Clerk members of the public, the m. T. A. Met in closed session discussing hiring of a secretary to the board of directors and also discussing litigation with the City Attorney but took no action with either matter. Item 10 will be a motion to disclose or not disclose matters discussed in closed session. Motion not to disclose. Second. Madam secretary, roll call. [roll call] clerk madam chair, the motion to not disclose is approved. Moving on, at this point, madam chair, is approval of minutes from the september 15 regular meeting. Anyone on the board have any additions or corrections to the minutes . Seeing none, we can open it to Public Comment for the addition or corrections to our minutes. Moderator, is the phone line open . Operator you have one question remaining. Wonderful. Commenter . Mr. Pillpow, is that you . Hello . Hi. I think i dialled in by mistake. Okay. Are there any other commenters on our minutes . Operator you have one question remaining. Okay. Commenter . Hello . Hi. I think im unmuted. I dont know. Okay. Moderator, are there any other callers on the line or is it just the one caller . Operator you have zero questions remaining. Okay. With that, i will entertain a motion to approve or not approve the minutes. Motion to approve. Is there a second . Second. Secretary boomer, can you please call the roll. [roll call] clerk the minutes are approved. Item 12, communications. Madam chair . Due to the covid19 health emergency, this meeting is being held virtually, and all members and staff are present via teleconference. This will ensure the safety of all members and staff. On the meeting page, weve asked the public to participate remotely by emailing or mailing a comment. We continue to urge the public to write the board at mtaboard sfmta. Org. While this Technology Allows us to hold these meetings via teleconference, it may not be as seamless as we like it to be. There may be gaps and silence as staff is transitioning to presentations and speakers. Please understand that we are doing our best for the hearing. If we lose connections during the meeting, well pause the meeting until the connection is reestablished. Lastly, i would like to thank all those who have been working to make the meeting possible. Clerk madam chair and staff, there meeting is being televised on sfgtv. For those of you watching the live stream, please be aware there is a delay between the actual meeting and what members of the public are seeing on sfgtv. We request that if you are kwauchg via sfgtv and you wish to comment on an item, please call the phone line when the item is called. When the phone line is open for Public Comment, the phone number to use is 8888086929. The access code is 9961164. Please make sure youre in a quiet location, that you turnoff any t. V. S or raos, and if youre Live Streaming the meeting via sfgtv, that you mute the sound. This will reduce any reverberation so that we can hear you. At that time, the chair will ask that the lines are open. At that time, you will be prompted to press star, zero. At the last meeting, one, zero. At the last meeting, a few people said they were unable to enter Public Comment, but they forget to press one, zero. After you press one, zero, there will be an automated voice that tells you you are unmuted, and you can start talking. When you have 30 seconds left, i will tell you 30 seconds. At the end of your time, we will tell you that your time is up. If you are on the phone line, you need to press one, zero to be added to the queue, and i will repeat the directions a little further down in the meeting. Item 13, items of new or Unfinished Business. Are there any new or Unfinished Business . Director eaken . Madam chair, [inaudible] one of the items that came up in that conversation was just the way that we were communicating with the public about our Transit Service and our availability. Like, our Transit Service and i just wanted to raise that i took a trip on the 5 fulton recently and heard the announcement on the bus that muni is for essential trips only, and my trip was not an essential trip. I was going out to, you know, meet some friends on a friday night. And i had a moment of pause in that moment, just kind of should i be riding this bus . This is not an essential trip. And i think weve lost so much transit ridership, that our Transit System is going to be suffering a lot of challenges, and i just want to make sure that were being very clear with communicating with the public what is the direction for right now . What is the right direction . Are we still in a mode of discouraging the public from riding transit except for essential trips or are we inviting the public who may be making discretionary trips back onto muni . I found myself very unclear what was the message we were giving to the public, and i think we are in a posture where we dont want to pass; that we want toen surgery people back onto muni given all the accommodations that weve made, and all the accommodations for safety. I just wanted to kind of raise that for the director and the board to talk about because i think things are challenging, and its especially challenging right now. I think people are feeling confused as to whether they want them riding muni or not right now. Thank you, director eaken. Director lai . Thank you. I was trying to follow the recent m. T. A. Update to the plan action, and i particularly found the policy around work from home, which is a lastminute addition, troubling, which is the word i think im going to use here. It seems counterintuitive in some regards and certainly damaging for urban centers. So i have trouble understanding how that policy evolved into being part of the plan itself. I think for those of you who have also been paying attention, it fails to account for green modes of availability, which weve been trying to pursue with m. T. A. , and pursuing green energy sources, and just flatly requiring the 60 work from home seems to lack the appropriate evaluation in considering the real life consequences on urban job centers like San Francisco and will have unintended consequences if this requirement is uniformly implemented across jurisdictions. And i think most of us will agree, urban transportation policy is not a onesizefitsall game. I think we agree, and i think m. T. C. Is providing some clarification around this policy. I understand that there are still steps to complete. Theres environmental review, theres the final adoption. So heres the ask. I would like m. T. A. Staff to pay close attention and provide an update on the clarification, on the implementation. How that will affect us locally and as an agency. Continue to question the g. H. G. , the Greenhouse Gas emission that the agency is expecting, and verifying, i guess, trying to help me understand how the workfromhome policy is appropriately offsetting the g. H. G. Emission increases. And then, also to just help us advocate for the Regional Authority to understand the premise of benefits of fostering urban centers of San Francisco, and how we may differ and need different policies than, lets say a more rural area. And i think we may support reduction in emissions, but just make sure that the agencies are being thoughtful in protecting the environment of urban centers and not penalizing cities like us. I think thats clear. I want staff to be coming back to us and helping us track this and understand how this plan will shape us as a transportation agency, whether it may or may not impact our capital planning. As an agency, i believe that there will be consequences, how it may or may not impact our strategies, which is great. Both directors brought up the message that i was thinking of, whether its riding muni transportation now that bars and restaurants are open, and theres no confusion in asking people to work from home. Are there any other directors who had Unfinished Business . Seeing none, we can move on. Clerk item 14, directors report. Thank you, chair borden and members of the board. Before i begin my directors report, let me respond directly to the requests. Transit director julie kirchbaum will be responding to director eakens request around this the tensions and contradictions that were facing with the Health Directives still stating that transit is for essential trips only. The fact that we need additional transit ridership, but at the same time, our primary High Frequency lines are leaving people behind at the curb every day because we do not have enough capacity. We may be able to address the intense work that weve been doing with the department of Public Health on relating the physical distancing goals on transit to the stages of reopening the economy. So that has been a topic that has involved a lot of internal conversation, it involves a lot of complexity. Similarly, yesterday at the general managers meeting, the executive director of the me o metropolitan Transportation Commission addressed us with that goal. Its a long story, not recorded correctly in the press, but it is nonetheless alarming. I have been working further with director mcmillan to collaborate with m. T. C. Staff for more Realistic Solutions on what was a sleight of hand. [inaudible] as well as effective Transportation DemandManagement Program in the United States that links Transportation Demand management requirements for employers to impact fees on development and the way we analyze new projects. So we are going to basically loan some of our staff expertise to m. T. C. In order to help them develop a more fist indicates approach on the demand side that is necessary for reducing or emission goals in the transportation sector. So thank you for pointing out those two issues. Theyve been top of mind for me in the last two weeks. Onto my formal directors report, as im sure many of you read in the press, there was a severe and fraudulent mishandling of an sfmta employees e. E. O. Or equal Employment Opportunity complaint. Those are handled by the City Department of Human Resources or d. H. R. We are working very closely with the Mayors Office around resolving this particular issue. The City Attorneys office is also investigating closely, and the Controllers Office is doing an audit to try to discover the underlying problems over at d. H. R. So that what happened to our employees never happens again. We are also, as part of our departmental race Racial Equity action plan, there is a long list of action steps including Building Trust in the e. E. O. Process, but, more importantly, incompetevesting training and management techniques to begin with. The e. E. O. Is a method of last resort for employees who have faced discrimination in the workplace. We want to create a Workplace Culture that honors everyone in this agency so that people dont feel like they need to file an e. E. O. Complaint because our own managers and supervisors are not taking the issue sufficiently seriously. We will be presenting our draft Racial Equity action plan to you all in november, i believe, if that has been scheduled. Let me share my screen now. I want to talk about vision zero and a couple of other topics. So we have been busy on a lot of vision zero topics, but as you probably read in the press, there was a fatal collision at cesar chavez and evans last friday. Our fatal Response Team is investigating. There are a lot of details that will be forthcoming. We also held a virtual and inplace project open house for our vision zero project for our bayview quick fill project. We received a lot of input and consensus, which will allow us to move forward with a series of quick fill projects to help us improve frack flow in t t flow in the bayview. We also received an office of Traffic Safety grant that will allow us to continue the Motorcycle Safety program, and as i know many of you are interested in, well continuing to strategize with the bay area racial organization. Last week, the board of supervisors four of the five ceqa appeals, California Environmental quality act appeals against our Recovery Plan projects, including our slow streets and temporary emergency transit lanes. All of our work had been halted while those appeals were considered, but within 12 hours of the board of supervisors unanimously rejecting the appeals, we were able to move forward on the slow streets project on several city streets, including clay and pacific as well as noe and duboce triangle, and we have also recently completed work on hossl tompkins. And Governor Newsom signed into law california 288, allowing us to move forward more rapidly with considering of how we transition our emergency projects into permanent projects while removing an onerous step of environmental review. Were also here on th, here, moving forward with our p. R. T. This program is helping us to reach our Face Covering compliance goals, which julie kirchbaum will be talking about later. We also, as you know, as we talked about over the summer, this summer was the 30 anniversary of the americans with disabilities act, and we partnered with local artist Deirdre Weinberg who was a former planner in the sustainable Streets Division to design these murals, celebrating the 30 anniversary of the americans with disabilities act. This was painted by city staff and will be hanging in the San FranciscoParatransit Office on 12 street. We are very excited about that. Here is the painting crew who did that work. Finally, this week is transit week, and weve been [no audio] we dont hear it. Director tumlin, we cannot hear the presentation right now, so why dont we postit online, and we can provide a link to the board. Sorry about that. Let me figure how to get out of this and stop sharing my screen. There we go. All right. So it is transit week this week, and weve been partnering with the San Francisco transit Riders Association in order to support that, and as you do not see, weve been working with them to produce a series of videos. They will also be presenting awards to many people throughout the sfmta, staff people who have gone above and beyond serving the people in these challenging times. That is the end of my report. Thank you, director. Are there questions from members of the board before we open it up to the public . No . Okay. With that, moderator, can you please see if theres anyone on the line for Public Comment . Operator you have three questions remaining. Welcome, first caller, please. Hello . Good afternoon, chair borden. Hello, can you hear me . We can hear you. We can hear you. Oh. Good afternoon, chair borden and Board Members. My name is deanna, and im an sfmta employee. Im calling in support of the sfmta Employee Alliance. What all the statistics point to is that black people have no chance or opportunity to succeed from the moment that they are hired being at the beginning of the interview process. Interview channels are being touted and jobs are being given to specific persons in mind, so a lot of these interviews are dogandpony shows. [inaudible] based on their representation in the workforce. That is a problem. Thank you. Thank you for calling in. Next speaker, please. Clerk members of the public, if you could be reminded that this Public Comment is on matters that were addressed by director tumlin. There will be Public Comment on matters in the boards jurisdiction and not on the agenda. Okay. Can you hear me . Yes, mr. Pillpow. So i was monitoring things this afternoon, but i could not get back in fast enough on the minutes. If we could go back on that. On page 8, the draft minutes, in the middle of the comments, i think its more accurate to say actions by the city traffic engineer arent necessarily exempt by ceqa. If you could make that change, i would be appreciative. Thats on the minutes. On item 13, you didnt ask for Public Comment on that, and i did have a comment on director eakens point. I dont believe that an emergency, including this current emergency that were in, supersedes the citys transit first policy, and i think we should endeavor to message the idea that transit should be the mode of choice where theres a choice. And i agree that theres been confusing messaging about essential trips and nonessential trips, but to the extent that people are making essential trips, if those are the only ones allowed or to the extend that those are allowed or will be allowed, they should be choosing transit where transit is an option. So i think that transit first policy and the emergency are not mutely exclusive, and you should be able to harmonize those two and encourage people to ride the bus in a safe manner where their trip requires that. And then finally, on director tumlins report, once again, if theres a written presentation or a powerpoint, if that could please be posted to the website. And just on an ongoing basis, if that would