Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Public Safety And Neighborhood Ser

SFGTV BOS Public Safety And Neighborhood Services Committeee July 13, 2024

Staffing the meeting. Please ensure youve silenced cell phones. Files should be submitted to the clerk. Items acted upon will appear on the january 28, 2020 agenda unless otherwise stated. Before we go to the first item, ill make a motion we excuse supervisor walton. Mr. Clerk, please call our first item. Number 1 is an ordinance amending the health code by amending the sugar sweetened beverage to update the findings and purpose, revise the definition of advertiser, reduce the warning size, move modifiede warning text, remove exemptions for certain types of sugar advertisements. Natalie g. , welcome. Good morning. So a little bit of background information. The citys sugar sweet and beverage ordinance was introduced by supervisor scott weiner and unanimously passed by the board in 2015. But because of a subsequent lawsuit and a ruling against the city at the ninth Circuit Court it prevented the ordinance going into effect. We introduced the revised revision last september to incorporate more feedback on this legislation. We know that theres been countless studies connecting these beverages to weight again, obesity and type ii diabetes and theres been numerous studies showing that these large Beverage Companies specifically target their advertising to communities of colour creating more health despairties. Theres been studies proving that labels are an effective way to provide the Community Information for them to make their own healthy choices. In fact, ucsf has done numerous focus groups in the bayview, mission and tenderloin to ask what the community wanted from a Public Health perspective and the top request was to have information on warning labels about the health risks so that people can make their own informed choices. This reading introduced versions incorporating the following seven changes with input from the committee. Number one it updates the ordinances statements of findings and purposes with more recent information about weight gain, increasing the risk of obesity and type ii diabetes and these finds are about Health Literacy and helping the public to make informed choices. It defines the definition of an advertiser of those selling sugar sheetenned organizers and excuse people in the business of placing, installing or providing space where the displays such as Business Owners of a small mom and pop shops and it reduces the total number of advertisement and number four, it modifies the text to the required warning to say San Francisco government warning, drinking beverages with added sugars can cause weight gain and increases the risk of obesity and type ii diabetes. Number five, it adds a Language Access component as part of the equity lense, requiring official translations of the warning labels in the top San Francisco languages such as chinese and it limits certain types of sugar beverages. We had a provision about any ads about december 31, 1985 were exempt and we took that out. And we are excepting ads that have been in place 50 areas or more. The cocacola billboard sign off of the i80 freeway and lastly, this revises the ordinance enforcement allowing dph to administer ordinances to pursue civil enforcement. We have medical professionals such as sf medical society, Health Organizations and expect groups all on board with this legislation. The Youth Commission just voted unanimously to also support this. So happy to answer any questions and hope you all can join on a positive recommendation. Thank you. Thank you. I dont see any comments or questions from my colleagues so well go to Public Comment. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak on this item . If so, come on up and line up on your right, our left. Speakers will have two minutes. We ask you state your first and last name clearly and speak to the microphone. If you have prepared written statements, leave them with the clerk for ad admission file. In the interest of time, speakers are advised to avoid repetition of previous statements. Come on up. When it comes to sugary beverages, the possibility of substitutes are greater now than ever. The Beverage Market is all steadily saturated with flavoured, unsweetened products, the majority of which are sold in recyclable aluminum cans rather than the plastic containers and theyre increasingly gaining shelf space. So trends suggest consumer taste and beverages have been shifting in a halty direction and culturally obesity is less popular today than a mere decade ago so gym memberships have risen significantly over the intervals. However, attempts to compel marketers or emergency engaged in specific language regarding sugary beverages may be an uphill battle and are you looking at all beverages, sugary beverages or specific sugary beverages . Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who would like to speak on this item before Public Comment is closed . Seeing none, Public Comment actually, well invite you back up miss gee, seeing no comment from members of the public, comment is closed. Miss gee, come on back. Earlier i said the mom and pop shops so the provision exempts installers of the signs, not the owners of the business. So i just wanted to clarify that. Ok, thank you. If there are no comments or questions, i will move that we forward this to the full board with positive recommendation. We can take that without objection. Congracongratulations, miss ge. Mr. Clerk, the next item. Number two is a hearing on the city and county policies as it relates to trash cans and pickups in addressing litter. Supervisor hainey, this is your hearing, take it away. Thank you, chair and thank you supervisor, stephanie, for having this hearing at the committee. I want to also recognise and thank all of the folks here in the room who do this work everyday. I think its, obviously, a very challenging and often thankless job to be out there making sure our streets are clean, that litter and trash is taken care of and, especially, at a time, i think, where this issue is often in the media, and getting attention, im sure it puts a lot of attention on you all and the folks out there. So i want to extend my appreciation to the folks here and also to the employees that are out there right now. I saw them on the way here and just do tremendous, very difficult jobs and we appreciate them. So today, were going to talk some trash. Im sure in this room, thats not a joke you havent heard before, but i just want to take my shot at it. You know, you thin i think for e reason for this hearing is pretty obvious and clear. We have a huge problem with trash and litter on our streets. Thats true all over our city. Its especially true in the district that i represent, Downtown South of market and the tenderloin, particularly. This is something that comes up from residents, workers, businesses and as i mentioned, the national, International Press and here in San Francisco in a city that is among, if not the most innovative place when it comes to technology and progress, it continues to me to be deeply concerning and in some ways mind boggling that we havent been able to solve this problem. It seems to me there are practical, commonsense solutions, proactive loose solus that caif we Work Together. This specifically will be about trash cans, both the public cans and the private cans, dumpsters and to shed light what the cities and partners have been doing to address trash and litter on our streets and to get an update on a new policies and strategies to address this ongoing problem. For me, and what ive seen and what ive heard and experienced in the last year and before that, this comes up all the time and a couple of things i want to highlight before we jump into the conversation. One is, there are parts of my district, at least, where we can walk block after block and not see a city can. And thats something that i hear about from my constituents and deeply concerning and confusing to me as to why thats a reality that continues to exist. On top of that, we often see, in my district, both city cans and private cans either being broken or busted open or trash and litter that was clearly previously in a city can or a private can making up a lot of the litter on our streets and sidewalks. This ithese are conditions thate unacceptable for people to live and work in. It seems deeply unfair to the employees themselves who are having to pick up after, basically, broken infrastructure and having to respond in a reactive way as opposed to having trash stay where i think it belongs, which is in the trash can to begin with. I did a fixit walk along the embarcadaro with a number of the departments and neighbors and we came across, first of all, not enough city cans, but the city cans that we came across were actually more likely to be broken than functional. They were, in many cases the gate was swung open or the trash was pulled out. That creates problems for people who live and work in this area but also creates a lot of cynicism and a culture where people dont believe theyre supposed to throw things in the trash because the trash cans themselves dont work. So this is a reality that, i think, is fixable, that there are solutions to. As a city, we started to fund and put out more sort of total containment bins with big belly style cans and i want to understand how that fits into our strategy to address this issue. So the three things, the guiding questions that i had for the city departments and the folks who are here are what are thecies where we are placing city cans, the types of cans were using and why. Secondly, how can we prevent trash from being spilled on the street from city cans and dumpsters and how do we ensure buildings and businesses are signed up for and receiving adequate service . And this is something that the department of Public Health will speak to. I want to say at the outset, i dont want to just ask questions but offer solutions which ive tried to do and weve been working closely together doing my time as supervisor. I want to appreciate dpw and oewd for your partnership on that. There are a set of thank thingsm asking for. If this is not the right approach, i would love to hear why we are not doing these things and why we cant. The first thing, there seems to be a need to have a trash can on every corner. In the tenderloin, south of market, downtown, it is astounding to me that with the attention and the realities of trash on the ground, that we wouldnt have an adequate a lot of trash cans. Theres a mythology and i want to talk about this and i dont know how true this is, that the city has pulled away tons of cans over time and people bring that up a lot in the community. Secondly, as i believe we need a new trash can design for our public cans. For these cans to be as likely to be broken open as functional is completely unacceptable and so i want to hear about what our plan is to either fix or replace the ones that are out there. Third, i want to understand the standard for where public cans go and what sort of transparency there is around that. Seems to me that theres not a formula for where the cans to and why theyre there and when. They can be pulled out or put away based on complaints. I dont feel thats the best way to do this. Fourth, how were going to secure dumpsters. There need to be much stronger locks on dumpsters. There are places where trash is pulled all over the street. Fifth, how woul well roll out r bins and coordinate pickup schedules which is beginning to happen in the tenderloin and i want to appreciate the work that recolocg is doing and how to extendeextend that across the cd a plan for how buildings have correct and adequate trash service. Peoples are residential and the people who live there dont have adequate trash service and end up dumping their trash by the city cans. That seems to be a solvable problem and will take a plan to address it. So those are my ideas and what i would like to see, but i would hope that we can talk about what your plans are and how were going to really keep trash where it belongs in the can and make sure cans are available and ensure we have cleaner, healthier streets for all of our residents, not just those in district 6. So to address those issues and questions, we have representatives from San Francisco public works, recology, department of Public Health and oewd and i think were going to start with jeremy spitts from public works. Good morning. Thank you, supervisor hainey for giving us the opportunity to discuss the citys public garbage cancer. Cans. And also, i we had the same joke. [ laughter ] i knew somebody would use that. Theres only so many. [ laughter ] so we were asked to provide just a basic overview of whats out there on the streets. Public works maintains almost 3500 cans, about 1,000 are the oldstyle concrete cans with the rest being the renaissance cans which is, i believe, just the vendors name. They were first installed in 1977 and i found a mayor of, then, george masconey installing one and i thought that was fun. Since theyre reaching the end of their useful life, were phasing them out and weve been phasing them out, actually, over the last ten years and almost done phasing them out and we should have all gone and replaced within this fiscal year. Were currently replacing about 40 a week with the vendor that installs and replacing them with the renaissance cans. In addition, theres two kinds, mainly two kinds on the street of these solar smart cans. The first that everyone is familiar with is the big bellies and theres about 150 or so big bellies out there. They are not maintained by the city. They are maintained by cbds or neighborhood groups or private organizations because they require a higher level of maintenance than the city is really able to offer. The other one, since there is so much interest in these kinds of cans, the city has piloted an alternative to big bellies that we thought might be a little bit cheaper and easier to maintain called the pel or pell solar smart can which is similar and theres about 30 of those in the city at the moment. And you had asked about our procedures for can placement. So we do have a procedure. Its procedure 1651 and i can read it. Its not very exciting, but as most of our procedures arent exciting. Liberal receptors should be located near schools, business districts, bus stops and platforms. Requests from the public to add or remove receptacles are investigated by street environmental supervisors before any action is taken. Placement includes dog parts, community stairs, navigation centres and other locations requested but the public and elected officials. So its not a hard science. We get a lot of requests from difficuldifferent people to putn different places. I think thats a lot of my job as the Government Affairs manager and for the department to shuffle garbage cans around. Theres a request to install them and the next week from a different constituent, i get a request to remove that can, so its all over the place. Problems. So as you eluded to, there are some problems. My photos . One of them might be, yeah. [ laughter ] i think that one might be so challenges. So theres three main categories of challenges. The first one is overflowing cans, and the second one would be Illegal Dumping of household garbage or bad behaviour and people just using the cans as a suspecspot to dump because theyw someone will comeby to pick them up and then theres vandalism, breaking in to get to the garbage recyclables inside or just because they like breaking things. Weve provided kind of a snapshot of the Service Requests for the city cans over the last year. So we get two main categories of Service Requests for city cans through 311. The first one is for overflowing cans and the second one is for damaged cans. So this is a snapshot of both requests in the last year. So theyre where you would expect them to be. So here is broken out by district and we get the most in district 9 and district 3 and we, in total, over the last year got about 13,000 requests for overflowing cans and about 1,000 requests for broken cans. For the citys 3500 or so cans. Its important to note that the system, the 311, doesnt distinguish between overflowing cans and Illegal Dumping. So this is representative of both. So if somebody on streets sees a bunch of trash around the streets and takes a picture and sends it to 311, its somebody who has dumped trash around the can. Can i ask a question if. Absolutely. Is the response the same to overflowing and Illegal Dumping. Yes, response is the same. I think those requests go, actually, to our part of ecology and they are out there within, i believe, two hours. So we get to those pretty quick. So this is not a new problem. We have some photos. I was flipping through old annual reports and these are from 1968. Since the city is so quick in picking up trash, people have kind of back to accept it. Theres almost a perception that its maid service for the city. So people dump their trash out there, its gone within a few hours and people just doing it. So this has been a problem in the city for a long time, both with dumping of cans, dumping in Industrial Areas and dumping of used appliances and theres many initiatives that the city has done to try to provide outreach and enforcement. The city has passed mandatory garbage and recycling and composts since they were taken and we do all sorts of outreach and the problem definitely persists. So what is the city doing to combat litter in general . So its not just about garbage cans. We have our own cleaning crews that go out. Weve created different types of cleaning crews, up and above the cleaning crews. An important one is our corridor ambassadors, sweeping up and keeping an eye on garbage caps and topping them off when they get too full. We have an outreach Enforcement Team that does outreach to merchants and they can write tickets for peoples bins being overfilled. We have antilitter campaigns. We have Strong Partnerships with nonprofits like the cbds and also very Strong Partnership with ecology. We are embracing new technology

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