Transcripts For SFGTV Small Business Commission 20240713

Sound like today we do. Come up. Good evening. Thank you commissioners. Me and my partner are with a ate aspen tech policy hub. Were really looking to try to figure out what the awareness is amongst Small Businesses and to help Small Businesses improve their posture and prevent attacks. This is a problem you dont hear about Small Businesses being attacked. You do hear a lot about public organizations. State of new orleans spent 7 million recovering from attacks. They declared state of emergency in the city. Which is impressive. There are some simple steps you can take. Why are the steps not been taken and what they can do. Were trying to figure out this is a hightech field. In order to get businesses to take these steps they need to be coached, consulted and to do them correctly. Reduce the friction and to helping them to protect both businesses as well as the customers. User data that businesses use that are associated with it. With that, we like to continue the conversation and answer any questions and come back at the next Council Meeting for more discussion. Any other Public Comment . Next item. Item 3, Office Small Business presentation. Discussion item. The presenter is director dickendrizzi office of Small Business. Good evening commissioners. Regina dickendrizzi director of the office of Small Business. I thought we take an opportunity just to take a look at some of the definitions with the department of Public Health and the Planning Department as it relates to the food related industry so that you can begin to think about your line of questioning for the department on wednesday. Sfgov tv, i have a slide. Im first going to start off with the mobile fooled food facility. Im not sure if youve been able to process the briefing document ahead of wednesdays meeting. We have three sort of ways in which they are being constructed. One is more in a catering type of facility. That is off our Main Commercial corridors. Another is on our commercial corridors and in brick and mortar space. Its designed more like a shared kitchen catering kitchen. Then we also have a virtual kitchen in the mobile food space. I want to highlight. There are three areas in which mobile food facilities can be placed. The first one is in the public rightofway. This is what we think of our traditional mobile food facili facility. The public works, the public rightofway is your traditional mobile food facility. It is a truck that can move in and out. I will not get into the great details of permitting. It is temporary. Its there for a very specific period of time. Its not stationary. We currently right now, i dont think that we would ever see a virtual kitchen permitted in the public rightofway. It would ultimately sort of have to be more or less permitted. Its much more substantial and doesnt quite have the moveability of moving in and out and also mobile food facilities are there for a very short period of time. They have a small window which they can operate in their space. To the far right is park property. Rec and park permits their own mobile food facilities. The middle is where were seeing the virtual kitchens that are being permitted under the mobile food structure on private property and private parked private are like parking lots. We see mobile food facilities like sometimes on gas station lots. Its not part of the public rightofway. Its on private property. Therefore, the Planning Department is the entity that provides the land use approval process for the mobile food facility. Where on public rightofway, it is department of Public Health. Each the mobile food facilities, any mobile mobile food facility for the Public Safety food handling, all of that is permitted through the department of Public Health. There are five different categories of mobile food facilities. They are in the written document. The most intensive mobile food facility is in a mobile food facility five which allows cooking, heating. Other mobile food facilities deal with just a range of maybe food prep but cooking and preparation. Cooking is done in a commissary. All mobile food facilities are designed to be temporary. Wherever they are located, whether its on the street, which d. P. W. Permits and planning on rec and park property. They need to leave their space after their permitted time is up and return to a commissary area where the truck is stored and cleaned and their food is removed from the mobile food facility and is also in a food commissary. Any questions up to that point . I have one. The vehicle has to leave if it was in the second category of private property, the vehicle has to leave and go to a vehicle storage area and the food has to come out of the vehicle every night . The vehicle cant be parked there it says here up to three days. It cannot. This is actually since im not an expert, i would take that question and i would ask planning about that. The temporary use authorization, they may be able to keep the facility there. That will be good question to ask d. P. H. And planning. If the vehicle is able to stay there stationary up to three days, what is required around the food safety handling. The food safety handling is going to be d. P. H. If theyre allowed to be there for three days, do they have to can they stay for three days on that property or do they have to leave. Are you aware of, this might be another question for planning and d. P. H. , does the property have to register or have license or permit to have these trucks . They do not. Planning requires that the mobile food facility get permission from the Property Owner. So the Property Owner has to allow permission. They also have to have a restroom within a certain radius of the facility as well. That is standard whether its private property or public property or on rec and park property. If a business had three parcels of property and had three vehicles that can just once every three days, rotate them all without ever having to it sound the temporary use authorization that planning has, when we were discussing developing the initial mobile food facilities program. It does not become a permanent structure. I would get as i understand it, no, they would not. That would definitely be a question that i would ask the Planning Department. Just kind of curious, it does appear there are Business Models coming up that are essentially that. They have multiple parcels. It looks like they could dodge the permitting use provision by shuffling the vehicles between parcels. They would need to get land use approval for each parcel and those conditions of each parcel would be established. If they violate those conditions and the Planning Department can take action. Ada commissioner adams i do know little bit about this. Theres these carts all over financial district that are on the sidewalk. I talked to some of the owners of those. They are permitted from 10 00 to 3 00 p. M. They are there right at 10 00 a. M. They do have to go. They say they have a facility and the ones that eive talked to, its a place down near the produce terminal. Some of the most of the others, their permits for set for a certain period of time. I dont know of anybody who has a permit up to three days. Most of them, all of them that are on the sidewalk at least in the financial district, theyre only permitted from 10 00 a. M. To 3 00 p. M. Then they have to move. The trucks can only be there from the morning but by 4 00, everybody has to be gone within the financial district. Commissioner dooley follow up on commissioner adams, do you know if theres any difference in types of mobile trucks like what were looking at here. You can only stay three days. They still have to leave that premises. They cant just stay where they are. Correct. Unfortunately you will not be here, commissioner dooley, that is a question for planning is to know whether theres going to be any given consideration. The virtual kitchens under one particular model of mobile food isnt classic mobile food. Its more of a larger trailer. Physical space and so it would be a good question to ask the Planning Department on whether there would be considerations around an entity like that on a permanent basis. President laguana any other commissioners . I know lot of brick and mortar businesses i talk to are constantly asking questions related to mobile food facilities. I know theres a lot of misinformation because of the change in laws. I remember at one point, they added a statute that they couldnt be within a certain radius of like commercial corridors or Something Like that. It was a radius of a restroom. It was changed to 50 feet. I think that in order to it will be great to make this available to some of our Small Businesses who maybe still spreading they say theyre not paying the same taxes that we are and kind of repeat ma mantra. We dont what they are paying. If the commission would like im going to really sort of encourage differentiation between mobile foods that are trucks, that are on our streets, what were familiar with and some of the food park, mobile carts that are on sidewalks. If you want a presentation and get specifics in relationship to that, what im trying to do tonight is really sort of focus in on the structure as it relates to virtual kitchen and preparation for wednesday. Commissioner adams i agree with you director. When we were discussing the mobile food trucks years ago on this commission, those food trucks, they are not virtual kitchens. They are Small Businesses. Good example, they can bake in, they started out as a food truck and they wound up opening up a brick and mortar location. Theres a few of those. What were talking about here is these virtual kitchens which i think is the dangerous thing thats happening now. The virtual kitchens are the ones that are putting out the Small Businesses in my opinion. We just got to know the difference between the two. Theres a lot of misinformation out there. I realize years ago that lot of these food trucks, they are Small Businesses too. You have to create that even playing field. I hope this hearing will clarify. Commissioner adams its those virtual kitchens. I agree with commissioner ortizcartagena said. As you said, we trying to create a framework for Small Business to succeed. What i think were seeing here, now have to contemplate is whether the code itself contemplated a very wellfunded Tech Industry coming in with hundred of millions of dollars. Its real estate and trucks and for them its just a way to facilitate food delivery at scale. Where does that leave the Small Business community thats actually Building Community and making the city a good place to visit. Nobody coming here to visit an uber pickup spot. Thank you for that commissioner. Thats a very clear distinction unlike the mobile foods thats happening. The trucks thats b to c, b to consumer where the other model is b to b. Its business to the Third Party Delivery platform. Thats, perhaps, also a clear distinction is that while it may be in the parking lot and look accessible like a mobile food truck, you cant walk up and order food. At least at this particular format. I think that that for this particular document, i think im going to move on. Are we moveing on to the next item . No. The next document are the definitions from the planning code. If you havent had an opportunity to really look at it between now and wednesday, i do encourage you to. I will not go into everything in detail. We have sort of the planning code about eating and drinking uses. Theres mobile food facility. Thats what creates that specific definition of which the planning first set of definitions are under the planning code. This creates the ability for the Planning Department having a very specific definition around mobile food facilities in terms being able to permit on a private property. Below that is the definition of the temporary use authorization. Im not going to go into detail about that. It is the temporary use authorization in which emotional food falls under and being able to operate on private property. The next definition is around restaurants and restaurants one of the key distinguishing factors are its abc licenses. I highlighted that for you which is abc licenses type 2, 23, 41, 47, 49. Theres some others. Its generally the 47 and 49 that we are type 41 and 40. One is beer and wane an wine anr is beer and wine and spirits. Theres the restaurant limited. These licenses are on sale only. Theres a distinction between on sale and off sale licenses. On sale means the consumption has to take placed in the premise. Theres restaurant limited and under restaurant limited, you will see, i highlighted that it shall not provide beer and wine on site. But may provide type 20 off sale beer and wine license so you can walk in, buy the beer and wine, leave with the alcohol. One of the things to highlight here is what weve identified and for you to have a discussion with the Planning Department is for the virtual restaurants that are in our neighborhood commercial corridors. They are being permitted under limited restaurant. To date, i have not seen that alcohol is included. This may be sort of very clear alcohol alcohol maybe something you want to set recommendations around. One is so that our brick and mortar restaurants have a leg up and ensuring if theyre able to serve beer and wine or spirits, that gives them an economic advantage. Our limited restaurants are able to serve limited restaurants are able to serve that gives them an economic advantage and kind of an economic advantage over our Liquor Stores in our Neighborhood Corner stores sell alcohol. You may want to think about some policy considerations to provide. Thats one area where the city could provide some very specific criteria to help give our brick and mortar and economic advantage. For d. P. H. One second. Commissioner yekutiel. Commissioner yekutiel what do you think their appetite will be . Given that Cloud Kitchens are a pretty new concept . Thats a very good question for you to have an engagement with. At times, departments either this is what we see all the time with the Business Assistant centre, new models kind of come in. We work with the departments to figure out how they might fit within the current regulatory structure for them to get permitted in an open. Its not consistent where departments if they are seen in abundance, the department may initiate that we may need to do something. If they are not, they may not. Thats a good question for you to ask the planning staff if theyve been seeing this and if theyre thinking about and giving it any consideration. If not, you may want to make a recommendation that this is something that is taken a look at. I think anything sort of business wise that were looking at in relationship to planning, d. P. H. That we would encourage and interagency kind of review and taking a look at it with our office, looking both planning and health as these things are being permitted and coming up. Commissioner yekutiel do you know when the different rules around mobile food facilities and food trucks came about . A long time. The changes in the mobile food was because initially the mobile food was under the Police Department. There were significant challenges in dealing with the Police Department. This is not their primary area. Its permitting businesses. They still do have some of that. It was taking it from the Police Department and putting it in both planning and department of public works code. That probably took place around 2009 and 2010 with some revisions couple of years later. This question came up recently. I want to make sure im clear on this. Planning has they can add new definitions and new types of businesses at their discretion . Does that require action from the board . It requires action from the board. The department may initiate and work with the board member. Any changes to the planning code does require legislation. Got it. That was my question. Just to kind of sort of put a little asterisk there is the cdp3 program. Thats not, thats an internal process. That was not codified through legislation and it is not in the planning code. Its not an actual designation for a type of business rather its a designation for type of process thats attached to an existing category. Correct. Commissioner dooley where are we with the mobile food trucks with the subject of formula retail . There was a point in time a number of years back, we did see like a jack in the box, food truck. Are we making any changes . Where are we with that part of it . There have been no changes in applications to the formula retail. Id have to verify that. To my knowledge, it hasnt been an issue. I think what we have seen is that formula retailers tend to do promotional and they may park a truck in front of one of their stores of which they can get a oneday permit. I do think that area of formula retail especially if were looking at some of these models in relationship to virtual kitchens that are intending to be there and in parking lots on private property. I think the question for the Planning Department is formula retail now as you read it and read what triggers formula retail. Thats b to c businesses. Business to consumer not b to b. Those are some questions that i highly encourage and discussion for the commission to have with the Planning Department. To talk about if these entities end up being permanent, especially in the mobile food realm. Also in the virtual neighborhood commercial corridors. Would it trigger both of them . Would it trigger formula retail because its b to b and not b to c are there other areas of the code where they discriminate between b to c and b to b in whats allowed and not allowed . Its not i would say that even reading i did a quick reread of the formula retail. Ill resend the link. It doesnt articulate out that its direct to consumer. Because these are in our neighborhood commercial corridors, i think theres an underlying assumption. You can read that assumption in the types of businesses that trigger formula retail. Theres another related question to commissioner dooleys comment about formula retail as it maps on to this. Which is, it sounds like the code is not contemplated somebody coming in with extraordinarily well capitalized, far beyond what we would imagine as a Small Business. Taking advantage of this structure and the code that was set up to support Small Business. Naturally, that would concern this commission. I think what im wondering, how does the code typically are there provisions that the code where you can only take advantage of some zoning or code provision if youre a Small Business as defined by the law. Im just wonderin wondering whag la stor regulatory opportunits would be. The key is number of locations worldwide. Theres a consistency of look, feel, signage and product so you can really tell whether youre going to detroit, San Francisco, toronto. Youre walking into the same business. I think to your point, which is sort of along the lines what were asking about and not related to this hearing on wednesday. In terms of we have Online Retailers who may or may not be Venture Capital backed but really grow and grow their market and decide they want to open the flagship store. I have been asked by i think this question did come up at the presentation around vacancies. One of the valencia street merchants asked if they will be looked at given consideration. To your point, we had this discussion, i think theres a lot of things. Its time to perhaps relook at formula retail. The workaround could imagine setting up dozens of trucks on a parking lot and nobody can walk up to and order from. Its a delivery expediting. Its only for the use of the delivery apps. If would sidestep the formula retail by not having a similar look and feel each truck is making a different kind of food. Its an interesting extort of conundrum that were facing here. I wonder what sorts of mechanisms the code maybe the code never faced anything like this in the past. We dont have any actual mechanism. Thats what im wondering about. Vice president zouzounis the re are r there are restrictis in neighborhood corridors. Its closed to the public on the ground level and merchant corridor. This is in it street. What im imagining is on private property. Theres people exploring this. Theres two venues this could happen. It will be public rightofway, public corridor. I would say they both take place, they might take place on public property. They both take place on private property. One is in the built environment and one is open private present property space. In terms of i think the question of formula retail and how and if it can kick in with either structure. Either way, the virtual restaurant is being developed. Seem like a stretch to me. Because the b to b component. I think that is a really great conversation for you to have with the Planning Department in terms of when they are looking and giving consideration and what the designation what the Planning Department, how they would designate as a formula retail when an applicant is coming. Commissioner huie my comment was along the same lines. Maybe we should kind of consider looking at this not just as when were talking about virtual kitchens within our neighborhood corridors. Not just looking at the codes and things that set precedents for restaurants. But looking at it as Ground Floor Office space. Thats the same types of thats a similar threat that were facing in our corresponds do. We dont have enough retail wanting to come in to fill the vacancies. Lot of landlords are renting out to interior designers or other services that have more client base clientele. That threatens our walking traffic and corridors. This is another piece that also threatens walkin traffic. If you have one retail space on virtual kitchens interior designers. They can argue that they have maybe your uber drivers will buy flowers. They can argue that they are creating some sense of traffic. I dont think its enough traffic to really make a dent into anybodys sales or profitability at this point. I think maybe looking also at the general kind of makeup what our neighborhood corridors realistically can look like and this being a component that you would be taking away walking traffic. I think its an opportunity for a discussion around is it time to reevaluate whats on our ground floor commercial and things that might help generate more traffic. Commissioner dooley i wanted after spending more than a year with regina and myself and others with the Planning Department about formula retail only where they came to no conclusionses conclusions and made no changes. Thats where we need to get in front of everything. Their attitude is, well, lets not do anything. Thats why i bring it up. Did see jack in the box food truck done up with the logos and people with the outfits on. We need to get ahead of the Planning Department. They dont like to bring up formula retail because it is complex. I urge us to get there no front. Dont ignore it like you usually do. We went through that with them about brick and mortar where it was like a Major National chan. We never really reached any conclusions on that. Thank you commissioner dooley. We have the hearing on wednesday. If theres time permits, based upon the amount of Public Comment f for any reason Public Comment is still taking place at 4 00, we have a hard stop. We would have to continue the meeting to the march 9th meeting to finish hearing Public Comment. You can start formulating your set of recommendations. Well have march 9th to finalize set of to make sure that you have a thorough thought through set recommendations. Not for us to present at supervisor safais hearing. Commissioner yekutiel can we invite the new incoming planning director to meet us . Certainly. Commissioner yekutiel do you know when he starts . He may have started this week. Commissioner yekutiel might be good to start develop a relationship with the commission, maybe actually give some perspective from us since we have a new planning director. We havent had a new planning flexibility a while. Directodirector in a while. I want to make sure i take the opportunity. In terms of department of Public Health technology to define for you as it relates to our virtual kitchen. Sounds like youre switching to the next. Im still on that topic. To get clarity around department of Public Health created new deafs ins. You heard that legislation when it was change the placards. These models are new. They are likely still new from the department and whats a commissary and a shared kitchen. I encourage you to ask the department weve asked them to provide those definitions. Whats the what distinguishes a commissary over a shared kitchen. Whats the clear distinction about a mobile food. What are the health code requirements that distinguish a mobile food from a restaurant . Theres Certain Health code regulations. If theres interest in plan and some of these new busy models to have what is now sort of a trailer to be stationary. Whats required what will be required in in the build out of that to sure theyre meeting the same health code. Theres a lot of requirements that brick an mortar are required to go through to get their department of Public Health requirements. Theres a definition about takeout establishment. Planning has its own set of definitions. D. P. H. Has its other set of definitions. If business is presenting its Business Plan t would look like its a takeout facility where food is picked up and taken off side but its b to c takeout facility. From their perspective that may or may not matter, but thats a good question to ask. In restaurant t says officials shall be required to operate at bon fide eating places. Is this for planning . This under restaurants in the planning code. Commissioner yekutiel your revenue has to come from food sales. 50 er of our revenue comes from food sales commissioner dooley thats also in answer part of their decision. Its actually following abc. Sound like its not what i was hoping it would be. Its nice a i think from the abc definition and planning code, it allows that opportunity to distinguish from a bar that might serve food or a restaurant that serves alcohol. It really does seem the focus this ring rinse on. Whats frustrating is whether regulating that will violate City Attorney says you cant do that. The argument can be made if we trying to splice this on b to c. Catering Company Selling food to a tech employee. Its selling food to a serve thats serving food to its employees. Its technically b to b food establishment. The public wants these services. You want to create some space for them to exist. What im worried about is the extremes. And where they exist. Im worried about the extreme somebody setting up 20 trailers in a parking lot. Every restaurant within one mile radius, finding it difficult to get by and hes folks are not having to play by the same rule. Its another thing if theyre getting the carpet rolled out to them. Im all for competition. Seems to me like its agreeing pretty quickly. Didnt you send all the locations . Right now, the definitions that were using are sort of virtual in ghost kitchens. Theres more of the frontfacing virtuals that are in our neighborhood commercial corridors which are the ones operating in the mobile food type of permitting structure. Then those in are directly occupying brick an mortar space. We still have ghost kitchens that are operating more kind of theyre not operating in our neighborhood commercial corridors. Theyre operating in areas where like commissaries, shared kitchens are allowed and permitted. There theres a third category, which is ghost to ghost kitchens which dont actually exist where they say they do when you go in the delivery service. They can be in a awareness quite far away. Theyll say theyre at some address. You go to that address and its an art gallery or hair salon. Is that legal . Address is only listed in the delivery app. Arguably, [indiscernible] when sort of putting together your set of recommendations, you might want to think about buckets and categories. Whats consumer facing and consumer rights. What are some of the commerce components. Theres been some discussions around the amount charged or platforms putting businesses on their platform without First Signing a contract and getting their agreement. Then there is a what we can do with department of Public Health. That goes back t this is not another entity thats exempt from that. What are the metrics you like to see the city put together to help monitor this new business trend. Commissioner ortizcartagenai senile two mom and pops now Small Business restaurants close their frontage because they got into the ghost game because its so much more profitable. They were just barely scraping by. They shut down the front door and go virtual. Is that another bucket as well . Thats not only is it a bucket, it is likely to the point of near certainty that we are going to hear testimony at the hearing that they are been driven to that Business Model by an environment that made any other Business Model unsustainable and unsupportable. Thats speaking to you, commissioner, that was the whole thing. We dont have foot traffic. Everything starts rolling downhill and we dont have a community or infrastructure. Were like in the matrix and stuff. [laughter] again, its an opportunity. What i think how i sort of my kind of analogy is. I just remember when uber and lyft were going to take hold. At the same time taxi industry was before the sfmta board requiring them to take credit cards. Our regulatory structure, do we want to be the taxi industry saying, theres nothing to change here as businesses going in. Helping to sort of set the stage of business going in the other direction. Commissioner ortizcartagenaf rom that industry, people that drive around limos for ceos, uber didnt have no impact. Its truly small. Usually cultural centric and some high end restaurants, this will not affect them. I want to keep that in mind. The equity lens we have to shout it out. Thats who really gets affected and who has the least voice. People trying to start their first business. Like one of us latinos thats one of the biggest businesses we open is a restaurant. Commissioner dooley i was pretty much going to say the same. Im seeing that all over the place now where the restaurants are not open to be sit down and serve. They just have a counter and its takeout only or uber eats. It really does cut down on the ambience or atmosphere of that neighborhood to see closed doors and no one inside. You think, are they not very good restaurant. You dont know that. Youll see there are no customers inside. Its not a good thing for the neighborhood corridor. What we have to balance is the public certainly wants food delivered to them. We all had food delivered to us. Theres a place for these services. We cannot lose our community, the Small Businesses that enable us to see each other that create a vibrant. Doing in a way thats thoughtful is a challenge here. [please stand by] that is when the rubber hits the road. When the rules are the same, let competition rule. When people are taking advantage of loopholes and wiggling through and, you know, now they dont have to do the stuff that the brick and mortar does but they can compete against them. I would caution about loopholes. It is just that we are still so much as the city and i think most governments are still so much in the mind frame of regulating through the brick and mortar lens, and so w we are not actually positioning ourselves to look at the new market and new Market Trends and how that applies and how we may need to put regulation around it. You know, we have discussed it. What is the balance, and is our regulation around brick and mortar making it so restrictive but we dont really have an equitable component around the other. It allows it to really grow. Then, now, our restaurants arent the only entities that can occupy brick and mortar ground florcommercial and make it vibrant. Do we have too much do we rely too much on that industry to keep the ground floor commercial vibrandt . At the start of the hearing we should clarify, get everybody on the same page what words we use to describe each of these entities. This can become a mess as people come up to talk about it. You are saying ghost kitchen, mobile or brick and mortar or ghost ghost kitchen . Maybe we should take a minute and get everybody i in the room aligned with the terms for this meeting that we are going to use. That is a thought. I just wanted to mention. I dont know if they are still going on. There is a flurry of mobile retail trucks that sell clothing. I have seen them around. I leave near the plaza. I see them pulling up at lunchtime. There was an eyeglass company, parker, i think it was. Is that a separate category . There was a little ruckus about that. When the economic crisis was still really, you know, still an issue. We had and the mobile food sort of got popular and we creep ated the regular we created the regulartory structure in 2013 or 2014 when we looked at the permitting structure. Then it died down. I was not aware there was a burgeoning mobile retail or resuregens of mobile retail. It could make sense. It makes sense to me if rents are high that it can be. If you are still seeing that, then that would be good to know. I mean at one point they were partnering with off the grid. I havent seen mobile retail with off the grid. I see it a lot with amazon, the treasure trucks are everywhere in the same places that is retail. The treasure trucks . I have to say i dont know what they are. I see them in my neighborhood daily. What are they . It looks like a big mobile food truck. I havent gone in. It is too weird. They are selling retail out of these, and they claim they are offering special good deals. Get a picture. One of them almost every time i drive by near the embarcadero there is a treasure truck. On the street or private property . 20132014 they were in the castro. Then i remember taking pictures and showing you and planning. Then they stopped. They are over with me now. Are they on private property or public . You know, the one that i see in my neighborhood are in parking lots. Actually, that may be a city parking lot. The one on the embarcadero that face the embarcadero. That is where i see them. It is always the same spot where i see different ones. Let me know. I am happy to take a look at it. I mean there is a lot of jumping off points to go down in relationship. You have decided that you really wanted it to focus in on the virtual kitchens and the thirdparty platform delivery apps. I have seen the mobile on valencia street. There is an opportunity to work that. That is a joke everyone. Unless there is any questions. One last thing. I am in conversation with a lot of Restaurant Owners, and we did an event on the state of the restaurant industry. The outlook is pretty bleak for Restaurant Owners. We have talked a lot of business closures on the brick and mortar side they are restaurants. It is a tough industry. This could be an opportunity for the office of Small Business to really live our purpose and to fight for the businesses that need us to fight for them in this hearing and in this work. I know the commissioner has been working on this with you, director, and the more i talk about this and the more i think this may be one of those things where we can be uniquely helpful with coming up ideas on city departments advocating on behalf of the Restaurant Owners and thinking outside of the box and in a bold manner. I am feeling fired up because i think Restaurant Owners dont always, you know, have the advo cassie they need. They may need us right now. That is exciting and that is great because those ideas are what we can add to the set of recommendations. Unless there is any more questions i am done with this section. Move on to Public Comment. Thank you, director. Do we have Public Comment on the item we just discussed . Seeing none comments closed. Next item. Small business presentation. Small Business Commission retreat and Strategic Planning. Back on item two did we get a chance as commissioners to speak. We cant talk in Public Comment. They can comment to us. Under the rules we cant ask questions under Public Comment. I got schooled on that once. So did i. That is why i know it. So we are moved to the next item. I want to take an opportunity since we had a fairly light agenda. We need to schedule our retreat, annual retreat. I really would like to do a full day retreat. We havent had a full day retreat for the last two to three years. It is needed with new commissioners, but also what is ahead of us and to really give some opportunity to think about what the Commission Wants to accomplish. Under your binder tab and there is copies for the members of the public if they would like it. I just have listed out some of the usual things we go through, but actually before i get into some of the things to think about what to cover, commissioner did you want to add anything . I want to make sure you have an opportunity to add . I think this looks pretty good. From my perspective. The microphone. Pull it closer to you. Thank you. I just think that perhaps simply put more than what we see here, at a top level i would like us as a body to develop a sense of consensus around two to three items that we are really just going to dig deep into. Those items might be big. I am thinking pretty big at this point in time or they might be a little more constrained. I want us to sort of collectively decide these are the two to three things to focus on. I want it fairly narrow and minimal to actually make constructive progress on it, number one. Number two, what i have come to learn is our biggest constraint is staff time and staff hours. We have a very limited budget. We got these folks coming in, they are exempt so we dont have to pay over time. They have already worked an eight hour day. They are here. There is staff when we ask for reports and do things, it creates a whole other later of steps. I want to develop consensus around what we are going to focus on and that we stay focused on those things and that we allocate our limited resources as efficient and disciplined manner as possible so we can achieve those three things. That is my top level view. I think some of that is sort of contained within reginas list. I wanted to give my 60,000foot perspective, which is that we be focused narrowly focused and extremely disciplined as how we move forward to the next year. We could get caught up in legacy business on its own. There is stuff to discuss there, for sure. It is a huge thing we made some progress but not enough is the whole issue of construction, tearing up the streets. That is just a huge issue for Small Businesses. You know, once again i have gone to meetings for a year at a time. At the end of each meeting everyone was angry, the merchants. That is something that puts people out of business. When you have a jackhammer going ououtside of your business every day. Dpw and mtr are not good at working with other departments like Small Business. You wake up one morning and bam, there it is. We have made a little bit of progress with that. I just think it is a major issue. Mario from the Council District merchants sent a letter to the mayor, i believe just yesterday, saying Small Business should have a seat on the m. T. A. Board. I thought that sounds quite right and quite appropriate given the level of disruption that Small Business incurs when they make those decisions, as you just pointed out. Steven cornell has been screaming for that for years. The timing. We are always asking what is the master plan . What are you going to do on this block of valencia a year or two years from now. They are like we cant tell you. They are making bus stops in yellow zones. It is a done deal with them. It may be appropriate to do a resolution in support of that idea. It may be appropriate for the commission to play some role. Because there is someone at m. T. A. That is sort of in charge of working with the merchants on this, but personally after working with that group with a lot of the Council District merchant people, too, i didnt feel like we accomplished anything. It was negative. We have a new m. T. A. Director. He reached out to Small Business very early. Lets hope that is not window dressing. If i may, there are so many issues affecting Small Business and so many things to work on, and because of the brown act, sunshine ordinance and limited time we physically have in this room, it seems to me like a good use of time would be to throw it all on the wall, all the different issues that we could work on. Actually not as a commission but individually as commissioners, to figure out what throw it on the wall. What are the issues we feel uniquely suited to work on. We are passionate about, and then maybe it makes sense given that, a, we have fulltime jobs and we should be working on issues that matter to us. Dont create subcommittees, there are a set of rules that come with that. Decide strike teams. What are the issues that they feel they can attack, commissioners and then we see what we work towards. I think it makes the most sense, it feels like established policy and goals for the next two years would be the time to do that. I dont think that is at the end. We do that closer to the front because that will be the meat and potatoes what we do. We could get bogged down in three hours about the legacy. We came here to help Small Businesses. We have ideas what that means and what we want to do. Iowa president be to protect that time o i want to protect that time. That is well said. I agree. A couple things, one, there is a provision in our charter that allows for subcommittees and committees. I am working on a plan the constraint has been staff time and staff hours. I think i may have found a work around that will free that up without putting a burden on our office. I will report more when i have that firmed up. Hopefully that will be firmed up when we have the planning retreat. I think absolutely because we all bring different experiences and Different Levels of wisdom. What i think we absolutely need to do is activate, empower each of us to attack our area of expertise. It is a force multiplier. There are seven of us that could be potentially doing seven Different Things while still reporting back to the main body and staying consistent with a coherent plan of attack in terms of how we as a commission, as a body approaches this. What i would like the see the Commission Structured as we take high level feedback from committees and policymakers and get really detailed and distilled reporting so that we can make good decisions as a body without having to spend be hours and hours debating what is not the best use of peoples time. By the way, for this part speak up. I want to make sure we do get time and come up with a protocol about how to get more regular reporting on what our office sees. Our staff is working so hard and they are just like us ground level retail and restaurants and Small Businesses, they are ground level for a lot of the firsthand issues that the businesses are facing so i dont want us to lose that. I would like to see that built into our Commission Framework a little more moving forward. These are all, i think, great ideas. Moving into the retreat, the concepts of why i put what i did around taking time to sort of look at the powers and duties of is just, you know, is the commission utilizing its powers and duties in terms of having departments present to them and ask questions and recommendations and having them return back after a period of time to see what they have done in terms of your recommendation. There is that. We do the one thing that i do absolutely have to say, not that i anticipate that we get this accomplished is every three years we are required by the city to do a Strategic Plan update. It is well over that. Our last plan does not reflect where we are as a department now. We need to begin this process. I dont anticipate at all that it gets accomplished. I think the work that we do and the commission can help form that and it is shaped and worked over several months to be finalized before the commission. I put the legacy business here because the legacy business affects your time, my time. It may not affect their time so much. It is one of the department programs. It does merit me. If you dont want to take time in the retreat. There needs to be some projection and focus as it fits into the whole picture of the Department Operations. The retrate we dont have to retreat fits into the overall goal of what we want to accomplish. It would be really important whoever is determining the amount of time we spend on each item, i think actually indicating the priorities of the retreat in the amount of time allotted per action item is important. I think we should have someone, it can be a commissioner whose task it is to say we have 15 minutes left, five minutes left, we are done with this item. We have a lot of things to say and that is great. I will speak for myself. Knowing we have 10 minutes left on the item. If it is not essential dont say it. That is right. A triage. I was awarded best clerk in Southern California in mock high school for my time keeping ability. I am happy to volunteer myself. It did happen and i am happy to do it if you want me to. Some of this prepreparation, too, if there is an opportunity that you might like with osb or Client Services to have martha come do a presentation and give an update. I have sent you the dashboard for last year in termses the client data. We are getting in a mission though. It is good to hear feedback. Continue to give feedback by the end of this week if there is anything else. Actually. Let me get us back on track here. Item one we need to determine a date. Whether it is going to be an all day retreat on a weekday or weekend. Can i please we mentioned this before. Everyone needs to have schedules when they are available before we discuss this because we need to come to a consensus. You know i was very disappointed. I am not going to be at the hearing. That could apply to anybody. Maybe we can submit to regina or to you. I think, first, maybe we should just take a poll right now where are people at weekdays versus weekend. When you say all day are you thinking 9 00 to 5 00 . Weekend. Saturday. I think if we do it. For myself weekend would be easier. Great. That is solved. It will be a saturday. That is a consensuses. Is it in an office . Because the full body is meeting it has to be open to the public. City hall is not open on the weekend. There are certain changes. We have a 15 day notification period for meetings held outside of city hall. There are different places that we can look at. We can look at the library. There are different places in terms of that. I ask we have a white board available. I think that is critical. Then in terms of the actual date, a lot of people dont have their calendars in front of them right now. We will, i think, when do we want to have this . I would say ideally end of march, end of april. Next four to six weeks . That will beacon continuing get on find contingent on finding a location. I have a venue. Ii have a suggestion. We cant. Thank you. Can we try having gone to many of these retreats. We should do our agenda because people get really burned out and tired. Lets keep in mind when we have our agenda what is superimportant to us. By the time it is almost 5 00. I think we start with most important ey items then work our way to the items we dont mind dealing with when we are sleepy. I have no issue for people that have to go take care of something or pick up a kid. I dont have a problem with that. I do want us to have a sense of like if you are not there, you cant be upset about what the people that are there decide. Because it is official we need a minimum of four. Do we want to take the time now to discuss what our triage is or do we want to save that for a letter date . A later date. Establish policy goals is my number one. That should be first. The rest of it is discussion because regina you mentioned the Strategic Plan several times to me. That is important to you. I mean i think the Strategic Plan could come at the end. It is about th the prediscussion that will shape it. The straStrategic Plan should not be tasks but it should help you formulate what it needs to consist of. After policy goals should be the structures around the commission. How it works, is it working the way we want it to . What tools are at our disposal. To me that is a good next step after we decided all of the things we want to work on. You are talking about the item at the top . Rules of order. Traditionallitaing time to review. The duties of the commission. We will have discussed what we want to do. Then we get to the mechanism to act on things which is our commission and office. To me it makes sense to talk about that next. Is someone thinking about revisions to the rules of order . I have only recently learned them. It is hard to think about it. We can review before, right . Then come in with revisions . Yes. My thought about the Strategic Plan, it would make a nice wrap up. I agree it would be a good place to solidify action for the commission at the end. Regina where does budget fit into this for you . I mean the budget is definitely going to influence. Is this different than what we just talked about . It is different because there will be i think budget could come in after, you know, looking at it could be a three or a four. We do have to do one annual budget and then two year budget projection so that can help those budget projections can help. That needs to be influenced by some of your earlier discussions. The review of osb. I threw some things out there. Review of osb Client Service data is Something Like martha could come give a presentation then have that Data Available for you to take a look at. Lets make that a maybe. That sounds like something that could happen during a hearing. That should be something. If we are just reviewing data unless it is like material to the decisions that we are trying to make at this retreat. I defer to you on whether or not it is. If we are just reviewing existing data. If we are reviewing existing data, how it may affect, not reviewing the existing data but Department Operations in terms of volume staffing. Maybe we should do that before the retreat. I think seeing that in writing for me would be helpful prior to the restreet to get a sense of the scope of what we are doing. I think we have to set aside a little bit of time or as many hearings as we can leading up to the retreat to educate ourselves what it is we are going to try to do. Is there time between now and then for martha to come and speak with us . That would be great. Lets do that. The annual obligations. Am i wrong, is that a five minute thing . Are we going through them or is there more to it . Making sure. I almost dont feel completely confident Everybody Knows what our annual obligations are. Again, that is something that can be provided in writing, but it is information. Why dont we have like an osb day . We can talk about what the osb does, services you provide, have mathat come in and martha come in and provide data. You can do a presentation about the different annual obligations. We are all on the same page and we all know what that stuff is. It is all combined. I think we are really going to o have a lot to talk about with policy and budget. That is a whole day right there. Do we want to with our things we are talking about for policy or major topics, do we want to have background, what has been done already so that when we step in, a brief saying this is where we are and we want to move forward. If it could be a very brief outline of met with Planning Department, and it looked at this. You know, to write on a piece of paper to know where we are starting from now. In an ideal world we would submit all we are working on to osb and then get some reality checks premade in advance. The commission wanted to work on this four years ago and it didnt work. We do have potentially six weeks. That may be a lot of work for osb. The most efficient use of our time we would compile everything we think we are working on, send it somewhere central and get background done in advance. Is this like where we stand at this moment with the retreat on thetic issue . Let me ask you a question, regina. The brown act is about items before the commission. What if we are. Technically those suggestions should come to dominica and i. It is working with president and Vice President to deal with meeting structure. What i dont like about that and i find frustrates is that each of you have different experiences and bits of wisdom to add to what is being presented. Maybe there is. It has to be public. I guess what i am saying is i think that is a solid idea, and i think it is a good framework for us to talking about this stuff, how do we make time in the meetings that we can go through these things to get the benefit of our collective wisdom . I am in favor of raising all of our ideas, starting with me. My recommendation is thoughts you have in terms of the policy things. Formula retail. Put it out there and then we know the breadth of what that is and the breadth what it would entail in terms of putting together background information, now. The number of times formula retail has been touched in the last lets say 10 years or Something Like that. That will take some time, and it is not that it is insurmountable. I dont know what the breadth is. How would it look like if we took this week to figure out when this thing is, which it shouldnt take more than a week for the seven of us to come up with a weekend. That will give you four to five weeks. Then we would submit ideas to give you four weeks to come up with whatever information is at your fingertips about some of this stuff . Not with the eye of shooting down ideas, obviously, but with the idea of informing us so we can be strategic how we spend our time. We also have new business reports of where we are with our new business that the director provides us. We can start there. I think it would be go ahead. I think that as we are thinking about new ideas, i dont want to feel necessarily limited by what has happened in the history of the commission or of our city, i mean just sitting here listening to the ideas that you guys have generated since i have been sitting here. Even if we have them today it is a totally different environment than the idea two years ago. That is an excellent point. We have the tool making resolutions, and that can be the way to proactively suggest to policymakers, you should consider doing something here. A lot of times we react to something that the supervisor brings up. I think we have an opportunity, not just institutionally but just politically within the city right now. We have an opportunity to proactively make suggestions and then wever well may find the policy makers pick that up and move forward. I hope we can be liberal with that tool and use it quite a bit and generate a lot of output. I was just going to suggest to your point, cynthia, we dont necessarily have to think within the framework of what are people looking out there or what they are talking about. If there is something that actively helps the some Business Community that is not getting done that could be done that you think at least four of us would support, i will back it. That can be a way to get a proactive message out. I think, also, in the same thought. I still think that we could take a quick look for five minutes of where we have been, not for years, but where we are right now. What is the Planning Departments policy on formula retail or whatever so we have a starting point for these issues. What are dpw and m. T. A. Doing about interrupting Small Businesses. That is out there. This is where we are, lets move forward. Fix what is not working. A format of a suggestion could be current state of affairs. If you dont know, put a question mark. If there is a question mark there then dominica and regina can help us fill in the question mark. Then current problem, what is the problem that you are seeking to address . Propose a solution or are we just talking about the problem . Maybe one solution that comes to your mind. Presupposing what you have brought up. Construction mitigation . That is something you are passionate about. If that is something to work on, that should be proposed. This is more everyone putting the issues they want to work on. We can talk collectively about brainstorming solutions. That is a great point. I am talking about our policy goals, but you are talking about lets be really careful to what is our word for this . Action plan . No, i mean our word for the idea we are going to activate each of us as individuals. I like the term strike team. That is good. A good military team. I think some of these policy goals might wind up being strike team items and some of the strike team items might wind up being policy goals. I dont want to prejudge which is which. I will say policy goals are more likely to be 60,000foot view, big items worthy of all seven of us focusing our time on. Strike team items are diving in and reporting back to the body. This is what, i met with so and so or we assembled a committee and we spent three months talking about it. After we debated it, this is what the conclusions we came to and then as a commission then we can ask questions and then, you know, motion to concur and resolution results. Now we are pushing the ball forward. Steven, i know you said you have done commissions or i am sorry committees to great effect in the past. Is that the structure that was most effective . We came up with our committees basically at our retreats. Those were good at one thing were on those committees. I thought the committees were useful. The committees would report back to the full commission, and we seemed to get resolutions quickly. Our goals were met pretty good. We definitely used the all day retreats to establish what the committee did like the strike team. Part of the restreet is what is the outreach . Someone wants to be the strike team for restaurants, then you know we need to we need to communicate the results to the constituents and public. We used to have the committee and report on the committee at our Commission Meeting. It was on the addenda. When agenda. We would have it listed and who is in charm of that committee would report and people would ask questions. Give us an example of the committees. Legislation. That was a huge one. Maybe there is confusion. I am thinking about like things. Maybe there are larger things. You mentioned restaurants. I am thinking something maybe topic specific or something accomplished in th in the six ms period to get the Tax Collector to notify the Small Businesses that registration is digital in a oneyear cycle. We dont need a committee but we need to know there is a commissioner that is going to do that and they are reporting back. That is what i am getting at here. That is what commissioner reports are for. Some of these topics have committees that meet outside of the Small Business commission. M. T. A. Committee. That kind of needs to be part of what we are doing. It is important to have a voice on those. You know, it is important. Kathleen, to that point. I was about to say i have heard about a number of different events. I got a business, i have kids, i have this. I cant be at all of the events. Not everybody can be everywhere. If they are having an important event, whether it is a Business Roundtable or a meeting on restaurants or retail, i do feel strongly as a commission we should have some kind of presence there. I am wondering if we have an appetite for and this is related. M. T. A. Board meeting or oewd you budgeted presentation. Can we say over the next six to eight weeks these are the items on the calendar that are likely to have an overlap with our business. Delegate amongst ourselves. I will go to this one and you will go to this one so that we have coverage and then we report back on the commissioners reports. This is what we discussed at ththe retreat. We are spinning our wheelings. What might be helpful is dont filter right now. Just feed it. We can look at it and say this topic, okay, there is a legislative history to it. There is a Community Organization history to it or neighborhood or area or working on this. There are departments currently working on this so that who do we engage with . There is a way to outline some of that to give you a little bit of background scope, something that might be better done through a formal committee or through the full commission, something more appropriate to work out outside of the Commission Structure with the Community Type of thing. Instead of overthinking how are we going to deal with it, it is better to get your ideas in. Then we can take it from there. We can work to get some information out to you and even if it is on a rolling basis so that you are just starting to think about what is involved. Can i ask i would like to see from the restreet a time we can openly talk about all of the threats we are experiencing in the Small Business community in terms of we have them in every industry. We can talk about the doom and gloom. We have read articles and watched to news and talked to people and gone to meetings, i would like to put that up there. Sometimes i am not aware of all of the things affecting somebody elses industry or somebody elses neighborhood. In our past retreats because kathleen is the only one i know that when we could do this. That is how we would start the e retreat. What is good, what is bad, put it on the whiteboard. I would like to add something you said earlier was about, you know, regulating now for the virtual world. To me i feel that is the real opportunity in terms of like instead of talking about the little kind of things. I dont know how we are going to get there, but i would like to speak to all of you guys as Small Business leaders and really think about what do we think the city is going to look like . What is our Small Business Community Going to do . We are kind of like in this period where stuff is happening right now, and i mean there are things in motion, opportunities right now to grow the city to what we want it to look like. I dont have answers for that necessarily, but i would love to it is around and actually have a time set aside to dream about that. I know that is not supertangible. That would be nice to see a white board what you think your individual neighborhoods like like and your individual definitions of Community Means for you and what we think is tolerable to live in. Small business 2050 . Yes. One last thing on my end. I think we should not lose sight of that that is superimportant. This might seem supervisor per visual. No retreat is complete without a little forced fun and bonding. laughter . I am serious. I do think we worry miss not to include some opportunities. Kakay some of us dont have relationships with each other. We have to work well together. There are only serve and weep represent all we represent all Small Businesses. We should utilize to bond as a body. That is my idea. I love it. There are threats to Small Business. Your First Strike Team appointment is to come up with the bonding activity. Okay. Then you also will keep the time for us as well. In the past when steve and i were doing retreats, we started with a time where each commissioner talked about their background a little bit. Where they came from, what they have been doing just to give everyone. It was always those moments you go i didnt know that about a commissioner, you know. I think we should do that. That is a very positive thing. That is an excellent suggestion. We have accomplished a lot in the last year, this commission and this office. We wont spend too much time praising ourselves. It is a good measurement for the new commissioners to see how we have been growing from just the time that i have witnessed this commission, we have grown a lot. Yes, going back to the existential threats of Small Business that are related to some things that came up today. Technical support for Small Business is a huge issue we reference but dont really have mechanisms connecting our Small Businesses to organizations, Service Based organizations that are providing those Technical Services and oe wd resources schooling ourselves is so helpful. I learned the other day in the conversation, i think it was the Economic Working Group, related to the conversation for minimal changes to your storefront or if you have seeding, you need drawings. Oewd has design support. Stuff like that, i think, is why i wanted to learn more what the office is doing and the tools they refer to people. That may close some of what we may think as a threat that has a tangible solution. That comes down to the bottom line which is we need to raise the profile of this and we have been doing that. That is an important thing to make the people of San Francisco, the merchants aware of our existence. So many times i have said i am a Small Business commissioner and they have not heard of that. We need to raise our profile. I agree. I totally agree. I am thinking about this. I love this feedback. I am thinking right when we get there, policy goals is not number one. Policy goals is like our top number one output of the day, but i think we want to be careful where we put it in the order. Some of the stuff, bonding, learning about each others background, sort of talking about a vision what Small Business looks like 20, 30 years from now seems central and critical towards having a meaningful conversation about what our policy goals should be. I think those things should probably come first in the conversation. I guess, you know, we can keep talking about this. We have some time and sharing the commissioners reports and perhaps we put retreat discussion on the agenda maybe in two or three meetings from now to such base. Maybe provide a sample agenda. And a date. I think the people that have the calendar to look at march and april saturday. I was able to skim together. Are we allowed to do that . In the past regina sends out a thing. I cant be do it now. At least it is like slimmed down. The way we used to do it. How about because part of this is going to be condition on the facility and taking a look at the facilities where we can be and what is a comfortable facility for us to be in. So anyway, we will work on that and send out a doodle poll. If you want to send the dates ahead of time or give them to us after the meeting. It may be that, you know, what if we cant find the location and we have to push it out a little bit more. Lets bring it to a close then. We will do a doodle on time and then we will have a discussion about the agenda. We will finalize the agenda at a later meeting. Done and done. Anything else . Public comment . Lastly that you are going to start and you can keep things rolling in, but by friday just really if you can submit to dominica and i your top level things that you want to by march 6th at the latest. If you could in the subject line do retreat so it is easy to sort by. Okay. Do we have any Public Comment on the directors report . The retreat. Do we have any comment on item 4, the Small Business commission retreat and Strategic Planning . Seeing none, comment is closed. Next item. Item 5 directors report. Update and report on the office of Small Business and Small Business assistance center, department programs, policy and legislative matters, announcements from the mayor, and announcements regarding Small Business activities. I do not have a written report. High level things to go over. Mayor announcements. The mayor did announce appointment of the new planning director and also last week we had the mayor kickoff the 50th anniversary year for gay pride. That is exciting. Couple new Housing Navigation centers that have been open so i will make sure that you get those press announcements so you are aware how much more housing that is coming on board. Especially dealing with our more vulnerable populations. Also, there was an article in the New York Times that spoke malls. The assessment that it wasnt just Online Retail affecting malls, malls sort of their claim was really it is Middle America. Those stars are targeted for Middle America and the economic decline of Middle America, and that is a contributor. I will forward you that article, but also couple days later the bow tie economist. He does these 70 word things about the economy and not all are things i respond to. I thought this was interesting. He talked about a generation gap. He said in 1990 when the baby boomers medium age was 35 they owned 21 of the nations wealth. In 2008 when genxers were 25, they owned 9 . Had melenials there not hit it until 2023 the share of National Wealth will have do triple from 3. 2 to reach the level of genxers. I thought that was Something Interesting to sort of look at in the mix. I mean that is obviously national data. What does that look like for San Francisco . We definitely have lost a middle class here. I think things arent mutually exclusive. There is a lot of things happening. I thought that was fairly an interesting bit of information and the timing of those two things coming together. We have in addition to the hearing on wednesday with the economic Mitigation Group supervisor fewer is conducting a hearing on the dealinged use fee. This is from the Economic Working Group in terms of findings. It was recommended a hearing to be held to support findings of the Mitigation Group. The office will be testifying at that hearing as well, and. When are the time findings . April is. This is the group you are on . April 1. It. It came from a resolution adopted by the board of supervisors. They are coming up with recommendations how to mitigate and support businesses affected by the recent ban on the tobacco license, in particular. This ordinance applies to type 20 and 21 off sale liquor licenses. So it is affecting the Retail Sector that is being gutted. We got an in depth presentation from the department of health on this fee. It is an outdated fee from 2006 that i think we have a positive hearing about the sfpd will be there responding to questions. They are amicable to this process and getting rid of redundant things on the books that is the look it is going to take is the impact on Small Business. Also, you know, the success as a fee meeting its goals. It is a look at that. Are there other ways that every alcohol license because there is no new issue type 2021 licenses. They are sold recycled. There is an opportunity through the approval process to deal with some of the same goals through that way. It is also taking a look at streamlining. Either an eye to really severely minimizing it or removing it. One of the recommendations to give you guys a sense. We are going to look at it objectively, but there is a waiver associated with the fee that has largely not been accessible to businesses let alone immigrant minorities and as a result many businesses have been compliant and paying into this fee for over a decade and we are looking at as a precedent if there are other fees how can the Tax Collector notify people or opt them out and that systematic look at how our fees should be moving from punitive to compliance based. This is a really big hearing not just for the over burdened sector that it is related to but as a precedent for fee mitigation work. We can look at it moving forward. Congratulations, commissioner. We will see. Then i definitely want to make sure that i report after each assessed the council of district merchants meeting do minca provided an update on the work that the working group has done to date. They had some discussions because of the s. F. M. T. A. , Small Business working group, discussions around the congestion pricing. There is concerns there, and then just the implications to Small Businesses that have to go in and out of a potential congestion pricing area. Something on the radar both for, i think, inner sunset merchants is discussion of closure of Golden Gate Park for traffic seven days each were. That is something there is a lot of concern from. In terms of some of the concern issues that they brought up. Will we get reports. I go that congestion pricing reared its head before. Is it moving forward, are we going to have a hearing . It impacts a lot of people and even where i live. It would mean i would have to pay a fee to leave my home and come back. None of that stuff has really been drilled down, and these are things that affect everybody. It is legislation that should come up before this commission. It has a lot of moving parts. My understanding is that they are targeting that area in the financial district where at 5 00 it takes an hour to go a block. I have seen the plan in the past. It was like targeting from the Golden Gate Bridge all the way we need a grip on this. I am telling you how it was described to me. It is going to be substantially more minimal than perhaps what has been floated in the past. This is definitely not going to be citywide. I havent seen the plan in writing. Maybe perhaps not the whole city but the east side of the city. I dont think even that is contemplated. Isnt this moot until we get it . Something we get it . Right. If that is something that just to get ahead of it and be educated about it under new business, it could be brought up under new business to receive a presentation on the current. I do know that mario sits on Advisory Commission as well, we can have the department ann marieio come and present. We dont need to wait for the retreat, but i think it is never too early to have the Department Come to provide a presentation, if you would like. I think those are just the key things to highlight for one last thing. I will not be here at next mondays meeting. I will be in london celebrating a good friends birthday. Dominica will be here. I will work with sharky before my department. Next meeting, monday march 9th. This will be the meeting you will be reviewing your recommendations. There wont be and finalizing your recommendations from the wednesday hearing. There might be some legislation. Isnt that the day that m. T. A. Was going to come and present the budget . M. T. A. Is going to present budget as well. That will be an opportunity to ask questions about that. Any more . That is it for the directors report. Do we have any Public Comment on the directors report . Seeing none, closed. Item 6. Commissioners reports. Allows president , Vice President and commissioners to report on recent Small Business activities and make announcements that are of interest to the Small Business community. Commissioner commission dul. We attended the first meeting. It was a great idea to develop. Just the few people there were very grateful for having the opportunity to address issues. The next one i am working on having that in north beach. I am trying to learn from first one. That is get out ahead of it, get the publicity out there. I think it was a really rare opportunity for Small Businesses to feel this is for you. It was very productive. I think one thing that was really great about the event. I sat at the table with supervisor peskin and his aid and two businesses. We spent 45 minutes to an hour talking about their concerns, both lee and i were furiouslitaing notes to try to digest how did that plug into our work. I thought it was actually might have been the effectiveness might have been heightened by the fact it wasnt well attended. We could have detailed conversations and i came away with some things to think about and talk about. I agree. It was a great event. We should support events like that. We should be pushing for that in all business corridors. Each corridor may have a Different Group of issues. It is a challenge in a good way to address what each neighborhood says this is what is in our neighborhood. That event was specific to polk street. One can imagine that, you know, in a different district or in the tenderloin it is completely different. I completely agree. The supervisor is to be commended for organizing the event and public sizing it. Commissioner huie. I want to circle back. There was a letter to the mayor . The letter to the mayor in terms of asking for representation in the m. T. A. Vacancies. I want to see what you guys are feeling or thinking about this, in particular, if in the future you think there is something you think the commission can do to, i dont know, support or not. I dont know exactly how you guys feel. I am putting it out there and wondering. I brought this up at a meetings before. I went through the list on the vacancies on the committees and commissions a while back. Some of them are Small Business specific seats and they are all vacant. There are so many random committees that we can, you know, start executing Leadership Development. We have a recruiting problem. There are a lot that are Small Business specific seats for Advisory Boards and committees and commissions that should be part of our Leadership Development strategy. For those very important commissions like Planning Commission, i doubt very much if they would be willing to reserve a seat for Small Business. I dont see why we cant come up with liaison seat or Something Like that that we would be. Given a chance to speak and be heard. Not be actually a voting member. I think we should definitely. We could do that with m. T. A. , dpw, planning. I have two quick thoughts. I think to me it sounds like that might be a good thing to spend time talking about in the retreat. Who do we know that we could propose to be filling the seats . That might be a good use of our time because we are only on this commission. There are a lot of commissions that could use a Small Business voice. If we cant get the commissions to change the structure to require a Small Business sheet. In the short term it might be good for the higher Profile Commission to utilize our collective effort to advocate for whoever fills that vacancy to be a Small Business owner. If there is a vacancy on the m. T. A. Board or Planning Commission maybe we can propose candidates in the Small Business committee to get it done. They are unpaid appointmen appointmentsiappointments,like s extraordinary. It attracts folk with no time to run a business on the side. There are examples. Elgar runs a Large Organization and is president of the Planning Commission. It makes it harder. There are people that could do it. A wellknown architect. When she is not at the commission she is designing buildings. What she has to say is based on fact and what she has seen and done. It gives those people added insight that i think is very important. I agree. We had an event to start a Small Business. Martha was amazing. We had iris lee. The city has people to help Small Businesses negotiate leases. It is something i didnt know about. It is a great tool. It probably had 30 people there, 35. It was okay attended. The new director this week and so if there are Small Business owners with ideas or things to ask him or if they would like to attend to bring that up to him directly, i think he will be there on wednesday or thursday of this week. The last thing is since the last Commission Meeting i have been collecting data and information about the effects of seismic retrofits on ground floor commercial retail spaces. The final space of mandatory seismic retrofits have to be completed by september. Because the final deadline is september many are rushing to get it done. In the mission and other neighborhood commercial districts you are seeing a lot more businesses shutter for required mandated seismic retrofits. We have nine months to provide some relief for Small Businesses that will face the retrofit. Unfortunately, while the city has done the dew diligence to Due Diligence to notify Property Owners. There are no requirements how much advance notice they need to give commercial tenants and no Financial Support or no requirements with the relationship between the Property Owner and commercial tenant. On 18th and deloris a popular korean spot was told they had to shutter for mandatory seismic retrofit and pay rent even though the business is closed. He lost all 23 employees. He lost all employees, had to pay rent and was given 30days notice. I have been collecting stories and i am working on this issue independently and i am in the information gathering face right now. Dont forget we are working on this for years. It is not just until september. They have got time after time after time extended. It is not a soft story. Abe. But there are some potential recommendations that the commission could make. I think about two stages. Anything to do now and when they are getting work done . What can we learn about this requirement in the future, specifically if you make a Property Owner do work that will affect the ability of its small accident to operate, what are the requirements the Property Owner indicate that they are commercial tenants to find a new space if they need to . To educate merchants to not sign a lease until they go over some of these extremely important things that could affect them negatively in the future. A lot of people arent thinking that much about these things and they smack them in the face. They need to know, you know, maybe they dont want to sign a lease of that space. I think we need to get that out there. I will report back in the next Commission Meeting. That is a good example. If they send notice to the tenants. Who is complying . These are simple things we could have done as a city, i am not saying the commission. I would say what i can tell you is and we can, you know, talk about this at another meeting in more detail. There is close to 900 properties, half have been completed. Another 400 something properties, that is properties not individual businesses. Sometimes there are one to four businesses in a property. If through the research there is needed things that could be considered is that the commission can send a recommendation that we need to do emergency legislation to extend out the timeline, put in Property Owner notification requirements, and there are some sort of potential. From the Property Owner, yes. An example is like if a business is given six months from their Property Owner, that might give them the time they need to find a temporary location while the seismic retrofit happens and not put dozens of people out of work, some are relying on health care and cant afford to take even a week off. Or if we had a database. I know a restaurant i helped the owner knew they were going to do this and let them do the build out then said i have to do this. Is a database if you type in the address, it will tell you whether or not the seismic retrofit is required. I know required but complet completed. It tells you whether well most the permit should be pulled by now. There are more than a few, probably 20, that are now noncompliant. Most of them the permit has been pulled. You may be able to look, pull up more information to see where it is in the permit process, but right now it is like permit is pulled and not completed for the majority of those properties left to complete. This is something that if you are interested we could put together a little more information. Maybe that is something that you and i can talk about ahead of time in terms of from the information you are getting and what more. Again, if there is, you know, certain recommendations that are in need in terms of lease negotiations to make sure that is out there, we have to figure out how the businesses and those properties are communicated to. I would like to do more homework and come back if that is okay. Thanks. Anybody else . Do we have Public Comment on the new business item . Commissioners reports. I keep crossing it off. Do we have Public Comment on commissioners reports. Seeing none comment closed. New business. Allows commissioners to introduce new agenda items for future consideration by the commission. Discussion items. I was interested from Public Comment earlier today. I know it is not a pressing issue but it is something that will eventually affect Small Businesses to get exposure to the potential problem. I have heard you know i wont give you back your server if you dont pay me and stuff. I would like to have them do a presentation. We have had now we pay it feels like protection money to a. Com because a competitor for 30 bucks a month you can hire somebody to drown out your website. We had a competitor that was just like hitting our website with millions of hits and it completely shut our website down. I will pay you to protect your windows so they dont get broken. Technical support comes into play. A lot of times Small Businesses the professional folks dont want to work with us. They said we are not going to set up your internet or do this because it is not worth our time. We are going to work with bigger people. People have said that to my familys business. Weep end up getting in predatory resituations. We are inundated with emails from companies that are presumptuous. They are saying your internet presence is terrible. Sign up with us. Knocnobody knows how to vet thee people. If a member of the public wants to make a presentation, email regina what you would like to present about and we can look at the calendar to see when the appropriate time to put that on the agenda would be. Do we have any other new business . Yes. I would like to adjourn the meeting in honor of three Small Businesses that closed in the last two weeks. One i may need to ask the help in remembering. It was the wholesale bakery around for about 40 years that supplied a lot of the wholesale baked goods. Bakers of paris. There was a lot of it. I would like to adjourn in honor of bakers of paris, cats bagels that was here for 27 years, and flying filafel. Those are the businesses i would like to adjourn in honor of. I want to add that shaws in west portal closed after 89 years. It is like an ice cream and candy shop here for 89 years. They were up to i think 60 businesses or something. They have shut them all down to the one on west portal, which i think that was first one. That is now gone. Ambassador toys is also gone in the west portal corridor. They just lost the bar open there for like one of the oldest bars in San Francisco, wasnt it . Terrible. Do we have any other commissioner comments . Any Public Comment . Commissioner any new business . None. Any Public Comment on new business . Seeing none, comments are closed. Sfgovtv please show the office of Small Business slide. Good night. It is our custom to begin and end with a reminder the office of Small Business is the only place to start your new business in San Francisco. The best place to get answers to your questions about doing business in San Francisco. The office of Small Business should be your first stop when you have a question about what to do next. You can find us online or in person here at city hall. Best of all, all of our services are free of charge. The Small Business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about the business in San Francisco. If you need assistance start here. Item 8. Adjournment. I would like to adjourn in honor of bakers of paris, ambassador toys, shaws, the cats location and cats bagels for clothing. I second. All in favor. Aye. Any opposed . Meets is adjourned at 8 02 p. M