grip of what San Franciscos came from. Tommys is a place that youll always recognize whenever you lock in the door. Youll see the same staff, the same bartender and have the same meal and that is great. Thats important. The service that San Francisco heritage offers to the legacy businesses is to help them with that application process, to make sure that they really recognize about them what it is that makes them so special here in San Francisco. So well help them with that application process if, in fact, the board of supervisors does recognize them as a legacy business, then that does entitle them to certain financial benefits from the city of San Francisco. But i say really, more importantly, it really brings them public recognition that this is a business in San Francisco that has history and that is unique to San Francisco. It started in june of 1953. And we make everything from scratch. Everything. We started a you we started a off with 12 flavors and mango fruits from the philippines and then started trying them one by one and the family had a whole new clientele. The business really boomed after that. I think that the flavors we make reflect the diversity of San Francisco. We were really surprised about the legacy project but we were thrilled to be a part of it. Businesses come and go in the city. Pretty tough for businesss to stay here because it is so expensive and theres so much competition. So for us who have been here all these years and still be popular and to be recognized by the city has been really a huge honor. We got a phone call from a woman who was 91 and she wanted to know if the mitchells still owned it and she was so happy that we were still involved, still the owners. She was our customer in 1953. And she still comes in. But she was just making sure that we were still around and it just makes us feel, you know, very proud that were carrying on our fathers legacy. And that we mean so much to so many people. It provides a perspective. And i think if you only looked at it in the here and now, youre missing the context. For me, legacy businesses, legacy bars and restaurants are really about setting the context for how we come to be where we are today. I just think its part of San Francisco. People like to see familiar stuff. At least i know i do. In the 1950s, you could see a picture of tommys joint and looks exactly the same. We havent change add thing. I remember one lady saying, you know, ive been eating this ice cream since before i was born. And i thought, wow we have, too. Shop and dine on the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges residents to do shopping and dining within the 49 square miles of San Francisco by supporting local Services Within neighborhood. We help San Francisco remain unique, successful and vibrant. Where will you shop and dine in the 49 . San francisco owes the charm to the unique character of the neighborhood comer hall district. Each corridor has its own personality. Our neighborhoods are the engine of the city. You are putting money and support back to the community you live in and you are helping Small Businesses grow. It is more environmentally friendly. Shopping local is very important. I have had relationships with my local growers for 30 years. By shopping here and supporting us locally, you are also supporting the growers of the flowers, they are fresh and they have a price point that is not imported. It is really good for everybody. Shopping locally is crucial. Without that support, Small Business cant survive, and if we lose Small Business, that diversity goes away, and, you know, it would be a shame to see that become a thing of the past. It is important to dine and shop locally. It allows us to maintain traditions. It makes the neighborhood. I think San Francisco should shop local as much as they can. The retail marketplace is changes. We are trying to have people on the floor who can talk to you and help you with products you are interested in buying, and help you with exploration to try things you have never had before. The fish business, you think it is a piece of fish and fisherman. There are a lot of people working in the fish business, between wholesalers and fishermen and bait and tackle. At the retail end, we about a lot of people and it is good for everybody. Shopping and dining locally is so important to the community because it brings a tighter fabric to the community and allows the Business Owners to thrive in the community. We see more Small Businesses going away. We need to shop locally to keep the Small Business alive in San Francisco. Shop and dine in the 49 is a cool initiative. You can see the banners in the streets around town. It is great. Anything that can showcase and legitimize Small Businesses is a wonderful thing. Muted. Perfect. L thing. Muted. Sorry, dominica. Okay. Sfgov tv, we are ready to start the meeting now. This is a special meeting of the Small Business commission. The meeting is being called to order at 11 05 a. M. Small Business Commission thanks Media Services and sfgov tv and the department of technology for televising this meeting, which can be viewed on sfgov tv 2, live streamed at sfgovtv. Org. Members of the public, who will be phoning in, the number is 888 3634735. And the access code is 4134030. When prompted, dial 10 in order to be added to the speaker line. The auto prompts will look at callers entry. The questionandanswer time. But this is the Public Comment period