Transcripts For SFGTV SFCTA Full Authority Board 20240712

Clerk we have quorum. Chair peskin thank you, ms. Milton. Do you have any announcements . Clerk yes. Public comment will be available for any item on this agenda by call 8882045987, and entering access code on the screen. Once told, you will be invited to join the meeting as a participant. When prompted, dial star, three to speak. You will be prompted by the system when it is your turn to speak. Please anow for audio alf delays and a 30second lag time during the course of this meeting. That completes my announcement. Chair peskin thank you, ms. Milton, and colleagues, supervisor mandelman is going to be about 30 minutes late fore this meeting. Colleagues, is there a motion . Supervisor walton second. Chair peskin ms. Meltocan that without roll or how do i handle that . Because there is no quorum for this meeting, you dont need to have because there is no quorum for this meeting, you dont have to call roll for that item. Chair peskin thank you. I want to thank supervisor walton and supervisor yee for convening two weeks ago during our oneweek recess to consider and ultimately approve the onecent sales tax for our caltrain. This will provide much needed reforms and a path for long needed funding for this train that will connect San Francisco, san mateo, and santa clara counties. We want to thank supervisor walton serving on the ad hoc govern johnson committee, particularly supervisor send cindy chavez and david cruz, as well as our entire elected official delegation, including our mayor, mayor breed, senator wiener, and representatives chiu and tang. Now we need to educate about the measure and as a measure, it will need two thirds ballot approval to pass. The other thing was the m. T. C. To include the downtown extension or d. T. X. As we call it, strengthening the projects call on near term federal and state funds. This is just the draft reprint stage, but i want to acknowledge and appreciate the milestone and successful joint advocacy by tilly chang and our Transportation Authority staff, as well as the Transbay Joint Powers Authority with the support of our m. T. C. , commissioner ronen, and our other m. T. C. Reps on that body. I also want to thank work for the securing outcome, and youll hear a little bit more about that on our executive directors report. On a related note, im pleased to report that the executive steering committee, which, colleagues, youll remember our deliberations about reform in that agency, held its inaugural meeting in july and adopted our nominee, tilly chang, as its chair. Good luck for more work, and we look forward to the team for more great outcomes. Unfortunately, and we can schedule at our next meeting a hearing on this, but i am extremely disappointed and saddened that after five months of closure of our subway under market street, that we still have problems with splices and got off to a terrible start yesterday. It is extremely disappointing, and i would like to schedule a hearing on that. I know that the director of transportation director tumlin wanted to speak on that, but insofar as its not on the agenda, i was advised by counsel that we cannot discuss it in this meeting. Finally, congratulations are in order for cynthia fong, Deputy Director of finance and her administration, for achieving a certificate of excellence in financial recording by the governor finance officers association. For the third year in a row, ms. Fong, and to your team, congratulations for this Outstanding Award and for your stewardship of our taxpayers dollars, and with that, colleagues, i conclude my remarks. Is there any Public Comment on the chairs report . Clerk chair, let me check. Chair peskin thank you, ms. Milton. Operator you have no Public Comment. Chair peskin Public Comment is closed madam executive director, your report, please. Good morning, and thank you, chair peskin, good morning, commissioners. In addition to chair peskins congratulations, id ask for this meeting to be added to your calendar so we can discuss particularly the budget and work program. So thank you to each of you and your staff. Ill lead off with an update on the state level. State legislation is moving along, and the statutory deadline for bills to be approved is august 31. Weve been tracking these bills, and we dont have an update for your agenda today, but we will in the next meeting. Only a few of the Top Priorities are advancing. Of the bills the t. A. Has taken a position, only a few are still active. Senate bill 288 from senator wiener, from which we currently have a watch position, which has to do with ceqa reform, passed out of legislation next week. There would also be theyve added certain requirements for Public Meetings before and during construction and established a sunset date of january 2023. So those are some updates on that bill. We are also following a budget trailer bill, sb 815, which would allow for gas tax funds that are currently direct via formula to transit agencies to be used for transit operations. These are normally used for state of good repair maintenance Capital Projects, but the state is allowing through this bill to allow for transit operations to use them to avoid cuts in service. So its the regulation that allows federal funds to be used that we talked about last month. So we will provide an update on those of these as well as other bills on the september 15 meeting as well as a federal update that includes updates on representative Ayanna Pressleys freedom to move acts. Acts are due for bicycle and pedestrians projects, including a 220 million statewide program, and a 37 million Regional Program administered by d. T. C. So we will be submitting a package for the yerba buena design pathway. We talked about this at the timma Committee Last month, and other projects are the Fulton Howard streetscape project, which will include best of my knowledge and longterm improvements on those streets. Also, m. T. C. S application with the Alameda County transportation commissioner is also of interest because it included design of improvements connecting the west bay path to oakland. The Water Authority Transit Agency and the downtown transit project have created the ferry project, an upgrade to the ferry gates and a beautiful new plaza, including some overhead weather protection, as well as improving Emergency Response capabilities. The project will include future services, including service to Treasure Island and some east bay cities that are included to 2030, and we did contribute about 2. 7 million to that project. Were happy to support that project through design and construction. As you recall, weve been tracking these after the board approved funding for the l. R. B. Funding, the expansion vehicles that came in and were used recently, but also the 151 existing replacement of existing 151 l. R. V. S. I think first vehicle is expected last month. On the downtown rail extension, thank you, chair peskin, for mentioning that. Ill just mention that Deputy Director from m. T. C. Was elected [no audio] as well as early phasing studies, so that will be a monthly meeting, as well as our e. F. C. Meetings, and you can find information on the tjpas website. On a related note, the executive directors of the Water Transit Authority and Municipal Transportation Agency have announced their retirement, so i want to congratulate them. We also appreciate, of course, director mark zabanehs service at the transboy joint powers authority, managing through some tough times but always with transparency and ultimately being able to celebrate with full confidence this beautiful new facility for the region, as well as his shepherding of the d. T. X. Project through the approval stage at the federal level. So best wishes to them in their retirement and their future endeavors. The lifeline Transportation Program at the state level, we have some applications underway. These were reviewed at the t. A. Board, Transportation Authority board last month. For sfmta, these will be utilizing these funds for the lifeline Transportation Program and the folks using that, and the b. A. R. T. Transportation and redundancy project that we mentioned last month. Hopefully, your offices have seen some messages from our agency our news regarding an online game as well as other measures to folks to let them know about the studys progress. Theres an online game called unclog fog city to help understand the different tradeoffs in deciding the level of sea level in our city. We are sponsoring a telephone town hall and virtual town hall on august 26, tomorrow, in fact, and a workshop with s. P. U. R. And the Bicycle Coalition on november 1. We are also working with many, Many Organizations through Small Group Meetings as well as distributing fliers through food bampnks and other ways of getting the word out to folks in the community. I also want to thank and congratulate the sfmta for its outstanding work on the Bayview Community Transportation Plan as well as supervisor waltons office, d10 office. Theyve just received the california Planning Association award for excellence in opportunity and empowerment, so congratulations to that team. That was a fantastic project that brought together the community, including participatory budgeting, and d. T. C. Brought funds to support that, and we at sfmta have brought Forward Investments to that plan. Finally, i just want to add my congratulations to Deputy Director cynthia fong and controller carmen hui and the rest of the finance decision staff on the decision of the finance governments award. Chair peskin thank you for that. Are there any comments from members . Seeing none, is there any Public Comment on the executive directors report . Clerk okay. Were checking. Operator you have zero questions remaining. Chair peskin okay. Public comment is closed. Madam clerk, could you please read the next item . Clerk item 4, approve the minutes of the july 28, 2020 meeting. This is an action item. Chair peskin is there any Public Comment on the minutes of our july 28 meeting . Madam clerk . Operator you have zero questions remaining. Clerk there is none. Chair peskin Public Comment is closed. And is is there a motion to approve said minutes . Made by supervisor walton so moved. Chair peskin moved by commissioner walton and seconded by commissioner yee, beat commissioner fewer on that. Roll call please, miss melton. Clerk on the item approval of minutes [roll call] clerk we have ten ayes. Minutes are approved. Chair peskin all right. Next item, please. Chair peskin item 5, covidera congestion tracker and covid19 Recovery Scenario analysis. Chair peskin tilly, do you want to text joe to unmute. Sorry. Production, can you unmute joes mic, please . Chair peskin why dont we go to item 6, is that okay . Clerk sure. Chair peskin and we can circle back to item 5. Madam clerk, why dont you read item 6. Clerk item 6, preliminary fiscal year 202021 budget and pork progr work program. This is an information item. Let me take a moment to pull up my slide. Chair peskin yes, we are. So this is your first look at the fiscal year 202021 budget. Before i begin diving into the numbers, id just like to take a moment to review the t. A. S agency structure. We have 47 approved positions here across six different divisions. The t. A. Administers the prop a sales tax program, the 10 double vehicle prop d Registration Fee, the transbay prop mitigation tax, and we act as the local manager for the Transportation Fund for clean air. We have six different mandated responsibilities, and we have 47 staff approved by this board to carry all those functions out. Id also like to take a moment to recap on the sales tax revenue industry and also a moment how we did for sales tax revenues for fiscal year 1920. Here, we have a past look of fiscal year sales tax revenue. You can see here in 2012, we were collecting about 81 million of revenue each year. This was also the same time the federal department of transportation moved into a new communication system. And then, covid19 impacted all of us. We had collected revenue of 86 million, and we had originally anticipated we would collect 110. Im happy to tell you that we have collected overall 99 million. Now Going Forward in fiscal year 2021, we are anticipating collecting 91 million. We are expecting to continue to shelter in place, and well continue to report back how were doing. Excuse me, cynthia. Do you see the presenting box that keeps flickering on on my . I dont know if anyone else sees it, as well. No, i dont. Okay. Chair peskin and do you want to say how you came up with that . You didnt create a crystal box, you consulted with experts based on modelling, and i think its important to state that. Sure. Lets take a moment to state that. There is no crystal ball behind the curtain here. We are working with consultants in economics in addition to working closely with the Controllers Office, as well. They have a separate economist, so its great to compare two different thirdparty sources. In addition, joes presentation would have taken a look at how we arrived at some of these numbers, along with some tourist and Hotel Occupancy rates, we are looking at other considerations such as percentage of workforce in San Francisco thats able to work from home. Also, restaurants opening sales that impact sales tax in San Francisco. And wayfair collections we started receiving that tax in december, while that was assessed back on april 1 of 2019. There are a lot of different factors that go into these revenue estimates. We try to remain conservative, trying to monitor whats happening in San Francisco, including mayor breeds current orders for San Francisco. All right. Is that good enough . Chair peskin thats great. Okay. Ill go on. We are looking at 20 more revenues as compared to last fiscal year. As you can see on the chart, the gray chart represent the 2021 budget, while the blue represents the projected budget. There is [inaudible] and bridge structure project. Mainly, the south gate realignment project. As you may remember, we had begun construction on that project in june of this year. In addition, vehicle Registration Fee represents 3 . We city a small see a small decrease due to covid19 impacts. Our transportation mitigation tax represented 5 . This is a new tax for the t. A. We began collections on january 1, 2020. We had anticipated collecting, for the first six months, 7. 5 million revenue. We had budgeted 3. 2 and actual collect ended up to 2. 5. So we were estimating with the Controllers Office and sfmta, 7. 4 million for a full 12 months for the are Traffic Congestion mitigation tax. Now interest and other revenues represent less than 1 . Majority of the cash that the t. A. Holds fits with the fits with the treasury pool office citys treasury pool. Let me move onto expenditures now. Just to highlight first, our main source of expenditures are proposition k. This is seeking the largest reimbursement request for the current year. The majority of expenditures, approximately 45 million. Will be going to sfmtas light rail vehicle procurements. Sfmta is the sponsor that receives the most funds from the t. A. S prop k program. In addition, well have large reimbursement from several places, including the San Francisco public works geary resurfacing project. Executive director tan will go more into detail in her presentation of the agencys work plan. Great. Thank you, cynthia. I have one more slide, tilly. So expenditures, this is the last slide. Expenditures, we are looking at an increase of 15. 5 . As you can see, the Capital Project costs thus far are the ones that represent 85. 6 of expenditures. In addition to the expenditures i just indicated on the last slide, we anticipate lower than usual prop k expenditures being carried forward. Our operating cost, this represents about 5 of the t. A. s budget. We are anticipating an increase in personnel costs of approximately 10 . These are related to positions that we had removed from last years budget and now anticipate hiring these positions. They are the real program manager, a senior Transportation Planner, and a Transportation Planner. In terms of operating costs, we have barely a change here. We have less operating costs than last year, and then, we have debt service costs. This represents 10 of the t. A. S budget. Now, this is for fees, principles, and interest for the sales tax revenue bond and in addition to maintaining our 140 million revolving credit loan agreement. This is a line of credit that the agency has had for the last three years. Our debt program has allowed us to be more flexible in delivery of prop k projects. Y in order to be able to fund our expenditures, well need to drawdown on that revolving Credit Agreement this year in order to pay for our expenditures. As some of you may remember, a few years ago, we had drew down from our resolving Credit Agreement. We will be coming to the board for approval before each drawdown is made, and well be able to indicate what the drawdown and what the purpose of the drawdown will be for the upcoming expenditures. With that, i am happy to take any questions for this before transitioning to director chan. Chair peskin thank you for that, as well as the personal briefing that you gave me earlier. Are there any questions from members . Let me look in the chat box. I do not see any. With that, why dont we go to our executive director . Thank you, chair peskin supervisor safai chair peskin, this is chair peskin go ahead, supervisor safai . Supervisor safai so saying were going to be drawing down on our credit. How much of that will be remaining, and how much impact does that have to our overall stability . Chair peskin ms. Fong . Let me break this question up into pieces. What is the impact . Well, the impact, since were able to pull down on this line of credit that the board has approved, well be able to Fund Upcoming expenditures for delivery of projects in San Francisco. Now, what does this to our credit supervisor safai and how much of our credit will be remaining . Well, we would be anticipating up to 100 million being drawn down for this fiscal year. That would leave us 40 million left to drawdown, and if and then, we would have a number of years based on the life of the asset that were funding to payback these funds. What weve done in the past to payback the resolving Credit Agreement were to use future tax revenues to pay the balance down in addition to erbing debt to pay to issuing debt to payback the revolving Credit Agreement. Supervisor safai so were taking debt to drawdown our credit at what Interest Rate . The Interest Rate would be the Interest Rate currently at the market for shortterm debt. Supervisor safai so were taking down interest, going into debt, and then, were going to pay it with future debt . Sales tax revenue. Supervisor safai sales tax revenue or debt. Sales tax revenue or debt, which would be in the course of a bond. And is this the usual course of the t. A. . I know were in an unusual fiscal situation, but do we normally drawdown credit and go into debt in this matter . With yyes. This is the second time weve done this to pay our share shareholders in expenditures. And on the cityside, through Deputy Director fong to commissioner safai, it is not uncommon that we take out shortterm resolving debt with longer term structural debt, like bond. So this is not an uncommon action. Supervisor safai okay. I just wanted to know if it was something that was done in the past because obviously, it costs us a lot more to cray down doctor and pay it with future drawdown credit and pay it with future debt and sales tax. Chair peskin thank you for those questions, supervisor safai. Madam executive director . Thank you. And one more question to clarify from cynthias report, our operationing expends are slightly operating expenses are slightly lower because weet off on two hires, and we have since decided to go forward and fill a couple of those position, so youll see a slight rise in the actual operating expenses, but its very small, and its for several positions that we have secured funding for, including prop k funding. Okay, so heres the work plan. I just wanted to mention some highlights of our coming work plan. Many of these will be familiar through the course of this year, and many of them are rolling over. Our congestion management work is primarily relating to supporting immediate needs at sfmta and the working group that chair peskin coleads with director tumlin as well as tools such as what youll be seeing from joe in the next ite item. Our downtown congestion pricing study continues, as well, but its a big year for finishing the planned bay work for the region and also identifying our own Transportation Plan, which is San Francisco Transportation Plan 2050, we call it s. T. P. Right now, were heading into briefings, and next year, well inform the public on some modal studies and how that will track with the update next fall. Planning, environmental work is on pause, however, we are continuing to provide planning and policy support to the region, to our partners on the 101 corridor, and we are tracking, again, caltrans efforts, as well, as they turn back on some of those lanes based on how congested theyre becoming. Next slight, now Neighborhood Transportation Improvement Program is very active. We are leading, i believe, three or four of these studies in districts 4, 5, and 9, and we are leading the efforts in other districts. We also received a School Access Planning Grant from caltrans that commissioner mar has requested, so we continue to provide support to a number of studies across the city in the district levels. Next . Forecasting and data, these are the tools that well be discussing in just a moment, but these are the types of things that you would see the tools development, the rulemaking, anything that involves big data and model enhancements. This has become such a valuable tool and really a model across the nation for things such as this. We have roles that we play, and making sure that were leveraging. These are all the things that weve been mentioning in my directors report, and youre seeing grants, applications, and rewards, inner city capital, congested corridors, and the like. Thats especially important as we head into potentially again federal reauthorization. Our Strategic Plan update is being led by ana la fort and is looking at putting that forward and sponsors needs. That will inform our debt strategy. So speaking to supervisor safai, this is something that we do quite often. We do go to our bond programs supported by line of credit revolvertype facility, and thats very typical of agencies with infrastructure delivery. Reauthorization is something that chair peskin has asked us to take a look at to go to voters for the prop k expenditure plan. We have already at this point, about 15 years into our program, delivered many of the program that were in our program in 2003. So it is a perfect time, as were updating our county wide plan in getting with all of our partners to envision what those next projects should be. New revenue measures also include a potential regional transportation measure as well as the ones that weve been discussing this year. In terms of legislative advocacy, we remain active at all levels, particularly the state but also the federal level and ensuring that we are ready for any stimulus or further federal opportunities on the funding side, and particularly for a major project such as downtown extension. Prop k Customer Support and service and efficiency improvements include the tools and particularly for our project sponsors and sister agencies to make their work more efficient, as well. Next . In terms of Capital Projects, youve seen and youll continue to see us come before you, particularly this fall, to obtain your approvals to initiate the Major Construction efforts on y. B. I. , south gate road, as we mentioned, kicked off earlier this year, in the summer, and now, we have the main bridges to replace a set of roads from bay bridge down to Treasure Island, and that is being coordinated with the bicycle and pedestrians task on those islands as well as Treasure Island mobility management program, which we will provide updates to you as the timma committees consider those next week. And then, in terms of the ocean avenue southbound on and off ramps and realignments, were working on these in conjunction with supervisor yee and safais office and working wi supporting things in that area, needs in that very, very critical area. You have the b. A. R. T. Station and the two major freeways or the freeway and the mattjor arterials in that area. Next . Transbay Transit Center is now in operation mode and now were focused, of course, on d. T. X. , and that includes the pennsylvania avenue extension as well as locations for the 22nd caltrain station. This is an important study let by planning department, and many agencies are working together on what that should look like as far as serving the southeast part of the city with caltrain and also supporting caltrain through its Electrification Program and beyond with high speed rail, central subway, overseeing that, geary, and market street, and better market street, we should add, as well. Transparency, youre seeing that with the really nice recognition from dsoa, we also have active programs to support sponsors and ensure that we have efficient grants management and contracting. Were proud of our d. B. E. And l. B. E. Policies and appreciate this boards guidances in that, particularly this year, and also support all of our work with sound and thorough communications with bidders, with contractors, and with Overall Community stakeholders. So with that, i believe we are, yep, down to our last slide, which would be about our process. This is our first round with presenting this information item to you all, well be back after we present to our Citizens Advisory Committee next week, and well be back with your input for the final budget in september, and that way, well stay consistent with the city as we adopt the budget by october 1. That concludes my presentation. Chair peskin thank you for that presentation. Are there any members who have any questions or comments for director chang or miss fong . Seeing none, why dont we open this up to Public Comment. Operator you have one question remaining. Clerk welcome, caller. Your two minutes begins now. Thank you, chair peskin and sfcta members. Alita dupree. For the record, my pronouns are she and her. You made a mention of 22nd street and caltrain. I ask that you, in this study, you ensure that you have funding to make sure that this particular station is a. D. A. Accessible because at this time, it is not. I happen to believe that all railroad stations should be fully accessible snanationwideo we dont want to forget about that. I did hear about your discussion about borrowing, and we have to be very careful. I have a bit of heartburn about shortterm borrowing and possibly replacing that with longer term debt. It brings about an issue called Interest Rate risk, so we have to be mindful of that. I dont like to be overleveraged here. And just we need to do a deep dive on spending and taxable items. I think im spending about the same on items i get from the groceries, like toothpaste and toilet paper. Lets make sure that this plan keeps equity and accessibility in mind. Thank you. Chair peskin thank you. Are there any other members of the public for this item . Operator you have zero questions remaining. Chair peskin okay. Public comment is closed. [gavel]. Chair peskin and this was an information item. Why dont we circle back to item number 5 that has already been called. Joe yes. Can you hear me now . Chair peskin we can hear you. Great. Thank you so much. Good morning, commissioners. Good morning, chair peskin. Let me just pull up my slide show, and are you able to see this now . Chair peskin yes, and if you could perfect. Good morning, again. Im the Deputy Director for Technology Data and analysis at the San Francisco county Transportation Authority, and im here to talk to you today about the covid era congestion tracker staff have developed. As we know, the shelter in place orders really quite rapidly changed traffic patterns and congestion in San Francisco, and, of course, as we now, transportation patterns and ridership continue to change as we see changes in the Public Health Decision Making and economy. In order to help Decision Makers and planners understand and respond to these changes, Transportation Authority staff have developed this covid era congestion tracker, which is an interactive map which we update weekly. It shows information on the average speeds in the a. M. And p. M. Peaks. This is the same as we report every other year as part of our congestion management program, and in fact, what this tool does is take a process that we used to go through every other year and do it every single week. Provides information at a city level as well as changes and speeds over time, and this can be used for all sorts of different applications, including being able to help identify emerging hot spots where appropriate electric management strat Traffic Management strategies might be needed. You can see the web link at the bottom. This is where you can interact with the tool. You can see some of the images on the righthand side of your screen. On the top, you see the average a. M. Speeds, and on the bottom, you see the average p. M. Speeds. Ive circled in green the amount speeds increases. Average speed increases from 22 Miles Per Hour before the shelter in place to over 60 Miles Per Hour, and you can see these illustrated in these maps. These are screen shots of the interactive tools, so if you go to the website that i just showed the link for, youll be able to see that. On the left is the typical congestion map during the shelter in place. The red lines indicate that speeds are actually quite low. We use the Traffic Engineering level of Service Standard to indicate those, and these are e. R. Average, not good. But just two weeks later, after the shelter in place order had been in place, you can see that that whole segment of the city had now turned to a much cooler shades of green and yellow, and this indicates that those speeds had rapidly increased during just that twoweek period. However, we expect that more activity will return, and we are ready to see that. You will see immediately after the shelter in place was instituted relatively cooler colors. And then a screen shot on the right from just a couple of weeks ago. We can see that the bridge has gone from a free flowing green to an orange color, indicating that speeds have dropped significantly, and the main segment through the soma district of 80 is also returning to red, indicating levels of higher congestion. The tools, in addition to being able to, with those nice colors, be able to show you where speeds are faster or slower, it also includes a capability or a feature to allow you to compare speeds so what they were prior to the imposition of the shelter in place orders. So here, on the lefthand side, you can see this is during or immediately after the shelter in place, and the pale yellow color indicates that speeds were 30 higher, and that represents much of what you see here at the core. The orange indicates that speeds have begun to return to their preshelter in place congestion or even gotten worse than their preshelter in place congestion, and you can see that in many locations populating the market and south of market district. Chair peskin and is that an a. M. Or p. M. Mark peak market right . I should have noted that. I believe this was a p. M. Peak when i took those screen shots. Chair peskin maybe we should drill down a little bit into the data source . But as tilly knows, i live and walk and traverse the columbus avenue of the Northeast Corner of the city daily, often at the a. M. And almost every day at the a. M. Peak and often at the p. M. Peak, and i have just never encountered anything that would look like a level of service that he reflected in either one of these maps. And i understand its based on cell phone data, but i just its i mean, if you go out there with boots on the ground, it just doesnt look like this. Well, so maybe ill respond in a couple ways. One, i would love to dig into that and be able to provide you a more complete answer, and so ill do that after this presentation. But perhaps some information on the source of the data and how we process the data and how we visualize the data might address some of the questions that you may have. So the data, this data source is not just cell phone data. Cell phone data is part of the data source that flows into this, but also, they pull in a whole bunch of other data, particularly from large fleets you know, the fedex, the u. P. S. , the large fleets and other vehicles that are driving around, as well, and inra estimates that 25 of all the vehicles that are driving in the country are feeding data in there. So thats what it is. Its a number of sources. One thing that ill demonstrate on the next slide, and perhaps if we have time, we can dig into this specifically, we can represent the data. So the colors here are a relative change to what they were prepandemic, but if i slide back to look at these colors, these colors are assigned by the institute of the Transportation Association of engineers standards. So those standards are based on the type of road way and its you know, its location in the kind of urban context, and its really not perhaps as reflective of some of the San Francisco conditions as we might like. It does represent a direct representation of speed, and in fact, if i can just advance a little bit more, is that thats also information that the tool provides you. So for example, for any of those colored segments, we can go in and select an individual segment and see what the actual seeds are. And i think this would be the best test of validation, or perhaps not, of what youre seeing on the street because we can go in and look at the segments that youre most familiar with and see if the average speeds shown here are representative of what your own experience is. At the end of this presentation, i can pull up the congestion tracker tool, and we can look at it on screen, if youd like to do that. Chair peskin no, ive pulled up the tool and played with it myself, but no, we can take that question later and just proceed analysis colleagues, you have any other questions . Go ahead, joe. Okay. Hearing no questions, the purpose of this slide is to illustrate for any individual segment, folks can go in and look at the actual data. What you see here, then, in the charts on the right is the presentation not of the citywide average speeds but the average speeds for this individual segment. At the top is the a. M. Speeds and at the bottom is the p. M. Speeds. So what we can see here, for this segment, is the speeds that are experienced on octavia northbound are slightly worse than they were in the first weekend of march. All of this information that ive just presented to you, and the tool, is really retrospective. We update it weekly, but it tells us what happened. Its important that we pivot and look forward, and this is really critical, especially given all of the uncertainty around the nature of the recovery, and again, that is obviously the intersection of many different factors, including, but not limited to how the economy and how the epidemiological facts are playing out. To do this, we use the sfchamp model, and it allows us to develop estimates of Transportation System performance, including congestion, ridership, and this is really based on changes in Key Assumptions about the economy, including unemployment levels and workforce participation, all of which we track by an industrial sector level. Its influenced by what transportation segments are available, the frequency of routes, capacities, the fares and fare collection policies as well as things like bus lanes, bike lanes, and bridge toll collections. Theres a lot of uncertainty about this, as well, but its influenced by peoples traveling behaviors. To what degree are they able to do Remote Working based on what the nature of their job is, and how many folks are doing that . To what agree are people willing to jump back into transit due to concerns about the Public Health and safety . To what degree are people traveling for nonmandatory purposes such as work and school . You know, the amount of nonessential travel. These are all things that we can test out in our scenario testing tool, and they can give us indications about what we can expect to see and when we can expect to see and under what conditions we can expect to see congestion return and ridersh ridership return, as well. Weve structured these tests with some principles and guidance derived from both the state and the city. You can see theres quite a bit of coherance from the maps supplied by the state of california as well as the maps issued by the city. Each one of these stages will be represented by the scenario tasks. Currently, were at stage two or phase two, and thats the set of scenario tests were working on right now, and as we complete that, well certainly be reporting back to this body about some of our findings and also developing some capabilities to allow folks to take that information and interact with it so they can explore the outcomes in different scenarios. And with that, im happy to take any questions. Chair peskin thank you so much, joe. Are there any questions from members . And i encourage everybody to go to covidcongestion. Sfcta. Org and play with this very helpful tool, and i look forward to future presentations. Seeing no questions from members, why dont we open this up for Public Comment . Operator you have one question remaining. Chair peskin first speaker, please. Chair peskin and members, alita dupree, she and her. Theres a feeling when youre sitting on a muni bus in traffic, and theres nothing that the driver can do about it because were surrounded by cars that have stopped. And ive driven, not in San Francisco, but in manhattan, in new york city. Things get very interesting and difficult. I dont want to go there again. And so i think in our analysis of data, i think we need to look at it in a broader regional perspective of seeing where are all of these cars coming from . How far do they come from . I would conjecture that many of them are single occupancy vehicles, so the real elephant in the room here, and its been this way for decades, is the preponderance of single occupancy cars and the new normal, except that people are choosing not to purchase cars when in the past, people would not have elected to do that, so lets look at this more deeply and broadly. Thank you. Chair peskin thank you, miss dupree. Are there any other members of the public for Public Comment . Operator you have zero questions remaining. Chair peskin seeing none, Public Comment is closed, and this was an information item. Colleagues, is there any introduction of new items . Seeing no names on the roster, is there any general Public Comment . Operator you have zero questions remaining. Chair peskin general Public Comment is closed. Ms. Milton, congratulations on surviving and doing very well at your first meeting at clerk of the sfcta, and with that, colleagues, we are adjourned. [gavel] coping with covid19 with chris manning. Hi. Im chris manners, and youre watching coping with covid19. My guest today is tanya peterson. Shes the director of the San Francisco zoo on sloat boulevard, and shes here today to talk about how the zoos managing during the pandemic and how theyre reopening. Tanya, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Im really pleased to hear that the zoo has reopened again. Thats great news. Can you tell us what changes youve made to make visitors to the zoo feel comfortable and safe when theyre there. I understand now you have to make reservations, and theres only a limited Number Available each day. We were making changes before shelter in place. Fortunately, because we work with animals, and we have a vet hospital onsite, we have the safe coverings before the shelter in place. While we were closed, we made some internal and external changes. The first one, i guess, would be online reservations. You now need to make reservations to visit the zoo, just like your favorite dinner restaurant. That is an effort to slow down congestion. Try to keep everything smooth, and we can control the number of families coming in over the course of time. Thats great. What about the indoor exhibits and the playground. Are those off limits now . Well, theyre not off limits, but the playground, we had we had started Child Care Program for essential workers even when we were closed, and the playground is used exclusively by our Child Care Programs. So if you can think of the zoo, 100 acres, about a good third of it right now is reserved for child care, so what we do is we have the weve got the children in their safe pods. Theyre with each other for three weeks. Theyre in a controlled environment, and in the morning, one pod has the playground, we disinfect, and in the afternoon, another pod comes. All indoor spaces were closed before the shelter in place. The one thing im asked most frequently about is the train. We have a 100yearold train, and as soon as we can disinfect that, well get that open, because thats the number one question i guess, when is the train reopening. Is there a map how youre supposed to walk around the zoo . Yes. In certain areas, we created a oneway path. We try to make it fun. Theyre generally in the shape of bear paws and colored you know, follow the blue bear paws, follow the red bear paws but weve tried to make it fun. When children have not been out for three months, they were climbing anything and everything. We didnt anticipate that, so we put coverings open water fountains, statue signs. Kids had been cooped up, so they went crazy the first few days. More control in place. That sounds great. How did the zoos residents respond to a lack of visitors. Did you observe any behavioral differences . Absolutely. We have some shy residents, gorillas and orangs. We have a male orangutan, he would blow me kisses. The rhinos, they would come out when i would feed them. How does it feel to have the zoo open again to the general public, even if its a limited fashion . It feels fantastic. Im a mother, and i know its been hard on kids. To be able to open safely outdoors were one of the few zoos on an ocean, so youve got the coastal air coming through. We see families or selfascribed pods coming through. Its been great for our staff and for our visitors. Its been heart warming, all the true experiences the first few days. Clearly. You have a lot of mouths to feed. How did you cope with the pandemic so far . Were you able to get some financial assistance, and how can viewers contribute if theyd like to . Well, thank you. We received some help, but we burned through that quickly, and we received some financial donations. We burned through a lot of our funding, and we were really feeling it. All of the people who supported us and hung in there, i thank you. You can join as a member. Its a tax deduction. David attenborough said it best. If the zoo becomes extinction, we all do. In the wild, poachers are getting the best of the wild anima animals, but i think with the help of the zoo and the community, we can save the animals. Where can i go if i want to donate . You can go to sfzoo. Org. You can join, become a member or make a donation. It takes about 30,000 a day to feed all of our 2,000 animals, so you can pick how you want to help. Well, i appreciate you coming onto the show today, miss peterson. Thank you. The animals and i thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Youve been watching coping with covid19. For sfgovtv, im chris manners. Thanks for watching. Shop and dine in the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges residents to do their business in the 49 square files of San Francisco. We help San Francisco remain unique, successful and right vi. So where will you shop and dine in the 49 . Im one of three owners here in San Francisco and we provide mostly live Music Entertainment and we have food, the type of food that we have a mexican food and its not a big menu, but we did it with love. Like ribeye tacos and quesadillas and fries. For latinos, it brings Families Together and if we can bring that family to your business, youre gold. Tonight we have russelling for e community. We have a tenperson limb elimination match. We have a fullsize ring with barside food and drink. We ended up getting wrestling here with puoillo del mar. Were hope og get families to join us. Weve done a drag queen bingo and were trying to be a diverse kind of club, trying different things. This is a great part of town and theres a bunch of shops, a variety of stores and ethnic restaurants. Theres a popular little shop that all of the kids like to hanhang out at. We have a great breakfast spot call brick fast at tiffanies. Some of the older businesses are refurbished and newer businesses are coming in and its exciting. We even have our own brewery for fdr, ferment, drink repeat. Its in the San Francisco Garden District and four beautiful muellermixer ura alsomurals. Its important to shop local because its kind of like a circle of life, if you will. We hire local people. Local people spend their money at our businesses and those local mean that wor people willr money as well. I hope people shop locally. [ ] as latinos we are unified in some ways and incredibly diverse in others and this exhibit really is an exploration of nuance in how we present those ideas. Our debts are not for sale. A piece about sanctuary and how his whole family served in the army and its a long Family Tradition and these people that look at us as foreigners, we have been here and we are part of america, you know, and we had to reinforce that. I have been cure rating here for about 18 year. We started with a table top, candle, flower es, and a picture and people reacted to that like it was the monna lisa. The most important tradition as it relates to the show is idea of making offering. In Traditional Mexican alters, you see food, candy, drinks, cigarettes, the things that the person that the offerings where being made to can take with them into the next word, the next life. Keeps u. S us connects to the people who have passed and because family is so important to us, that Community Dynamic makes it stick and makes it visible and it humanizes it and makes it present again. When i first started doing it back in 71, i wanted to do something with ritual, ceremony and history and you know i talked to my partner ross about the research and we opened and it hit a cord and people loved it. I think the line between engaging everyone with our culture and appropriating it. I think it goes back to asking people to bring their visions of what it means to honor the dead, and so for us its not asking us to make mexican altars if they are not mexican, its really to share and expand our vision of what it means to honor the dead. People are very respectful. I can show you this year alone of people who call tol ask is it okay if we come, we are hawaii or asian or we are this. What should we wear . What do you recommend that we do . They say oh, you know, we want a four day of the dead and its all hybrid in this country. What has happened are paper cuts, its so hybrid. It has spread to mexico from the bay area. We have influence on a lot of people, and im proud of it. A lot of tim times they dont represent we represent a lot of cultures with a lot of different perspectives and beliefs. I can see the city changes and its scary. When we first started a lot of people freaked out thinking we were a cult and things like that, but we went out of our way to also make it educational through outreach and that is why we started doing the prosession in 1979. As someone who grew up attending the yearly processions and who has seen them change incrementally every year into kind of what they are now, i feel in many ways that the cat is out of the bag and there is no putting the genie back into the bottle in how the wider public accesses the day of the dead. I have been through three different generations of children who were brought to the procession when they were very young that are now bringing their children or grandchildren. In the 80s, the processions were just kind of electric. Families with their homemade visuals walking down the street in San Francisco. Service so much more intimate and personal and so much more rooted in kind of a Family Practice of a very strong cultural practice. It kind of is what it is now and it has gone off in many Different Directions but i will always love the early days in the 80s where it was so intimate and son sofa millial. Our goal is to rescue a part of the culture that was a part that we could invite others to join in there there by where we invite the person to come help us rescue rescue it also. Thats what makes it unique. You have to know how to approach this changing situation, its exhausting and i have seen how it has affected everybody. Whats happening in mission and the relationship with the police, well its relevant and its relevant that people think about it that day of the dead is not just sugar skulls and paper flowers and candles, but its become a nondenominational tradition that people celebrate. Our culture is about color and family and if that is not present in your life, there is just no meaning to it you know . We have artists as black and brown people that are in direct danger of the direct policies of the trump a administration and i think how each of the artists has responsibilitie responded ss interesting. Interesting. Thank you. Good morning. I am mayor london breed. Thank you for your patience. Today we have a total number of 9544 cases of those diagnosed in the past six months of covid in San Francisco, with sadly 83 people have died. This is, as i constantly say, a fluid situation. Remember just recently as i reminded folks at the last press conference, of course, one day we were talking about a phased plan. Then the next day we had to make significant changes. More recently we had a level of confusion between state issued guidelines and local guidelines. I want to be clear that we are definitely working and communicating with the state. I just believe that there was a level of confusion as it relates to what we were doing here locally because of our numbers and because of our Public Health officials. What we try to do is provide you the most uptodate, Accurate Information. It is important that you visit sfgov. Org to find the latest in guidelines. There are certain things that we have repeated over and over again that we are at a point where those are the kinds of things we should automatically do. That includes making sure we wear our masks, social distancing, doing our part because what happens is there are a lot of questions asked of me and so many leaders in the city. The biggest question is when can i open my store, when can my kid go back to school . When can i do this or do that . I understand the desire. I have those same desires, and the only way to get to that place is if we all do our part. Today we want to talk a little bit where the city is, a new phase every opening because of where the city is, but also just reminder that just because this happens doesnt mean that we, unfortunately, cant pull things back if we see a surge. Labor day weekend is coming up. Everybody is thinking, well, this is the time i miss my family. It is six months. Here is an opportunity to get together. That is highly discouraged. Highly discouraged, especially if you want your kids to go back to school sometime soon, you want to visit your elderly parents in the senior home that probably doesnt still allow visitors, if you need to reopen your shop to go back to work. As we approach Labor Day Weekend, it is so important that we remember in those family and friendly gatherings that occur that is where we see through Contact Tracing where the spread happens, where we run into problems. We saw it during the fourth of july weekend there was a spike and during holiday weekends. We understand human nature wants to connect with other people, but we have got to get through this. We have got to get through this. Dr. Colfax will go into more detail what is happening in the city. We are still based on the state system that has been established that the governor announced last week, we are still in the red category, and we want to, of course, move away from that as much as possible, but it doesnt mean that we arent able to move forward to provide guidance on when we expect to reopen. We are off the wait list, which is a good thing. We are not out of the woods. Keep that in mind. As of today, we no, i thinks like haircuts and outdoor hair salons and massages can resume, outdoor pools can reopen. This is not what people wanted. I sure dont want to get my hair done outside, to be honest. I get it. This is what we have to offer. We also said that as of today that gyms can open, our door gyms as well. We are working on the guidelines to make sure they are prepared. Most likely september 9th would be the first opportunity that could be available. Another thing after being removed from the state watch list, malls were opened. As of today malls can reopen because we are no longer on the state watch list, and because they were open previously before we were placed on the state watch list. Now, i also have heard there is a lot of talk about not knowing what the guidelines are for various businesses. I want be to direct any business, any community, anyone who is uncertain what they need to do to sf. Gov reopening. There is not only a laundry list of guidelines for various businesses, there is information that you can review so you can be prepared even if your business is not open at this time. You dont have to wait until these announcements occur. You can get ready before the opportunity is available to your business. The path forward is good news. Again, we have Labor Day Weekend coming up. We have real concerns because the more reopen, the more people are gathering and spreading around, and we still have concerns. We want you to do this responsibly because we want to make sure we see these businesses continue to be open. All plans are subject to change, just like they were before. The last thing i want to do is tell you that we are going to be opening and then need to make changes and start closing businesses again. That is the last thing i want to do. The good news is that starting midseptember, hotels for tourism and visitors, outdoor movie theate theaters and mini , tour buses, boats. Indoor museums, zoos and aquariums with approved safety plans, houses of worship can allow Outdoor Services up to 50 people. That begins midseptember. We will provide the specific date once we have confirmed the date and make sure we are in touch with those various businesses with the appropriate guidelines. The end of september is, i think, really good news. This is something we should all be working towards. What that means is sacrifice of another month of masking and socially distancing and doing everything we can to get to a place where we can have indoor personal services. We can move hair and nail salons and barbershops and massages by the end of this month indoors. That is incredible if we continue at the pace we are now. And we will be able to allow tattoo, piercing and indoors no more than 25 and 50 outdoors. Door oneonone training with the gyms. Safely with mask wearing because that is critical to success of not opening establishments but allowing them to remain open. The path forward for schools. I just want to be cheer that as mayor i am, of course, very, very supportive of our schools, our kids, in particular, and wanting them to learn, grow and thrive. What we have seen this year with our students, especially those students who may not have parents or grandparents or Family Support to help in lessons. When we provided devices and internet service, they are still falling further behind. It is why it was so important that we open these learning hubs. We are almost at capacity. We know how vital it is that kids have access to people who are able to help them with lesson plans. I am extremely concerned about the future of our children as we continue with covid. We have to make prioritizing the ability to get schools reopened, we have to put that at the forefront. We know it is not as easy as we can open the schools. There are teachers and educators concerned, we know we need to put together plans. We know it is not my decision but the decision of the School District to move this forward, and my plan is to do everything i can to work handinhand with the School District so we can move forward to get kids back in school as soon as it is safely possible to do so. Starting in midseptember we will have Community Learning hubs. K through 6 schools that submitted health and safety plans through the waiver process will be able to open. I want to be clear. There is a process and it is their decision. We want to be clear that the opportunity to move forward with k through 6 is possible. After that work toward getting the following open by midoctober, after that the goal is to take it to the next level. By midoctober k through 6 not part of the waiver process will be part of the waiver process and will determine whether or not they will open. Middle school through eighth grade. High School Students are similar to adults. We are cautious and not certain we will move forward with high schools any time soon. All of this again has everything to do with the numbers, with where we are, with what is happening as we open more businesses, as we start to move around San Francisco like we havent before. We will all play a role in this success of what we do moving forward. I cant reiterate that enough because you all have been a part of stopping the spread at one point. When we first started this journey six months ago, this city was like praised, it was praised because of our fast action and because of the people of the city who played a role in doing everything you could to not only stay home but to also support your neighbors and to support one another. Six months later, i am tired of it, too. I am tired of living like this, too. I understand how you feel. I cant imagine what parents are going through or people caring for elderly parents, but you know what . We all have to sacrifice. We are all going to have to sacrifice to get through is this. As i said. If we want to move to the next level, if we want to get kids back in school, want be to keep the business that we grew up going to open, the businesses that rely on us every day, if we want to keep them open, all of us play a role. I want to thank you all for your cooperation. I know it is Labor Day Weekend, i know it is attempting, but, please, keep in mind that this virus is still out there and we need everybody to play a role in making sure that it doesnt continue to spread, and as we reopen we dont want to see the numbers go back up, which will force us to take a different direction. That is the last thing i want to get out here and say is that unfortunately, i told you yesterday that we were opening and i am telling you today that we have to close because of the numbers. That is the last thing i want to do. Keep that in mind as we move about the daytoday activities. This is really great news for Small Businesses, especially the personal services that i know are struggling to survive. Thank you all so much for your cooperation and work. At this time for a detailed Public Health update from the director of the department of Public Health, doctor brent colfax will joint us join us. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, mayor breed for all you do for this city every day. I am dr. Grant colfax, director of department of Public Health. I am happy to join the mayor and cochair of the City Economic Recovery Task force to discuss the San Francisco path forward towards recovery. As the mayor just explained the state has removed many of the restrictions that had previously prevented us from reopening low risk activities and businesses. While we have managed the impacts of the virus better than many other cities and counties. For example, we have one of the highest testing rates of any city in the country, and given the rates of infection, we thankfully have one of the lowest death rates in the country. Both of these, while being one of the densest cities in the country. We still need to move forward with gradual reopening as infection rates remain high as do hospitalizations. They have gone down over the past few weeks. We still have one of the highest hospitalization rates in the region. Of course, we are continuing to monitor the virus in our community and adjust and adapt our response as needed. We continue to have a high positivity case rate, and this continues to proportionately impact or latino community. Today in San Francisco we have 9544 confirmed cases of covid19. Over half of those cases are diagnosed in the latino community. We have made progress, but there is much more work to do. This is a priority for the department of Public Health. The reality is that we know more about the virus today than we did six months or even three months ago. We learn more and more about the virus every week. We are able to analyze more data and learn more about the relative risk and preventative measures we all need to take to reduce and slow the spread of the virus. This information is so key as we continue to follow the science, data and facts. These will inform our efforts as we open incrementally so we can manage the spread of covid19 and sustain the progress that we have made. We continue to monitor the rules and limitations of the states friday announcement, but in San Francisco we are placing an emphasis on our city indicators while decides whether we can reopen more and at what pace. We must look at the local contacts. Remember the state guidance is broad brushed, meant to cover counties as small and rural as yuba oral pine but also as large as la or as dense and urban as San Francisco. We will continue to be guided by the local Health Indicators which tract the covid19 cases, deaths, hospitalizations and Contact Tracing capability and availability of all important personal protective equipment. I want to provide an update on todays indicators from our data dashboard. The rate of new cases of covid19 remains high. We are seeing about 75 new cases every day right now and are still in the red zone. Our Hospital System indicators measuring the rate of increase of hospitalizations as well as capacity of our Healthcare System to respond are in green and indeed that is good news. Our other Health Indicators remain solid. Testing is green. We are testing over 3500 people a day, more than double our goal. Contact tracing is yellow and orange. We are reaching about 81 of cases and 77 of their contacts. While this metric has improved over the past few weeks, our goal is to reach 90 on both. Our ppe supply is at 100 of what we need for 30days, placing us in the green zone. The gradual reopening of Outdoor Services, hotels and children activities means people will start to move about the city more. Increasing risk and potentially Community Spread of the virus. With more activities we will likely experience an increase in not only cases but also hospitalizations. We will continually assess the new positive case counts and hospitalization numbers. Our reopening pace will be informed by our ability to manage the risk of more activity that may result in more cases and again more hospitalizations. Reenforcing the mayors comments, we need everyone to do their part, especially as we enter the holiday weekend. We must remain vigilant. I know six months if we are tired, but we must dig deeper and do our part. There is more virus out there than ever before, and indeed we have a narrow window to keep moving forward. The most important thing you can do to slow the spread of the virus is to continue to take precautions. I thank you for taking these precautions in march, june, july, now and in the future. Even in this time of uncertainty, especially in this time of uncertainty, it is important to remind ourselves and our neighbors that we do know how to slow the spread of the virus. Stay home as much as possible, cover your face to help us all keep on track. Keep six feet apart, wash your hands frequently, and please do not go out if you are sick and avoid social gatherings. We are in this together, and together we will get through this. In this evolving risk environment we will bring back our communities and economies the same we continue to fight covid19 by working together. Thank you. It is now my pleasure to introduce assessorrecorder carmen chu, cochair of the citys Economic Recovery Task force to discuss further the San Francisco path towards recovery. Thank you may or breed and dr. Colfax. We were here on friday to share our plans for expanding outdoor activities. We mentioned at that time we would be back this week to talk more about forward plans as we think about other industries. As dr. Colfax mentioned and the mayor pointed to we consider the restrictions and parameters the state provides. We will continue to reopen based on local Health Indicators. Today is important because it shows all of us what our path forward could look like. I will take a moment to thank the Public Health team for all of work they are doing to keep San Francisco residents and workers safe. I want to thank all of you for your individual actions that collectively have made a difference. Because of your actions, wearing a mask, keeping social distance and making sure you are taking precautions, we are here today to talk about what a path forward could look like. I want to acknowledge how hard it has been. I think for many people over the last month, month and a half it finley set in another i eye fine finally set in. We felt heart break we wouldnt be moving forward and this might be here longer than we hoped. We miss our family and friends and want to get back to work. More than anything as the city first started down this path when we first entered shel shelterinplace. We were here and it didnt really settle into us what this would all mean. What we did know was this this was going to be a situation unlike anything we had ever experienced before. Not only from Public Health perspective we are in the middle of an active Global Pandemic the Economic Impact would be so devastatdevastating and quick. Unemployment went from under 3 to 11 . There are over 60,000 in San Francisco unemployed at the moment. So many kids are having a very hard time adjusting to distance learning. Our most vulnerable continue to be isolated in homes and other settings. Not only that, we have heard from so many businesses they are hanging by a shoestring. In the beginning we knew there was a lot that we did not know about the disease. We had a lot to learn about how it is spread, prevalence and what it means for those infected and what treatments would look like. We know more today. We knew we had to b be flexibled transparent to sherry opening plans to get the economy back on track. We are transparent and will share forecast as soon as we know it, share guidance and best practices with you so you can operate safely, so that you can interact safely. We knew that we had to let the data guide us to make sure we were careful about watching the hospitalizations, our case counts, test positivity to allow that to guide decisions if it is safe to reopen, pause, or take other actions. We had to be thoughtful in our approach. We had to make sure that we understand the impacts of the actions we are taking. We go this is important to sustain the progress that we make. It helps no one when we pingpong and go and open and close businesses. People have to make investments to pull back or not able to use. These dont help our economy, they hurt our economy. We knew we had to focus on information an and guidance. The safety of our workers, customers interactions matters with economic recovery. There is no economic recovery unless people are confident reengaging with our city and city life. We will continue to provide immediate relief to workers, families, businesses. We will continue to be as flexible as we can. Through our words and actions we will break the narrative it is a decision between Public Health or the economy. Over the last few months we know we need both. That is our continued commitment to you. I am cautiously excited. There are many cautions out there, we hope you continue to do your best during this week end. I am excited this plan recognizes many things. One, we need to take steps to move the Economic Activity indoors. We need to do it safely to sustain the opening. It really does begin to recognize what that path forward could look like. This plan also recognizes the importance of uplifting large and Major Industries in the city including hog hospitalities. Thousands are employed in hotels and restaurants and retail stores. We can do that safely. We have shown the world we can do this safely. I will rest on this one thought. It is a refrain you have heard before. The idea that that progress isnt automatic. Again, i think san franciscans are familiar with this call to action. We have heard it before in all of thesive vit rights movements that we have had. While we make progress sometimes we somewhere to fight to make sure we dont lose ground. That is what we are facing. We know this can come back. What we have shown is that we know how to beat it back and can open up businesses together. I want to thank you, San Francisco, for all of the work you are doing to continue to help move our city forward and make sure we are able to keep opening in a sustained and safe way. To make sure we balance taking care of workers and customers at the same time. Thank you, San Francisco. We will begin the q a portion with dr. Colfax. The first set of questions from the San Francisco chronicle. What have you learned about reopening and about the virus since may and june that you are applying to reopening plans now . I think we have seen in our local response as well as across the country that we can mitigate and slow the spread of the virus, keeping the Hospital Capacity adequate and having enough capacity in our system to care for people who become infected. The other side that we have also seen is we know if we let down our guard, the virus can spread very rapidly. I think it is really getting this balance between the need to manage the control of the spread of the virus and realizing that there are key factors that we need to consider with regard to education, mental health, Behavioral Health and other Public Health considerations that we need to take into account in our reopens. We know that masking is so key. We know that more than ever. Something we learned a number of analysis have shown if as a society we can get up to 80 masking that will have a dramatic effect on the virus. In the guidelines coming out there will be an emphasis on the need for facial coverings. Out door activities are safer than indoor activities. Outdoor activities you can see in the phasing that we have. Outdoor activities that are expanded as of today. We also understand the need after six months for children to come back in to inperson learning as much as possible. We think that can be done in a safer way. From what we have learned in the data globally, we will be making recommendations around how to move forward with educational activities. There is no such thing as no risk. Pacing is important. That is why we spread out this process every opening and we need to be cautious as we go forward. Thank you, dr. Colfax. This is from ev baty. Are there Indoor Dining problems that keep it off the list of those you are hoping to open in september and october . If you look at the pieces we released today they fall into the buckets of the lower risk activities. The component of Indoor Dining there are a number of things that are concerning. Outdoor dining and takeout is open. There are opportunities there. Indoor dining would be in a later date at this point because of the risk that is entailed in people sitting down for long periods of time in crowded croud quarters taking off masks. I miss going to restaurants. If we all do our part we will be thrilled to see it coming online sometime in the future. Many next question with healthner from the San Francisco chronicling. Any plan for reopening kids playgrounds and basketball courts and Outdoor Recreation item . We are evaluating. One of the key things with regard to playgrounds. I would love to see them reopen and many parents and kids would as well. Playgrounds are mostly uncontrolled environment with a lot of children mixing different ages, interacting with different families. That does increase risk of transmission. At this time we do not have a date to reopen play grounds. Our Health Officer and Pediatric Team is looking at the data. That is something we would like to do as soon as it is safer to do so. Next set of questions are for mayor breed. First set of questions are from heather with the San Francisco chronicle. Six weeks after the city settled a lawsuit regarding the tenderloin how are things going in the neighborhood amid the covid19 pandemic . We didnt just put together a comprehensive plan to address homelessness and the large number of tent encampments we have spread to other neighborhoods where we have seen a level of homelessness that typically these particular neighborhoods dont experience as well. In the tenderloin in particular we saw over 400 tents with a few hundred people. We have been able to reduce that to as of today 41 tents. We have been able to get most of those people the help and support they need. That includes transitioning some of those folks to the safe sleeping sites, some into hotels, some into permanent be supportive housing. It is easier said an than done. It required a village of people working several different agencies. The home less Street Operations center under the Emergency Management because of this covid crisis and need to try to get people indoors, prevent the spread within the Homeless Population and provide people with a safe place to sleep, this operation has been incredible. I want to thank all city workers who played a role in going in to address the real challenge in several areas including one by ocean beach, one on oak street, in addition to the tenderloin. These camps resolution teams include workers from the department of public works, members of the San Francisco police department. Workers from the department of Public Health and the mag management team. I want to thank them. They are out there every day. Our Homeless Outreach team. When they began the resolution of addressing the encampment site. They dont show up just that day. They have to develop a relationship with the people there to understand the challenges they face so they are able to provide the support and assistance that they need. It is an ongoing process and the most effective thing we are able to do to resolve encampmentses and it is something we will continue to do. People are tired and frustrated and there is a lot of poverty and lack of housing and resources for so many folks. It is something we are working hard to address. Our program that we have established applan around homelessness has been the most effective that it has ever been since we put together this plan to address encampments. It is going well. It is not good enough. Going back to the conditions of the tenderloin in particular, it is really shorible. I want to be honest. We may have removed encampments but what we see in soma and the tenderloin around the behavior, urinating and def if indicating and public acts that are unmentional that have impacted the quality of life for the people in the community, we see things get worse. Part of what we need to do especially around the significant amount of drug dealing that occurs in the tenderloin, it is to to point where we have to get dress i. We cant have it both ways. You cant be upset that we are making arrests and then be upset we are allo allowing it is cont. These acts should not be tolerated. We will continue to push and do our job to make sure we cleanup this community so that people walking down the street with a baby stroller dont have to get off and go to the street to walk around a bunch of people selling drugs and shooting up. Is that okay for families to live like that . It is not. We are in a much better place than in a long time. Thank you madam mayor. No further questions. This concludes todays press conference. Thank you, madam mayor, doctor colfax, and ms. Chu for your time. Usf donates 100120 pounds of food a night. For the four semesters we have been running here, usf has donated about 18,000 pounds of food to the Food Recovery Network. Im maggie. Im nick. Were coechairs of the national led organization. What food recovery does is recover and redistribute food that would go wasted and redistributing to people in the community. The moment that i became really engaged in the cause of fighting food waste was when i had just taken the food from the usf cafeteria and i saw four pans full size full of food perfectly fine to be eaten and made the day before and that would have gone into the trash that night if we didnt recover it the next day. I want to fight food waste because it hurts the economy, its one of the largest emitters of Greenhouse Gases in the world. If it was a nation, it would be the Third Largest nation behind china and the United States. America wastes about 40 of the food we create every year, 160 billion worth and thats made up in the higher cost of food for consumers. No matter where you view the line, you should be engaged with the issue of food waste. Access edible food that we have throughout our Lunch Program in our center, i go ahead and collect it and ill cool it down and every night i prep it up and the next day ill heat it and ready for delivery. Its really natural for me, i love it, im passionate about it and its just been great. I believe its such a blessing to have the opportunity to actually feed people every day. No food should go wasted. Theres someone who wants to eat, we have food, its definitely hand in hand and it shouldnt be looked at as work or a task, were feeding people and it really means so much to me. I come to work and theyre like nora do you want this, do you want that . And its so great and everyone is truly involved. Every day, every night after every period of food, breakfast, lunch, dinner, i mean, people just throw it away. They dont even think twice about it and i think as a whole, as a community, as any community, if people just put a little effort, we could really help each other out. Thats how it should be. Thats what food is about basically. An organization that meets is the San Francisco knight ministry we work with tuesday and thursdays. By the power of your name i have faith to move mountains because i believe in jesus. I believe its helpful to offer food to people because as you know, theres so much homelessness in San Francisco and california and the United States. I really believe that food is important as well as our faith. The San Francisco knight ministry has been around for 54 years. The core of the ministry, a group of ordain ministers, we go out in the middle of the night every single night of the year, so for 54 years we have never missed a night. I know its difficult to believe maybe in the United States but a lot of our people will say this is the first meal theyve had in two days. I really believe it is a time between life or death because i mean, we could be here and have church, but, you know, i dont know how much we could feed or how many we could feed and this way over 100 people get fed every single thursday out here. Its not solely the food, i tell you, believe me. Theyre extremely grateful. Its super awesome how welcoming they are. After one or two times theyre like i recognize you. How are you doing, how is school . I have never been in the city, its overwhelming. You get to know people and through the music and the food, you get to know people. We never know what impact were going to have on folks. If you just practice love and kindness, its a labor of love and thats what the Food Recovery Network is and this is a huge i believe they salvage our mission. To me the most important part is its about food waste and feeding people. The Food Recovery Network National Slogan is finding ways to feed people. Its property to bring the scientific and Human Element into the situation. Good afternoon. And welcome to the land use and Transportation Committee of the San Francisco board of supervisors for today, august 31st, 2020. I am the chair of the Committee Aaron peskin, joined by Committee Member supervisor dean preston and i think to be joined momentarily by vice chair supervisor ahsha safai. Our clerk is miss erica major. Ms. Major, do you have any announcements . Clerk yes. Due to the covid19 health emergency, and to protect Board Members and employees in the public. The Committee Room are closed. However, members will be participating in the meeting remotely. All local, state and federal orders, declarations and directives. Committee members will attend the meeting through video conference, participating as if physically present. Public comment will be available on each item on this agenda both channel 26, 78 or 99 depending on your provider. And sfgovtv. Org are streaming the number across the screen. Each speaker will be allowed two minutes to speak. Comments are opportunities to speak. During the Public Comment period, are available by phone by calling 415 6650001. Again the number is 415 6650001. The meeting i. D. Is 146 466 4627. Again thats 146 466 4627. Press pound and pound again. When connected youll hearing the meeting discussion and be muted and in listening mode only. When your item of interest comes up, please press star 3 to be added to the speaker line. Best practices are to call from a quiet location, speak clearly and slowly and turn down your television or radio. Alternatively you may submit Public Comment in either of the ways, to myself at erica. Ma erica. Major sfgov. Org. You submit Public Comment via email, it will be forwarded to the supervisors and it will be included as part of the official file. Finally items acted upon today will appear on the agenda on september 15th, unless otherwise stated. Supervisor peskin thank you, madam clerk. Can you please read the first item. Clerk yes. Item number 1, is the reenactment of emergency for protections of occupants of Residential Hotels or s. R. O. Residence during the covid19 pandemic. Supervisor peskin thank you, madam clerk. Colleagues, i want to thank my cosponsors for the original ordinance. Supervisors mainy , ronen, safai, fewer, preston, walton and yee. That emergency ordinance, that as the clerk said, established protections for occupants of s. R. O. Hotels in San Francisco that include some 18,000 to 19,000 individuals in congregate settings, passed by the board of supervisors as an emergency matter and lasts for 80 days. That required the department of Public Health to offer a number of provisions, including testing and i. N. Q. Provisions, isolation and quarantine for individuals that had tested positive, as well as implicit notice for residents of those s. R. O. S. These are individuals who live in congregate settings, where they share bathrooms and they share kitchens, a highly transmissive environment. And i want to thank the department of Public Health for not only taking that ordinance seriously, but already having done that job before we massed the emergency ordinance. And during the interim for starting to establish a dialogue with the residents of those communities that span the mission, into the tenderloin into chinatown into north beach, were the best of the rest of once were 40,000 or more s. R. O. Hotels once existed. So i want to thank and acknowledge d. P. H. For that. This has been really an admonition to d. P. H. And the community to step up the game. I want to thank and acknowledge the department of Public Health that on friday at approximately 518 in the afternoon, actually put up a web tool that shows the number of cases in s. R. O. S and the numbers of deaths, which thankfully tragically four deaths over 500 cases. So those buildings have been handed superbly, some less so. And i really want to thank d. P. H. , but more importantly the community for holding our feet to the fire as decision manned legislators and d. P. H. s feet to the fire, as the frontline implementers under the pandemic. And with that i believe that we have dr. Stephanie cohen. Colleagues, if you have no comments, i would like to hand this over to the department of Public Health and dr. Cohen. Thank you, supervisor safai, for joining to really present whats happened and fundamental, as i said in the newspaper the other way, i want to create the space for the department of Public Health to build trust amongst the s. R. O. Population in those communities that are very, very different communities. Some of them latinx communities, some of them chinese communities and predominantly cantonese amongo linguaamong mono lingl individuals. And those who reside in the arc that has s. R. O. S. With that ill turn it over to dr. Cohen. Thank you very much. Im going to share my screen and give a short update to what we discussed a couple of weeks ago. Are you able to see the presentation . Supervisor peskin yes, we are. Okay. Supervisor peskin, preston and safai, thank you for the opportunity to come back and speak to you again and update the committee on our ongoing work to prevent covid19 in s. R. O. S and to protect the residents who reside in these buildings. We met a couple of weeks. My name is stephanie cohen. Im an Infectious Disease physician and serving as the lead for the sscta covid19 s. R. O. Seeing none team since Response Team since april. As we discussed at the Committee Meeting on august 17th, we are committed to this population and we have a robust and proactive approach to prevention in these congregate settings. Our robust approach has produced results preponderates of covid19 testing among s. R. O. Residents are actually higher than the rate of testing in san franciscans overall. The proportion of s. R. O. Residents who test positive for covid19 is similar to that of nons. R. O. Residents who live in the same neighborhood. So a lot of what were seeing in s. R. O. S reflects the Community Prevalence in the communities where the s. R. O. S are. And lastly the case fatality rate among s. R. O. Residents is comparable to the overall case fatality rate at approximately. 8 . And this is one of the lowest covid case fatality rates nationwide. As supervisor peskin mentioned, one of the provisions in the ordinance was to launch a publicly available data tracker. And after much hard and diligent work on the part of our advanced planning, data s. F. And surveillance groups, that dashboard went live on august 28th. Its available its a u. R. L. That you see on the slide. This is just a snapshot from the data tracker to show you what it looks like, as required by the ordinance. It shows the number of residents who tested positive, the number of buildings that have had a case, numbers of deaths and number of residents who have gone to an isolation and Quarantine Hotel. It also shows these figures here which show over time the total number of cases and the total number of deaths, as well as the daily new cases and the sffd rolling average, which gives us a sense of where we are on some of our important surge metrics. We also, since our last meeting, are working on community engagement. Since the last meeting, we met with Chinatown Community leaders. We also have met with Chinese Hospital leadership and are excited to really move forward in a collaborative response with Chinese Hospitals to covid19 cases in s. R. O. S in chinatown. And were working on setting up recurring meetings with the s. R. O. Collaboratives. And we want to hear their concerns. We also want to provide them information and updates and we want to strategize together how we can optimize covid19 prevention for s. R. O. S residents and other disproportionately impacted by covid19. We have an amazing team in our group of social workers, nurse practitioners, nurses, Health Workers who have been in the field in s. R. O. S every day since really the pandemic started, talking to residents. And we want to share the stories that we have heard, bus we know there are a lot of up stream factors and social determinants of health that are affecting these communities and we can only figure out how to address them if we work together. We do want to continue to request that the committee reevaluate the provision in the legislation, that requires sfdph to test all residents in an s. R. O. Within 48 hours of a single case. I would like to be clear that we are not asking to waterdown the legislation or relax rules for s. R. O. S. Our team, who exists to advocate and protect these residents, will continue to deploy onsite testing to a building, when there is concern for interbuilding transmission. And we do a lot of onsite testing in s. R. O. S. At the same time i want to try to explain again why this particular provision is just not an effective strategy. I know that testing is a hotbutton topic. Its a politicized topic, unfortunately, at the national level. And i really want to reiterate if we thought this particular testing strategy, testing all residents in a building after a single case, if we thought that would be effective at preventing outbreaks, we would be all for it. We are aligned in prioritizing and working to protect s. R. O. Residents. The challenge, though, is that s. R. O. S are not closed settings, like a Skilled Nursing facility. In a closed environment, like a smith, you can implement we can implement routine surveillance testing of staff and identify staff cases before residents become infected. And, of course, this is especially critical in the smith context, because the case fatality rate is so high among those living in those conditions. But s. R. O. S, as you know are not like smith. Theyre open. Residents come and go every day. They go to work, they go to the store, they go to visit their friends and family. And so a single case in a building, in a residence doesnt mean that theres an outbreak in the building. We do test and quarantine close contacts of all cases, including cases among s. R. O. Residents. Then if their contacts, including their household members, then their nextdoor neighbor, whoever they hang out with in the building, if they test positive, we continue to test and expanding circles. In the worstcase scenario, and this has happened, an s. R. O. Resident has covid, hasnt been tested and is symptomatic and has not been ice slating in the building. They think they have aler gees o allergies. By the time they get tested they may have exposed others in the building. At that point, though, testing is not prevention. Testing doesnt prevent anyone from getting infected. Theyve already been exposed. But what it does do it allows to us find cases. And we want to find those cases, because then we have the opportunity to intervene on those who are already infected. And so thats why we do deploy testing when we see multiple cases in a short period of time in a building. And so, you know, really i think to summarize here, what im trying to explain is that testing is important. It enables us to identify individuals who have covid when theyre still in thin infectious period, then we can support them in isolating. We identify their close contacts and support those close contacts with testing and quarantine. But mass testing at a single point in time, triggered by a single case, does not in and of itself prevent covid19. So in conclusion, building mas g is not a strategy in line with our citywide testing strategy or with supervisor peskin miss major, i think you may doctor orb someone may have hit a button that they shouldnt have hit . Clerk thank you, mr. Chair. Im checking with operations. It might be the bridge line. We will supervisor peskin the bridge line has become the bain of our existence. Go ahead. Thank you, dr. Cohen. My apologies. No problem. So really in summary, i think what im trying to make clear this particular strategy is not in line with cdph or c. D. C. Guidance. Its not the best use of our testing resources. And our investigative tools can really help us predict when and where to test. We really have to continue to push primary prevention approaches, the best way to protect everyone from covid. And thats, as you know, things like masking, social distancing and hand washing. Those are the critical things for mitigating spread in all settings. Thank you for giving me another opportunity to speak to you and for all of your work to protect these communities. Supervisor peskin thank you, dr. Cohen. And when that when you release your screen, well all be able to look at each other over our respective computers. And, dr. Cohen, i really want to thank you for your candor. And, indeed, this is an evolving situation. And i think collectively we are trying to, as nondoctors, address what we believe are the most vulnerable populations in the most transmissive settings. And i know that you and your colleagues are committed to that as well. And as i said earlier, we know that youre resourceconstrained, as we all are economically, Human Resource wise and relative to actual physical things that are reagents and swabs that are moving to hot spots in the United States of america, be it texas or florida. And, yes, this is an ordinance. And, yes, it is a law. But fundamentally and i have tried to communicate this to you and to the advocacy community. This is an admonition. And it is a shorttermed a mow s going to last for another two months. And i for one, unless you make not you personally, but the department is malfeasant and not going to go after you, so to speak, on. I think this is really trying to hold you to the highest standards for our most vulnerable populations. And this, too, shall evolve. Ultimately i hope this becomes a permanent ordinance, which doesnt mean that we cant tweak it Going Forward. But i think the most important thing, and ive been very clear with you and the community and my former colleague, who has become a liaison between the board and your department, former supervisor katie tang, that i really want to create the space to build trust between the department of Public Health and the community. And the community has been abundantly clear in the last several days and while i think i dont want to put words in their mouth, that theyre thankful for the transparency that now comes with the additional tool on the tracker site. That trust is earned through hard work and relationships. And you are working now to build them. These were relationships that didnt exist before the pandemic, that have to be built very, very quickly. And i hope over the weeks and a couple months ahead, before this becomes a permanent, albeit flexible piece of legislation, that those relationships and that trust will start to be built. So i just wanted to share those thoughts some that you know where im coming from. As you know and as said in the paper 48 hours ago, i actually originally didnt want to have this debate. But i fundamentally have to honor the community that is are in these s. R. O. S. And i think we all collectively, the people, the decisionmakers and the department of Public Health really also have to delve down into and make very transparent what is confidential and why and what is not confidential and to whom and why or why not. And i think h hippa which is a huge privacy law, needs to be weighed and balanced for Public Health. I think we have to delve down into that, maybe in closed session, subject to attorneyclient privilege advice. But ultimately in open session, where we can all ask those questions and understand where we balance privacy. As i have said to the deputy city attorney, that is on this in this meeting and to counsel for d. P. H. , it strikes me as odd that we can be transparent with a Building Owner or a building manager, that theres a covid case in a particular building with a particular address, but we cannot tell the rest of the tenants that one of their neighbors, that they share a kitchen or a bathroom with,s that covid. And i dont want to freak people out. I just want to make sure that they have the opportunities to be tested, to be isolated, to be quarantined, to be given a meal in a comfortable, confident way. Thats whats driving this. This is not a, you know, board, you know, being you know demeaning to d. P. H. Its not at all. Its an evolving conversation. I know you understand that. So i appreciate that. Are there and dr. Cohen, if you have anything you want to add or subtract from that, youre welcome to do so. No. Thank you very much for your comments. And just for the opportunity to continue to have a dialogue. The science is evolving and the diagnostics are evolving. I know well continue to work to figure out the best way to do this. And really appreciate that weve gotten the chance over these months to try to think about that together. Thank you. Supervisor peskin i really appreciate that youre taking this legislation seriously and that you are spending moments of your precious time, as youre triaging and stratifying, to actually engage with the board seriously. It would be easy enough for you to say, thats the thing, were going to blow it off, because were resourceconstrained. So thank you for that. With that to my colleagues, hold on, let me press a button. Either one of you have any questions or comments . I did, chair peskin. Thank you. And just concur with your the remarks you just made. I did have just a question from the d. P. H. Perspective what does trigger, under the current understanding of the mass testing, in a particular building. I understand what youre saying, dr. Cohen, about the difference between the setting and the s. R. O. Congregate living situation. Im curious. I understand from the perspective of the department at this point in time, some disagreement around whether one case should trigger that or not. And this legislation addresses that. But what is two cases in the site, what are the set of circumstances from your perspective . And i think to chair peskins point, to me its less relevant for what the Community Wants is clear. But as chair peskin notes, i think well 30, 60, however many days be out once again looking at this issue. And it will be helpful from my perspective just to know from d. P. H. s perspective what does, from your perspective, trigger mass testing in an s. R. O. Context. Well, the California Department of Public Health definition of an outbreak in a Congregate Community setting is three cases in three separate households within 14 days. So we would always define that as an outbreak and report that as an outbreak in terms of not the specific address, not the privacy thing nourishments terms of how many outbreaks we have in s. R. O. S and we would test. The threshold is lower than that. Our threshold is two cases in two separate households within 14 days. And some risk criteria for interbuilding transmission. When we have two cases in two separate households, we either go on site. We may have already gone on site previously, which may give us a sense of what the building is like and whether theres risk. We havent gone on site, we would go on site and there are things that contribute to that risk stratification. Things like crowded households. Is this a building with a lot of family or a lot of we see a lot of buildings ra theres multiple young men sharing one room, who are all frontline workers. We know in shows settings covid starts very quickly. Did we learn that the case was actually infectious on site for more than seven days total, between the two cases. Maybe one person was three days, one person was four days. Thats concerning. Thats a lot of days of potential spread. We know that theres certain communities that are disproportionately impacted in San Francisco. Are those folks highly represented in the building. And we also look at the risk of morbidity. Are there a lot of elders in the building, people over the age of 60, a lot of comorbidities. So those are some of the criteria we do have the matrix that we use. But basically has to be two cases in two separate households in 14 days and at least two of those several criteria that i mentioned. Supervisor preston, i really appreciate that comment. I think what dr. Cohen just told us is that we, in this case d. P. H. , can actually have Higher Standards than the state does, which say lute i salute and appreciate. Everything that dr. Cohen just said, relative to assessing risk is absolutely right. Do you have higher comorbidity factors. Do you have, you know, folks who are living 10 to a room instead of two to a room. Are they more likely to have to go to work than be retired or on a fixed income. All of those things could lead to a spread. But i think where the rubber hits the road is, and i mean no professional offense to d. P. H. Is how well do they know the residents in that building. How do they know what i have come to learn or have knowledge access to on and off in my 20 years, as to who lives in that building or what Community Members know then. I dont think that d. P. H. Can figure that out in 24 hours, unless they start working with the community to quickly under then do triage. Because you cant triage unless you know what the whether the victim is about to be in deep trouble or not. But this is very helpful conversation to me at least. Supervisor preston, do you have any more comments . Supervisor preston i dont. Thank you, dr. Cohen. I just want to echo really the point you made, chair peskin, really thank you for your leadership on this. Proud to be cosponsoring this this time, as well as last time. And i think that, you know, where we have really proactive and engaged communities representing and Community Groups representing some of the most Vulnerable People in the city, i see this kind of legislation as really honoring their expertise around the community their serving. But also as you say, but facilitating and trying to deepen the conversation between d. P. H. And those Community Groups, so that as we sort of in some ways the beauty of having these emergency ordinances as ways to sort of temporarily deal with things, but not cement them permanently and look forward to it sounds like ongoing discussions happening to arrive at whatever makes sense on a more permanent basis. It certainly resonates with me that where theres doubt, being more careful, preventative and, you know, we have for whatever reasons avoided certainly outbreaks that would have otherwise occurred through taking proactive steps. So certainly i appreciate that this, you know, we continue i hope to err on the side of over testing and overly taking precautions, rather than the opposite. But understanding that theres further conversation to figure out what that, you know, what should be in place on the longerterm basis. Supervisor peskin thank you, supervisor preston. Supervisor safai, anything to add . Supervisor safai something who is a city planner by training, you know, not many cities have this type of housing that remains. It is one of the things that makes San Francisco unique, to have a Single Room Occupancy Hotel and being used obviously in a different way than they were originally built. You know, we have multiple families, multiple generations, many members of the same family sharing space. And some for me it makes sense, under these circumstances, that we would want to err on the side of extreme caution. Because as we know and as we learn from the assisted living facilities, that was where this virus really began in the United States, in multiple cities. In new york, and in washington and all over. I dont want the same to happen. And i know supervisor peskin has been out in front of this. We had conversations in the very beginning of this pandemic about individuals and their patterns of travel and their patterns of obtaining medicine and going actually in many ways to the heart of where this pandemic began in the world, into wuhan, china. And so that is no longer a risk. But the risk is this massive amount of people in these buildings living in very close settings. And so im proud to be a cosponsor of this legislation. I think if it pushes sfdph to work aggressively with advocate communities, that is on the ground working with individuals in these settings, i think its a positive thing. And in the end if we dont have an outbreak, good. And we put the resources in the right place. So i appreciate your leadership on this and being a part of this conversation, supervisor peskin, along with the advocates from the community. And thank you, ms. Cohen, as well. Supervisor peskin thank you, colleagues and cosponsors. Before we open this up to Public Comment, while this is a reenactment of the emergency ordinance, i do have a couple of nonsubstantive tweaks perform before i open it up to Public Comment, i want colleagues to go through that. Youre both in receipt of those, as is the clerk of this committee ms. Major. On page 2, section 2, at line 22 insert and amend section 3 of such emergency ordinance to read as follows, even though both ordinance no. 8420 and this reenactment emergency ordinance are uncodified, for purposes of clarity, the respective fontses for additions and deletions of the municipal code as stated in the note that appears at the beginning of this ordinance are used to show the amendments to section 3 of ordinance number 8420. Thats the original source ordinance. In the tweaks to the original ordinance, in section 3, would be in subsection g to insert a new subsection 5. And that so let me just take you to the top of that subsection g, which is already in the existing law that we are reenacting, upon confirming that an s. R. O. Resident has tested positive for covid19, d. P. H. Shall to the extent consistent with state and federal laws governing the confidentiality of medical information and heres the new subsection 5. As soon as feasible, but not more than 12 hours after receiving such confirmation, promptly post in common areas of the residential hotel, where fire Safety Information is required to be posted, a notice to advise s. R. O. Residents of their rights under this emergency ordinance to access i q, isolation Quarantine Hotel rooms and face coverings. Such notice shall include, but not be limited to, the number of the language accessible hotline for s. R. O. Residents, that residents may call to access those resources. This is making the implicit notice requirements explicit. That was my insertion. And in sub l, under sub 2, the total number of confirmed positive covid19 cases, this is under what data d. P. H. Shall produce, the total number of confirmed positive covid19 cases in San Francisco insert Residential Hotels, delete at the rate of cases by population size in San Francisco. So that the sentence now reads, the total number of confirmed positive covid19 cases in San Francisco Residential Hotels, organized by zip code. So those are the amendments that i would like to make, subject to Public Comment. And with that, are there any members of the public who would like to comment on this item number 1 . Madam clerk. Clerk thank you. Thank you, mr. Chair. Operations is checking to see if there are any callers in queue. Noting that we have nine listeners. Arthur, please let us know how many we have in queue. There are currently five callers in the queue. Supervisor peskin first speaker, please. Caller thank you so much to d. P. H. And the board for giving time and attention to this ordinance. My name is tria. Im a tenant organizer with the mission s. R. O. Collaborative of the dolores street. We want to address the Landuse Committee to shed light on the practices of d. P. H. , in accordance with the emergency ordinance that was adopted on may 19th. Im here to ask that the land use and Transportation Committee renew the s. R. O. Emergency ordinance and not dilute any of the protections. In San Francisco, s. R. O. S provide homes for over 18,000 extremely lowincome seniors and families, people of color, people with disabilities and formerly homeless people. Many of the people we serve are also immigrants and some identify as undocumented. We believe that the impact of covid19 should not only be measured in terms of the number of deaths, but the impacts that the virus has on income and mental health. From the time the emergency ordinance was enacted, d. P. H. Has only implemented a portion of the elements and we call on them to recognize that the tenants have a right to receive a notice if theres a confirmed covid19 case in their building, the right to full and Accurate Information about the rights to recovery program, that for tenants that test positive and the general location of i. N. Q. Housing available to them. We have worked directly with tenants, for example, from tenants in the grand southern that in the last 50 days the legislation has been active, that health and sanitary measures have not been implemented, despite tenants contacting d. P. H. And shes been struggling with test problems and rats and cockroaches and ticks on top of the pandemic for the past 50 days, to the point to which she had to replace her own sink becausest inaction and unresponsiveness. And in another case, an s. R. O. Tenant at the albert struggled with the affordability of the living situation, as hes unable to pay rent monthtomonth. 23 latinx have tested positive for covid19, including the grand southern clerk thank you. Next speaker, please. Caller hello. Clerk hi. Youre on the line. Yes. You may speak. You have two minutes. Caller okay. My name is eric markoo. Im a member of senior disability action in soma neighborhood residence council. Im just saying that testing s. R. O. S should be made for the entire building in a place thats been infected. I heard other speakers in other days say that some of these rooms have, you know, selfcontaining bathrooms and kitchens. But the vast majority of them dont. And when if someone gets infected in these places, it could spread like wildfire, especially in crowded communities like the mission and tenderloin and chinatown. It just seems i mean, unimaginable to me that when we consider scaling this back at this time, when we have such an epidemic. I mean, we need people that are infected or exposed to be put into hotel rooms, selfcontained hotel rooms, not in a congregate area. Thank you kindly. Clerk again youll be notified if you have been unmuted and you can begin your comments. Hi, my name is dana foot. Im with the mission s. R. O. Collaborative program for Lotus Community services. I wanted to first say that theres currently a demand for testing in San Francisco. And through our outreach and education work, the need for the continuation of the s. R. O. Emergency ordinance. Testing allowing us to connect with services and to the programs that we have also asked. Our main concerns is that currently were assessing the impact of this pandemic in the number of cumulative deaths. And thats not an accurate number of what were hearing, tests in high levels of stress, depression, and general anxiety. We know that currently theres a timeline and challenges to the turnaround to Access Programs such as [indiscernible] we also know the importance of having transparent information about what are the services connections, Community Organizations on the ground can link people to. We know that theres a flu season approaching us and we cannot actually afford to water down any of the provisions of the legislation. We are committed, however, to continue to figure out how we support proactively testing communities and accurately investigate those possible thinks to spread. And understand the use of i. N. Q. Thank you again for the time youve given this morning. Supervisor peskin thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. This is anna stage. A member of San Francisco tenants union, an antidisplacement coalition. I really appreciate this conversation the supervisors had today, with d. P. H. And dr. Cohen. I am encouraged with the doctor and the d. P. H. Staff are going to kind of make some overtures and steps to work with the s. R. O. Collaborative communities, that are in there doing the work with the tenants. Its the only way this program will work. And as previous speakers have said and supervisor peskin has said, not knowing that your fellow residents have someone has a case of covid is really scary. So if there could be some information that tenants could have of where to go to get tested, and then what to do once they test positive, so that theyre not afraid to go to the d. P. H. Staff or to do what they have to do or to tell their worker that,. Commissioner haney , i hey, i got tested and i have covid. If dr. Cohen cant do it or they dont have the resources to do it, these people need to be tested. Thank you. Supervisor peskin thank you. Next speaker, please. Caller supervisors, director of policy at the Community Development center. I want to thank you for working on behalf of s. R. O. Residents, not only in chinatown and district 3, but citywide. This is really important legislation. And while we are reassured by dr. Cohens words to reflect that they dont support a wartingdown of the legislation, we do continue to insist on testing being a critical need. We have seen that testing, when its done at the building, is effective. We have also seen in many neighborhoods when testing is offered offsite, it is less effective and people are less interested in being tested. We really want to frame this as a tenants righ righttoknow perspective. This ordinance is about what the tenant needs to know in terms of the citys covid response. And what the city and what the tenants, you know, has a right to know in terms of what is going on in their buildings. We have testimony a little bit later, thats going to show you that, of course, when d. P. H. Comes around and does outreef and says that, you know, theres covidwide testing, kind of sounds stupid. They know that that means that theres an outbreak or there are cases. So we hope that we can get behind, get beyond the concerns and really look at what is best to protect those communities and our s. R. O. Residents. I look forward to working with d. P. H. In the coming weeks and months, you know, relationship that builds decades back when the s. R. O. Collaborative was first funded by the department of Public Health. So were looking forward to working together and continue to strength our defense of our s. R. O. Residents. Thank you very much. Supervisor peskin thank you, mattias. Any other members of the public who would like to testify on item number 1 . Yes. Two additional callers. Ill unmute the next caller. Supervisor peskin next speaker, please. Caller hello. Can you hear me . Supervisor peskin yes, i can. Please proceed. Oh. This is trudy. Im calling from center city collaborative, part of the housing clinic. Thank you, supervisor peskin, to extend this legislation for another 90 days or more. One thing i do agree with all the speakers who spoke in front of me before me about the emphasis of testing and the outreach. One thing that i definitely felt that is terribly lacking and im hoping and willing to work with d. P. H. On it is like the reaching out to the communitybased organizations thats already working with tenants in various buildings. Because we bring the relationship, we bring the approach. So im hopingle this legislation will push d. P. H. To partner with many of us, so that we can make this legislation effective. Thank you very much. Supervisor peskin thank you. Next speaker. Yes, please go ahead. Hi. Madam clerk, im a staff person with chinatown c. D. C. I have a recorded testimony by a witness speaking in cantonese and i will be playing ard roing and then translating. This is a tenant who lives in the chinatown s. R. O. With the present outbreak. [speaking cantonese] [caller speaking cantonese] hello, im a chinatown s. R. O. Tenant. We are among the affected families in the pandemic. Recently my husband got the virus. At that time he developed a fever in the evening, after taking the pills and sweating all over his body. The fever got lowered. It was later that we found out that someone had been infected in our building. People in the building were not notified of this virus infection. Everyone was kept in the dark and so the virus spread to others. This was frightening because our household included grandparents and children. Thank you. Madam clerk, ill be submitting the written translated version of the entire statement for the record. Thank you. Supervisor peskin thank you. Any other members of the public who would like to testify on this item . Caller i would like to thank the last speaker for providing that testimony. And i find it unfortunate that we seem to have so few actual s. R. O. Residents speaking today. It seems very paternalistic to have these decisions made by people who, you know, dont actually live in s. R. O. S and, you know, some input from the people who are on various boards and stuff. So im wondering like, you know, was were s. R. O. Residents notified that this meeting was being held . And there arent any interpreters at the meeting, as far as i can tell. So the residents of s. R. O. S are very linguistically diverse. There should have been more outreach to s. R. O. Residents to get their input on these decisions, instead of the topdown manner. Supervisor peskin are there any other members of the public who would like to testify under Public Comment . Yes, hello. This is theresa with senior disability action. I so appreciate all of your work on this, supervisor peskin. I also hope it will not be diluted. I am also thinking of a resident in an s. R. O. That i visited and the issuing about that he had only recently come home from the hospital, is having an occupational therapist go in to visit him. And so when d. P. H. Talks about, you know, people, indeed, do come and go out of s. R. O. S, that may be the difference. However, it is the difference that makes it even more important for people to be tested. People are going out and working and getting their groceries, et cetera. So they may not know that they have been exposed and they need to know that. They need to protect themselves. And protect the people outside that they may encounter. So i just want to support this. Again he is a resident who could not speak today. And so i am speaking for him. Thank you very much. Supervisor peskin thank you. Are there any other members of the public who want to ite itemr 1 . Hi, yes. My name is freddie. Im with senior disability action as a housing organizer. And since covid broke out, i have been doing a lot of work with tenants that live in s. R. O. S and participating and facilitating several tenant groups and meetings within the community, within s. R. O. Working groups and collaboratives. And there is a fear of the emergency protections being through the somehow and i appreciate and im glad of the fact that that doesnt appear to be happening. And supportive of these protections that are in place will be reenacted fully. There is a fear amongst people that live in the s. R. O. S, that i have spoken with, that if they dont know that someone is infected, that they wouldnt be able to adequately protect themselves. So just one person getting it has the potential to affect so many people. Just, for example in the building im living in, its not an s. R. O. Building. It is partially subsidized. There was one tenant that was that came up positive and the entire building received notices on their doors. And for those that were nervous about being in just the hallways or the elevators, because we dont share public areas, other than the hallways and the lobby, there was several people that were able to get tested, because of that. Had they not known and been exposed, there potentially could have been many more cases. So it is important to fully reenact this and thank you for your support. Supervisor peskin thank you. Next speaker, please. Are there any more speakers . Mr. Chair, that completes the queue. Supervisor peskin all right. Public comment is closed. And to the speaker three speakers ago, let me say theres definitely a difference between dilution and delusion. Every once in a while we get speakers on the land use Committee Meetings that dont identify themselves and they dont have to. [ please stand by ] [roll call]. You have three ayes. Commissioner id like to make a motion to send the item as amended with recommendation as a Committee Report for a meeting with the bull board of supervisors tomorrow september 1. On that motion, madame clerk, roll call, please. [roll call]. Commissioner the motion is auto approved. Madame clerk call the next item. Clerk [reading item] members of the public who wish to comment call 14156550001 the meeting i. D. Is 146 466 4627 and press , and then a system prompt will indicate you have raised your hand. When we get to Public Comment the system will indicate you have been unmuted. Commissioner id like to make a motion to continue this to september 14, 2020. Is there any Public Comment on that continuance . Clerk thank you, mr. Chair. Were check forg callers in the checking for callers in the queue. There are no callers in the queue. Commissioner Public Comment is closed and on that motion, madame clerk, a roll call, please. Clerk the motion as state. [roll call]. D. [roll call]. Commissioner the item is continued to september 14. Next item, please. Clerk the next is a conversion of certain limited restaurants to restaurants north beach neighborhood amending the planning code. For those wishing to provide Public Comment call 14156550001 and meeting i. D. 146 466 4627 and press pouve po pound to line up to speak. Commissioner this is a carefully crafted piece of legislation that will help up to a dozen defined in the code as limited restaurants in the corner of the city i represent that really in every way behave like full Service Restaurants but due to changes in the code that precede me that happened when i was off the board prohibited from applying for beer and wine licenses. And in short, it rendered uncompetitive before the pandemic and now is an imperative for them and these Small Businesses include outfits like family cafe, which is a chance cafe and the portofino, not the old one the fbi raid 20 years ago but a new one which is a new one on grand avenue. Masala which was originally i think in your district, supervisor peskin and may be the only west african restaurant in