Comment first from people attending the meeting in person ann, and then from people attending the meeting remotely. Members of the public who will be calling in the numbers 415 a6550001. The access code. Is 26649273601, followed by password 7221. Press pound and then pound again to be added to the line. When connected, you will be muted and in listening mode only when your item of interest comes up. Dial star three to be added to the speaker line if you dial star three before Public Comment is called, youll be added to the queue when its your time to speak, youll be prompted to do so. Public comment during the meeting is limited to three minutes per speaker. An alarm will sound once the time has finished. Speakers are requested but not required to state their names. Sf govtv. Please show the office of Small Business slide. Oh today we will begin with a reminder that the Small Business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the Economic Vitality of Small Businesses. In San Francisco. So before item one is called, id like to start by thanking Media Services and sf govtv for coordinating this virtual hearing and helping to run the meeting. Please call item number one. Item one roll call. Commissioner carter is absent. Commissioner dickerson present commissioner gregory is absent. Commissioner herbert is absent. President huey here. Commissioner ortiz cartagena here and Vice President susannas present. Mr. President , you have a quorum. Thank you. The San FranciscoSmall Business commission and office of Small Business staff acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula, as indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions as the Ramaytush Ohlone have never ceded lost nor forgotten their response abilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory as guests , we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestor elders, elders and relatives of the Ramaytush Ohlone communities and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. Please call item number two. Item two board of supervisors file 230861. Police code fees, applications and conditions for certain Entertainment Permits. This is a discussion and action item the commission will discuss and possibly take action on an ordinance amending the police code to one waive initial license and filing fees through june 30th, 2025 for certain Entertainment Permits for current or former holders of Just Add Music permits to waive initial license and filing fees for Entertainment Permits for applicants who are newly eligible to apply those permits for those permits due to the planning. Recent planning code amendments and other amendments. Uh, presenting today we have Ben VanhoutenBusiness Development manager, nightlife and entertainment sector with the office of economic and Workforce Development, and maggie wayland, executive director with the Entertainment Commission. Welcome thank you so much. Good evening, commissioners. Good evening. Director tang my name is maggie wyland and im the director of the Entertainment Commission. Im very pleased to be here this evening with all of you with this piece of legislation that our office has been working very closely with the office of economic and Workforce Development on this is an initiative that certainly aligns with both my commissions work and your commissions work. Were also really looking forward to the timing of this, because this is happening ing at the same time as a piece of legislation that the office of Small Business is working on that will also be supporting Small Businesses in permit streamlining mining. So essentially my office has worked very closely with the city administrator for as well as our local entertainment and nightlife industry. Me and my commissioners on this work and really we set up a summit where we host all of our stakeholders within our community and we take feedback from all of them about what we as a city can be doing better for them in supporting them, especially during postpandemic times in follow up to that, we always do an annual survey where we ask folks the status of their business. Anything that we can be doing better. And at this point theres a lot of concern from our businesses that we regulate around staying afloat. So anything that we can do to further improve police code and make the permitting process easier for our folks, were trying to do that. So this piece of legislation was really born out of that. The feedback that weve received from everybody and were just really looking forward to this. Hopefully sailing through all of the different commission and board processes. I want to hand over the mic to Ben Van Houten and i will be back up shortly to tell you more. Great. Thanks, maggie. Good evening, commissioners. Ben van horn from the office of economic and Workforce Development. Im going to walk through a couple of slides with a number of the different elements in this legislation. There are a whole bunch of different reforms that are a part of this. This proposed ordinance. First off, we are proposing part of the legislation would enable the waiving of certain entertainment fees, first and foremost, the ability to waive application and license fees associated with the transition for businesses from the pandemic. Just add music permit, which allowed Outdoor Entertainment and amplified sound during the pandemic. That was a free permit. But as the that permit sunsets, along with the sunsetting of the pandemic, shared spaces program, businesses that want to continue offering Outdoor Entertainment amplified sound will need to either apply for a brick and mortar Entertainment Permit for the first time or amend an existing permit in order to include that outdoor area that they never contemplated having entertainment or amplified sound. This ordinance would enable waiving of the application fees for those new permits or amended permits and for people getting a permit for the first time. Those new permits. It would also waive their initial license fees. A second set of fee waivers enabled by the legislation would be around businesses that are newly able to apply for Entertainment Permits due to changes in zoning. So there are parts of the city where nighttime entertainment has been historically be prohibited. Most recently, there was great legislation in the south of market along folsom street that supervisor dorsey led that enables businesses, including the stud now and certainly others as well, to establish new entertainment operations on folsom street. This legislation would enable those businesses, especially businesses that have been operating along those corridors and havent been able to apply for an Entertainment Permit. They dont apply. They dont qualify for first year free because theyve been around for a few years. But this is new Business Activity they want to do, thanks to the zoning changes, we want to waive those permit application and initial license fees to again, help them expand their offerings and hire more local performers for finally on on this slide. And this legislation would ensure all the Entertainment Commission to issue limited Live Performance permits to a slightly broader geography. We want to remove. Theres language in code that limited Live Performance permits can include outdoor outdoor areas that are surrounded by enclosed buildings. We want to take out, surrounded by enclosed buildings to ensure the broadest possible set of outdoor areas can get limited. Live performance permits. Again, acts activity that is Live Performance, Live Entertainment ancillary to some other Business Activity. Were proposing to streamline a number of referrals and hearing requirements that are currently part of different Entertainment Commission processes under current practice, the Entertainment Commission refers their place of Entertainment Permit applications to the department of building inspection. We want to carve out a narrow exemption where a business has been in operation with an Entertainment Permit within the past year by by narrowing. When those referrals happen, we would save businesses time and money to pick up existing venues and under new ownership. So again, reducing those barriers there. Similarly for the fixed place amplified outdoor amplified sound permit, that permit has under code been required to be referred to the department of Public Health. We want to remove that referral as well. Again, just finding ways to save time, save money businesses would otherwise have to pay for these referrals to these departments. So just finding ways to streamline the process finally, for or additionally for a business looking for a billiard parlor permit currently those permits are required to go to Entertainment Commission hearing. Weve talked with staff and the determinations that thats thats not necessary to have every billiard parlor go to a commission hearing. Instead we want to remove that mandatory hearing requirement. If there are if there is a history of incidents at a business, it can be made to go to commission hearing. But but removing that mandatory hearing again saves time for businesses looking to install pool tables. And then finally, there is some some outdated and unnecessary tree operating standards around arcades that date back several decades. We want to clean that out of the code and ill hand it back over to maggie. Thank you. Hes a very tall man. Yeah all right. So on this next slide, these are the final improvements that we want to let you know about. So one is removing the requirement that permit applicants provide detailed criminal history information. And i want to let you all just know that collecting this information at the Entertainment Commission doesnt really make sense anymore. Its unnecessary. We were trying to modernize our practice forces, the Police Department already is able to conduct background checks when necessary on applicants ice. And this actually protects applicants privacy much more than we would be able to as a civilian agency. So were very supportive of removing this from our application process and it aligns with what the city has been doing, which is moving away from collecting criminal history information as a more general practice. So beyond that, were also removing outdated language around masked ball permits. This is another example of something that was in police code. Many decades ago. I cant even give you an example of a masked ball that we wouldnt be able to permit with one of our one time event permits. So thats why were getting rid of that option. Weve been kind of downsizing on our permit options slowly over the past several years and making sure that folks can apply with one that makes sense. Were also going to be requiring potentially certain applicants of our accessory use limited Live Performance permit to submit a security plan as a part of their application in and this came up this past year. There was a business in the mission who is a bookstore and we want to support what theyre doing. But they were hosting events with several, several people, probably 100, where there capacity was at 50. They were spilling out into the street and a violent incident occurred. So we wanted to make sure that from the get go we can ensure that were collecting information about a security plan and then making sure that that business complies with that security plan, whereas if we werent able to do that before and then finally, were establish doing that permit applications refiled after a year of inactivity by the applicant must be a accompanied with a new application fee. And i dont want anyone to think thats burdensome on a lot of folks. Its very rare that that would happen. But we need to ensure that for Cost Recovery purposes, as we go into a next fiscal year, we need to account for the work that our staff does. So that should be it should let ben and i know if you have any questions. Thank you so much. Um, yeah. Does anybody have any questions up here . Oh one other thing i do want to add that wasnt addressed actually in second to last slide around removing requirements for department of building inspection and Public Health is that we have reached out to both of those departments and theyre on board with these reforms. Yeah. Uh oh. Commissioner ortiz, cartagena. I just want to say thank you both for the presentation and when you were showing us the post slide, you know, when the deferrals to other department, not only the fee, but the time. Um, yeah, you know, the time is, is just crazy and youre paying lease and all that. So just want to commend comments and stuff and sometimes in San Francisco thats rare. So thank you. Yeah maggie thank you so much and ben thank you very much for going through so much. Im sure you you went through a lot of code to find these little nooks and crannies. Yeah. Um, i guess one question i have is, is this like, do you feel like this kind of got most everything that would kind of, like, be an impediment . Or do you feel like there might be like a second phase or other opportunities for there to be some streamlining ahead . Theres always opportunities because i think a huge part of what ben and i do is Technical Assistance with our Small Businesses. And so any time were hearing of a snag or folks are running into issues, we may then need a look back at code and figure out what we can prioritize reforming at this time. There is one piece that ben and i are potentially going to try to add in. Its not relative to Small Business. We werent planning on bringing it up tonight because its not drafted yet. But i will just mention to you all that its around schools. Schools have been coming to us trying to figure out if they need permits for us on an ongoing basis and we want to exempt them from having to get brick and mortar permits and only have them come to us for one time. Event permit applications for things like entertainment activations and carnivals and things where they might actually be doing something outside of School Activities rather than permitting them for, say, a Football Game or recess. We dont want to have our hands in that. And so thats the only other reform that i can think of at this time thats not included that we hope to include in this piece of legislation. Thats super helpful. Im glad you shared that with us, because, i mean, even though were all, you know, Small Business owners, we are also all resident and community members. So i think having a more streamlined process for everybody is great. Um, commissioner or Vice President , business. Um, thank you so much. Thank you. Director and ben for coming to us. We always love to hear from you and collaborate between our commissions and offices. Um, yeah, i guess my question is, is kind of for us, since this is something that came out of a commission and an office that deals with business constituents and is now policy and code change and for our our purposes as as a Small Business commission who weve had similar, you know, duplicative code where it lives in police code and Public Health code. And, you know, streamlining has always been something weve weve been hoping to try to push beyond, um, you know, our intake and making to policy. So can you maybe give us like a play by play of how it came from you know, you know, hearing from your, your constituents to your Commission Discussion discussing it to a code change, because that would be so interesting for us to know. Sure. Yeah. I would say just over the past several years, we have been wanting to do reform. Um, and during the pandemic we had to prioritize pandemic response. And i know i was presenting to you all at that point around how we shifted gears and were doing Community Education and response work in the Small Business community where were educating folks about having