Theres other places you can enjoy, as well. So what were asking people to do is to just make sure that youre using good judgment. If you go to dolores park, and you see that its crowded and theres no place for you to go with your people and maintain your distance with your mask and so forth, why even step foot in that park . We will be out doing enforcement more so than we have in the past, but we want people to use common sense because we tend to see spikes in our numbers as a result of the holidays, and labor day, im sure, is not going to be any different. Ive had people reach out to be to invite me to barbecues, people who want today do a jumpy with the kids, and im saying, why are you calling me . Im going to say no way. Its not that im not only going to go, its just that these are places where the virus could transmit. Im just asking people to remember, be a part of the solution, and we will do our very best to be out there, to do enforcement. We dont want to have to do enforcement. We dont want people out there, creating more attention than already exists because of people not being good citizens by wearing masks. We just want people to do their part. Were going to do our part. We hope we dont have to shutdown parks and parking lots and make it difficult for people to get out and enjoy things. We have so many parks where theres no reason why people have to crowd in one or two or three park in San Francisco. The beaches have been a lot more manageable because weve opened up more space there. Again, just use common sense not only to protect you but the people around you. Thank you so much, madam mayor, and everyone else for your time. There are no further questions at this time, and this concludes todays press conference. Thank you, and stay safe. The hon. London breed thank you. The meeting is being called to order at 5 31p. M. The Small Business commissioner thanks Media Service and sfgov tv for televising the meeting which can be viewed on sfgov tv2 or inaudible . Ill remind all of the commissioners to please mute yourselves if you are not speaking at this time. Members of the public who will be calling in, the number is 408 4189388 again, that is 408 4189388. The access code is 146 705 4896. Again, that number to access to the Public Comment line is 146 705 6896. You will press pound and then pound again to be added to the queue. When youre connected you will hear the meeting discussions and youll be muted and in listening mode only. When your item of interest comes up, dial star 3 to be added to the speaker line. Call from a quiet location, speak clearly and slowly and turn down your television or radio. If you dial star 3 before Public Comment is called, you will be added to the queue. When you are called for Public Comment, mute and when it is your time you will be prompted to do so. Public comment is three minutes per speaker unless otherwise established by the presiding officer of the meeting. An alarm will sound when the Public Comment time is finished and speakers are requested and not required to seek their name. Show the office of Small Business slide. Good evening, today we will begin with a reminder the Small Business commissioner is the Office Public forum to face your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the Economic Vitality of Small Businesses of San Francisco. The office of Small Business is the best place to get answers about doing business in San Francisco during the local emergency. If you need assistance, with Small Business matters, particularly at this time, you can find us online or via telephone and our services are completely free of charge. Before item 1 is called, id like to start by thanking Media Services and sf gov tv and thank you for assisting with the Public Comment line. Please call item number 1. Clerk call to order and roll call. [roll call] i keep muting on everything. Every which look, its just muted either way. All right. Can you hear me now . Clerk yes. It says muted on my screen. Clerk yes. Ill take that as a present. [roll call] clerk mr. President , you have a quorum. Wonderful. Next item, please. Presentation update and report on the shared Spaces Program related resources and Community Feedback discussion item. The presenters are robin abad, senior planner with the planning department, donteball Vice President of the Bayview Merchants Association and may bell ramerez Vice President of the exce excelsier action groupd doug pressly. Owner and representative of the outer sunset Merchants Association. Great. Welcome back, robin. I want to thank you so much for sticking around until, i think you didnt go on until 9 30 or 9 40 at the last meeting. I appreciate so much that you sticking around for that and accordingly, we put you first today to hopefully get you out earlier this time. So were excited to have you back. We obviously feel very strongly about shared spaces in your on going feedback and information that is very important. Wed also like to welcome marybell and doug for joining us. They have some great information for us about how shared spaces is working or not working and out lying communities and its a big priority for our commission. So, im excited to welcome you and hear about your experiences. Well begin with robins update and after that well move over to mary bell and daunte and doug. Thank you, president. Its great to be here again reporting on status and to be here with mr. Ball, mr. Marez and all three of those individuals have been major champions for in suring adoption and sort of a presence and an impact in the communities that they served. I did prepare some slides. I dont know if it would be helpful to the commission for we have maps and some graphs. I dont believe at this moment i have the ability to share my screen. Clerk i will toss the control to you. Thank you. Appreciate that. So, lets see, all right. This is material that the commissioner is familiar with and focus on the items pertinent to our presenters that will go after me. As a reminder. This is all about turning over the public realm to commissioner activities, allowing Small Businesses or merchants in our commercial corridors to conduct fitness safety out of doors. Theres retailing, you know, Outdoor Dining, of course, but curbside pick up and physical distance chewing which are also activities that we facilitate through this program. All applications are conducted through very simple intake process at shared spaces at sfgov. Org where you will find another supporting guidance in the materials about how to. Updated statistics. Were now at over 1,600 applications to date with about 13 of those in some sort of position in the pipeline wait to go get approved. We steadily see the percentage of approvals for the programs increase and we know that the commission has been highly interested in Program Performance and not only how quickly were processing folks through but over all volume and so im very glad to report that we continue to make wonderful gains and getting as many folks as possible who have applied through the pipeline and up and operating. In recent weeks, weve launched a public tracker so anyone in the public is able to see where all of the shared spaces applications are and in the city and you can even get down to the neighborhood or the supervisor director even that application, click on that data point and get information about where you are in the process using this url. So, here is another look at the numbers. These numbers are actually from wednesday of last week. Our team updates our stats, actually end of date on monday so sometimes when im here before you, commissioners, im able to have fresh numbers from that monday. As you can see from 1,600 applications, the numbers in small parenthesis represents the number of the prior monday so you can get a sense of how many applications are getting processes through the pipeline and moving into approvals. By comparing the number from monday versus the following wednesday. As folks know, this is a fee free program and currently the program is set to expire at end of president 2020. We are endeavoring to improve our Technical Assistance document and our how to materials to make it even easier for folks to understand what the process is and so this is somewhat new visualization that helps folks understand the different stages of getting approved and what happens in that 72 hour timeline from application submitel to operating. Its a simple sixpart process. The simplest permit application the city has created. And of course, there are some Certification Requirements we ask of applicants and insurance, of course, policy, we no longer are requiring applicants to produce this documentation at the time of application. For the moment, its fine that you sell certified and you carry this insurance and and we moved that requirement from the front end and request all the stressors we know this community is facing right now, commercial and insurance requirement documentation. Were also steadily increasing our capacity to do sort of monitoring and compliance. As our population glows, we want people to adhere to publichealth guidelines specifically but also our guidelines for ada access and this is the primary responsibility that faults to the merchants who are operating these shared spaces and the city will be amping up it was efforts to go out and ensure were operating as expected and safely. I just want to give a mention to a shout out in the Washington Post pertinent to the way that San Francisco is championing and really being till general about the need for these facilities to be ada accessible so on the screen is one of the to help how they a array their furnishings so as this pro live rates around the country that were all doing so in a manner that keeps our most vulnerable communities safe and ensures that they have access so were proud of the fact the Washington Post and their National Survey called out San Franciscos guidelines and some positive feedback for merchants this is from a perch ant on upper va len see us regarding the way were dealing with ada and ensuring compliance. Ive made mention several times that the shared Spaces Program has a very rigorous equity framework and and certain neighborhoods and part of the cities amongst certain demographics where were most vulnerable, even before covid and the Global Pandemic and the attendant economic crisis so, that is something that we look at. There are many different inputs into this equity framework, the office of economic and identifying opportunity neighborhoods as well as the invest in neighborhoods areas that were established by the office. Were also looking at cultural districts and there are other metrics like the communities of concern, the m. P. C. Has an index that classifies sort of neighborhoods and geography in terms of their impacts and air pollution, for example. As well as the San Francisco recreation and Parks Department equity zones index all go into helping us determine and plan where we need to do paperwork so what is this paperwork look like . It looks like outreach and it looks like partnership with non governmental organizations, non profits to support these equity pilots in these neighborhoods and i think much of this material is material the commission is already seeing so i wont bee maybe it here and just a note on capacity and process, which is something weve been very appreciative of the commissions attention towards and support around. As we seek to further improve the performance of the program, not only how quickly we are responding to applications and getting folks back up and running but also thinking about the longterm sustainability of this program as something that works well for the city and not only through the end of the calender year but, potentially beyond the calender year. We recognize that in setting a program up overnight, you need to think about how to make it sustainable and resources in a way so it can continue serving the Small Business of San Francisco. There are four goals in this shared spaces sustainable strategy and that it was greater equity and a faster timeline, minimizing bureaucracy and ensuring that we maintain compliance with our Health Directives and then ability for us report impacts. There are five different action areas and you can see in this chart the way the shared spaces Sustainability Strategy organizes responses in those five action areas, in order to meet these four policy goals. Theres special attention here at the Small Business commissioner as well as in outer neighborhoods like the sunset, to ensure that were able to create larger shared spaces by closing parts of the road like weve seen on valencia street the closure organized by the valencia merchants Corridor Association so like weve seen in china town on grant street and so, your City Departments are working very closely together to ensure that we can have this happen as quickly as possible and so, is the shared Spaces Program led by our Municipal Transportation Agency has been looking very closely at how to tighten up that that review and approvals timeline and the mta will issue new Program Regulations for shared spaces that lock in this streamline process that we have developed, experimented through shared spaces and not codifying it but being explicit through orders being released by the department. Also just a quick plug, we have spun up more of our sort of marking in Communications Efforts and part of that is. So please follow us on the platforms to celebrate a lot of the great sponsors out there who have made shared spaces possible so our first shared space recognized the mission on 16th. My favorite in the city. You should expect to see, you know, more celebrations of the diverses of businesses participating in shared spaces on those social media platforms. With that ill break and let mre over with their presentations. Before we move onto the next presentations, do any commissioners have any questions specifically about the presentation . You are unmuted. I have a couple of questions and i have come up in north beach and i want to double check. One as you know, people are very protective of their shared spaces and in northbeat and probably lofts of other neighborhoods the meter spaces to match up with the storefront. Right now, i just spent part of my afternoon with some very unhappy merchants and who claim they have a space and the they have a space that i left out today, 10 feet of the parking space is in front of one business, the other 10 feet is in front of another one. How do we address these issues. I think its, were now seeing evidence of the, you know, the program being a victim of its own success. On the one hand, its so encouraging that there are so many folks who really see this as a viable way to their survive but we are seeing that in some neighborhoods that are starting done and they are next to each other and some of these use conflicts might come up, were taking about it. I think were obviously here to help all business and merchants and they have have the public realm to support their efforts. I suspect that overcoming months, well see tweaks and adjustments either at site level or on the Program Level to accommodate. If there are any is anyone out there listening if you are having a specific kind of how or conflict, maybe you werent Small Business ready to start where your neighbors were Better Research to start and you can found yourself in this position. The city wants to settle and mediate this. How would you suggest that i have three businesses that are screaming at me right now about these spaces. They have the space, no they have the space. What am i going to what am i going to tell these people . In the spirit of togetherness that weve all embraced this this crazy pandemic and the next crisis, we really encourage neighbors to talk to one another. These issues are best resolved between neighbors and friends so, you know, first and foremost i could encourage folks to talk to one another. Weve seen situations where one business might activate the same part of the street and its more where they take over so there are many different creative ways for neighbors to Work Together to share this limited resource and be able to leverage the program. At this point, these situations in north beach are beyond the Friendly Neighbor thing and people are waiting to have an assessment of who gets that space. That is what were dealing with right now. We have such a success with our shared Space Program and now every inch of the space is contested. Im going back tomorrow to these same people and inaudible . What could i say . Commissioner, you cut out a little bit there. Go ahead, commissioner. I was just