Transcripts For SFGTV Government Access Programming 20180211

Initiative where were not trying to start something brandnew where lit take us five years to get us up and running. We have it up and running and we have to have the resources. As we roll it out in terms of increasing the numbers that we serve, the facilities will be there. And today i would ask for a continuance of this particular item. It was my fault that it was confusing where things were at. The initiative was presented by signatures and with this one. First i want to recognize ivy lee from supervisor kims office. I just wanted to give you an opportunity also to present on behalf of supervisor kim who couldnt be with us today but is also the lead sponsor on this initiative. Thank you so much, chair cohen. And thank you, supervisors, for your time today on this issue. You know, i just want to speak from a very personal point of view. About this measure. I have three kids of my own. And victory and i were both nonprofit attorneys. We made 90,000 between the two of us and we had three kids all in child care at the same time. It was a real struggle. And it was a part of it was part of the reason that i gave up work for about three years in other words to take care of the kids because my paycheque was going straight into child care. I know a lot of people that, you know, think that, you know, it is a hard choice when you are a mom. You feel guilty when youre at work and you feel guilty when youre at home. For me, being a fulltime mom was really hard. Because i felt like i still had something to contribute outside of the home. But i wasnt willing to put my kids in a system, if i couldnt guarantee that they were receiving highquality care. I wanted people that would love them as much as i did. And do. And i think that is the crux of this measure is that for women, especially, were the ones that carry this burden. Were the ones that will have the freedom to actually make choices in the workforce if we have access to quality care that we can actually afford. And that is the bottom line. That is the key reason that im actually at city hall and still working here because that is the last big lift that i really hope we can accomplish. While supervisor kim is still in office. So, i really thank you for your consideration of this measure. And i hope that you will support it. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that testimony. Supervisor yee, if you can and ms. Lee, if you could stick around if we have questions. So, just for you, supervisor yee, just for clarification on page 11, line nine, you talk about eligibility programmes. Subsection c, specifically. It reads supporting physical, emotional and Cognitive Development of children under the age of 6. That is a very, very broad statement. I was wondering if you could expand on what exactly that might what that might entail . So, typical of a really good Early Childhood Education Programme and part of this language is very familiar with people in the field that state what they have desire results and regulations along their programmes. And it includes this language. I was part of the development of the what we call at the time these are results of programmes. Unlike children when theyre older, you can separate easier. Theses a pexes for a younger child, you dont do well because of cognitive, meaning mainly Cognitive Development eventually helps with your academic that. Thats what it means. And being stable emotionally, i learned from our historic programmes in which i ran that without the support of the Mental Health pieces and other sort of needs for emotional piece, that youre not going to develop your cognitive skills. Let me see if i can drill down on my question. Are there specific programmes that you are looking to get funded . I understand the value. Lord knows i understand the value of physical and emotional and Cognitive Development. But are there specific programmes that are out there . Are we creating new programmes . Are there so so again, this metricks that we use in the city that has been developed over the years, its sort of looking at the state of metrics and the federal metrics and we develop our own to make sure because one of the things we can walk around and say lets have quality programming. What does that mean . So we develop these metrics to measure whether a programme meets the bare minimum to qualify as a programme that we want to support through contracts. So the beauty of this is that we started this 15 years ago with the preschool for all programme and have it developed. I cant give you an exact number. Im not that closely in terms of how many of the centre base, whether its for profit or nonprofit. And how many of the Family Child Care providers are under contract. I think next week, the office of the e. C. E. Could you give you numbers. Who . September jarret. Oefk. So, what were hoping for is expand the numbers that can be qualified as under the programme. We have to i have to say that whening we first started 15 year ago, many of the programmes that have contracts now were not qualified. Including almost all the School Districts because the quality wasnt there. Instead of walking away from them, we put in funding to help them improve the quality so many of them became qualified so that is what were planning to do to bring up other programmes to the level that we feel like where somebody in the ivy league can walk in with her kids and say, yes, this is great and for my grandkids would be walking in in about a year. That would be great. Are your grand kids walking yet . Yes. Theyre running [laughter] ok. I also want to add that one of the beauties of this, in terms of talking about immediate and large impact to the working families, within a year of this passing, we will be able to serve not only 1,000, but 5,000 working families, an increase of working families within a year. That is Immediate Impact to keep as many of our families in San Francisco as possible. All right. Thank you. Supervisor yee, theres little question that the investment in Early Childhood education pays dividends in the long run. I think no one is here to make that argument at all. Im interested in how this will affect not just San Francisco residents currently, but those who have been displaced and pushed out of the city. But continue to work in San Francisco. Have you given any thought to that . I think no. To be truthful. Part of it is trying to serve as many san franciscans as possible. To keep them here. If we want to reach beyond that, for instance, then we need to ask for more money. So it is a matter of priority where were trying to help people thats actually living here than possibly moving out. Ok. Got it. So we have precedent for legislation that accommodates displaced communities which are overwhelmingly are community of colour, lowincome residents, people with challenging immigration status and with the neighbourhood programme, i was wondering if the programme does this particular programme that you are proposing do anything for the displacement of families at all . You said no, but i was wondering if there is room for it. Theres some flexibility. Its not built into the legislation. But a few things. Im glad you brought it up. Ok. I mean, im so immersed in this sometimes i take it for granted that Everybody Knows this. But lets make sure the public knows that the workforce itself is 90 of people of colour and women and theyre the poorest paid. And many of them have to move out of the city. So we are losing not only what we consider just other working family, but losing these people and im hoping that we can keep them in the city. So, but i think i hear you. I will im pretty sure well have a discussion. We built in some flexibility for this so that i didnt want to dictate every single item on this. So that office of the e. C. E. Could actually massage it as much as they can. Ok. Thank you. I believe that exhausts my questions and i want to recognize supervisor few weather a few of her own. Thank you very much, chairman im also cosponsor of this and i will say after being on the board of education for eight years, i know what happens to preschool for all. Supervisor yee is absolutely correct that many of our Child Development centres did not meet the High Standard and we had to revamp them all to meet that High Standard and it was a heavy lift. It meant looking at curriculum, aligning curriculum with actually the kindergarten curriculum. It looked at who was actually carrying for our children and with activities and we found there are great discrepancies among geographic locations also which we felt was inequitable. So i know it is a heavy lift. I want to echo the sentments of ivy lee. I stayed home for the first 19 years of my marriage simply because the cost of child care was so expensive. I think everyone should know that this would take 2500 families off the wait list for child care subsidies and also that when you talk about does it help anyone who has been displaced out of San Francisco. I want to remind everyone that when we started the childrens fund, people said at the time this is political suicide. That will never happen. You shouldnt do it. Guess what . Weve done it and other cities nationwide have copied what weve done and now it is common place for other major cities to set aside a portion of their general fund just for children, youth and families so i would hope if San Francisco did this, that other jurisdictions and neighbouring jurisdictions where people have been displaced but are still coming in to work that actually would follow suit. Again, we lead the way here in San Francisco and also have such a high cost of living. Also i think that folks should know that 0 to 3, the infant care so expensive. While San Francisco Unified School District has many early ed programmes, it is very, very few infant care programmes because the ratio is so much different. For a child that is an infant, it is a 6to1 ratio. Where as a preschool child is a much higher ratio so the cost is less expensive. I recently just met with Early Education services and they also told me that they will have to close their doors in 10 years if there is not an interruption because they are losing their staff rapidly. Their staff, they serve mainly in my district lowincome, cantonesespeaking parents and they cannot find the workforce because everyone has been pushed out of the city. So, not only is this needed to, i think, take people off the wait list, it is also to continue the families of San Francisco. There will be people who will be those teachers that are in the centres that will be caring for their children in a high level. And lastly i want to say that seeing the statistics of the San Francisco Unified School District, we know that Early Childhood education so important. It is one of the great determiners of how successful a child would be in their k18 years. In fact, it is so profound that the San Francisco Unified School District in the red every year about 6 million, frontloading that education for children because the subsidis that we get back from the state just dont match up to the cost of highquality child care. And so as a mother but also as someone who is a fourth generation san franciscan and raised three children here, meeting so many families that continue to pay high rents but simply cannot afford the cost of child care, the need for quality child care, for every one of our San Francisco residents, whatever [inaudible] they are, but especially the youngest who cannot speak for themselves, that this is an investment in not tonight future of San Francisco, but and investment in our families and it is not enough to say that were familyfriendly is that we have to put our money actually where our mouths are. And i think that this initiative is so important to the working families of San Francisco and the overall family population in San Francisco as we have the lowest population of 0 through 18 aged children of any large urban city in the United States. So, having said that, i know that the sponsor, supervisor yee, has asked for continuance. Id like to make a motion to continue this item to the next meeting. Next budgets meeting will happen next week. Ok. Lets talk about that. So, before we take that motion, we need to take Public Comment. Ok. So, lets open up the Public Comment. I have one card here. I want to call michael wineberg. If you are still interested, please come on up. Anyone else thats interested in speaking on this item, please come. Thank you. Thank you, supervisors. Michael wineberg, sciu local 10to1. While the item is considered for consideration or moved to next week, what i had intended to say, which will probably still say next week, is that our union hasnt hadnt had the opportunity to take a formal position on this measure yet. Were calendaring that. Generally speaking, we always look at opportunities to provide more for everyone. And generally speaking this looks like one of them. Especially in the context of the largest or some of the largest tax cuts ever to be seen by the wealthiest among us. We think that there is a capacity for such a measure to provide for provide services for the least among us. And thats paraphrasing, that is the lens with which we would view this measure. Thank you. Mr. Wineberg, i have a question for you. Are you on sciu staff or a volunteer member or whats your role within the organization . Im a political organizer with the union. Im employed by the union. Ok. And does the union represent worker child care workers . That is a good question. We represent the sfusd child care workers. San francisco Unified School District. Yes. That would benefit from this measure. We do not represent the private providers. All right. I appreciate that. Thank you very much for that clarification. Thank you. Thank you, youre welcome. Next speaker. Mr. Bozeman. Yes. Hi. John bozeman again. Thank you, chair. Our organization hasnt taken any position on any gross receipt tax measure and im here to say that our organization, its not what youre funding. The way we look at it is not what youre funding but it is how youre funding it. Any tax, and our members pay a fair share, property tax, transportation tax to different departments and theyre ok with that, as long as the money goes to the general fund and you debate how you want to fund City Government and whatever you feel is important for the citizens here and the legislative arena. But when it comes to gross receipt tax and taxes by referendum, we have to say that its difficult for us to ascertain exactly the sustainability of that tax to fund whatever youd like. Again, it is not what youre funding. It is how youre funding it. You have to look at the longterm economic consequences of an annual tax of 100 millionplus a year on any one specific industry and how that might erode your tax base over time because that would be impactful to us. Again, not what youre funding, but just how youre funding i. Our industry is a resources for you if you ever have any questions about retail issues or anything regarding taxes. We have a lot of data and we want to be there for you and be at the table and we are. But even more so. So, thank you. I have a question for you. Yes, chair. You raise an interesting point, certainly a stakeholder in this. Has anyone reached out to you to talk about this particular proposal . Yes. I spoke with supervisor yee and supervisor kim. I told them same thing. Its not what youre funding, how youre funding it. The current tax base and the economy is great now. But in these to five years or less, it may not be. And good things can be funded with tax measures, no question. But just be careful what you believe the longterm sustainability of that tax is because if you cant fund it, people will be suffering and we want to make sure these taxes are sustainable, not only for our industry, but for the larger business community, too. Thank you. Thank you. Any other members of the public that would like to comment on item five . Ok. Seeing none, item five is closed. Thank you. There is a request about a continuance and i just want to go over the calendar just to touch base on where we are. So, the request is to continue the item to next week to february 15. And i am not in favour of that. The agenda already is very heavy. We have 12 items already scheduled for february 15. So then i looked at the following week and that is february 22. Which we have no Board Meeting. We have no Committee Meeting scheduled. There is no Board Meeting on the 20th due to president s week. So that leaves the following thursday, which is thursday, march 1. So, to the maker of the request for the continuance, march 1 is the next time that the agenda is open im willing to schedule at that time. However, i would suspect that we will you will already have your answer. Part of the desire to have a continuances to figure out whether or not the signatures are validated because theres this particular topic, that is one topic. There are three different ways that the sponsors are trying to get this before voters by signature, by four signatures collected by the electorate and then by four signatures on the board of supervise source and then through the legislative ordinance process. So, this committee is dealing with the one that is going through the legislative process. I will have a conversation about it. But the next day that we can get this the next time this item can be heard is march 1. So i wanted to see supervisor yee, i see your name on the roster. March 1 is in order to move this forward to h