[gavel] please call us because buell here, low here, anderson here, bonilla here, harrison here, mcdonnell here. So ever since we we would ask if you have any Electronic Devices you please, turn those off so they do not go off during the meeting. That you take any secondary conversations you may have outside. If you would like to speak on an item today we request that you complete a blue card unless otherwise announced by the president each person will have three minutes for Public Comment on each item. If there is an item of interest thats not on the agenda and is under the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission you may speak under general Public Comment and that is item before and then continued on item 7. When you address comments to the commission, please in order to allow equal time for all the commission or staff to respond to any questions during Public Comment. The commission may request staff to respond when the Public Comment is done. Last, if the fire alarm is activated you have to evacuate the building using any exit. Please note, elevators will immediately return to the first floor and are not available for use. If you need assistance out of the building, please, make your way to the closest area refuge which is directly across the hall in the mens restroom inside the restroom are a speaker box and security will answer your to let them know where you are and they will assist you. With that commissioner we are in item 2 the president s report. Thank you. Very briefly, two things. One, i do very productive meeting out of the zoo at the mothers building with representatives of the Art Commission and the recreation and Park Department and the zoo staff. With Richard Rothman and kind of moderately happy to report were making some slow progress there and that there is [inaudible] to connect the building to be able to heat it to preserve those murals. Theres some money that has been appropriated with the city budget to start some initial work on it. So i think were finally moving in the right direction. I dont see richard here, but i want to thank him for his continued devotion to that. Secondly, i would like commissioner anderson to make a few comments. Thank you commissioner buell. I just want to highlight that the wreck park staff commissioners were invited to a ribboncutting at the south End Rowing Club and the area they are touches on wreck park land and they extended the envelope of the building to allow women members to have a real changing room, locker room, where they been changing basically in a closet for decades. I think they want to one a fight in 1970s to include women turn it was a great celebration and they gave the San Francisco recreation and Parks Department a certificate of appreciation and especially have a shout out to Cassandra Costello for being such a great team member for this event. So i just want to share that. We had this phenomena give this to our general manager Nils Ginsberg in a few minutes but anyway its a Great Community asset here, and by the way south End Rowing Club has a really affordable membership if youre interested in rowing running or swimming. So thank you. Thank you. That concludes my report. Any Public Comment on item 2, president s report . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed to item 3, general managers report. Good morning commissioners. Today is april 20. [laughing] 420. If you happen to be in the east end of Golden Gate Park today and suddenly have the urge to eat an entire bag of doritos you will know its because 420 is also the date of the annual unofficial event in the area of the park celebrating for good and for bad, marijuana. In years past, this unofficial unsanctioned event the regularly draws 1013,000 people from all over the bay area has been a real challenge for us. Its negatively impacted our parks, our staff and surrounding communities. Last year we spent well over 50,000 a year in cleanup and park staffing on just on this one day. We collected 11 tons, or 22,000 pounds of trash in Golden Gate Park alone and this does not even begin to address the impacts to surrounding neighborhoods with traffic and variety of other bad behavior to its a tough event for us to manage. This year i am cautiously optimistic that things will be a little better. In partnership with supervisor breed and several government agencies, including the Police Department, fire department, public works, mta, sheriff, juvenile probation animal care and control, we have partnered together to create a plan that encourages participants to respect our communitys and parks. That plan is possible because of the support from haightashbury merchants and Event Organizer who we are allowing to help organize the crowds that come. To be clear, this event happens whether we want it to or not. There is nobody in charge of 420. But we have imbued some responsibility and authority to some of the Community Folks to bring some resources to the event to make sure that we have some additional security, some additional sanitation services, some additional cleanup services. Im very proud of the City Government for trying this. I dont know whether its going to work but we are going to hike and we are trying Something Different in an effort to accomplish three main objectives. We want to keep people safe. We want to minimize the impact on the surrounding neighborhoods. And we want to protect the park. So thanks to the support from local merchants and this Event Organizer, we have some additional [inaudible] including fencing which surrounds sharon meadow. 40 security personnel. There will be two points of entry into 420 today and i just was there this morning and you can already tell the impact that is having good usually what happens is such a permeable space people bring lots and lots and lots of stuff that makes Public Safety very very challenging. Bring wagons full of booze, barbecues, large structures, amplified sound all kinds of things. So we are able to actually prevent some of the stuff coming in. Significantly, were also doing her best today to prevent anybody under the age of 18 from entering the space. If you are under 18 and you get in there, please, no juvenile probation and s of pd will be in there with you. We are prohibiting glass and glass paraphernalia and tense and barbecues. There is no sale of any narcotics at this eventthat is permitted. [laughing]. We have 175 portable toilets, both inside the footprint of the space and outside around the neighborhoods. We havetheres an emergency medical plan. The spaces now gotbroken up into different quads to make it easier to respond to situations. So this is a long way of saying theres a lot more planning a party with a Committee Group making the streets to help clean up afterwards and even with all that your department will still have 50almost 50 park rangers and are in another 50 Park Maintenance staff out there to try to manage the space. We also have extraordinary help from the Police Department from public works, from mta in a variety of these other agencies. So we will see. But i think you should be proud of your department and frankly, the city and i really want to thank supervisor breed for really some pretty courageous leadership on this to try to try something to see if it achieves those event egypt objectives. I know that were going to honor and talk a lot about some of our permit staff today and theyre all here. I want to pay a particular debt of gratitude to them and specifically diane reed. Diane has done just an amazing job between the summer of love and for 20, i dont know if anybody does a purple heart more than diane today. Shes really done some amazing amazing work and parting with a Community Group and all these other city agencies to make this happen. So thank you, diane. All right. Its also worth month. Weve got a whole host of events happening all throughout the month to so right earth month. One of them, i want to single out which is next saturday, april 29 huckleberry Youth Programs which provide services for low income and underserved youth celebrates 50th anniversary right along with the summer of love with volunteer day of service in Golden Gate Park in the panhandle. The event is in partnership with us and sf travel. Will be a variety of beautification programs litter removal, barbecue lunch is included. Please, sign up and join us at sf please, sign up and join us sfrexandpark. Org. Huckleberry park is an Amazing Program and has been around since the late 60s urban kids who need a helping hand. This saturday on april 22 we have its an American Sign Language day. With a family day and barbecue admission playground and inclusion center. 3555 19th st. Are maintaining arts and craps Imagination Playground and so much more. Also our Therapeutic Recreation Division will cohost access to adventure at the bandshell on may 6 which is a free festival of recreation for children with disabilities including sports extreme sports Outdoor Recreation aquatics cultural art and more. Why we are celebrating our inclusionary programs i want to thank wilderness inquiry and there commute mobile for partnering with us. This a third year in a row. They were here here all last week at lake merced and spent last saturday right before extravaganza which im in a get to in a second, with canoes at mcnabb lake. Wilderness inquiry and their canoe mobile programs part outdoor nature expenses for people in all committees across the subject they really focus on underserved communities, monolingual committees and the disability community. I was out there with them on saturday and had just an amazing experience of watching a woman with ms who is wheelchairbound and her family get into a canoe. For the first time. There were literally tears of joy as they paddled around the lake. So was really meaningful experience and a reminder of how special the Clarendon Park isand most portly, a reminder that recreation is for everyone. So it was a big big deal and i want to really want to thank inquiry mobile. After being at mclaren park for that i drove back across town and joint commissioner low at extrinsic extravaganza. I want to think my recreation staffsome of them are hereactually its more than recreation staff. Its entertainment stuff, permit staff, everybody gets involved in this. We welcomed about 89000 people to Golden Gate Park on Easter Saturday for a very familyfriendly fun event that featured music, egg hunts, arts and crafts, rides, soft ice cream, and yes, the rib cookoff where i was part of a team from Mclaren Lodge and i think we gotwe made up on the healthy choice award for a watermelon and [inaudible] salad which was pretty good. But we do not win the big rib cookoff. There are teams from the fire to berman Police Department, and rec staff commissioner low thank you, sir was a judge which means he got to eat a lot. Taste a lotbut it was a pretty special day. We were joined by lots of vips including commissioner low. We had some of assemblyman david chiu. Board president walton. Assessor carmen chu committee college or board president shiah selby. A lot of stefan fronds in a variety of other folks who participated in the judging and was super event. Then last saturday evening was americas [inaudible] 15th universe. The one of our closest partners. I got to join them at their celebration it was an opportunity to honor their achievements. And celebrate this organization that is delivered just an Incredible Program to more than 15,000 children in low income areas of San Francisco and around the bay. As you know there a nonprofit soccer and Literacy Program that focuses both on development through sport but also through writing and public speaking and poetry. They have made a super impact. Is emily here . Im not sure shes here today we will bring them back but i really want to thank emily [inaudible] for all that organization does for San Francisco skids. Also last week your San Francisco bay socks, or our girls baseball program, participated with a proximately 100 other girls ages 16 and under representing 20 states washington dc and canada where they all traveled to los angeles to play baseball in inaugural allgirls tournament sponsored by Major League Baseball. So as you know, was a program called baseball for all which the nonprofit where we hostedwasnt the firstit was the Second National tournament last summer Major League Baseball has now embraced this and as part of their baseball for all program and on a weekend of festivities celebrating Jackie Robinsons achievements and groundbreaking evolution to the game of baseball, mlb was perhaps symbolizing the future and we have some girls from San Francisco that are deeply committed and deeply talented to the game of baseball. They were in la representing our city. I really want to think rocky emily and alexwith their efforts to continue to coach and mentor and we are National Leader in this program. Lastly, as you know, we are in the middle of a demonstration project both Golden Gate Park in mclaren park where we have for the first time in decades brought horseback riding back to these parks. I really want to take the opportunity to thank our partners at the pot of gold the adventurers who have been offering residents and tourists around both of these parks an opportunity to tour Golden Gate Park and mclaren on horseback. In less than a month, weve had over 850 participants in this program. We started at golden a park and mclaren park start i think a week or so later but we have about 500 writers in Golden Gate Park and over about 350 folks in mclaren. Its been really popular there. The pilot will continue to run through may 20 reflecting feedback from park user. I want to give you a little bit of a taste of some of the sweet things people have said so far. Lewis ctr. , park is a gateway to go mclaren park the introduction of the stables and horses has been wonderful and already used on families to an area that otherwise would not visit. The horses returning to the stables and mclaren is a wonderful opportunity to put the mclaren back on the map. Introduce mclaren to our citys youth and benefit the park as well. Somebody else had a minute Bernal Heights help owner and a 12yearold horse mechanic the horses in mclaren our dream come true for my daughter. [inaudible] anyway, weve also got feedback about concerns. The two primary areas of concern about menu or management and trail erosion weve been working with pot of gold on both of those areas of concern. With respect to maneuver management particles is brought in an additional staff in each location and depending upon the number of riders on a given day trails revealing cleanup to three times a day of maneuver which is not to say people wont stumble upon some at different points in time but its a regular multi time of day occurrence that theres maneuver management and theres been concerns about trailer erosion. Our staff went out actually on april 14 and did a complete loop of both trails. Very little to no damage in Golden Gate Park. In mclaren we seen a little bit more evidence of trail erosion and its been wet and its been soggy but our staff has concluded its actually minor and can be easily remedied with minor maintenance. We will continue to take feedback and continue to observe but its been quite a successful program. If you are interested the horses out there seven days a week from 8 am7 pm weather permitting. You can call 844967. If you are interested the horses out there seven days a week from 8 am7 pm weather permitting. You can call 8449674653 or visit recreation parks website to sign up. It really is a very very special experience. Lastly, we have a very special acknowledgment today which is why we have so many people in the house. Lets give it up for permits and reservation staff. [applause] so coworkers and colleagues, move on regularly. It happens but there are some whose time at a particular job have a much more profound affect on an organization. Today we have the distinct honor of recognizing one of recreation and parks mostthe longestserving employee and frankly one of that are best very best. Peter kendo is somewhat of a unicorn he spent the majority of his career 41 years worth, with one organization. An extremely rare feat. Today weatherbee in the professional world or in the mba you dont just stay with one team anymore. He started at recreation parks in 1976 as an assistant recreation director and through the years hes worked at Eureka Valley rec ctr. , mission pl