Transcripts For SFGTV 20120206 : vimarsana.com

this is a wonderful celebration. i am sorry i am late. i spent this morning going through four different districts. i experienced many of the pot holes in those districts. this is wonderful. it has been a long road. many years of wanting to get this measure done. in 2009, mayor newsom and i proposed this out of the work of capital planning. we did not have enough support. we knew where one might region were not able to pass it during the recession in 2009. we knew we were not able to pass it in 2009 because of the recession. mayor lee and i were a bit distracted last year. i want to thank supervisor w iener for stepping up and doing the work to get the bond measure passed. it is not easy. i want to thank him for the fund-raising work he did, for being such an able spokesperson all over the city to explain why we need to do this. we all know that in addition to the bond, your elected officials as well as everyone who s part of the capital planning committee and city leadership, we know we need to find an ongoing source to make sure the money we get is going to be a down payment on keeping our roads paved and working over the next decades of our city. we re all committed to that. the excitement of being able to attack the 800 miles of streets, the 300 building structures, the ability to make our roads safer for our seniors, the disabled, kids, pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers, i could not be more pleased. i look forward to signing this of the mayor s new desk and look forward to working with you as we see improvements in every single district and neighborhood of the city. thank you very much. [applause] part of the program is dedicated to improvements that will bring benefits to the many muni riders. a key part of that is the mta. during his tenure, the bond was brought to life and successfully passed. it is my pleasure to welcome the director of the mta and former director of dpw. it is like the former director gathering. [laughter] having spent four years doing right of way infrastructure work in san francisco, it is not sexy, it is critically important to the economy and quality of life for those of us in san francisco. this bond will make it easier and safer for people to get around san francisco on foot by improving sidewalks, intersections, better striping, countdown signals it will make it easier and safer for people to get around on bicycles by improving and adding more bicycle lanes, making them safer, separating them from traffic wherever we can. it will make it easier and more efficient to get around on transit because we will be improving our traffic signal controllers so the traffic signals talk to the others so that the buses move faster. this will be helping happening on the smoother pavement that these dollars will bring to san francisco. it is an important investment in infrastructure. you put those things together making it easier and more attractive to walk, bike, and take transit. that is how we meet the goals set back in 1973. it is only with this kind of investment that we can become the transit first city we all want to be. i want to thank the leadership standing behind me, particularly a supervisor wiener, without whom the spawned would not have passed. i want to thank some people who worked hard behind-the-scenes to do the legwork, analytical work, the packaging of this. i want to acknowledge douglas legg, gloria chan, and others from dpw. we stand ready to work with dpw, stakeholders, and the public. we re ready to go to work to invest for san francisco and create jobs. thank you very much. [applause] power agency also works very closely with the san francisco in our agency also worked very closely with others to address pot holes and provide smooth rides for bicyclists. we depend on the bicycle coalition and its members to give us information, assessments, and conditions of the streets. i would like to introduce the executive director to say a few words. [applause] you know we will tell you what we think. we will keep on that. i want to thank the political leadership behind me and the amazing leadership of the family around me. we re so proud to be part of the bond passing. i bike regularly on 17th street. this is a very welcome news of the bond funds to repay the 17th street. it is a great example of how far our money can go. these planes were strike less than a year ago. we have seen noticeable increases in the number of people biking on the street. this has happened throughout the city. every time we have dedicated space to biking, we see increases in the number of people biking. we will see the same kind of improvements and changes in safety when our roads are paved and smooth. it could not matter more to someone on a bicycle. the numbers of people boking in san francisco the numbers of people biking in san francisco are skyrocketing. that is good for our environment, public health, and quality of life. it is also good for our local economy. more people biking and walking means more people visiting our commercial corridors, shopping, eating, in the local economy. that is for all the neighborhoods in our city. there is a great new study by i have to get the name right and give them credit. the political economy research institute in baltimore. the new study shows infrastructure projects around biking and pedestrian projects create more jobs than traditional road projects. on average, the projects create 11 to 14 jobs per $1 million spent. traditional road infrastructure projects create on average seven jobs per $1 million spent. we are really proud of that. we want to make sure we re pumping more money into our local economy with more jobs, more people biking, and frequenting our commercial corridors. we look forward to repaving 17th street and many more. [applause] one more important partner. we ve touched on improvement for drivers, transit riders, and bicyclist. this bond will also repair sidewalks all over the city. what san francisco is premier pedestrian advocacy organization. i would like to introduce the executive director. [applause] walk s.f. is eager to see new investment in wider sidewalks and smarter street design throughout the city. in san francisco, even though we all walk, we still see 800 people here get hit by cars. that is too much. thanks to the mayor s pedestrian safety task force, we know that only 7% of our streets are where over half of all of the serious and fatal injuries occur. that means we know where to focus our resources to save lives. smart investment will pay off for everyone in the city because more walkable streets means more foot traffic. that is better for local businesses. that means safer streets for kids to walk to schools, families to walk to parks, and for everyone to enjoy lives, works, and visits san francisco. thank you. [applause] i will now turn it over to mayor lee. i will ask all of us to gather around as he signs the legislation at his ne today is 2/3. one there. i only have one of these pens. if i had more, everybody behind me would get one. they re valuable things. otherwise, the tallest person. [laughter] [applause] thank you very much. let s get to work. good afternoon, everyone. thanks for being here. this is our first disaster council meeting for 2012, and it s been quite a previous year, but again, i want to start out by thanking everybody for working as closely as together as we are. i do feel it s just a higher level of collaboration by our community, our residents, our agencies, our responders and i know that towards the end of last year, we had a number of fires. we had a fairly big one just a few days before christmas in our western district area. i want to thank all of the residents that were out there because there were individual heroes that acted very quickly to get others out, and then, in those precious minutes, our fire department showed up with not only one but five different divisions which was absolutely necessary, five-alarm. their response was excellent and not only did a good job but immediately there was also the fire commissioners, including the chief. we were there. i want to thank ross mirkarimi, then supervisor, he was out there with me looking out for the residents. several other board members, as well. and we immediately saw not only the residents there but the non-profits that had been there helping out. our faith-based community was there, as well, because immediately, the needs were felt and i think in the context, that there were no fatalities, no real serious injuries, it was just another reflection of the way we re handling serious disasters, yet response is so thorough, so good. and then to follow up with those needs, not only did the community help out and i think the city started showing immediately our sense of support for the residents there that had lost everything that they had just before the holidays, and good response from our helpful communities to help out, whether they were churches or individuals that would help. d.e.m. also, they made, i think, a very critical call to cal nema to get our city declared particularly at that fire, a disaster, and got the attention of the s.b.a. and the state programs to help out and ind that there are at least six individuals who are going through the process of getting specially handled loans out of that program. there was good follow-up because people, although not serious injuries, their lives are being put in place with that additional help so i thank the staff for doing that and all the other agencies but i think it s the reflection of the kind of response we want to see in case there is that and while we re doing that, we do everything we can to prevent but when it comes to the winter times, it was something we were all paying attention to and i know sheriff mirkarimi shared this with me, as well, because we had a chance to talk then. we were thinking there were too many fires going on in that district and we were wondering why, trying to make sure we looked at every opportunity, whether our police department and others, to research the backgrounds for all these things to make sure that if they were accidental, we can do something even about accidental better, by better education with all of our residents about how these fires start and where they start and how to prevent them, while we look for any other indications beyond just accidental. again, i think we re doing everything we can to do that. i also want to acknowledge the work that s going on behind the scenes but now becoming more visible, and that s our america s cup. as we approach that very active event, that inviting event with thousands of people that will be here, a number of agencies are already working together doing the necessary training and i know a number of you are involved in that because there will be so many people and so many activities that are going on throughout the city in anticipation of that and so many agencies that need to have a lot more ability to work with each other and maybe have not had the opportunity to do that. and, then, to, of course, prevent anything from happening that would be negative to the event and really reach our goals for it. so the exercises that are being led by d.e.m. in anticipation of that, the agencies that will touch upon things that include things that will happen in the air, crime control, e.m.s. fire, park events we anticipate, the people movement that are needed, the general security and the use of the water, both for security as well as recreation, all will be in play so appropriate agencies are being tapped to work through the leadership of d.e.m. to coordinate exercises that will test and need to be tested any assumptions that we are making with our individual plans so we never work in silos. and i want that to be, again, the mantra for all of us. these large events, we have to get out of our silos and make sure we re cooperating and that s been the theme of this and that s why we go through the exercises so i appreciate this and want to thank people for doing that because when we re doing that up front, we re making every effort to mitigate anything that can happen beyond our individual borders which i know all of you will take care of on an individual department basis, it s really where it doesn t come across as individual departments and effects several of us, i don t want any gray areas to prevent us from doing an excellent job as we go on the world stage with this event. thank you very much for that. i want to single out the also the leadership that d.e.m. is doing when it comes to a bay web. that s been in the papers. it s before our board of supervisors and thank you for holding those hearings, members of the board, that we are pushing forward this bay web because we do have very, very clear needs to have better communication, better spread of data. the chief mentioned that during the playoff games at candlestick, as well, some examples where things could have worked better if we had a bay web approach to our other agencies to promote higher levels of data exchange. we need to get there and i want to signal to the board that our staff, working with d.e.m., will make sure we answer every question about the financing aspects to it that might be of concern and make sure we get through that quickly so we can get on to building a system in collaboration with all the other agencies that are involved in the bay area, all their responders, all their emergency agencies. we need this because we are going to be hosting more events in this great city that command a level of bay area collaboration and with that, we need, then, data and communications that work across our cities. that s important to us and we are also honoring the serious federal funding that had been made because they believe this is also their goal in supporting us, as well. and finally, again, i want to acknowledge all the members of the disaster council, including the new members from the community and from various agencies we work with, along with all the departments, and the board of supervisors, as well, in paying attention to how we manage disasters and how we prepare for them. things do still make me nervous in my years as public works director and i ve already asked d.p.w. as well as the city engineer to begin studying what s happening on the tower and telegraph hill because those slides always leave me some level of uncertainty as there s so much housing up there and visitors that go up there and the tower itself so we re going to get a study going to what the short term, middle term and long term challenges are on those rock slides and what they re indicating to us. i need the best engineer minds to give us that information so we can go on to higher levels of effort there. i also want to make sure we are all continuing to pay good attention to disaster recovery. that s been my personal interest but i ll tell you, all the things that we re already doing on disaster recovery, i ve indicated to many other cities as i go through the conference of mayors and talk to them about what they re doing, they acknowledge that disaster preparedness has a lot to do with recovery planning that goes on now because that leads to a stronger tie with our communities about what mitigation is really all about and where we need to spend our infrastructure money. i want to thank everybody for participating in that. you ll hear reports. every time there s a disaster in the world, if we can get somebody over there that representing our city, not only as part of a humanitarian effort that we ve done like for turkey that you ll hear about today, but if we can bring back that very live experience that people have every single time we come back with a reinforcement that our recovery planning and our disaster preparedness is not only apropos, it is absolutely necessary, and again, i also signal a thanks our fleet week because that is really turning the corner for us. it s no longer the very important celebration of our military, the humanitarian and ongoing training we have with our military in the country about our own disaster preparedness is extremely important, getting everyone involved in that. with that, i just wanted to make that initial report and thank everybody for participating this disaster council meeting. thank you to the board members, again, for being here. thank you, mr. mayor. i happily can say the mayor gave most of my director s report so that s wonderful. thank you so much. i have a nice little presentation for you, mr. mayor, that is a fun way to start this out, i hope. we had a beautiful coat made for you so that when you respond to our disasters we can tell who you are right away. [laughter] it is the mayor. anyway. i hope it s all reflective, it s heat resistant, all of that stuff. i hope you enjoy it. [applause] we didn t want to be outdone because i know the fire chief gave you a hat after your election. i m hoping not to wear this too often. i hope you don t have to, as well. just a couple of quick things that i did want to touch on, is a little uwasi update. i think most of you know that there has been cuts at the federal level on uwsai funding. this last year, we lucked out in that san francisco and the core cities remained whole, which is wonderful. so we will continue to have our $34 million of funding regionally for this current year. next year, it s questionable. what we re hearing from washington is that perhaps all of the tier 2 cities or regions will be cut out this year. if that s the case, we still may be ok next year but i think we need to be thinking long term about how we sustain the efforts that we have begun and make sure that we can continue to become more and more prepared and ready for the big one when it does happen because funding at the federal level is definitely declining. san francisco, at this point, is in good shape and in fact the approval authority last week voted to keep the core city allocations of oakland, san jose, and san francisco, $1 million each before any other funding is expended so that s a very positive thing. just real briefly, we were very happy that the state e.m.s. authority ruled just a few weeks ago that san francisco can maintain its exclusive operating area for ambulance response for 911 and emergency calls. this has been up in the air since 2008 so that s a big victory for us, very happy with all the work that mr. dudgeon has done working with the state and with chief hayes-white and her command staff. we really that s a big victory for us. just following what the mayor said about advance recovery and the resilience work that san francisco has been doing. we have really been acknowledged throughout the entire country as being at the forefront of that work and that gets back to what mayor lee, in his former position as city administrator, led up the resiliency effort and did that pre-recovery planning. on february 16, fema is coming out to roll out their national recovery plan and so they are doing it in san francisco, here in city hall. the mayor is going to be giving the opening remarks that day and in fact i had the opportunity to go to harvard in december and go through the national preparedness leadership institute, which was this fabulous program, and all of the instructors from around the country are saying that san francisco is the lead, that we are the model that should be followed in other places. so fema will be looking to us for direction and i think that it s a way for us to highlight all the great work we ve been doing and continue to do. just on a very last note, we will be doing all the 1906 earthquake remembrances that we do every year, so i hope you will join us at lata s fountain at 5:42 a.m., or whatever time it is, some god awful early morning but it s a lot of fun and we will be doing community events during april. april s a big month for us so look forward to getting messages from us and i hope you can join us. thank you. next on the agenda, i believe, is rob, recent e.o.c. activations? certainly. i m going to touch on the last three or so that we ve had because they re in relatively recent memory and work backwards a little bit. first starting with, we did activate a small team for the rock slide earlier and we did that to basically make sure everything gets pulled together in one spot and make sure that everybody s working together. it seems like maybe it doesn t raise up to the level of e.o.c. but this is a key message we ve been trying to push, it doesn t have to be a big event in order to have the benefits of the cross departmental, cross-agency coordination. in this case, this is specifically one of those events that really benefits from getting people in the room because oftentimes what happens is if something if there s an event, it gets put in the dispatch system, we get pages and updates and what the fire and police part is done, they go back to their stations and go back in service and it drops off everybody s radar so one of my charges to my team has been to keep tracking these events beyond the end of the first respond because it is first respond. it doesn t mean the event is done. we ve really seen that in dealing with displaced people and a lot of these fires in the past year and it also folds over into this where we re able to maintain tracking it for several days after it until we get a sense that we ve got to the recovery phase and it s down to one or two departments working together to solve the problem. that s what we did here. it also gives us visibility and i think this is really important. it gives us visibility for identifying those events that might be eligible for some form of reimbursement down the line because if we get together early and capture the data early and get the damage assessments early, we re able to make that determination and work with cal ema to determine whether or not it s goin