Of this hearing. It has been quite a night, as well as staff. To the bureau of urban forestry, i think working with the sfmta to ultimately have a net gain of trees, in this area, by the 53 trees that are planted, it pretty entrepreneurial and a way to Work Together with city agencies to make sure we are doing things and hopefully disrupting this Community Less by having these projects be aligned. At the same time, i think it is incumbent upon us to maintain some trust by ensuring that we hold ourselves to the same standards that we would hold anybody else before this body. Even the exercise of finding the contractor, and all of that stuff may happen, that is the process we have and that is a process we would ask any of the contractor to go through. Even if it feels odd, i think it is worth it to go through. That is what we ask others to do. We should not we should be subject to the same standard. That said, i find this permit was properly issued with the one issue that they should find the contractor for the removal of the tree without a permit and pursue that process. I think that was was eloquently said. I want to think the departments for coming out, spending time, even though you guys are on the clock. As well as the public that stayed here until 10 40 p. M. You know, sometimes, it seems like i am badgering i do have a lot of respect for your departments. Sometimes, as my commissioners said, it feels like there is a weighted scale and we belittled tesla about one tree, and here we have a lot more. You know, that process, like she said, should be followed by everyone so that it is more clear. Please, hopefully this gets done, so in two years i do not have to say how come those trees are not done . If i am still here. Do we have a motion . I would move i guess, im not clear about the finding thing. Hold on one second. I dont think we can conditio condition i dont think this board can order public works to find a third party for something that is not directly before us. We cant. I would move that we would deny the appeal and uphold the permit on the basis of its proper iss issue. We have a motion from commissioner tanner, to deny the appeal and uphold the public works order on the basis that it is properly issued. [role call] that motion carries 50. The appeals are denied. We are done. I would like to request that we calendar discussion about policies and procedures regarding length of our meetings. I will put that on the agenda when everyone is here. Good morning. Here. This is thursday, september 19, 2019. This is the regular meeting of the recreation and park commission. Will the secretary please call the roll. [ roll call ]. Clerk commissioner buell has an excused absence. This is the meeting of the parks and recreation committee. We welcome everyone here and we ask that you please turn off devices that may sound off during this meeting. If you would like to speak on any item today, we request but do not require you to complete a blue card. Unless otherwise announced, each person will have three minutes for Public Comment. Neither the commission or staff will respond to Public Comment. If there is an item of interest to you that is not on the agenda and is under the subject matter of the commission, you may speak under general Public Comment, and that is item 4. Last, if the fire alarms activate, you must exit the building in an orderly exit. The elevators will return to the first floor and are not available for use. Please make your way to the closest area of refuge. Inside the restroom is a city box. Please press the button and someone will come to assist you. We will be taking items 10 and 11 out of order and they will be heard after item 7. First i want to acknowledge Parks Alliance for their great party last saturday at party for the parks. It was a fantastic event and there was a lot of donors and money raised for the parks projects around the city. Thank you for Parks Alliance and thank you to the department which also i understand helps support the party. So again, thank you to the Parks Alliance. The only other item i have to note was on a very im a very infrequent reader of the new york times, and there was an article that caught my attention that was called dogs wont fix our broken democracy. A lot of this was how dogs force us to get outside and go to the public parks and force us to talk to each other and interact and the serendipity of casual alliances. There was a line that ill read to you. It was spending time in public places, theyre open to everyone and while situated to guarantee the people from all walks of life will cross paths. I think that really speaks to the author was talking about central park, but it really talks about to all of our parks. Hopefully our general manager will discuss his letter to the editor, which i thought was very compelling and actually pretty moving for the general manager. So hopefully he will hes brought the letter to the editor with him. That concludes my Vice President s report. Clerk is there any Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. We are now on item 3, general managers report. Good morning, commissioners, as he scrambles to find the letter i wrote to the new york times. If i can find it, ill share it at another meeting, commissioner. You and i both reacted to that frank bernie column which i thought was fantastic. Those of you who are familiar with his work should look it up. He does use dogs in the public realm as a metaphor to talk about the importance of public space. I think i noted in my letter that parks are essentially the most Democratic Institution that we have left and the most equitable institution. Let me move on to our report for the month. So, mr. Vice president , you were unable to be at the party for the parks because you were rooting on your cal bears. There is a great rivally between cal and stanford. There is a great rivalry between the 49s and the oakland raiders. There is a great rivalry between the San Francisco giants and the oakland team. Let me introduce you to battle for the bay which is this saturday which is California Coastal cleanup day, San Francisco and our amazing mayor london breed take on the city of oakland and their amazing mayor libbc schaff in a bet which city can turn out the most volunteers and collect the most trash. This is important. Our mayor doesnt like to lose. So to all of us san franciscans, please sign up, either with s. F. Rec and park or with public works and join us. This is an amazing event. Every year its one of the largest volunteer events in the nation. Across the country i think approximately 60,000 volunteers will help remove thousands of pounds of trash and recyclables from beaches and parks and lakes all up and down the state. Here in San Francisco, were partnering with the port and public works and p. U. C. And the department of the environment. We need more than 2,000 volunteers at 16 inland and coastal sites, including the marina harbor, indian basin shoreline park. Again, this year we are pitting our efforts against our friendly rivals across the bay. There is a bet associated with this between the mayors and it involves the losing mayor having to go to the other city wearing other citys baseball jersey and participate in a volunteer event. Did i say that our mayor does not want to lose this bet . Please join us saturday. Volunteers can sign up by visiting battle fortheb forthebay29th. Org. Saturday is one of those terrific days where things are happening in our parks. Between 1 00 and 3 00 p. M. There will be a play day at West Portal Playground as we celebrate the upcoming improvements there. The playground is set to receive a muchneeded renovation thanks to lets play s. F. , which was the beneficiary for party for the parks, commissioner, that you mentioned. Lets play s. F. Is an amazing partnership between the recreation and Parks Department and the San FranciscoParks Alliance, where we are overhauling 13 of the most deserving and needy playgrounds all around the city, impacting 20,000 kids in those neighborhoods who use those playgrounds. And West Portal Playground is one of the 13. Saturdays event will include food, games, brief remarks, and an opportunity to spend time with our neighbors, which we should all be doing more of. As a special side note, Kaiser Permanente it was announced that he has made a 1. 6 million contribution to the lets play s. F. Campaign. So thank you for the bottom of our hearts, kaiser, and we join you in your mission to let people live long and thrive. Next we are the u. S. National lawn bowling championships which we are hosting right here in golden gate park. The top men and women lawn bowlers will compete in the 2019 championships, hosted by our very own San Francisco lawn bowling club. Competitions will take place from september 24 to 27 and are free and open to the public for viewing at the club located just west of Robin Williams meadow. You can visit sfrecpark. Org. We are also having a Community Celebration at christopher playground on saturday, as that playground gets ready to receive a muchneeded facelift with new playground equipment and new pathways and some restroom renovations. On september 28, we will be enjoyi enjoying ecocenter play day as our key event on Public Center wednesday. This coming saturday is Coastal Cleanup day. The following saturday is National Public lands days. So parks, parks, parks, parks. We will be hosting a day of fun at the ecocenter at herons head featuring a volunteer work party, fishing, bee workshops, a smoothie blender a bikepowered smoothie blender, and our mobile rock wall. That is right, a bicyclepowered smootie blender. Thats what we do. Herons head is now, commissioners, as you know, under the operation of our volunteer staff at parks and rec. The ecocenter if you havent been there is really one of the most special buildings anywhere in the city. Its an entirely offthegrid building that is used for Environmental Education and programming. It features its own solar energy system, a living roof, onsite wastewater treatment, a rainwater harvesting and reuse system. Its fantastic. Our goals, since taking over as the program and operator at herons head are to increase Public Access to the facility, provide more programs for youth, launch free fitness and Nature Programs for adults, and to provide Community Workshops and events at the site. Come see it and come learn all that the ecocenter has to offer. The event is free and open to the public. For more information visit sfparkrec. O rrks grks. Wait, theres more. October 2, big truck day is back in maclaren park. This is one of our most popular events where we invite all of our Little People to come to the park to see our biggest and coolest trucks from 10 00 a. M. To noon. Youll get to explore the city trucks, not just those that belong to rec and park, but a lot of our partners show up with their cool trucks that keep our city working, like fire engines and dump trucks. This is a free event. Visit the website for more information. I have been to big truck day a couple of times and it is a mad house. Then just around the corner, hardly strictly blue grass. Everyones free Favourite Music festival is back for its 19th year october 4 through 6. Like every year it brings a cool and eclectic mix of musicians together. This year it will feature many headliner headliners. This year festival operators are implementing additional security measures. So if i can be serious for a second. We will have increased sfpd and security presence. There will be a fence around the perimeter. There is a limited entrance this year at four locations only. Thats how you get into this event this year. Only clear plastic bags only clear plastic backpacks and bags will be admitted and no coolers or and this is written kegs. So dont bring a beg to hardly strictly. More details can be found at hardlystrictlybluegrass. Com. Last night our staff hosted a meeting to discuss the expansion of our free tennis pilot program. We launched the program back in april coinciding with the closure of the golden gate tennis center. This will allow users to make online reservations for tennis and pickle ball courts around the city. This is really working and has been very helpful and has been very helpful for the tennisplaying community. More than 1500 users have made more than 6,000 bookings since we started. So were seeing much greater use at the Tennis Courts and much more sense of reliability to know that a court is available. Almost everybody seems to be behaving really well and respecting the system. In august alone more than 1600 bookings were made. So were going to expand the program at 12 additional sites around the city. Weve gathered a significant amount of feedback from users and we will continue to improve the program as we move forward. Finally, this week the Controllers Office unveiled an interesting online tool that allows web users to sort and view by neighborhood the result of the Controllers Offices biannual city survey. The survey came out in may in 2019 and we were very pleased with how well people view their park system. The city polled residents on their satisfaction of a variety of city services, including overall safety, reliability, and helpfulness of staff. The latest survey completed in may gave an overall of b plus. The second only to the library. The quality of our programs received an 86 favorable rating, while landscape and parks received 84. These are good ratings. This new system allows you to view things by district and take a dive where people see our strong suits as well as opportunities for growth, areas where we need to improve. Its a useful tool for us and our staff. Some highlights in this first cut, district 9, including the mission, reserves the happiest opinions for our recreation programs, parkland scaping and park parks overall. District 6 gave some of the highest ratings to the quality of our recreation programs at 94 . The online tool can be found at sfgov sfgov. Org citysurvey. If you are a geek and love manipulating numbers and on base percentages, you will love this website. So that concludes the general managers report except for our video. This month in parks, which features our incredible nature play day we hosted a few weeks ago. [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] commissioners, this was just an incredible event. So kudos to San FranciscoRecreation Park Department staff. This was a collaborative effort between our policy and Public Affairs staff and some of our Park Maintenance staff. This was led by maria derona who is our children and nature coordinator. This is part of a much larger effort called the San Francisco children and nature initiative, that was actually chaired by hydra mendosa and i. A couple of years ago we were one of seven pilot cities to join the league of cities to think about strategies to increase urban equity in nature and to get kids out. San francisco has a mission station which is, every child deserves a naturebased experience every day. This was an effort to make that happen and i am very proud of it. That concludes the general managers report. Clerk is there any Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. We are at number 4. At this time, members of the public may address the commission on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission and that do not appear on the agenda. With respect to agenda items, you will have opportunity to address the commission when the item is reached in the meeting. I have some blue cards. I have anthony and then sally and then richard. Good morning, commissioners. Thank you. My name is lisa mccarth. I am serving the Beautiful Community of bayviewhunters point. We also convened a park collaborative. And just on behalf of the collaborative and Community Members, i want to thank this full commission for considering the additional allocation of funding to shareview park. As you know, this is in a very tightknit community. As the park is and the video showed, every child deserves a day in nature. So we thank this commission for that consideration of allowing the children within that community and mccarther bayview to have additional green space to play safely and just to be kids. Thank you. Thank you. Im anthony smith. Im here in support of jackson park. It must be identified as a priority for the funds in the next park bond. As you mentioned, sir, the event this weekend that was very successful, and jackson park hosted a wonderful part of that. Ive been a resident of the city since 1980. During that time ive played ball at jackson park in rec and park leagues. Ive umpired many games and coached many games at jackson park. Ive had the reward of being part of Team Camaraderie and sportsmanship there. Ive seen children achieve triumph and learn from their strengths and find their gifts. Ive cherished these experiences all along. Ive also witnessed two very disturbing trends. One is because of social trends that promote highly competitive pay to play groups prevails, there is a drop in participation in youth separate and aparts. Not every kid thrives in highly competitive environments and n