Transcripts For SFGTV Government Access Programming 20240713

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all. This is a reminder to silence all electronic devices. Fire Commission Regular meeting october 23, 2019. And the time is 5 03. Item 1 roll call. [roll call] item 2 general Public Comment. Members of the public may address the commission for up to three minutes on any matter within the commissions jurisdiction and not appear on the agenda. Speakers shall address their remarks to the commission and as a whole and not to individual commissioners or Department Personnel. Commissioners are not to enter into debate or discussion with a speaker. The lack of a response by the commissioners or Department Personnel does not necessarily constitute agreement with or support of statements made during Public Comment. If theres any member of the public that wishes to make Public Comment, please approach the podium. Is there any member of the public that wishes to give Public Comment at this time . Seeing none Public Comment is closed. Madame secretary. Item 4 im sorry item 3 approval of the minutes. Discussion and possible action to approve the Meeting Minutes of october 9 2019. Thank you very much. Is there any Public Comment at this time on item 3, approval of the minutes. Please approach the podium. If not Public Comment is closed. Commissioners. I move to approve, mr. President. Second. So moved by commissioner cleveland, seconded by Vice President covington. Call for the question, all in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you very much. Madame secretary. Item 4 certificate of appreciation presentation. San Francisco Fire Department to present certificate of appreciation to Dino Medardo Rosso for donating time to teach spanish to san Francisco Fire Department to enable our First Responders to continue to carry out the departments mission of serving all san franciscans and Waldorf School for donating classroom space to that members of the sffd can learn spanish, thereby enabling our First Responders to continue to carry out the departments mission of serving all san franciscans. Thank you president , Vice President and commissioners. Chief of department nicholson. If i could have dino could you come up to the podium for us . Is there a someone from the Waldorf School . A representative . Just come on up to the podium. I just want to say thank you so much. We appreciate your time, we appreciate your space. And in helping us be better at our jobs and be able to serve everyone in this city. And so im going to come down there and give you certificates of appreciation to both of you. And if either of you would like to speak, we can do that, and if we want to take a picture, well do that. So again, thank you very much. [applause] thank you so much. Whats your name . Andrea. Pleasure to meet you. [off mic] thank you for having us here. I wanted to thank los bombeross for sponsoring me. I wanted to thank my colleagues at waldorf where we teach spanish, they gave us a classroom over the summer. I would like to thank ingleside for offering us space to teach our classes. I would like to thank lieutenant baxter for being the champion for this program. We met a few years ago and he was trying to accomplish the same goal. I ran into him, and we just sort of he helped me make this happen. Hes been instrumental in this whole process. There are already some really great language tools that First Responders use when connecting with the community. One of which is there are hand held devices you can plug into arabic or cannot cantonese there are interpreters there are trainings. So this is an additional that First Responders have in their tool belts to be able to give a one on one direct assessment. I think its important that have that personal connection. An interesting number here is that 13 percent of households in San Francisco are nonenglish speaking. It is a fairly high number. 21 percent of those are spanish only. So i would like to again just really thank all of these First Responders, firefighters, cops emts, emergency personnel, they have volunteered their time to come and learn with me. This is not something that they were obliged to do. This is something that they thought was necessary in order to do their jobs better. They came to it. I wanted to talk a little bit about the progress of the students. I wanted to mention that beyond just learning simple phrases theyve learned how to actually engage and conjugate verbs and have meaningful conversations with people they are finding on a regular basis in general. The last point i want to make is that this really does have a positive kind of bearing on the way that we are perceived by the community, by we,i mean you. I think it improved Community Relations when First Responders are making a concerted effort to reach out to those that they serve by learning a language which as an adult is really hard to do. So i really commend everyone thats involved in this process. So is there anything that you would like to say . She is my colleague. She also works with me on this program. Its great to have meaningful collaboration between school and between the city and also that may we continue to build bridges not only with each other but all the members of the community. Can we do a photo . Sure, yeah. Why not . [applause] come on up here. Sure. [off mic] thank you. [off mic] thank you so much. Really great to meet you. Great job. Thank you so much. Commissioners are going to thank you. A pleasure. So i just stand here . Absolutely. Mr. Rosso . Yes sir. First of all as an order of business im going to ask for Public Comment and then the commissioners will comment as well. Is there any members of the public that wish to give comment on this item . Seeing none Public Comment is closed. Commissioners. Commissioner cleveland. Thank you, mr. President. And thank you for being here and thank you for what you are doing. When i became a commissioner on the Fire Commission, one of the things that i thought was super important was the people we bring into our department be multilingual that we have as many languages spoken in the department as are represented on our streets. And having this program, you know, for people who are already in the department, already on the streets working every day is so critically important. So i just wanted to say muchas gracias. [speaking spanish] we appreciate the work you are doing to help our department be more culturally relevant and competent on the street. Mr. Baxter has done a great job getting the word out about Fire Prevention and its been a breath of fresh air to have that kind of exposure to the city. So thank you and keep up the good work. [speaking spanish]. Thank you very much. Very, very nice of you to do this. And the Waldorf School, when i was on the board of the foundation the Waldorf School was at fort mason and this kind of involvement is very much in line with the waldorf philosophy. So im not surprised that the classes were held at the Waldorf School. Its very very good to see this collaboration. And of course i echo everything that my fellow commissioner cleveland just said. For a while i toyed with the idea of going to those classes, because i but you know, we do fight fires. Thank goodness for the city that we dont fight fires. Its such a wonderful thing to have people in their off time go to something that can help the citizenry even more. It really points to how giving the members of our department are. And its very nice to see you highlighted. So thank you. Thank you very much, Vice President covington. Commissioner hardeman. Yes. Since you are not officers, i can call you by your first name. Thank you for what you do. Great words of wisdom. I think you make a few bucks on the side if you can find a russian orthodox. Russian orthodox priest. Sure. Very kind of you to do that. Terrific. I didnt know it was even happening. So thats terrific. We should probably. Spread the word. Not only to find somebody close by that would do it in chinese, not you particularly but thats a great thing you are doing. Absolutely. If i can also just reiterate again our thanks to you. And i also want to give a shoutout to captain jack hart from ingleside pd who also gave us space. To thank you very much, captain. We appreciate you. [applause] thank you very much. I also wanted to echo some comments. This is one of the more beautiful exciting, happy occasions being a commissioner with this department. Its not unusual because the department and city and county with its citizens and its public, we have also long strived to have relationships. Its not very often these kind of relationships happen with this kind of activity. Part of this longevity that i have was part of the consent agreement and part of that was representation of diverse members of our community in the Fire Department. Equally in terms of that, with the percentage of members of our public that dont speak english as their first language ive learned over the years that if you are in trouble or need some help, its reassuring when you can hear a firefighter or fire woman or paramedic or person of our Department Come to you and have some language familiar if i, just to kind of engage and feel some comfort zone. Im quite proud of this whole program. I appreciate lieutenant baxter, thank you so much for the Police Department and the support that you have within that. In terms of the remarks by Vice President covington, i too was thinking at one point of showing up for some Classroom Activities only because for so long, and i get so tired of saying this that i want to learn spanish as well, only because our members of our Community Everywhere i go, members of the spanishspeaking. So for me to be able to engage a little bit beyond, you know [speaking spanish] something to have some relationship, its just really important. And i am very happy that waldorf is part of this as well. Just thank you so much for your dedication and for this work. And good things will occur from this. And thank you for the start of that. I appreciate it. [applause] any comments . No, just thank you to all of you and thanks to the Fire Department and Police Department for working together to make this kind of happen. Thank you very much. Thank you. Gracias. Such an honor to be here on behalf of waldorf. Thank you. Thank you very much. Madame secretary. Item 5 chief of departments report. Report from chief of Department Jeanine Nicholson on current issues, activities and events within the Department Since Fire Commission meeting on october 9, 2019 including budget, academies special events communication and outreach to other Government Agencies and the public. Thank you very much, madame secretary. Good evening chief nicholson. Good evening again. Thank you president nakajo, Vice President covington, commissioners good to have you here. Ill start off with our academy. I know chief velo is giving his report, hell give you more detail. But we did start the members of station 49 in our Suppression Academy this week. So we are going full bore now. And you will get further information from chief velo. On the 11th, myself and several of my staff, including chief tom met with the San Francisco General Hospital foundation. And we went through pes Psych Emergency Services and talked to them about how we Work Together and sort of what their capacity is and how we can work better together. And we talked also about all sorts of people that we bring that dont necessarily need a hospital, an emergency room and sort of how can we collaborate on that and do ems prevention. I know they are already doing things at San Francisco General Hospital. They have a couple folks at tree i cant imagine that work triage and they will divert them because they dont necessarily need to be in the er. So im looking forward to working with them in the future, whether its Community Paramedicine or what have you. On the 15th i had a meeting with the doctor about Community Paramedicine and seeing what we can do there as well as our policy and procedures. On the 15th we also met with local 798 to discuss all sorts of issues. And ems was definitely one of the top ones. And we followed that on the 21st with an ems Labor Management meeting. And we are collaborateing on all sorts of things ems related. And its a good, productive relationship. I also went to a Community Health Needs Assessment breakfast the other day with chief tong and heard from dph and some other folks and met with afterwards with dr. Bennett who is the director of interdivisional opportunities. So we are really looking for ways to collaborate, whether with dph or hospitals, in terms of what we can do to impact not just call volume but peoples lives on the street. I went to on the 16th, mayor breed and i both attended the welcome kickoff for the International Association of firefighters Human Relations Committee conference. We both spoke that morning. We went we had the great shakeout at Rosa Parks School and thank you for attending Vice President covington. And then the preed events on the 17th. Thank you to president nakajo and Vice President covington for attending the pier event that was held up in marina green. It was a treat to have Jerry Shannon there who is a retired firefighter who was really made a huge impact with his work during and after loma prieta. On the 19th we had the 30year nert drill anniversary. As we know, nert came out of the loma prieta earthquake. It was founded after that, because they wanted to do something. We had a meeting with the stress unit yesterday. Myself and chief velo and our chief of health and safety, chief parks. We met with them. And we were discussing how to streamline communications from within and to us as well as data that we want them to collect in terms of seeing how many people were actually working with and sort of what our resources look like in relation to that. Tomorrow is the ann Rush Foundation burn relay. It will be coming to the division of training at 19th and folsom around 4 45 tomorrow afternoon, you are all invited. The black Firefighters Association will be cooking dinner for everyone. This is the peninsula relay. So they started down the peninsula. Im not sure if it was at menlo park but theyve gone through there and their last journey is tomorrow up to us. And if you dont know, ann rush was a child who was severely burned in 1970 and died from a Backyard Barbecue accident. And we had many of our members involved with the alyssa ann Rush Foundation. We are mother created it as a way to educate folks about burns, stop drop and roll came out of that. And they also assist people who have folks who have family members that are burned. We have a meeting with the controller this week to talk about, again ems and sort of change the dashboard that weve been using. Weve been very reliant on just the 90 percent response time. And we are going to expand that dashboard to include all sorts of things from the beginning to the end of the call. Look at the system from a really holistic perspective. And yesterday i went to station 49 and did a meet and greet with probably 20, 25 members. It was very wellreceived. Chief tong and chief were there. We are having a conversation and really opening the door for more of that and collaboration and it was pretty well received. And i believe that concludes my report. Thank you very much chief nicholson. At this particular time we will call for Public Comment on chief nicholsons report. Is there any member of the public that wishes to give Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is c