And id also like to thank samuel williamses and high Maya Hernandez from sfgov tv. Items acted upon today will appear on the january 30 board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. Great. Thank you. Thank you, ms. Summerall. Can you please call item number one . Item number one is a hearing to consider appointing two members, terms ending november 30, 2018, to the Ballot Simplification Committee. There are two seats and two applicants. Great. We have two applicants, unless there is any initial comments from Committee Members. Lets hear from mr. Scott patterson first. If he is ok. Great. Please come forward. Hello. Thank you for having me here today. Im Scott Patterson, candidate for the Ballot Simplification Committee. My family traces its roots in San Francisco back to when they immigrated from italy in 1881 so weve been around for a long time. Ive been a member of the faculty at San FranciscoState University as a professor of broadcast and electronic Communication Arts for over 20 years. For 10 of those years, i served as chair of the department. Ive also been a member of the National Academy of Television Arts and sciences which has brought me before you today. Im currently serving as a governor in that organization. I live in the Richmond District and my wife and i have lived there for well over 20 years and were childfree. I look forward to any questions you may have. Great. Any questions from Committee Members . Yes . Supervisor yee . Im sorry. Mr. Patterson . Hello, yes. Yeah. Could you i didnt get a chance to meet with you or meet with anybody in my office. So, can you just tell give a little more background, your background so i could get to know you . Im trained professionally as a music recording engineer. I hold three degrees in the field of communication, ending with doctorate in communication from the ohio State University. Ive worked professionally in television and in radio stations across the country. With wgbh in boston being the largest station at which i worked. I currently teach in the becca department at San FranciscoState University. It is the acronym we use because it is a mouthful. I teach courses primarily in music recording engineering and Electronic MediaResearch Methods which are the writing intensive courses in the department for required of all students before they graduate to demonstrate their writing ability. Mmhmm. And what made you interested to be part of this committee . Two reasons, primarily. I think voting is the single most important act that any member of a democracy can engage and i always vote. And i want everybody to always vote. And secondly, i believe that the Ballot Simplification Committee work product is an exceptional aid in that voting process. I have had the opportunity to vote in elections in other states and the ballot that is prepared here is just superior. I think the work of the Ballot Simplification Committee goes long way toward doing that and id be very interested in helping with that project. Ok. Sounds good. And i im asking more about you, mainly because mainly because this is a very important committee, as you seem to agree and how we write up the initiatives and the Ballot Initiatives and these summaries and so forth is to make sure that our voters understand exactly whats going on and with no deceptions is really important for not only myself but probably all of my colleagues. I really appreciate, number one, you seem to have a very good background for this type of work and, number two, your willingness to even do this. Thank you very much. Youre welcome. Thank you, supervisor. I have a few questions for you. So my question is less and your experience. I think youre really wellqualified. I just want to know about the commitment and make sure youre prepared for the level of commitment that this requires. Have you attended any of the ballot designation hearings in the past and are you i have not, no. Im not ive read the website and the materials and seen the minutes of the meeting and ive participated in their work product. But ive never been a part of their process. Right. So i mean, you have wonderful recommendation on behalf of the nominating organization. So, thats important. The thing that i know from speaking with ms. Packard and the familiarity of this committee is that this is this can be pretty intense. We members of the board of supervisors and others often like to put a lot of things on the ballot. It just ends up happening. Thats San Francisco culture, as you know. So at times you might be doing 9 00 to 5 00 four or five, six weeks so this is a commitment and sometimes of about a month of your life without any compensation. So i just want to make sure, since i didnt have an opportunity to meet with you, that youre fully aware going in, eyes wide open, at the level of commitment that this really important body requires. Im prepared to donate that effort to the organization. I think that i understand that its a lot of work. Ive done a lot of writing. And writing takes time. And that its a committee. And writing by Committee Takes more time. And im aware of that. My work schedule and other obligations allow me to have the time to spend to devote to this committee. Great. I just wanted to make sure. I think eyes wide open is really important because the amount of time that this takes and the amount of intensity and the amount of scrutiny and the amount of importance of this body requires that level of commitment. So, if youre prepared to make that commitment, i think that the your background and qualifications are up to the task and you have, as i said, nice recommendations from the nominating organisations. So i appreciate that. Any other Committee Members have any other questions . No. Ok. Seeing none, i think what we need to do is hear from the second yes. The second applicant. And then we can take Public Comment. So, thank you, scott. If there is any other questions, well call you back up. Thank you. Ok. And so now lets hear from our second applicant, ms. Betty packard. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. And shall i say that i have chaired this commission for the last 15 years, been on the committee for now 21 years. I am very proud of this committee. I am very proud of the members on it. I am proud of the work that we have done. If you want a little bit of my background, i have 63 years of journalism experience behind me, starting when i was very young, as a reporter for the indianapolis time requests. I have taught journalism, both high school and college. I have been editor of four national magazines. When it comes to the print side. Ive been a tv host. Ive done a little bit of everything. Which is interesting. One year i interviewed peter druker who said to me really creative people change jobs about every five years in order stay creative and i think that probably fits me, exempt when it comes to the Ballot Simplification Committee. [laughter] and i know you were giving me a little bit of background. But if you could just talk a little bit about the level of commitment. I think that is important for the public to hear and some of the work that you do. Well, by law, we have to be finished 90 days before the ballot is before the election. And we usually work for two solid weeks before then. This last election, we had to work for three weeks because of the 25 measures on the ballot. What happens is, as a City Attorney comes to us with a draft, sometimes we love it. Sometimes we dont. Sometimes we tweak it. Sometimes we tear it apart. And sometimes we accept it. But in all terms, we wind up rewriting it into legible, 8th grade terms for the average voter. And then from what we do, we go to Public Comment, people tell us what they think of what weve done. Then we go back and review it again. And then at the end of that period, we come up with a draft which is then available for appeal. And people always try to appeal what they think that they want. And then we reschedule it in 72 hours plus so that it fits the sunshine law. And then we go through it all, the whole series all over again until we come up with a final draft and that is whats on the first page of the every initiative in the ballot handbook. All done within 90 days of election. Its done within two weeks, three weeks at the max. But all your work has to be done prior 90 days prior. Which puts us sometimes in a problematic situation when the supervisors wait until the last week of our session to finalize something on the ballot and then it becomes . Raoel we dont do that. [laughter] oh, yeah oh, yeah. And then it becomes lots of fun for us. And really intense and sometimes then we have to ask for a waiver on the sunshine in order to get it all in. But that is how we do business. Great. Well, thank you for that. And as i said, thank you for your continued commitment to this really important committee. Youve been on since 1997 . 97, yes. It seems like i shouldnt even be that old. [laughter] ok, thank you. Any other questions or comments from Committee Members . Ms. Packard . Ok. Seeing none, thank you, ms. Pack ards. If we have anymore, well call you back up. Well go ahead and take Public Comment on this item. Any members of the public that wish to testify on item number one . Please come ford want state your name. If you have any developments, you can hand them to the clerk. You have two minutes. Good afternoon. Im nancy warfel. I want to tell you what a tremendous Public Service this committee is and ms. Packard is outstanding. I have been before her several times on issues that every verb, noun and grammatical structure has been examined and i cannot tell you how important it is that the attention that this committee gives to the structure of the english language in order to be clear and accurate is important. Even if the people that read the ballots dont understand what went in to put these words on the page. I want to say thank you. And i want to welcome scott over here. If he is successful. This will be the time of your life. We are going to put you through paces like you never believed the public was capable of doing. But that is what democracy is all action and i just want to say i love this committee and i wish it had more coffee, tea, doughnuts or whatever you guys want because you do a Public Service like nobody else. Thank you. Thank you. Any other members of the public wish to comment on item number one . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Id like to entertain a motion to move this forward. Sure. Ill go ahead and move that we appoint Scott Patterson to seat one and Betty Packard to seat two with positive recommendation to move forward to the full board. To the Ballot Simplification Committee. Without objection, that item is moved and ordered. Thank you. Congratulations and thank you again for your commitment. Ms. Summerall, please call item number two. Item number two is a Charter Amendment for the june 5, 2018 election, to eliminate the municipal transportation agencys jurisdiction over traffic and parking legislation, grant the authority to the board of supervise source and create a livable street, commission and department to manage park and traffic. Hmm. Great. Thank you. This is my item. Im going to go ahead and say a few words. So, Committee Members know this, but general public, just want to reiterate. We introduced myself and supervisor peskin introduced legislation yesterday, which establishes a procedure for the board of supervisors to review certain m. T. A. Decisions. And just to remind members of the public the genesis of that is, after talking to many of our colleagues and working with individuals in the public, theres a lot of general frustration about the what i want to call the neighbourhood issues. Issues that are more relevant to our constituents in our districts. Not to say that theyre not citywide issues. But they are issues that we hear about the most. For lack of a better term. So, issues that revolve around traffic calming, stop signs, parking, preferential parking, curb management, and these impact us and we hear about them, i would say, probably on a daily basis. And so i approach supervisor peskin and we started a dialogue about the history and the design of taking what was the department of parking and traffic and the sfmta and merging it into one agency and removing any oversight or influence from this body. And i think that there were there was good intentions ins that movement. I think that the idea was to allow the experts and policy experts and policymakers and planners to take these policies and implement them without, i guess, political influence and i think some of those things have worked really well. But at the end of the day, i think what has happened, as ive said to you, weve been consistently bombarded in our positions about complaints and about the areas that weve referred to that we ultimately have no authority over. But we get a lot of the responsibility. So ultimately we move forward with an idea to keep one commission for this agency, all the commissioners still would be appointed by the mayor so were not getting into and rehashing old debates, but the commission would remain the same. Their level of expertise would remain the same. But what we would do is we would create a department of livable streets. And in that department, there would be a certain level of authority that is described, as ive said to you, with regard to traffic calming stop signs, Pedestrian Safety, vision zero, curb management, bicycle lanes, all the things that are just outside of pure muni and the idea would be that muni could then focus on munis core mission, which is a first class, world class Public Transportation system. In the interim, what we decided to do yesterday is access what is already in the city charter and it allows for, through the legislative process, our body to create a review of certain m. T. A. Decisions. With regard to the creation and elimination of preferential parking zones, the creation or elimination of parking metre zones, limitation on the time period for which a vehicle may be parked. Disability parking zones, curb space management, private transportation programmes involving preferential parking or curb space management. So these are some of the things that we have interim authority over so were going to move that legislation through the legislative process. Hopefully my colleagues here will be supportive of that and well work with them and work with members of the public and sfmta on that. In the interim, we have decided to postpone our ballot measure and reserve the right to come back for the November Ballot. Hopefully in the interim, sfmta has proposed some additional stems that they feel will be more responsive to the members of the public. They will be more responsive to our district offices. And they will be coming around to you and you to present this plan that they intend to implement to be more responsive to the needs of the districts. And so we want to see that and give that some opportunity. Im going to actually ask tom mcguire to come forward and say a few words because they presented us with an interim communication and outreach and followup strategy. You dont have to get into the minute detail, but some words on top of the great work that dylan does in keeping our offices informed. But you have a new strategy and a new design on how to be more responsive to us. In the meantime, were going to postpone our ballot measure and give some opportunity to see this legislation, hopefully our board will pass that. And we will then begin having the opportunity to review some of the things that ive described. Mr. Mcguire. Ok. Thank you. Tom mcguire, sustainable streets director for the sfmta where i oversee many of the functions and programmes that the supervisor described in his discussion regarding public and traffic regulation around the city. We appreciate the opportunity to say a few words about this whole legislative area today and some areas ways in which we think we can do better. We certainly understand that this proposal, as well as the legislation that you and supervisor peskin introduced yesterday, was borne out of real frustration with the way the sfmta is doing business, particularly at the neighbourhood scale, in terms of responding to requests around things like stop signs and safety areas. Safety programmes. Its our intention, as you said, to outline over the next 90 days for each member of the board of supervisors as well as for our m. T. A. Board ways in which we can be more responsive, be more proactive, and also be more accountable to you and to all 800,000 users of the Transportation System and what youll see, as we bring out the details of that, will be more proactive communitybased planning, an approach that weve seen some success with in areas like the western addition. [please stand by] [please stand by] talk about community planning, an area where weve heard legitimate feedback is when we are going to implement the kind of projects that were authorized and demanded by the voters in prop a and Community Forward and giving each Supervisors Office and staff member access, to individual staff engineers and plannerrers who will be in a position to get to know the stakeholders and get to know the local iss