Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Replay Public Safety Neighborhood Services Committee 12315 20151209

Not able to provide a support letter. But she will provide a letter of support. Supervisor david campos my understanding is that supervisor breed is in support of that as well. As laid out a number of conditions and specific for karoake places to protect the health and safety of people and prevent crime or prostitution. Are you aware, are you understanding all of these different conditions . Yes, definitely. Yes. It sounds like there is at least one other karoake place nearby. Yes. One couple doors down from you. So maybe it will become a more karoake center place in japantown in the fillmore area. Okay. I dont see any other questions from colleagues. Lets open up for Public Comment. Is there any additional Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. I just revealed that i like karoake and aware of different places. Good luck with the business. Colleagues can we have a motion on this application. Its been moved and seconded. Can we do that without objection, colleagues . Thank you. We want to thank jim smith and larson from sf govtv for televising us today. Next item. Hearing on measures to ensure Public Safety around pacific gas and Electric Company transformers citywide and requests the Fire Department support. Supervisor david campos thank you. I want to thank all who have supported us and i want to thank pg e as well as the San Francisco planning commission. On saturday, a transformer exploded on vernal heights. This is something that seriously injured two people. Mr. Robert antinelly and mr. Cruz. Mr. Cruz who was standing over the grade that covered the transformer was hurled into the street when that happened. Both men were treated and released from San Francisco General Hospital and we are grateful to San Francisco General Hospital for the great treatment that they provided them. Since then, several neighbors in vernal heights have rightly raised concerns about other explosions and the overall safety of pg es electrical utilities specifically transformers. The purpose of this hearing is to have a better understanding of what happened on september 27th, in Bernal Heights. We also want to get a better per on how transformers work, their safety, citywide, how many are there, how are they maintained. Are transformers in any parts of the city in this neighborhood nearing the end of their useful life . Most importantly for me, not only as a resident of vernal heights who worries about a possible explosion of a transformer near my house or as im walking down the neighborhood, i want to find out what Safety Measures are in place or could be put in place to ensure the safety of our residents to make sure there is no harm that comes to any member of the public not only in vernal heights but any neighborhood in the county of San Francisco. We have asked representatives from pg e to come and represent. Weve been also working with the California Public Utilities Commission that is responsible for regulating this equipment and weve also asked the members of the San Francisco Fire Department which respond to fire and electrical incidents to present today. Before i turn it over to pg e i want some people to share their thoughts who could not be here today. This is from valerie. She said hi, i cannot attend this hearing but i hope someone mentions this transformer was smoking and having electrical parts emitted. It was real scary and a real fire hazard. Luckily we have an electrician who lives on the nearby and could respond. This adds a danger of transformers to Bernal Heights neighborhood. Another one. Living next door i was told by a neighbor that a technician was stricken and black face and taken to hospital. Our power was out. A technician at the site told me it was likely old equipment allowing water seepage. I saw a gaping hole out of the unit. And it was decided it was safe hours later. This is a real danger and a deaffection and program. A smooth metal was for years a treasure treacherous pedestrian habit. I fell once and had to remember to walk around it after that. Other people slipped as well and it was painted with nonslip coating. This is from brian we have wind failure every month and this happens every time with that let me allow pg e to present. Mr. On the ontario smith who is the senior representative for pg e. Thank you very much to you and your staff for your responsiveness. I also understand that Berry Anderson advice operations is here. Presenter thank you. Im going to turn it to bearey anderson who is in charge of emergency operations. Hes been with us for 30 years and our licensee engineer and the lifelong council for private partnership that focuses on emergency preparedness. Barry will give remarks and provide the answers that we want. Thank you. Presenter thank you for inviting us to this important hearing. Your constituents are also our customers and like you we take the incident that occurred in Bernal Heights very seriously. Thats why we welcome the opportunity to work with you as partners to make sure that we are doing Everything Possible to safe guard san franciscans and continue the upgrades we are making to our system to make it the safest and most reliable power system within the nation. Towards exactly that end, pg e is spending billions of dollars investing in the safety and reliability of our system. We are working to rebuild infrastructure at a rapid pace to have safe infrastructure in the country. The customers we serve and our employees. We are spending more than 1. 5 billion. At the same time San Francisco possess its unique chances based on density and unique geography. The investigation is being conducted. Pg e responded to an outage 5 blocks away. Thankfully crews were able to respond quickly including local firefighters and local police. Our thoughts continue to go out to the people who were injured and we continue to support them. We are grateful to the San Francisco Fire Department for their Swift Response and help with this unfortunate sdinlt. Incident. Pg e conducted an electrical control in july and nothing found and another one in 2013. Our records show prior to the incident there were no main outages on this circuit. There was a serious issue occurred october 27th. The investigation will hopely be able to definitively answer what happened on that date and the failure. We are not waiting until that date to make sure we increase our efforts. We took swift action and will do the following. First we conducted inspections above and beyond our internal requirements in Bernal Heights and completed in october. We inspected the 125 underground transformers in Bernal Heights area. As part of this, pg e used the most modern technology. We did not identify any Hazardous Conditions to this inspection and we took the strength and reliability of this area. Second, we replaced the same transformer on the 27. Throughout the entire city of San Francisco there are seven transformers of the same manufacture. We are pro actively replacing the same transformers and expect the work to be completed at the end of this month. Third, we are asking the question as to whether and what can be done to improving the sidewalk and enclosures. The design in place is currently in line with industry standards. The lid is invented to keep the transformer cool under normal operating conditions. However we are looking for improved designs. Four, we want to follow the recommendation of the third party report that immediately was considered after the report. There was a mechanical failure to the internal transformers. The final report will inform us on the matter more quickly. We look forward to further improvement. We will also be working with the San Francisco Fire Department and regulate oris to ensure we are following industry practices and going far and beyond the current regulations continually improve our performance. This is in addition to the on going efforts which we said early include 1. 5 billion investment in infrastructure and safety upgrades in San Francisco. Thank you again for inviting us today and for being our partner and for safety and reliability in San Francisco. Im available for questions. Thank you, i have a few questions. Thank you for that t how much has pg e managed throughout the city and county in San Francisco. Its approximately 15,000 transformers you messaged mentioned you were replacing several transformers. How many types are there . There are different types of transformers. Some are called the single face transformers that serve the residents and others are very large that serve our under part of the ground and there are several voltages. Why is it that you decided to replace the seven transformers . Those seven transformers is really out of abundance of caution. They are made by the same manufacturer malone in Bernal Heights that failed. Did you have any problems with other transformers in the past snt city . The one i would like to talk to you about is the one you mention in your comments. It was a piece of equipment, a switch gear transformer that failed in Bernal Heights that include in the operation. In that circumstance there was the switch gear had a low amount of oil that when an arc was created that equipment failed. Our crew wears protective equipment when that happens, however one of our members was burned during that. We take these incidents very serious and we learn from them and in this particular case we added a protective device on the switch stick. If that happened in the future, our employee would be protected. Can i ask you with that switch gear transformer did you replace it or leave it . No that transformer was replaced. How many of that type of transformer do you have of the 15,000 of that same type . Of the malone . Yes. We have seven to replace. Did. There is a total of nine. How many transformer explosion from pg e . The one i know happened on october 27th and none that happened in 2014 and 2013. How about going back 5 years . Im not sure on the number that failed. I can tell you when we do inspections of these transformers we do 1 3 of them each year which is the reason why the transformer in Bernal Heights was looked at in 2013. The plan was to have a full inspection in 2016. What our full inspection does is uses an infrared camera to look at the heat and transformer to see if its leaking oil or any other conditions that we look for it to cause a premature failure. What is the usual life of a transformer . Thats a good question. When transformers are built they have very few moving parts inside. So from an engineering perspective they are built for a kind of infinite type of life. What we find is that a transformer will fail if its operate negative an environment that its not supposed to. When its exposed to high heat and subject to greater loads than what its designed for. What the data shows is the transformer that would be installed today that was brand new doesnt have greater likelihood of is you are survival than one that is 30 years old. What was the range . They range brand new that were installed but on average about 35 years old. 35 years old. Do you know what the oldest transformer that you have is . No, i dont. My speculation would be 50 or 60 years old. So, 50, 60. I think it would be helpful for all of us first of all knowing that we have 15,000 of these throughout the city. What the age of the 15,000 is. I dont know if you have that information if you can provide us . We can provide a distribution of age with the mode, the range, the average. In terms of best practices is there a recommended time during which you should replace a transformer . You said it was probably indefinite, so no time . Thanks for that question. How we do it is through our inspection process so every year we inspect 1 3 of our ground transformers to make sure there are no leaks and secondly we use our infrared and look for hot spots. We look at our transformers at anyone given year to find if they are going to fail. We put in our Maintenance Plan in our work schedule to work. The Maintenance Plan requires what exactly for a transformer, ideal how often you are supposed to inspect it . We have some of the highest standards to meet within our industry. Our regulators have strict guidelines. We have patrol on an annual basis of all of our transformers and every 3 years we do a thorough what we call an investigation or inspection. Thats where we use the infrared equipment. Do you have the information for having done that for the 15,000 transformers in the city . Yes. How this is done, a compliance inspector pulls out a map of all the facilities. There is a record of what was decade last detected last time it was patrolled and a card signed off, a confirmation and a sticker goes on certifying it was checked. What i get asked by residents of Bernal Heights is, could Something Like this happen again . You said that we have 125 transformers in Bernal Heights alone. What do you say to residents who might be afraid that like myself actually that an explosion could happen again . Supervisor, i appreciate that question. I would say first of all our system is safe. We have high standards that perform inspections on our equipment and we have from an inspection practice. From my experience, i can tell you that failures wont happen. The producers of this equipment cant guarantee this wont happen 100 of the time. What we do after an incident like Bernal Heights we take swift action to do additional patrols, final potentially a failure of a certain type of transformer to take an aggressive action to remove it and at the same time look for other ways to make improvements. In this case the sidewalk vault for example, we recognize the explosion causes the high gases for it to come in and under the right conditions. Given we had the transformer explosion and given those that need to be replaced. Do you know where they are in the city . Are there anymore in Bernal Heights . Where are those . There are no more in Bernal Heights. There are three or four in fillmore district. One in russian hill, one in the castro. Thats the area. I could follow up what is your timeline . All to be done by december 30. Th. Im sure that supervisor and president breed want to know where they are located and is there any reason why you couldnt replace them sooner than december 30th . We are working hard to do it. What some of them require clearances to customers and as you take the transformer out you want to make sure you are sensitive to their needs as well. Making arrangements to have generators. We can certainly look at accelerating that schedule. All will not be complete on december 30th. Have you been cited by the puc on the issue of transformers before pg e . To my knowledge we havent. In this particular case, the puc has been working with us. They visited this site. They have been with us as our Third Party Investigator has been doing a Destructive Testing of the transformer. The final question to my colleagues who may have a question for you. In terms of the members of the public who may have a specific concern about a transformer, is there a particular number they should call if they want to report any concern or issue they have . They could call our 800 number. 1800 as the hearing proceeds, maybe you can give it to us so we can give it to the public. I know one is 1800 pg e for outage. Well follow up to make sure. Thank you very much. Colleagues, do you have any questions for pg e . Supervisor Julie Christensen i just have a quick one. Do i understand that it was an anomaly related to the location of the transformer in the Bernal Heights incident . Yeah. Somebody told me the Residential Development followed the location of the transformer . Yeah, i think supervisor the question of the location of the invented lid was very close to the residential wall which had to do with the transformer there prior to the extension of that residence. And we didnt have a standard then. We have a standard now that it needs to be at least 3 feet away. What we have done is actually remove that location and now the secondary wiring is based off another feed thats there. Thats just another level. Thats another thing we follow up for safety. Thank you very much. Supervisor david campos the third part inspection, when do you expect that to be completed . The next 30 days or so. If you can share that, we would appreciate it. We would be pleased to submit a summary and corrective action. Colleagues, the next presentation comes from the California Public Utilities Commission, the regulatory body that regulates this industry and to present here is charlotte presenter im representing the California Public Utilities Commission. My role is in the safety and enforcement division. I over see the work of the engineers to ensure they are operating in in accordance with the puc requirements. In response to customer complaints regarding to safety and communication facilities. The c puc has begun an investigation which is currently on going. As soon since the investigation is still under progress, i cannot comment on the investigation. We can talk about what is being done now. We have reviewed inspection records and other documents pertaining to the incidents. Several request have been submitted to pg e and we are currently awaiting for their response. We know that pg e contacted the thirty party to perform an analysis to determine the cause of failure. Once we have the result we will review them. I can also provide the information to involve pg e incidents such as this one. We investigate utilities beyond our requirement and we will investigate any event even if it does not mean the commissions requirement. When investigating an incident, bsrb will tailor its situation. In general, a utilities engineer from esrb is assigned to investigate an incident. The engineer visited the site of the incident and conducted a field investigation. At the scene of the incident, they assign engineers first identify and safe locations and ensure the incident is safe and under control before starting investigation. The engineer will interview witnesses and First Responders and physical evidence. They will review records and do any other necessary follow up investigation. Because each incident is unique, the investigation length will vary based on many factors including the location and have the ability of witnesses and the level of the witness cooperation, involvement and another Government Agencies and test that may need to be conducted. With this investigation with electric incidents review neglect by the utilities and will call an investigation which can result in a penalty and chance to the utilities procedures as the c puc deems necessary. In addition to incident investigation, our engineers perform four types of safety audit. Electric distribution audits, electric transmission audits. For the one that failed in Bernal Heights are included in the electric distribution audits. The c puc has governed orders in the distribution systems. Go 95 addresses the construction of overhead electric and communication facilities. Over 128 addresses the design and construction of the communication systems. And over 165 addresses inspection requirements for electric distribution for facilities. In both incident investigations and safety audits we look at whether or not the utility has complied with the Commission General requirements. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. Im happy to address any questions or concerns you may have. Supervisor david campos thank you, i have a couple of questions. So, the you said by now there has been an investigation. Do you have a sense of when the investigation will be completed and when you can share the findings of the investigation with the public . Sure, because this investigation involves an injury, it may take us up to 67 months to complete the investigation. Once we have the Investigation Report it can be made public upon request. This incident happened october 27th. When will the report be completed . By the goal of next month. Depending on the investigation discovery it could be more or less. Is that march . Could be potentially, yes. They said they have 15,000 transformers in the city and county of San Francisco, about. Is that correct with the puc. We dont collect that information. I have no reason to doubt them. We dont collect the number of transformers. We dont collect data that tell us how many transformers or utility switches we have. But if you want, we can get this information. You are the agency that regulates that utility. Why wouldnt you collect data on how many transformers the utility has . Because we inspect these records with the other utilities. You inspect the utilities but you dont have the data yourself . Thats correct. Lets look at the transformers. Does the c puc inspect the transformers . When we do the audit, we ensure the utilities are inspecting the transformers as required. We do go inside the vault and look to make sure there are no violations. So, does the c puc inspect the transformers itself or is the inspection done by the utility . By the utilities. So, if you are a San Francisco resident looking at the 15,000 transformers that San Francisco has, has the California Public Utilities Commission itself inspected any of those 15,000 transformers . No. Okay. I have to say as a resident of San Francisco, it doesnt give you a lot of confidence to know that the agency is supposed to regulate this industry hasnt actually inspected any of those transformers. Let me comment on what you said. Utilities are, we trust that the utilities are the expert in inspecting their facilities. For us what we do is make sure they are inspecting their facilities on time, documenting any unsafe conditions as they are taking the correct steps to fix it. What we do when we do our audits we look for violation of go 128 discussed in construction. I dont usually quote ronald regan. You have to trust but to verify. Do you trust and verify . Of course we do. How many of the 15,000 transformers in San Francisco have you conducted . We chose the region. We go to the office and look at the records of the entire region. Not just transformers. You have underground and overhead facilities. They are both combined into one audit. We look at the utility record. We see if they have conducted the inspection. We make sure they have documented any violation. We look at the field, we look at the facilities to ensure they have inspected and corrected what they said they did and in addition to this we document any violations we discover. Now, how often we do this every year for many of the regions. So its specifically with pg e how many of those safety audits have you conducted . I dont have those numbers with me. We post the audit report on the website. Anybody interested of looking at our report and observing how many violations we have documented they can log onto our website and look at the report. How often are you supposed to conduct those safety audits . We conduct the safety audits every five 5 years to ensure they are inspected by us every 5 years. When was the last time you conducted a safety audit of pg e that would include the transformer that exploded here . For the city of San Francisco . I think it was last year if im not mistaken. Okay, now, when pg e presented and said that the lights of the transformers, im not quoting, im just para phrasing. The life of the transformer ranges can be indefinite, but there are some transformers that can be new but also 35 years old, 50, 60. From the c pucs perspective, what is the life of a transformer . Is there a life cycle for a transformer . No. On many factors it affects the operation and life of transformers. The environment that it exist. How many times the transformer is overloaded. There are many things that determine this. Does it worry you that you may have transformers that are old as 60 years old in San Francisco . Personally, as long as you are inspecting the transformers to ensure it can deliver power and complies with the rules. In my own opinion, i would not worry about it. I ask this of pg e and when i ask the c puc, whats your message to residents of Bernal Heights where you have 125 transformers. We learn now that you puc doesnt directly inspect the transformers that it relies on the utility to do the inspection. So whats your message to the residents of Bernal Heights in terms of the safety of these 125 transformers in their neighborhood . Well, i can assure them that we are doing our best to make sure that pg e ands any other utilities are inspecting their facilities and taking actions to correct any deficiencies in their system. To the best of your knowledge has pg e inspected all the 15,000 transformers in our city . If they have not, i will include in the reports as a violation. As of today, december 3rd, can you tell the residents of San Francisco whether or not the c puc has verified that pg e has inspected all 15,000 transformers . We have verified but i dont know the answer. We have to take a look at the audit report to let you know. Well, that doesnt leave me with a lot of sense of security. You have 15,000 of these things in the city and county of San Francisco. We have seven engineers in california that do this kind of work. Its difficult to remember everything off the top of our head. We did audit pg e and all the other utilities. If they did not inspect this equipment, we cite them. I will be able to provide you the information, but i dont have it on the top of my head. For as many engineers, how many are responsible in california . We have four engineers in Northern California and southern california. You have four engineers in Northern California . Thats right. I have to say its one of those things. We at the local level dont have any authority over the c puc. It doesnt seem you have that many people working on this. Three engineers for all of Northern California doesnt seem like a lot. Thats not my decision to make. Thank you. Colleagues, do we have any questions . Thank you very much. Now the last presentation is from the San Francisco Fire Department and i want to call on our, we have our battalion chief jack clem on and we have deputy chief Mark Gonzalez is here. What i wanted to say about our Fire Department is you know so many things happen in the city and neighborhood. As a Fire Department there is so much interaction that happens when an incident takes place and im just very grateful for the level of professionalism that our firefighters have and in district 9, not just Bernal Heights, the mission, we had besides this type of explosion, weve had fires, weve had a number of incidents and i can honestly say that but for the very prompt response from our firefighters, we could be talking about a lot more serious injury and fatalities in a number of these incidents. So im very grateful to the department and to its men and women for what they do. With that, deputy chief. Presenter thank you, supervisor campos, we appreciate being appreciated. If the residents feel any sense of danger, they are call 911 right away. Our presenter, is here. I dont want to steal his thunder. Well list some of our equipment and response stats for the last 2 years. Thank you. Presenter just a quick introduction. My name is jack kremen. Battalion chief. I was appointed to pg e liaison. I report directly to chief Mark Gonzalez also. A will little recent history. I have been working with pg e to have a Training Facility between the two of us so in the field we know exactly what we are talking about. Recently last year , pg e donated a couple transformers and some gas meters that we installed over at our Training Facilities at Treasure Island. This gave the firefighters training to see what the components look like and how we can deal with it and pg e also supplied a Public Safety officer or Service Person frank froeney, Public Safety specialist to come out and talk to us about how to make us safe also with the equipment. These pg e meters and we can go in an area to measure the level of oxygen and toxicity in the room. We also have ipads. On these ipads we got, the battalion chiefs, they have complete pg e gas distribution lines. So when we pull up on the scene, we can just tap our location, we can see the lines underground and what situation we are getting ourselves into. Pg e also donated several years ago a co 2 trailer housed in station 13. They upgraded to a new trailer with new bells and whistles. The station 13 is in charge with the maintenance and training in that. We recently added pg e to our unified command system at communications. So we have greater alarms. They are automatically contacted to have their crews come over to start to join us at the fire before we can officially call them. The last one is two current things we are working on to expedite our calls and make things safer for the field and for the citizens is a mutual link, a communication to Communication Center from pg e directly to our communities. Right now they are still using the telephone and sometimes it doesnt work all the time. As Communications Get lost. This can be more on a computer and it will be much more efficient. The last one that is just an fancy now and so they can expedite their equipment before they get to the scene how big the incident is we are working on. I was planning a couple questions from the board. The first question is what circumstances does sf puc respond to pg e calls . Well, we respond to a variety of gas and electrical incidents. Anything from wires down which can be a cable wire from a cable pole, electrical pole which is very easy. Some are gas pilots. We go in and something simple like that. It goes from simple calls to underground volt fires and transformer fires. Its a huge variety of calls that we respond to in both gas and electric throughout the city. The next question is what is our level of responses. Since we have such a wide variety of calls, we have a wide variety of responses. For example if there is a problem with gas, well send out a single engine company. They will evaluate the problem and they will be able to mitigate it themselves, either pull up a wire or pilot response. If they cant, well send an engine and battalion chief. We will come in and evaluate the area and atmosphere and see if we need to upgrade our response. Most of the times we are able to locate the situation ourself. If its something we could not handle, then i will especially call or the chief to help mitigate the problem itself. The last one came on a couple years ago. These are lessons we learned from new york city. They had an incident where the gas Company Called the Fire Department and they didnt have good communication. And it ended up the gas all went to one building and the building exploded. It was a disaster. We are learning fwr that. Chief gonzalez went back to new york a couple years ago and did research. When pg e calls us, we know its going to be a very big problem. We send out everybody to check it out. We send a hazmat, a specialist, a co 2 unit, hazmat specialist and battalion chief. Once the chief gets on scene, he will evaluate the situation. If its downtown in the middle of the day, we probably need more resources. If its in hunters poise, in point, in a safe area, we wont. Depends on the situation that responses well give to them. How many explosion calls have occurred in the past year, locations, any patterns established . Well, i was able to break down the communications to four different categories. We have wires, electrical wires, gas leak and wires down. Last year we responded do 1476 gas and electric related calls. Well, out of our 131,000 calls we had last year was approximate he 1. 1 . One of them can be very large. The volt fires. In the last five years weve had 40 volt fires. In the last two years, weve had four each year. The number seems to be going down. Three years ago, it was a little erratic 3 4 years ago, but it seems the numbers are going down. There is no pattern on that either. The only pattern that did notice here is a map. You cant really see it. Its broken in districts. Its difficult to see. The red is electrical and the blue is gas. The bigger the number, the more incidents we had in that area. We were able to put in street boxes. Everything is pretty much even except as you notice on the coast in district 4, a lot more electrical out there. I believe from my personal experience from working out there and living out there, i believe the weather has a lot to do that. The fog gets into the transformers and the electrical wires and the water conducts with the electricity up there and sometimes there is fires and storms out there and knocks the wires down. I didnt see any real pattern out there throughout this. Here is another way to look at it. We put it in graph form. Its pretty consistent all the way through. Its a little bit higher in the winter months in november to february as expected. People use more gas and electricity during that time and its consistent throughout the years. Last question is a great question. Are there any safety precautions that San Francisco Fire Departments recommends . Yes. The first thing to do is call 911. Thats the simplest thing to do. You dont need to know anything. All you know if there is a problem. You call 911. We evaluate the problem and we will decide if anything else needs to be taken care of. The next step for the citizens if they really want to help and do something is to help educate themselves. From what we have developed is the Neighborhood Emergency Response Team established in 1990 after the 89 earthquake when we realized the citizens were not prepared. We were prepared. Other cities from around the country are coming to us to find out what our program is doing and to emulate it. Erica artaras is running that right now. Shes training 126,000 citizens. One class is specifically detailed for gas and electric. It shows them where the shut offs are, how to use the main shut off and electric emergencies and the important thing to teach everybody is to deny entry and clear the area before we get there. That helps the citizens. They make it safe. If thats already established, it makes our job so much easier. Another safety thing is one thing that pg e offers. Its called eight 811 dial before you dig. Thats been a problem. People are digging their on and they will break the gas line and not even knowing he was there. I highly recommend education is the most important that we can get to our citizens. If we can get them involved in the program, that would be fantastic. What does our future look like . We continue to train with pg e and do quarterly trainings with them. We have been working very closely and incorporate them into our training. They do not only train our firefighters, but they train in our academy to teach the new ones. And erica got them in the new program and they teach 2 hours of the 4hour class on safety. What better than them to teach. The training, they are involved in that. Pg e has a training and they assimilate a disaster and the city, we are invited and we participate and we go through the evolutions of a disaster. The next thing is that pg e are Communication Centers. Communication, there is always a big problem and thats what we are working on right now to ensure that our communications will talk to each other in a timely manner to get it down to the field. Thank you very much for your time. If you have any questions, please give us a call. Thank you very much. I appreciate the collaboration with pg e. I appreciate the fact that they gave you a couple of transformers so you can train on how to deal with them. Pg e noted that there are 15,000 transformers in the city. To your knowledge, has there been any other explosion of the transformer that you are aware of in the last few years . I know of four. Eight in the last 2 years. Last year i was looking downtown and went through i dont know if it was explosion or what. By the time we got there, there was smoke coming out of it. It was contained. We called pg e and they came in. Interesting that i think they only had one but you may have four possibly but maybe they are not qualified as explosions. Maybe thats the discrepancy. I dont know if you want to call it explosion, fire or, you know, whatever you want to call it. Some of the transformers, they have some above on the electrical poles and below them. They are all over the place. Do you have any concerns, we heard from the puc that they dont really inspect them . Are you aware of that . I was not aware of that. We dont inspect them but we do an orientation inside the building to make sure we are safe while we are in there. For the residents not just Bernal Heights but in the city is there anything want you to add for how to maximize everyones safety going forward. I think to be safe is to be smart. To be smart is to get involved. To get involved call our neighborhood response team. Thats the best information you can give them. Thank you, chief. Appreciate it. Colleagues, that concludes the presentation on this item. This will be an opportunity to open up to Public Comment. This is an opportunity to speak for Public Comment. Anyone would like to speak . Please come forward. Public speaker i think its outrageous that there is no puc inspection of transformers. I think you should start in the area of the recent explosion. Is there any additional Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Supervisor campos . Supervisor david campos thank you. I want to thanks pg e and Public Utilities commission and Fire Department. We have received a number of emails and calls and i know for a lot of people its a challenge. Many people in the neighborhood have been watching this. Its a challenge to come to city hall to a meeting in the afternoon, but i know that many people are watching and will be watching this. I think the main thing here for me is that when Something Like this happens in a neighborhood, i think that one of the things that we have a responsibility to do with government is to make sure there is as much transparency as possible. Im appreciative of pg e that they were able to come and share their information with us. I have to say, that in terms of the California Public Utilities Commission piece thats hard to hear from me. Not because of what individuals said or didnt say, but that you have an agency that overseas this utilities and other utilities that is clearly under staffed. That it doesnt leave a lot of confidence to know that the level of oversight that is presented relies heavily on the utility itself to do all of this work. There is no separate independent verification that involves the agency itself inspecting these trarmers transformers and there are 15,000 of them in the city. So, what i will say to the residents of Bernal Heights is we will continue to work with pg e to work with our Fire Department and work with the c puc to make sure that we are doing everything you can to ensure the safety of the public and to make sure that Something Like this doesnt happen. I do think if there is one lesson to be learned that maybe the puc can be more active as to how it provides oversight to this utility and Nothing Specific to pg e. I think that its in terms of best practice that will increase the level of confidence everyone has because you have a history of things happening and as what happened in san bruno and we want to minimize the injury to any person. That was really the intent of this hearing. I want to thank again all the presenters and we are going to continue to watch this and if we can get from pg e, the results of its independent Party Investigation that would be greatly appreciated and from the c puc if it takes 6 months, if we can within the appropriate period get a copy of whatever Investigation Report comes out, i think that would be great. In the meantime, two members of Bernal Heights community, if there are any concerns, i look forward to hearing from you in my office. I also want to close by thanking sheila hagan of my office who helped work on this. With that, colleagues, i would ask that this hearing be filed and again, thank you very much. Thank you. Colleagues can we do that without objection . Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Evans, please call the next item. City clerk item no. 3, hearing to examine the issue of granting Liquor Licenses to nontraditional alcohol retailers in San Francisco. Our goal is to finish this meeting before 4 30. This item has come together because of years of work by San Francisco led Alcohol Coalition and many with us today. There is a strange danger. A new trend of Corporate Strategy of different chain stores and Fast Food Companies looking at making more money out of selling alcohol. For example, starbucks and taco bell have recently submitted applications in San Francisco. But this is a trend that is going on around the country. The youth Led Coalition and San Francisco Alcohol Coalition have been tracking this along with other trends like alcohol pops, targeted to younger people. Marketing that goes to sometimes places where younger people are. Its a wide range of different issues that the coalitions have been looking at. We are talking about connections to alcohol sales and already over saturated density in San Francisco and a lot of researchers like professors laura smith will bring up connections of that density especially in lower income neighborhoods and also violence and other issues of economic decline when you have an over saturation of alcohol sales. I also wanted to say that a number of Community Organizing efforts in los angeles and other places have looked at strategies and our grass roots very Diverse Coalition is looking at strategies and how we can counter them with healthier strategies with our community. This is a new business now requesting alcohol licenses in San Francisco that our local Police Department is starting to object to these licenses, but there is a complex structure of the state abc that lieutenant will go through. We have a number of speakers and Health Experts besides the grass roots and other leaders. Lieutenant is here with other supervisor agent within the Police Department. Also we have Community Based leaders like patty, senior director of San Francisco programs for the Youth Leadership institute; a strong anchor of our coalition and pedro, for open Center Recovery and we have leaders like Judith Martin of Behavioral Health services and lauren smith from universe of california San Francisco from department of medicine and lastly two department heads, jacqueline from our Entertainment Commission and office of Small Business in addition to a number of youth and Community Leaders. Im pleased that david soriano, our head of counsel will be here too. The people will mention San Francisco is over saturated with alcohol sales. Businesses with the rights to sell alcohol, there is 4500 businesses in our tiny city. They are largely concentrated in neighborhoods like the tenderloin and civic center and low income neighborhoods. I think the Health Equity demands that the coalition are very important. This hearing is cosponsored by supervisor norman yee and jane kim. Not necessarily the three Asian Pacific islanders because a lot of the coalition are youth leaders from uycc and fpcc and chinese and japanese american leaders and others of color that are a key part of our coalition. Our Community Knows that alcohol related harms are causes of premature death and other Health Problems and they lead to huge Health Public health cost direct and indirect within our city. Our city also has the highest density in our state of california of alcohol sales as well. So our Prevention Coalition is extremely concerned about chain stores that are looking at additional revenue by selling alcohol. So starbucks, just think about how many starbucks there are in San Francisco. There were some around 80, i believe, or taco bells as well. If there is one or two start, there is the explosion of more of them and to allow cheap alcohol sales with fast food and pefrjs beverage and its a harm to our community as well and not only are these types of chains but other cafes and chain stores to look at this model to profit off our community as well. Our community and coalition think its time to take a stronger stand against for a citywide strategy against alcohol and substances as well to protect ourselves from these Corporate Strategies going on. The coalition through the hearing today will look at how this comprehensive strategy has to look at health and safety of our individual Neighborhoods Health and well being of youth and families. How small independent businesses and this sector is impacted. Lastly how healthcare and Law Enforcement resources can be used to be part of our comprehensive citywide strategy. With that, let me call up lieutenant gal zone who has been with our Law Enforcement. Good afternoon. Lieutenant dave fal zoen. San francisco Police Department. Supervisors, good afternoon, thank you for having this hearing. A special thank you to supervisor mar for bringing this subject to the public. Also, in case i dont get the opportunity, i want to extend a special thank you to the youth here today. We have a packed house. Many of them are youth from the city who are sincerely interested in this topic. I think to set the tone, established. I want to show a map recently created with data provided by the abc and by our Police Department crime and analysis unit. I believe its going to show up. We also have it on a big screen. The first thing we are looking at is our sales and Liquor License. We have 186 of those. I want to point out at the dots. In the close proximity of stores, one do the can represent the multitude of stores. Next slide. Now we brought in distilled spirits. This is again our city, all off sales. Bringing in the off sales factor 579 stores. Now we are bringing in our restaurant licenses and this is the first set. The yellow dots are type 41s. Those are the discussion points today. They allow sale of beer and wine and although they are on sale licenses they have inherent off sale privilege. I would come back to that. But in theory you can call all of those potentially off sale locations. Meaning they can sell off sale, beer, wine, for all of those and then the solid greens with the plus to do distilled beers. The next slide, we are now bringing in our type 47 restaurants. These are restaurants that have on sale beer wine and distilled spirits. This license is also for supervisor christensens benefit where they have clubs. They often have 47 where they can have people underage of 21. They also have beer and wine. That number represents 781 licenses. Now the red dots are type 2s and they are just beer and wine. These are a lot of wine bars, adults only, 21 and over. Those we have 64. The next overlay we are bringing in our type 48, these are our traditional bar licenses. That is beer wine and 21 and over. The next slide, some of you may have read in our recent article. This is our brew hub. We have 17 in the city so all of our retail licenses represent 3684 licenses as of the last couple weeks. And that is all retail within the 49 square miles. With that being said, keep in mind it does not include 1 day licenses, special event licenses, catering authorizations. There are many more licenses that are occurring on a daily basis for a variety of reasons. Lastly, the final overlay which is all the squares is what we classify as nonretail. Of those we have 981. Nonretail would represent many of our wholesalers, in spirit its supposed to be businesses that dont interact with the public. But the legislature shifting and some of those are slowly creating situations where they have more access to the public. That being said it brings our grand total to 4665 license in 49 square miles. That gives us the highest concentration in the state of california. I have not been able to dis prove that we dont have the highest concentration in the nation. But i know for a fact that we do for the city and county. So, with that model in mind, it brings us what we are here to discuss today. In repeat months weve had a series of abc applications come in as well as meetings with what our city would normally call formula big box retail. These are businesses specifically that have no history with the sale or service or consumption of alcoholic beverages. A license they seek to obtain. After the discussion with the department, one of the parties decided to step back and elected to not apply, while two others and supervisor mar alluded to them, starbucks and taco bell decided to proceed knowing this objection which brings us to this here today. One issue, many know that several of our type licenses go to the board of supervisors. The types of licenses in question today do not go before the board. So, four our purposes in the city and county of San Francisco, as far as a voice in the process, there is really three. There is the community who is notified by 500foot mailer. There is also a posting that goes on in the building that has to be up for 30 days. Both those documents have instructions to file a formal protest. So thats our first option. The public can object. The second option that we have is our Planning Department which i refer to as the ultimate authority. If they dont approve the land use, they trump abc. Its on a few occasions and interesting for us to look as the city because if is not allowed, the abc cannot issue the license and we have the Police Department which is the department that reviews all licenses in the city and county as well as Treasure Island and sfo. This does not include sfo. Its just licenses in the city and county and by the golden state bridge which has Treasure Island which has licenses on it as well. So, give me one second, please. So both of these companies are applying for type 41. All of the locations and there is four and i would like to speak to those briefly. Starbucks has applied to three locations. 280 king, 565 clay and beach street. The king streets location is across the street from the ballpark, the tracy location near transamerica building and the other one across the wharf from the bar. The second by the beacon Apartment Building near at t park. They have all had favorable approval from the Planning Department which then brings it back to the Police Department. We have passed the posting period and pasted the 5foot mailer. Any objection that was going to come from the public has come in. On that note, i would point out and im going to try to comingle these but separate where there is differences. Taco bell has close to 200 accepted protest from the alcohol beverage control. I will speak to that again shortly. What abc classifies as an on sale license. We condition off the on sale privilege. We do that specifically based on high crime, high concentration and the persons business plan. What you need to know is every year the applicant can apply to modify them. When you theory hear the industry say we dont want off say, thats today. Next year they can petition to have that taken off and it can go on forever. Ultimately they can succeed to remove that condition. I think its important to understand that although conditions are very good and very powerful, they arent forever. So to talk specifically about these enterprises and the theme of nontraditional retail, it speaks to businesses that have no experience in the Sales Service or consumption of alcohol. They have no real relationship with their customer and let me explain what i mean by that. If you go to a starbucks, you go up to the counter, you pay for your drink and walk over to the barista and the barista makes your drink and you walk away. The barista has no idea where you are going with that coffee beverage. Its a game changer when you are talking about a regulated product. They dont know if you are sitting down with your coffee or reading and book. They are not concerned about it. In a traditional restaurant there is a relationship and thats part of why we eat out of that relationship. You get seated, you get greeted, you talk about the specials of the day. You talk about the pairing of a wine or beer or cocktail. Through your meal experience, your waiters interacting with you. A lot of that believe it or not although we all view it as courtesy, a lot of this has to be responsible for those consuming alcohol. Thats whats going on. The taco bell model doesnt address that. We also believe its going to raise serious concerns with customers thinking they can walk out the door where in San Francisco county we dont have public Alcohol Consumption on the streets. Its against the law. It seems to me why wouldnt you think that if you ordered a beer you can walk out the door . We know we have a problem with our off sale stores that can lawfully sell alcohol to go. That time and again they walk off the door and they pop it and consume it creating a public nuisance for the department, kreepting createing the public nuisance for those having the event and unfortunately the neighborhood has to deal with that being urination in door ways and fights etc. Taco bell doesnt have a relationship with the customer. My experience i walk in and i say i want a no. 4 with a diet pepsi to go. Now in the future it will be a no. 4 with a beer or wine. The other concern with taco bell, i have to say for all of my years for dealing with lickquor license, im amazed they chose us for the top market. They chose two places in america. Chicago got issued and operating and not only is it serving beer and wine, its serving a Malt Beverage slur pee. Which many customers are enjoying. If you go to many blogs, they say there is tequilas. What taco bell is telling us we dont want to do the small beverage slurpie here m in San Francisco. Whats going to happen in a year, when maybe this isnt on the radar like it might be today . They can begin to modify that. Supervisor eric mar can i ask. I know we are going to have other speakers. What is going to be the potential open floodgate for many more types of fast food businesses or ice cream flavored alcohol. But whats your assessment of how starbucks. There is three applications in San Francisco and another one is taco bell and will this potentially open up the flood gates . Based on our research on both companies our expectation is that their longterm goal is to be licensed everywhere. Their immediate goal is to get license where they can. Its a tactic of theirs to avoid any conditional use. They are targeting embarcadero because of their less regulations. They are not going to communities where they can go for it. But their intent is to expand their market. We have severe concerns about the impact to the segment of the industry because take the taco bell, directly across the street is an mcdonalds. Two nights ago on abc 7 they did a story where mcdonalds is experimenting in San Francisco market table service. I find that highly suspect because i think its mcdonalds very savvy aware of some of our concerns and trying to overcome them early on. I kind of applaud them from an early point of view because potentially they can take one issue off the table. This copy cat phenomenon it isnt just taco bell or starbucks. It really means you can almost speckel the whole thing if they can get through the Planning Department and the community. Supervisor david campos just a quick question. So whats the rational . To your knowledge, whats starbucks and taco bell saying as to why they need to add this . Supervisor, thats an excellent question and there is some irony to it. Taco bell says there is a key survivablity to their location. We had an acdc concert at the park and i will tell you i have never seen a line around the corner for a taco bell before. You would have thought it was the Opening Night for a new star wars movie. And the fact that they are operating as are the starbucks. That argument, i think based on what we are looking at is yet another example of corporate agreed and corporate mandate. Nobody really wanted to heed our suggestions. Hence wise its becoming a public hearing. So i think there is some mandates out there high up in these organizations that people are being told we want this. Go to the matt. There was one company all over the United States who respect the citys concerns and pulled out and said no, this is not right for us. Supervisor david campos thank you. Its great to have lieutenant back because hes so proactive on these. Appreciate it. Supervisor Julie Christensen youve given us the steps to for this approval . Yes. Who is responsible . How is it that this particular type of license falls in the different tracks and who is responsible for approval . Its not a unique track its taking, its different. One of the confusions with city hall which i have found interesting because you review some Liquor Licenses many believe they review them all. It seems that way. Right. Because there is a lot of them. Let me give you some data. With this economy, we have almost 3600 active retail licenses. We can transfer up to 800 licenses a year. I would estimate of those 800 licenses 2030 will go to the board. All the west will go to rest will go to the Police Department. Why do some go and why dont others. Just the process . The process is abc. There was a posting on the building. The applicant had to do a 5foot mailer, the public notification component. They notify planning and other agencies. Are you familiar with what sort of zoning conditions need to exist for this to meet planning code . Absolutely not and thats intention al with the affirmative. What i dont know is an applicant to say, the p. D. Recommended approval. We dont start our process until land use is approved especially with staffing because if its not approved, its not going to happen. Planning received and p. D. Reviews it. We file a protest. We can do that based on high crime which all of these are, and we can bring in other consideration points where we see it impacting the neighborhood negatively where its impacting resources and the community. Thats the process. After that it goes back to abc, San Francisco district office. They vet it and send a report to headquarters. The other question if there is anything we can do legislatively that over rides the abc. It would have to be a planning designation or something . Legislative, you are absolutely right. Its going to have to come to through the planning code. We have a topic and i can address it now or wait until the end. I think to make sure we are going to get the presentations and Public Comment and then add recommendations. Not to mist state my comment. If you are going to analyze a problem you need to look at all sides of it. The answer to the questions of why people want to sell alcohol is because its lucrative and they are trying to track their customers. You know as the thunderbird evolved as the client base got older and they are trying to create a more adult experience which happens to be lucrative. Table service. One of the fast food chains put something on sutter. They are trying to attract an older audience and that will involve alcohol. I come tr from a background of mapping. When you look at a mapping like this, this does not take into account the population density or accountability. What is important with my district which is covered with dots there, you say the ken concentration was high in San Francisco and so was the density population. I have the density population just outside of manhattan. If you start a density per capital you are going to get a higher density. My district has 6,000 people per square mile and that doubles everyday by people shopping in union square and fisherman. Wharf. Those places are where the activity are and looking at this on a per capita bases is a slightly different vision. The other thing that im finding in my district and i think its terrible that starbucks should sell alcohol but im looking at little cafes that cant make the rent anymore. They are trying to get Liquor License so the guy who has been working his butt off every year and does not want to work 8 hours a day, he can make money enough to get his kid through high school. There are a lot of businesses that are struggling with the cost of employees, the cost of goods and with rent and for some of them alcohol sales can be the dividing line for some of them. Supervisor, i would just add a couple of responses. I would agree with a lot of what you have said but the trouble with the tracking of adult audience only because of the taking of taco bell, for example. They want a slurpie and i dont think you and i are going to drink it. I think whats going on is they are extraordinarily good at what they do and they are bringing in new sources. Lastly with regard to Small Businesses. I think they have an opportunity to become a full restaurant. Not in my district. Thats another story and not for the Police Department. I can end on that note unless you have other questions for me. I have no questions for you. Thank you very much. Presenter hi, good afternoon, supervisors. My name is pedro torres, director of operations for open recovery and a my colleague in the room from Japanese Community Youth Council or my beacon center, horizons unlimited we comprised the Steering Committee for the San Francisco alcohol Prevention Coalition. Thank you for the opportunity to introduce the coalition to the committee and to share some of our work with you guys. One of the main focuses, of our main goal for this coalition includes binge drinking among ninth graders and follow an Evidence Base model called change in various neighborhoods contains to address the negative consequences of alcohols in their community and as a coalition as a whole we address issues that can impact all use. Patty will also speak about some of the work that weve done in the past couple years. Presenter thank you very much for the opportunity to communicate with you today. I want to talk about our prevention efforts that looks at individual behaviors, alcohol, the agent causing harm and the environment, the norms, the media message, the laws and policies and Access Points that make alcohol accessible to our young people. A lot of our work is how to limit the message and we have been work to go make those changes to ensure that young people are not being exposed to the constant message of alcohol and the promotion. What we found is that over 60 of the dominant forum of advertising at our local merchants is alcohol. So we know the industry is targeting many of our young people often below 3 feet. Lastly i will say quick 33 the access about how we are leverageing the communitys voice to committing to access to alcohol and believe that license retail impact that and increase and undermine so many effort of our youth leaders in our community and we want to make sure that this is something that you know and deeply as a Coalition Deeply concerned about this. I want to thank you about the opportunity. I wont take up more time because so many leaders are here today. We have dr. Martin. Thank you very much. The new cat category of alcohol sources. One of them is the prevention of activities that you just heard director torres tell you about to reduce teen drinking, exposure to alcohol. We also have efforts to increase screening at many medical locations for at risk drinking and harmful use and Early Intervention of those sites. We are making a push to make alcohol treatment medications availability throughout the Health System because they are under utilized right now. We are also with the black and African American Health Initiative have a specific effort to reduce the disparity and harm from alcohol to black and African American men. Here are some statistics i thought i could bring and this is a survey in San Francisco and the national numbers. 61 of residents reported past month alcohol use. 25 reported past month binge alcohol use. Thats falls into that category of binge drinking. That raises that a lot in our society consider that normal drinking. It takes an intervening and Health Discussion with conversation for people to realize they are at risk for many Health Related issues from drinking heavily. Alcohol was the primary drug for youth treatment admissions reported by latino and asians and second among whites and third among African Americans. It was determined to be a causal agent in approximately 250 deaths annually since 2005. Supervisor campos . Supervisor david campos thank you, doctor. I was wondering if you have any numbers in terms of how alcohol impacts the Lgbtq Community . I can tell you as a gay man in terms of marketing and culture, the impact of what it has especially wondering if it has an impact on the transgender community. Im wondering if the numbers exist . Im not sure if the numbers exist, but we have the several efforts in areas where there is gay socializing, for example the castro 1. 5 times stronger than other places because its a big part of the social life to draw meetings and congregations of people there partying. We also have a specific intervention bar outreach in the castro to men who have sex with men and transgender women to do a conversation about alcohol an its been pretty successful and weve funded on going efforts with that. That was a samsa grant that we have taken over the funding. I dont have specific numbers over the impact. Perhaps dr. Schmidt might. Thank you. Treatment alone from what i said, i think i already emphasized this. Treatment alone, weve done a lot of treatment. It has to be more than treatment as to affect alcohol. It has to be information to the public and for those at risk at drinking. For those that do not serve alcohol, we are concerned there is exposure of alcohol to young people in places where they work, meet and study and also as another feature of this, coffee shops are typically a safe place for people in recovery to meet. So harms to health from alcohol should be taken into account and considered in policy and regulations related to categories of alcohol outlets. In Public Health we use Health Impact assessments to evaluate proposed policy and regulations and this Evidence Based approach could better inform our alcohol policy options. The department of Public Health has been in collaboration with researchers and professors at uc sf at colleagues that document this and study Environmental Issues and there is no one better than dr. Laura schmidt who will share the information. Thank you again for taking time to think about our concerns. Supervisor eric mar thank you, dr. Martin. I see no other questions. Lets call up dr. Schmidt. Presenter hi. Its a pleasure to be here iechl i want to thank you all especially in your leadership for Healthy Retail in San Francisco. I have been so gratified to see the sugary beverage reduction effort and keeping the those things out of the reach of children and especially for the Trauma Center that there is an unhealthy piece in the agenda and that is alcohol and i want to speak to you about it today specifically the research on alcohol and what we have come up with. I am going to show some maps and your absolutely sophisticated questions around measuring density. I can spend a couple hours lecturing on the topic. We have had a wonderful epidemiology working in San Francisco because San Francisco represents a challenging place to study density. You have about a Million People come into this city everyday. So most density members depend on the census data which are the denominator which are the residents who do not drink. We have though way of capturing all the drunk driving incidents that may happen outside of the city limits but while drinking in San Francisco. We have a full range of density measurements. Please know we are very sensitive to this issue and will probably be publishing a paper on this topic. I want to share some of our research. The first is a map showing you the density of alcohol outlets by california counties. Here im showing you data on the type 41 licenses that are nontraditional retailers are requesting. This map, the green areas is the lowest density. Counties where you have less than one type 40 license per square mile and we are using the geographic measure. As you go ahead more red, you will see very high density parts of the state. What you can see here is that not on is San Francisco over populated, we are the red spot, the only one in the state not only are we over populated with type 40 licenses but truly an outlier, an extreme outlier. So San Francisco has 35 outlets just with the type 41 license per square mile. The next county is Orange County with two outlets per square mile. And they are again, an urban area densely populated which are critical industries. They have two per square mile. We have 35. This really raises questions around granting new licenses to a whole new class of nontraditional retailers. Now, here you are getting familiar with our pictures here. Here is the Current Situation in San Francisco mr. Fazone gave you a similar picture. Here is a second picture at a provides you with a view if all of taco bells in San Francisco were granted type 41 licenses. Let me give this to you again. Before and after. Before, after. Okay. Now, i want to share with you this question of opening the flood gates, right . Youve only got three request from starbucks for licenses right now. And i want to give you an example of the only other city that was the testing ground for starbucks in this new strategy. This is an article from in 2012 starbucks decided to test this strategy in chicago in 2012. What i can tell you, it did start with a couple of licenses. 3 years later, 28 of the 50 Starbucks Stores in chicago have Liquor Licenses. We have 81 starbucks outlets in this city. Within a few years, they went from a few licenses to 28. I think the chicago experience is an obvious lesson in this case. I want to help you understand why this issue of alcohol density is so important to us in a medical community. For decades we have a mounting scientific literature that shows consistent positive associations between the geographic density of outlets and the rick risk of violent and nonviolent crimes and intentional and unintentional injuries. We have a preponderance of Research Shows that within city localities that support more alcohol licenses you will see subsequent increases in alcohol related injuries and violence metrics. This is numerous studies at this point. Weve been on this issue for about 30 years in the alcohol literature. Let me bring this home to you by sharing some of the data from San Francisco. Over the past 3 years, weve been studying alcohol in San Francisco weve gotten more and more concerned particularly with the Trauma Centers. Its a level one Trauma Center, a World Class Institution have become more and more concerned because the alcohol related injuries is really taking a toll on the Trauma Center. They took the step a year ago, more than a year ago to routinely take a blood alcohol test on every Single Person who comes through the doors of the Trauma Center. You can imagine the cost and commitment it takes to do Something Like that in the healthcare system. Its not inexpensive and hard to rule out this kind of thing, but they did it because of alcohol related injuries is significant there. We have studied the cases real bl level on trauma cases and i want to share with you the first real data out of this research. This drawing here shows the first 300 cases where we got the blood alcohol levels and what we are showing you through emt reports where the person had a traumatic event. What we are looking at here. The surges surgeons at the Trauma Center serve the most severe people. They are not just any drunk driving incident. It has to be a car rollover. They are treating people with gunshot wounds to the chest and some of these where people have fallen out of high windows. 24 of the 300 cases represented on this map died at the Trauma Center from the severity of their injuries. A whopping 59 of the people experiencing these traumas had a positive blood alcohol level. The study further found that people with a positive blood alcohol level experienced more severe trauma therefore putting them at greater risk for death. The highest risk occurred in our high alcohol density census tract. You can see it on this map. Again you are looking at the reds are the high density tracks and you have clustering of these traumatic events in those high density areas. Did you say 59 or 59 . 59 of the serious traumas when we took blood alcohol levels had a positive read. Thats how big a burden this is on the Trauma Center. These are expensive healthcare events. You can imagine what it took researchers and emt folks on these cases. The hot zones, definitely there is a clustering. Without getting too technical, what our study is showing is that more than half of the variance, the explanation for a severe trauma is accounted for are if you are in an outlet dense part of the city. So in closing, i want to once again go back to this issue of Healthy Retail. You have done a fantastic job as a leader at the state level in this effort. But i do feel that alcohol is an unfinished piece of that agenda for this board. No matter what the promises are at this point, these National Chains operate on a Business Model that is simply not conducive to alcohol sales. People quickly come in and get their drink and leave. Companies profits depend on a high volume of customers constantly turning through. It not in their Business Model to change. Whether or not they are saying they are going to change, it wont be profitable if they do. On the other hand, many of those with alcohol licenses in San Francisco are longstanding Small Business people with strong ties to the community. Many are well equipped and experienced in responsible sales. The Police Department tell us they work closely and many of these businesses have a long track record of selling alcohol and are responsible and participating in the Health Retail efforts. I want to share with you that in contrast to many california counties, San Francisco currently does not take Public Health into account in consideration of granting alcohol licenses. So thats something that i think really needs to be thought through here. There is no consideration of the health harms that i just showed you when you were thinking about whether or not or when you are thinking about granting these licenses. I do believe that Healthy Retails should be responsible retail. Supervisor eric mar dr. Schmidt, can i just ask, dr. Martin says there is an Impact Assessment tool they use does that determine the number of alcohol licenses in the city. My sense is that one of you noted, a very complex issue with a lot of moving parts to it. Probably whats really needed is, we are only at the beginning of studying this issue in San Francisco. Probably there needs to be a lot more in consideration and Current Situation as to how the traditional and nonretailers will impact both health and economics in the Small Business community as well. Its going to take some time to figure out what is the right comprehensive alcohol strategy and i would strongly based on the research that i have been participating in, i would strongly encourage you to consider legal strategies that would take it into account when you consider granting these licenses given the density is such a strong predictor of very bad and heavily populated areas. Thank you. Supervisor Julie Christensen i love statistics and i think you are absolutely right about the consequences of taking care of people because they are falling out of windows because they are drunk. Do you have a map of this . They include both geographic and population density. Because i would think and they dont look all that different. I was going say, the map of california if graphed by population would look like yours . Pretty close. Looking at the map of San Francisco, your density of alcohol sales very much mirrors the population density, where those areas that have the extreme dense alcohol sales but dont have the alcohol density to support it and why that occurs and why that impact is. It is so important to remember you have 1 million everyday coming into this city and many of them especially on weekends i would think are purchasing alcohol here. Its actually a very tough issue. Its gotten our team very excited about studying San Francisco as a way of informing the ways that we develop metrics for measuring density. Very much a planning issue. The other thing is its some incredible accident of taking place near the home. Thats where most people go. If they are getting in an accident, they are going to be 5 miles within their home. So correlating that with the density of alcohol sales gets a lot more complicated. Its a very complicated area of science. Weve got the best scientist around. Two National Alcohol nih centers around us. Supervisor eric mar thank you very much. Just to clarify something. All the work that is done is populated. Taco bell, has a population of 9083 people. Under statute ab operates 8. We have 31. Similar the king street location shares the same census tract, same number. The beach street location, a city population of 4100. Its authorized for 14 and the active is 19. Meaning we have 19 licenses. Just i want you to know we are taking into account the population. I know the map. Supervisor eric mar thank you very much. We have over 20 speakers. Let me just ask our director ms. Cane, do you want to make remarks. Presenter good afternoon. Im going to be really quick. I dont necessarily agree with the word over saturated as a reasonable description of our nightlife industry which is worth billions of dollars as you know and 60,000 plus jobs and all levels of education. We are in agreement that this new interest of alcohol by chain stores and fast food is very concerning. I havent taken this properly to the commission. Weve been discussing with Small Business about maybe doing something together. But again i think that what you have heard while there are Small Businesses that are very responsible and the Entertainment Commission is always regulating responsible hospitality we are very interested and very concerned about it. If this is a Pilot Program and there are 81 starbucks as a starter, that means there is a lot of opportunity for things that we arent sure about. So we are happy to stay involved in this very complicated and nuance conversation. We would really like to be engaged in this. Thank you very much for doing this. Supervisor eric mar thank you, i dont see regina. I will move on to Public Comment. We are going to limit it to 2 minutes per person. If you can be quicker than that, we would appreciate that as well. I have been asked to place at the top a couple of people. David soriano from the Hospital Council and San Francisco Prevention Coalition. Public speaker thank you for hosting this hearing. We appreciate it. David soriano from the Hospital Council, the trade association that represent the collective interest of the ten hospitals in San Francisco. Its an honor to be here to the and stand with the Community Leaders on this very important issue. What is the hospitals stake in this in we see it on the front lines and ourer departments and what goes into treating the alcohol issue in our department. We have seen that number increase over time and working with the San Francisco Health Improvement partnership which is a collective effort of the county and hospitals we want to bring that number down. Granting these kinds of licenses to these types of businesses is going to make that incredibly harder. Thank you very much. Supervisor eric mar thank you. Next speaker. If people can come up as i call you, it doesnt have to be in this order. Public speaker im in eighth grade from den man middle school. Taco bell and starbucks should not have the alcohol licenses. Its going to come up to rise. Can you speak closer to the microphone. There are a lot of people getting killed because of duis and drunk driving. The cops have to work to get the people stop drinking and duis. So having starbucks and taco bell, having those licenses is not really a good thing for that at all. Then there is youth. The youth go to taco bell all the time. They like fast food places. If they go to fast food places, they see alcohol. They will say, hey, i want some alcohol. [ laughter ]. They will influence the use. That can be the older addiction. They will go downhill from there. So yeah. Im done. [ laughter ] great job. Thank you. [ applause ] next speaker . Public speaker hi, thank you for hearing us. I work closely with the Small Businesses in the neighborhood. We dont feel that businesses that have never sold alcohol should not sell alcohol. This is not a part of their Business Model. We are looking across San Francisco to increase and shift Business Model for so many businesses to increase these Business Strategies and minimize our local communities. They are not absentee corporations that dont know their neighborhood. They work closely with neighborhood residents to provide a service to them. We dont believe these absentee corporate Business Owners would be responsible. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker . Public speaker hi. My name is crystal wong. We are working to build a better community. Alcohol outlets have been affecting people of color and youth. What happens is these groups of people become desensitized to all. This is a problem. We dont want nontraditional retailers to begin to sell alcohol. This will increase the alcohol density in San Francisco and will affect the people of color and youth who are the most vulnerable who are at risk to alcohol. For the nontraditional retailers cooperating in San Francisco can affect the community as a whole. Thank you very much. Im going to call a few more names. Greg moore from sf living room. Kimably. Public speaker thank you supervisors for having me here tonight. My name is steven ten as from the tenderloin store coalition. Im a San Francisco resident, native actually and i have lived in the tenderloin for 20 years. Im recovering alcoholic and i was involved in a car accident and it almost took my life. We are starting to get the message out to the store owners that we deal with that they can make a profit without having to sell cigarettes and alcohol. They can make a profit by selling healthier foods and fruits and vegetables and its starting to take its effect. This really up sets me that two businesses, two corporations that have nothing to do with alcohol can come in. What really boths me is the process that enabled us to be here today this needs to change where we can hear about this where its not to where it is now. That doesnt seem right. Thank you very much. Public speaker hello, my name is michael, im an alcoholic. I know by a shadow of a doubt im one drink away from getting drunk. Im also an activist for my community. I work for the church and secretary of the committee. I was just amazed at these Energy Drinks that they have here. This is one that is shot through. Some look so beautiful with orientation and stuff like this and then i start to realize these are beginning to play. Just like my friend steven just mentioned now they are coming up with taco bell and the coffee place. I take my granddaughter. She likes to go to the fast food places. To think im going to sit next to someone who is trying to get their buzz on, its not cool. I live in the tenderloin and a lot of statistics you saw up there are people i know. People that have killed themselves with suicide. That have been there in car accidents. I see children down the street and they are fearful because they are afraid. We have to start looking out for these younger ones. The thing is we have sat there and found that eating healthier is more profitable and people will live longer. You hear statistics and like the lady showing the hospitals. Thank you. Supervisor eric mar thank you for organizing the community as well. Thanks to alcohol justice for years and years and decades of work as well. Public speaker hi, supervisors, bruce jenkins. I would like to give to you the fact sheet for alcohol outlet density. The harm associated with alcohol outlet density is just tremendous. So, and the evidence is very strong. But i just want to focus on another way to approach it which is, this is a beer. All the kids in the room know what this is. This is 12 alcohol by volume. The equivalent of 4. 7 shots of tequila in one can. Every standard drink, a shot of tequila standard drink or 4. 7 standard drinks in this can, each standard drink cost the government 1. This can for 2. 59 cost 4. 70 in government harm. This would be served with a beer and wine eating place with a license. To say this would proliferate in venues like starbucks, taco bell. It should not happen. We have gone down this road to make alcohol available everywhere in San Francisco and everywhere in california. Lets put a stop to it. Lets delay it. Thank you. Supervisor eric mar thank you. Im going to call a few more names. Scott ramen. Abdul benduk. Public speaker hi. Im from nap San Francisco and asians for public affairs. I sit on the board for the beacon homeowners association. We represent 1200 of the voters, residents. We are the community that is impacted by taco bell. When they first said they wanted to open, we told them we didnt want them to open. Im surprised that taco bell can just open like that. Because of the development area, all the permits were over the counter. We didnt have any say on it. They never had any experience opening above a high rise building. They havent had experience like serving alcohol as well. So, we didnt want to be the experiment. Unfortunately we are the experiment. They are open already because of that loophole. But we dont want to add insult to injury. So historically when abc gets these things, they get maybe a couple of protest. We had 200 protest on it. So, i would urge the supervisors if they can to kind of stop this in anyway they can. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker . [ applause ] public speaker good afternoon, supervisors, thank you for this opportunity, my name is greg warren, a senior operator in the tenderloin serving low income and homeless. Personally its wonderful to see all the young people here today supporting our effort to convince you to take a stand on this issue. Professionally i approach it from the other end of the age spectrum with our older adults. The two ends of that spectrum represent some of the most vulnerable at risk individuals. The youth who have their whole life ahead of them growing up in an atmosphere where alcohol is exalted for lack of a better word. At the other end our seniors, our older adults who are physically vulnerable and at risk dealing such as in the tenderloin with challenging environments physically mentally and spiritually. The testimony today has been great and excellent. And i could only pose the question if we dont take a stand now then when do we. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker . Public speaker good afternoon board of supervisors, my name is oscar and this is sebastian. I work for a Grass Roots Organization called San Francisco youth coalition. I currently work with youth in the mission, bayview and excelsior district. Im dumbfounded by the organizations allowed to sell alcohol in these establishments. Dont these corporations have enough money already than to tap into the other businesses for profit. There are already many restaurants and bars that sell alcohol. I see many prohibits and unintended consequences for this proposition. My main concern is the youth and their future. There are health concerns, disparities, addiction and crime that will definitely be impacted by a decision like this. I just hope the board will hear our concerns and listen to communitys staff of opposition. This is not health for San Francisco. He had something to say. I have been living in tenderloin for 15 years. Just being there you see a lot of drunk people and to provide more alcohol, there is more access to alcohol. I have it in my book right now but im not going to say it. We should stop advertising alcohol. When you go in the store, the first thing you walk in is four local hennessy and there is no fruit or apple and oranges. Frappuccinos and caffeine is already a drug. I think we should stop that. Thank you. [ applause ] im going to call a few more names from the a lynna from the youth coalition. Thank you. Public speaker thank you, supervisor. Hi, my name is miriam suzina with the american grocer coalition. Im here to support the youth in our neighborhood and to continue this work in the spirit of engagement and not singular measures to the community as they become accustomed to. Keep in mind these regulatory bodies i can say with tht tactics are used as a precedent to criminalize for other things often National Security concerns. Just keep that in mind that a lot of Corner Stores do have the same wants of replacing this corporate messaging labeling and the single coolers. They are also using them in a shared cropping way which they are least cheaply put in a position by these companies and providing alternatives and access to the you the most important. It is safe to say they are targeting the youth. Who are often the victims of that same strategy. Corporate franchises in the form of retailer and city version are literally pushing Small Businesses out of the city. They are leveraging distributors. Im happy to facilitate conversation with tobacco license and hope this mental message will change the city. Thank you. Public speaker hello supervisors, my name is scott romion. Im recovering from alcohol addiction. This is an important part of my recovery whether to meet with sponsors to discuss the meeting or make new friends. Traditionally we do fellowship at cafes and starbucks is a place where we meet with our fellow recoverers because there is no alcohol at this location. If this changes, starbucks will among the be a recovery for me and my friends. Thank you. A public speaker thank you. I want to thank the committee for allowing people to talk about these issues. In this conversations i couldnt help thinking weight would be like me when i had my first kid go to mcdonald while i have some drinks. I wouldnt would have done that when i was a parent. I cant imagine alcohol being served that is a known place to be familyfriendly. Not that im promoting fast food and starbucks but i have had some very important meetings with Child Protective Service with starbucks with parents from my school. Alcohol doesnt belong in those places. We need those places in San Francisco where families feel safe to talk about some of these places. The other thing that comes to mind, have we thought about the jobs that are impacted because we have people who will no longer be able to work at these places. My first job at kentucky fried chicken, it helped me public speaker im a student in high school. We are working on bettering the community. We want you to know that San Francisco is already saturated with alcohol. We dont want places that have never sold alcohol like starbucks and taco bell. We need to reduce the rate of Alcohol Consumption in the neighborhoods. Everyone can share a safe and healthy community. [ applause ] supervisor eric mar thank you. Next speaker, please come forward. Public speaker hello. Im the general manager for the beacon homeowners association. This is the location where taco bell is currently in and we have the starbucks applied for a Liquor License. That is two licenses in a half square block. Im here on behalf of 245 residents. I had 245 residents submit abc form 510as only 100 were deem valid. But because of the fact that we had 241 people submit this form, means there is a large portion of the community for the Public Safety for places that serve alcohol. We also have beacon babyville. The demographics from our community have young adults to young families. I see more toddlers running around our community than before. If we have starbucks and taco bell selling alcohol, i dont think its a safe area for these families to go. Supervisor eric mar thank you very much. I think i have called all the names. If anybody else would like to speak, please come forward. We are doing our best to finish up this hearing, but if people came out and you want to speak, please come forward. Public speaker hi. Im probably not going to be the most popular in the room because i support this. I actually helped develop it. One thing i think we need to differentiate is that its a completely different concept than taco bell. Its run by a local 86unit franchisee that is very e equipped with operational issues and talks about how responsible it will be with serving within the space that will be out on the floor monitoring who is actually taking beverages in and would only have craft beer. Its the offering really that we are trying to keep up with our customers wants and desires. There is a lot of millennials. There is a lot of baby boomers who would like to have a craft beer or two with their meal. Its not cheap. We are talking about 5 or 6 for a beer. The service is not a high turnover. There is a video wall in the space to sit down and enjoy. We are trying to provide a service with different food offerings and different beer and wine offerings compared to something you are familiar in the past. There was about 189 protest valid by the abc. We sent out 313 noticed designed to sign a form letter. We have 2,000 signatures as to when they would come about and when they would have a firestone walk 305 with some of the new food services. I would like you to at least consider the differentiation and that definitely its not whats happening. Its this new concept which is very cosmopolitan. You are getting a higher End Experience from something that you may have traditionally had in the past. You can get a 5 or 6 beer with your burrito supreme, but its the relatively lower cost. The menu has evolved and there is higher price point items. It also has one of the things that you will find supervisor mar is that taco bell is a very customizable menu where you can alter your menu to your health diet. You can order a burrito without a tortilla and get it in a bowl if you are on a high protein diet. All of this comes from the price that you would typically pay. I think taco bell as a brand helps the movement and better options. But here at the cantina, i would invite you to come down and experience it because i think you will find it to be a different restaurant experience operated by a very strong and capable franchisee. Thank you. Next speaker . If anyone else would like to come forward, please come up to speak. Public speaker good evening. My name is eva johnson. We need to keep it safe and taco bell and communities that are always keeping our children safe and safety matters in organizations that we have more that maybe we need to go that might help. And the world is change and the weather and certainly that there are things that we need to be aware of that we need to you know always keep the amount [inaudible] we need to be sure that everyone is safe. Make sure they are licensedment make sure they are right to awareness in management. Always making sure they understand what we are talking about. Supervisor eric mar thank you. Next speaker. We are going to close Public Comment in a moment. Public speaker hello. My name is lily fong. From what i have seen starbucks and taco bell is a place for people to community and its a safer environment. Starbucks has been a place where people are able to complete their work, increase the use of technology and enjoy their products. Since starbucks has been increasing, i dont think its a safe idea for youth to experience that sort of environment. I think that more selling of alcohol leads to more drugs due to alcohol addiction which will affect Peoples Health because of the you need of more healthcare and more drugs will lead to city crimes due to peoples bad behavior. I oppose the alcohol for the sake of the citys Public Safety. Supervisor eric mar thank you. Next speaker . Public speaker high. Im with the high school and part of the boys and girls club. If you watch arthur are the little place called sugar bowl. For me and my friends we meet at starbucks because its affordable and its adult free, usually. Its a safe place for us teens to be at. I like the drinks too. With alcohol there, i would feel really violated in a way because a lot of us have bad personal experiences with alcohol. My dad is an alcoholic. I wouldnt feel safe around starbucks anymore. If alcohol is there, it would allow more adults to be there and possibly drunks. So instead of going into starbucks usually, i would be more apart from it than i ever was. So, like instead of cheating yourself to sweet drinks or usually caffeinate yourself for all nighters. I just want to go to starbucks to have fun. [ applause ] supervisor eric mar thank you. Everyone for your great comments and keeping it as short as you could as well. Colleagues, are there any comments . My grandfather was an alcoholic. It had horrible impacts on my family as well and places that normally do not have alcohol in these at atmospheres is dangerous. I want to say to residents around the cantina in taco bell and starbucks, im geography going to do my best to express our voice as a United Coalition to do our best to protect the Public Health. Im not sure in timing in how it operates, i will do my best to make sure and victor lynn who helped me pull this together and our voice to make our voices heard. As people suggested from our speakers in the beginning and Public Comment, we will start a process to look at land use policies permitting, Public Health assessments and ways to have a much more comprehensive strategy in our city. I would like to continue this hearing to the call of the chair so we can work with many that are here with the grass Roots Coalition and the Community Agencies and residents as well. I think there is a lot of different strategies that combined together make our Neighborhoods Healthier. With that, i dont want to extend this hearing any longer. I want to know if colleagues want to make comments before we close . Supervisor campos. Supervisor david campos its too bad that the taco bell presenter left. When you have this many concerns and to try to minimize it, its really sad. Just because he put a spanish name to it doesnt mean that and you try to make it fancy, a cantina. I mean alcohol is alcohol. There is nothing snobbish about it that if you have more money that you can get away with more things. I actually like taco bell and now considering whether or not i should actually continue to go there. Thank you for being here. Its really commendable and i especially want to thank the young people and to supervisor mar and his office for his leadership. Thank you. Supervisor christensen . Supervisor Julie Christensen i also want to thank supervisor mar. This was an interesting discussion. These hearings arent always as productive. Thank you for participating. City often lags behind. It takes empirical data, compelling information, the will of the community and it ends up at the legislative end to try to react to it. It seems to me this is a societal or Cultural Development that requires a holistic response. We have to decide as a city how we want to cope with this situation and take some meaningful steps to control it. I guess im on the side. I dont so much fault people for doing what they will do, but i think we have to send a strong message as a city as to what we condone and with a we encourage in the city. This is certainly eye opening and an opportunity to take a look at the city and what will be better for it. Thank you for everything. Supervisor eric mar aside from the grass roots, lieutenant fal zone has been important to work with and with passion that he cant express in different ways, but your heart is so big and your advocacy for health and safety in our community i appreciate it very much, lieutenant. Thank you for being here. [ applause ]. Colleagues, i have made a motion that we continue this to the call of the chair. So moved. Well do that without objection. Is there any other business before us . There is no other business. So meeting adjourned. Thank you, everyone. [ applause ] [ applause ] [ meeting is adjourned ] [gavel] welcome ladies and gentlemen to the regular november 23, 2015 meeting of the San Francisco ethics commission. I will first take wool and i will say that ms. Hayon unfortunately is not going to be able to attend due to