Loan program. This will allow us to provide lowinterest rates to invest in corridors. Were looking at about 3. 5 rate. But the loan is also available to citywide businesses or businesses across the city. The last time we actually provided resources to this Revolving Loan fund was in 2013, under mayor lee. And main street lounge is our partner in administering the loan. Were currently actually amending their contract, so we can add the additional dollars. Next piece is the 2 million allocation for the next two years to expand the s. F. Shines program, into the bayview, excelsior and lower haight. The dollars support Small Business owners to make improvements to their storefronts and interiors. With the goal here is to make the spaces more appealing and accessible to patrons and contribute to the overall vitality of the neighborhood. We estimate that the additional dollars will support about 100 businesses over the next two years. Just quickly, just some history on the program. Since 2009, s. F. Shines has completed 203 storefront improvement projects and given over 3. 6 million in support. It has also allowed us to expand to various types of the program, not only s. F. Shines, the regular project that you think about the entire facade, makeover that comes with the program, but also a quick awning program that allows these dollars to spread further. Support of Small Business with an awning makeover, a quick paint job to their storefront. And also s. F. Shines is working with local nonprofits to incorporate art na their facades and make sure its culturally relevant. It could be around the holidays or particularly focused around themes. Out of the dollars we put out there, 35 have supported womenowned businesses. And about 65 have supported minorityowned businesses. And this year alone, weve implemented 73 programs. We just closed r. S. P. That allows this election for the next contractors to help us implement the s. F. Shines dollars that were allocated to our budget. Next piece. The next piece we have here is a Small Business fee rebate program. As ismael of the mayors as a signal of the mayors commitment knowing that fees are a challenge for our Small Businesses, but also recognizing the time that it would take for us to address them. Mayor breed allocated money this year to provide immediate relief in the budget. The rebates will target relief to support businesses that are subject to ongoing regulatory license fees in San Francisco. It will ensure that businesses receive a partial refund on their ongoing fees, beyond business registration, that are paid to the city for permitser such a Cash Register, print scanners, d. P. H. Or the Carbon Dioxide tanks for the soda machines with the department of public health. Oewd Tax Collectors Office is ensuring the money reaches businesses this winter. We are designing the program so there is no need to apply or request the information. If youre a Small Business and pay fees beyond the business registration, through our consolidated building process, you will simply get a mailin check. Get a check in the mail, excuse me. We estimate Small Businesses will receive a refund. 88. The next slide here we have is these San FranciscoCommunity Cornerstones program, which is a pilot program. Recognizing San Franciscos nonprofit and Small Business is our Community Cornerstones or hubs for essential services and affordable resources that support lowincome opportunities. For this reason, this years 4 million onetime allocation will pilot the Community Cornerstones program. This program is a twofold program. It will support about 25 to 30 Small Businesses, with commercial, physical improvements and Technical Assistance moving into spaces, acquired through the Mayors Office smallsized division program. We estimate theres about we know about 13 buildings in the pipeline for now for the program. And we estimate about 34 commercial spaces are available to benefit in the program. Nice. For the nonprofit side, we expect support 10 to 15 nonprofits with Financial Assistance to complete tenant improvements in groundfloor spaces in newly constructed Affordable Housing sites. The timeline is we expect guidelines to be released in december of this year. The first application deadline will be february of next year. And awards will be announced, which nonprofits will be selected for the grant dollars in march of 2020. With that, im going to go ahead and pass it over to ben on our team to go over business streamlining. Good afternoon, commissioners. Ben van houten. Here with an update on permit streamlining. The Small Business permit streamlining legislation was introduced in december of last year. And it was adopted unanimously by the board and signed by the mayor in september. And it became effective october 11th. So were in the early days of implementation. But really excited about some of the new opportunities to come out of this legislation. Im going to do a quick overview, recap of the legislation itself. And highlight a little bit how some businesses are already looking to pursue opportunities based on it. And then talk about implementation and next steps, kind of where were heading from there. Just as an overview, this is a very technical package of legislation. But really all of these pieces, that were a part of the legislation, came from real world situations. Small businesses coming to the office of Small Business, coming to folks in economic and Workforce Development or others. And finding themselves stuck at some part of the process or finding themselves unable to do what they wanted to do, in order to strengthen their business, expand their business, moving forward. Four main buckets of reforms in this legislation. Bucket number one, enabling Retail Businesses to diversify their offerings. We have heard from Retail Businesses and informed by retail study as well, that in order to get patrons in the door, get them to browse the retail wares, get them to linger a little bit longer, businesses are interested in offering togo food, coffee, pastry, that sort of thing. Businesses are interested in hosting events. And so two pieces to this legislation, one, to remove barriers at the local level. Its really rightsize the local code with the state code to allow our Retail Business to serve that to togo coffee or pastries without building out bathroom access for the patrons. Second lie, on the events side, we reduced or eliminated food and beverage requirements from entertainment permitting or Retail Businesses that want solve some accessory entertainment use. Theres a Catering Company in south of market, that really wanted to have togo sandwich window to help activate that corner and the corridor and also to bring in some additional revenues for the business. They werent able to do that previously, because you would have had to walk through their kitchen, while it was in operation in order to get to the bathroom. So theyre really excited about this legislation and adding a new amenity to their business. Thank you. Another piece of this legislation, increasing opportunities for businesses to fill vacancies and enhance vibrancy. We really delved deeply into some of the more byzantine aspects of the planning code around n. C. 1 zoning and limited commercial uses. There are certain parts of the planning code where the zoning for one neighborhood applies to other neighborhoods as well. And this was something that the business in coal valley found itself stuck by, that neighborhood cafe, wooden coffee house just trying to add beer and wine to extend his hours and offer live comedy events, which was a part of the neighborhood character and culture for a long time. He found his Business Limited by controls that were intended for haight street and limit new restaurants on haight street. We established more reasonable controls, again where the controls for the neighborhood, they apply there, but reduced the buffers that create these conflicts with other neighborhoods. Also we corrected or updated the code on the uses. It used to be in most neighborhoods an arcade, pinball, video games, that sort of thing was actually i think surprisingly restricted, owing to some 1980s fears about the impacts of arcades op young people. Theres been increased interest in arcades, without the commensurate, negative impact on young people. So we worked to revise arcade zoning. So as a result of this, arcades are permissible, permitted or with conditional use in a lot more many more zoning districts. Weve heard interest from people who want to start arcades without alcohol or anything. The final piece is supporting openair food service. Our code, our health code had said that you need to keep your doors and windows closed at all times, which was a real challenge for businesses that wanted to have the openair feel. And already, thanks to this legislation, a cafe in the mission, who inherited the business from or i talked to the prior tenant of this location, they said, oh, you know, if only a connection with the community. If only we had been closer to the sidewalk. And, as a result, of this legislation, that new cafe did not have to buy and install costly screens ford to keep their doors and windows open during business hours. Already saving businesses there. For our live music and other entertainment venues, we reduced duplicative requirements. Previously if you wanted to get an entertainment permit, you would have to go back to the Health Department or go back to the fire department, even if you already have your Health Permit and fire permit. If youve gone through the Building Permit process, you have to go back to the Building Permit. By eliminating duplicative inspections, where somebody has just gone through the process, this can save businesses up to 600 in fees. And inspection fees. And up to a month in processing time to get their permits. And then we also rightsized some of the requirements for food service at our entertainment venues. Final piece here is the most technical of technical legislation. There were a lot of places in the planning code where inconsistencies, migs in the code were leading to businesses getting different answers, depending on who they were talking to at the counter. Or required businesses to get letters of determination, to figure this stuff out and letter of determination means a few hundred bucks, another month or so of time. We really want to reduce the process and reduce the requirements to the extent possible. All right. A brief detour into the administrative reforms, that were announced as part of along with the introduction of this legislation last december. This is a these administrative reforms impact when a business has to go through the neighborhood notification process, to do a change of use, which in a lot of neighborhood commercial corridors, you have to do neighborhood notification, send out a mailer, post a sign on your property. That is a the notification itself is a 30day process. But the entirety of the journey that your permit application goes on, is significantly longer than 30 days. So theres the time before the neighborhood notification happens, after you submit your information and it gets assigned a planner and sent out for notification. And then after that, under the old system, your permit application would go from intake to intake and each of the permitting departments. So instead of being able to do it over the counter, it would go to the inbox over the counter and with all of the other more complicated stuff. We want to empower Business Owners to do as much of this stuff overthecounter as possible. If all im doing is neighborhood notification, but not doing any building work, or doing limited building work, i should be able to do that, that backend stuff over the counter at each of the departments. Its also better for the departments, because they dont have to have their intake inboxes full of stuff that could be approved overthecounter. So, as a result, of this administrative rwhich was developed in concert with the department of building inspection, following neighborhood notification, d. B. I. Can identify, haney, this is very limited scope of work. The rest of this can be done overthecounter. And that applicant can go from counttocounter. Saving people potentially two to three months in the permitting process. So final piece on implementation. Obviously theres a lot of a lot of small fixes and changes in this legislation. So as part of thinking about implementation, weve been meeting with each impacted department. And connecting with them about education of staff, permit applicants, other stakeholders. You know, i think that the outreach and education needs, for both this legislation and also theres been a range of new policies over the last couple of years, whether its flexible retail, temporary uses. All of these new tools out there. I think its incumbent on us to make sure that city staff, that Business Owners and potential entrepreneurs and other neighborhood stakeholders, Everybody Knows all of the tools that are out there. Were continuing to identify challenges facing San Francisco businesses. This legislation was developed out of discussions with all of the departments, collaborative discussions. Were continuing to do some of that work to hear from businesses and hear from departments about what the fixes are that we can do to smooth the process. And again were guided by some of these pieces of our retail study, that retailers are looking to do new things. Theyre looking to be adaptable and to expand their businesses in ways that might not have been anticipated by landuse permitting, Technical Rules and that we can find ways to have events and food and all of this stuff complement Healthy Retail environment. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Do we have any commissioner questions . I first want to thank you very much for this presentation today. One of the things i firmly believe is this commission really depends on oewd and what you guys hear on the street. What we hear on the street and working together in partnership to change things. And im going to go back to that legislation that the mayor just signed with the coffee house on coal street. And hes getting ready to do comedy now, which is great. I can go watch comedy, not take a bus. And i its stuff like that or its items like that that we are making a change for the better in Small Businesses, especially in these neighborhood corridors. I think if you tackle a lot of these issues and problems up front, youll save on that vacancy space. You know, youll prevent it. And youll help that Small Business thrive. And, you know, like the awning program that she brought up. You know, i cant tell you how many times like, you know, in april im going around to businesses saying, you know, guess what, in may you my want to apply for this. Theres no permitting fee on it. I have actually seen a couple of businesses change like that. You know, we always try to announce it here at our meetings. But, you know, we need to get that out with other people. But i will tell you in the last few years, i am so impressed with the job that you guys do and the outreach in the neighborhoods. When im out there in the neighborhoods, and i have offices all over the city, you know, its stuff that you guys do and they come up to me and, oh, thank you for taking care of this. Thank you for taking care of that. And, you know, im the were the office of Small Business. But i also feel like, you know, were all one great Big Happy Family and together making these changes. I really do appreciate everything that you guys have done. Thank you. Commissioner riley. Hi. Thank you for the presentation. And i just want to say that when the mayor mayor breda nounsed breed announced 9 million new investment and the people were very excited to hear that. So hopefully they can fund a lot of your good programs. Thank you. Commissioner ortizcartagena. I want to thank you as well for your presentation. And i also want to let everybody know that these are things that are actually happening. This is not just talk. You guys are really doing it. I mean, i see it on the ground in my neighborhood in the mission. This is really having an impact. I can name three businesses right now thats either part of the Revolving Loan fund, the awning program. I mean, you guys are on it. Like this is really happening. So this is exciting. This is real stuff happening. This is not just you guys are really doing stuff. I want to say thank you to all yall. Commissioner zouzounis . Thank you all for your presentation. This is really informative of exactly how these the mayors ordinance is being allocated to the work. I have a quick question about the regulatory fee reimbursements. Were there instructions . Do you have to apply for that . No. No. As Laurel Arvanitidis mentioned, that if youve been identified in our partnership with the treasurer and tax collector, as having one of the reoccurring fees and again were estimating about 8800, 8900 individual businesses who are currently having those reoccurring fees. Theyll simply see that reflected on their bill. Okay. Im sorry. As a check. Yeah. Okay. So theres