City and County of San Francisco Tuesday, January 15, 2019

>> Dr. Brinkman present.

Borden present. Eaken present.

Heinicke present. Hsu present. Torres present.

Director rubke will not be at

today's meeting.

Item 3, please be advised that

the ringing of electronic device

devices are prohibited. Anybody who is responsible for

one going off May be asked to leave the room.

Item 4, approval of the minutes.

>> any public comment on the minutes?

No, seeing none, public comment closed. Motion to approve? All in favor aye. Any opposed?

Hearing none, minutes are aprv

proved -- approved. >> item 6, introduction of new

or unfinished business by board members.

>> Chair Brinkman:   right into the election of officers. Nomination for chair.

>> I would like to nominate

malcolm heinicke. Any other nominations?

Hearing none, we'll go to public

comment on the nomination of

malcolm heinicke as chair.

Any public comment?

Seeing none, public item is closed. All in favor?

Congratulations! I'll just say, malcolm, I know

you're going to be a fantastic chair. I'm sure you all realize malcolm

is the longest serving director on this board.

so he has fantastic experience and has been such an asset.

I'm pleased to say the meeting

is yours, chair heinicke.

>> Vice Chair Heinicke:   thank you very much.

I will say a few things throughout the meeting.

Some will focus on not so

positive things that need to be addressed, but let me start with

the one positive thing.

The service of cheryl brinkman. The only good news to come out

of you stepping down, I'll still get to work with you, because you remain a chair. The amount of effort and energy

and passion this woman has put

into her term as chair has been remarkable.

As your colleague, I'm very grateful.

>> thank you very much.

>> Vice Chair Heinicke:   I will

entertain nominations for vice chair.

>> I would like to nominate director borden. I'll call for public comment on the nomination of director borden for the position of vice chair.

Seeing none, public comment.

Okay.

>> hi, my name is melody and I

hope you can do a good job and bless you. >> well said. Any other public comment?

Seeing none, all those in favor

of director borden for vice chair? Confirming it was unanimous. We will move on. Congratulations, vice chair borden. Anything you would like to say.

>> I want to thank my colleagues for giving me the opportunity to be vice chair of the board.

I look forward to working with you all in -- we have a big agenda. A lot of things to do as many know. There are a lot of challenges

that we need to face with the

agency that are great challenges to have in terms of great ridership and people wanting to use our system.

And demanding we do a better job, we have to and we will. I look forward to working with you.

I want to also congratulate

director brinkman for having

been a great steward of this board. I want to thank you for your leadership.

>> thank you, vice chair borden. >> back to the introduction of

new or unfinished business.

Board members, any new or unfinished business? >> I have a couple of things.

First I want to make sure we

adjourn in honor of raymond

joseph patrick murphy who passed

away on January 3rd.

He was a self-made san franciscan. He was an irish builder here in san francisco and will be missed by many.

I want to make sure we recognize him. >> without objection, that will be done. Thank you very much.

>> the other item -- I look

forward to hearing about the

chariot, the opportunity to be able to hire those drivers into our force. I look forward to seeing a

report at some point of how that outreach is going and what is a direct match of the existing drivers in terms of licenses and what it might take to get the other drivers and how fast we

can make that happen in the H.R. Process. >> they're already familiar with

the red lane, as I like to say.

[Laughter] Director brinkman?

>> just a quick shoutout to the staff and the volunteers from organizations that went out to

the opening day of the valencia street protected bike lanes in front of the schools, the pilot project got on the ground so quickly. It was working out really well. I volunteered with the bike coalition on the very first day that the lanes were open and the students were back and it seemed to be going well. The staff and the parents were

so happy to see our PCOs out

there, school crossing guards

and volunteers out there remind

reminding cyclists to take carry.

Mr. Maguire, I want to complement you on the work your staff did.

The accelerated timeline on that project meant a lot of long

hours from the staff who worked on that.

They were working nights and weekends.

They were happy to see it, the cyclists and the parents so happy to see it.

I want to acknowledge I recognize how long and hard they had to work.

All the new protected bike lanes are great.

I was out riding them in the rain, thank you so much.

>> any new or unfinished business.

>> Director Torres:   I want to revisit or have staff

communicate with me regarding

the reasons that this station

was put at randall street and

glen park when there seems to be

substantial opposition. >> can you designate someone to take that up.

If it is not taken up to your satisfaction or the board needs a briefing, please request that.

This is an ongoing issue of concern for this board.

>> thank you very much. >> Mr. Chairman, you do have a

member of the public who wishes

to address items on this topic that don't relate to the

election of chair or vice chair >> please call that member.

Good afternoon, Mr. Toronto, welcome back. >> it's been a while.

I had to get a little sleep to

come here, because I went to the airport commission meeting this morning.

I worked until 4 in the morning, I couldn't go home and get back

here, but I got a little shut eye.

I want to congratulate you on

your chairmanship.

I want to address what director borden mentioned about the jobs for muni drivers. How about offering them to cab drivers where you have our

records and background checks?

Why is it only the chariot?

And we work with a variety of different passengers. Why can't you offer it to us,

because a lot of us are going to lose our jobs at the end of the month if this plan goes into effect.

If you want to understand why,

we'll address it during public comment. It would be great if the chariot drivers, who are relatively new

to the city, we got equal access

to the muni jobs that are vacant. >> thank you, Mr. Toronto, excellent idea. You're not the only one that hadet. Thank you for sharing it. I don't think there is any other

public comment on that issue.

We will move onto the director report.

>> thank you, I'll be presenting the first item of recognition from the podium.

If I May suggest that the remaining reports can follow at

the end of the agenda.

>> absolutely, please.

We had coordinated walkup music

for you, but SFGovtv said we

couldn't do that, so imagine

cold play, playing as you walk down there.

[Laughter].

There you go.

>> it is my pleasure to offer

special recognition to janice yuen.

I'd ask janice to join me here. Janice leads special events as

part of the communications division.

A keep member of the marketing team.

She has been with the sfmta for

21 years and her work is key to

programs that help motivate our employees and promote agency connection to our local communities.

She's a linchpin to organizing

events, such as the safe drivers

award, where we celebrate

drivers who have been driving

safely 15 years or more, the heritage weekend, pride bell ringing. One thing you May not know, for

the past ten years, janice has

run the agency combined

charities, heart of the city for stm, which encourages our staff to donate to the campaign every year.

Working with our director of

human resources dawn elson, who

is your executive chair, janice organizes to take an approach to fundraising.

This year, through the amazing efforts to mobilize so many

people across the agency, our combined charities campaign met

and exceeded our agency goal by 10%.

The campaign raised $142,000.

Excuse me -- $156,000, even

bigger, in pledges from sfmta

staff across the agency, which

is 15% increase over the 2017 campaign.

A lot of the thanks goes to the

coordinators and captains.

It's janice that pulls it all together.

I worked with janice for six years and she's a great contributor to the sfmta family.

She's incredibly effective at getting colleagues engaged and involved and helping make our agency an outstanding place to

work. I'm very pleased. Offer you, janice, this award. >> thank you.

[Applause]

>> I will note, many of the team

members. -- many of our team members are

here to celebrate. >> if you are here to celebrate

janice, please stand up.

When they announced the goal, I

have to say I was nervous. I would like to acknowledge the

volunteers, the campaign captain

captains who fund raised and the

satellite offices. They brought their hearts, hands and minds to the project. They learned a lot.

We learned a new data entry

system for inputting pledges.

We learned that learning curves are hard.

We collaborated with other

colleagues and learned that pork buns sell well. We also learned that our

colleagues will buy hand crafted

jewelry and pizza, but not necessarily simultaneously. And that friday afternoons are a

great way to have popcorn and fun.

We learned and affirmed that we as an agency can do amazing things when we work together.

With a little faith and a lot of hard work, we were able to exceed our goal and help supports hundreds of nonprofit organizations for those in need.

So it's been a blessing for me

to serve alongside with all of

captains and all of those who pledged. With ethough that -- we know that people only give when asked.

I'm thankful for those who said yes.

With those of you in communications, will you please stand up and those associated with the project please stand up, because you did all this work, too. Thank you.

The update on vision zero I

believe is next.

>> yes, if tom maguire would

like to provide the report on

vision zero.

Good afternoon. >> good afternoon, directors.

A quick update and I'm going to

cover ground that director brinkman already covered.

This fall, this board and the

mayor challenged us to get a number of high-profile bike lane protected projects out on the street.

The last to get done was

valencia, but it followed townsend street and howard street and we were pleased to

cut the ribbon last week with supervisor kim on her last day in office.

We were very excited to get the valencia street protected bike

lane pilot in place before the first day of school at the

friends school and we're happy to get the townsend street lane

done before the holidays. So using our in-house resources

in creative ways, to make reality on the streets. That will be a theme you'll

continue to see in calendar year

2019 from our division. That project delivering

engineering is probably the most

ambitious part of your vision zero strategy. Wanted to provide updates we

have made many of the ambitious decisions that this board made

in the fall of 2018, are already

reality on the street, the first

week of 2019.

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you very much. >> moving on, I want to mention

as I said, I'm acting for

director riskin today who is at

the annual board meeting in washington D.C.

The director is participating in

the annual meeting of the national city of transportation officials this week.

and a meeting with legislative

staff from senator feinstein and house speaker nancy pelosi's

offices. I'll continue on.

I'm sad to report that last

night, as some of you May be aware, last night at

approximately 9:35 P.M., we had a very unfortunate incident

occur in the subway at van ness station. San francisco police department is currently investigating the incident, but based on preliminary information it

appears a woman entered the

station, climbed over the railing at the mezzanine area

above the trackway and fell onto

the outbound track. There were no trains present at

the time of the fall and all the trains were held outside the station afterwards.

Once the scene was actually secured, we had an sfmta

employee enter the trackway and initiate emergency cpr until the

fire department was able to arrive and take over.

Train service was stopped from embarcadero to castro.

We started owl service early and supplemented that with bus shuttles in order to keep passengers with the least amount of convenience possible.

This is a situation that is still under police investigation. That will take some time. I want to thank those who were

able to get on the scene quickly

and start to, you know, address this very difficult situation, including the station agent,

security personnel, the inspector, the control center staff and all those up into the

night working to manage the

situation.

I want to move on to construction projects that are coming up. In anticipation of the opening

of the chase center, the sfmta

is about to construct a new

wider 320-foot long center platform along third street between south and 16th street. Work has already been going on,

on this project, but the next

phase actually will be a more

extensive and impactful construction effort.

The next phase requires us to extend bus substitution starting

on tuesday, January 22nd through the end of March.

So during this period of time,

the t third will not run and buses will substitute that service.

We put out a plan that includes a tremendous amount of ambassador support and signage

support to make sure our customers are aware and we're

taking all the recommendations and lesses andens anden

and lessoned learned on the twin peak tunnel.

We included the signs that hang

within the subway.

Communication has been ongoing

with supervisors and community

members about the project. Construction will include quite a bit, it includes installing

not only the constructing the

platform and tracks, overhead

contact system will be replaced. Below-ground utility work is also part of the work, as well

as the canopy and concrete. While the service resumes at the

end of March, the mission bay

platform will not reopen until April. In addition to the bay platform project, we have smaller

projects going on, including the

church street inbound elevator,

which is about to undergo construction starting next monday.

That elevator will be out of service for ten weeks while the work is done. Wheelchair users will be

directed to the elevators at

castro and van ness or f line streetcar service.

This is one of the projects that

is part of the muni elevator modernization safety project

where we're replacing 11 older elevators.

This is the second project to go. That entire body of work is anticipated to take about four

years and it started last year.

And then finally we have a couple of utility cabinet that are undergoing work.

I mentioned this because it does

require trenching around the church street market into both

areas where we're installing underground electrical equipment that will help essentially

reduce the power outages and

shutdowns that occur for the j.

Church line. Hopefully, this work will make

sure this is more reliable.

And that concludes my report.

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you. Directors, any questions for

director hsu before we go to public comment?

Seeing none, I have a few, if I May ask. On the van ness incident, thank you for the report and the speed

of the report, getting it to us that quickly. Two questions. I assume that we're going to do

what we can to counsel the

employees, particularly the station agent involved to make

sure there is no lasting damage to that person and thank them for their quick service. I assume also we're going to

look at the barrier and revisit whether the barrier needs to be change or what safety upgrades

need to be made to the station? >> noted and we'll make sure that the counseling is on the list.

That is under discussion as well as evaluation of the

circumstances around the area.

>> Chair Heinicke:   then asking

what is a very object obvious

question, I'll asket, on the bus

substitution for the t-third line will that have affect on other bus service or the ability

to put coaches out on the other lines?

>> we're making every effort to

ensure that is not -- that service remains at the level we

expect it to for the rest of the city.

I will note that 83 and e line service will be cancelled during

this period so the operators can

be used to support service to ensure it doesn't come from other areas of the city.

>> Chair Heinicke:   at the risk

of stating the obvious, if there

is affect on other bus lines,

better to know sooner than later, better to be transparent

and communicate it to the riders

in advance so they can make plans accordingly.

Public comment on the director's report? >> the only person to turn in a

speaker card, this is restricted to topics that were just

discussed by acting director hsu.

>> Mr. Winer, welcome back.

>> the question of chariot, was that addressed by the board in this report? I came in late?

>> Chair Heinicke:   it was not.

>> I simply wanted to compliment the board on the possibility that the chariot riders will be hired by mta. I think it's a good move.

I hope they get the benefit.

And I wish everyone well in this endeavor.

>> Chair Heinicke:   okay. Even though you were off topic, since you complimented us, we'll allow it.

[Laughter].

Anyone else on the director's

report? Okay.

Moving on to item number 8. >> citizens advisory council report.

There is not a report today.

Moving onto item 9, opportunity

for the members of the public to

address the board, not on today's agenda. >> how many cards do you have?

>> 17. >> okay, two minutes for public comment.

That two minutes is a maximum. It's not a requirement. With that said, please call the

first few cards.

>> I'm mark --

>> Chair Heinicke:   welcome back. Nice to see you.

>> I'm a prop k medallion holder

and full-time driver for 30 years.

Although I'm sympathetic to the

hardships prop a medallion holders are going through and

believe quicker access to the

airport could possibly improve their income, the taxi industry

cannot afford to pay for the mistakes this agency has made

with the medallion sales program.

Imposing restrictions on 60% of

the taxi industry that already

is in short supply will not safe

safe -- save the industry nor

pay off the loans you owe to the credit union.

All medallions should be allowed to service the airport.

A lot of people still prefer

taxis instead of what we call

scab cabs such as uber and lyft.

Instead of helping us to be more

reliable and compete with 50,000t 50,000 roaming our streets, it will make it harder for the riding

public to get a taxi and it will eliminate more customers.

I urge all of you to reject his proposals. [Bell Ringing] The only way to co-exist with the unfair

competition we're faced with

today, and make the taxi industry prosperous again is to

achieve a level playing field in

the transportation for higher market. From mayor newsom to mayor

breed, no effort has been made in that direction.

I think it's about time to stop ignoring the elephant in the room. Thank you.

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you. You are always articulate. May I just take a moment and

say, how many of you are here in public comment to voice

something similar to what mr. fonseca said?

Okay and how many are you aware

of the memorandum that kate issued revising the proposals. So some, okay. You understand there has been a significant revision off of what this board adopted. I just wanted to make sure everyone is on the same page. We'll continue with public

comment.

Well, you're -- so...

>> and the board can't discuss an item not on --

>> Chair Heinicke:   I'm not

allowed to go off agenda, but I

wanted to make sure that this memo had been issued. We'll continue with the public comment.

Next speaker, please. >> thank you.

Speaking as a long time san

francisco are the and muni

rider, I wanted to share with

you a perception I've developed

over the years, that sfmta is not addressing the severe

problems muni faces with

anything close to the urgency that they demand.

Muni shares the same fate that

the taxi industry is currently confronting.

One anecdote that I'll share

with you, but it's one that I've experienced multiple times, today, coming here for this

meeting, I waited more than 30 minutes to catch the k.

When it finally came, it still

got held up at multiple intersections, red lights at

multiple intersections for

trivial minor streets.

When we get to where the k turns

from ocean, the signals let the cars go through the intersection first.

the k has to wait until after that.

A violation of the most literal sense of the charter transit first mandate.

That is one example of chronic

ongoing problems that muni is facing.

They've identified solutions to

that, but they are not getting implemented. Why does it matter? [Bell Ringing] In san francisco

and elsewhere, transit is losing ridership.

The resources board is saying

unless it's reduced, they have

no hope of meeting greenhouse gas emission targets.

I implore you in the coming year

to swiftly and systemically address these chronic ongoing problems.

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you very much.

Next speaker. Welcome back. >> congratulations, sir.

Mr. Heinicke.

I'm here to address this whole

question of the debt of all

these new medallion holders.

And we had a town hall meeting

in this room about three or four weeks ago.

And a suggestion was made by me

that possibly there could be a settlement.

And the settlement would be that

the mta would pay down the

purchase of these medallions by

$125,000.

Now that might sound like a lot

of money, but if this lawsuit is successful, it's going to cost

the mta approximately $160

million.

If you manage to do a paydown

and all you need is in the

offices, the good offices of the

city, a mediator, to look at

this issue before you go to the

extreme measures of killing the

taxi industry here, which we

need very badly.

When I addressed this issue, it

appeared -- [Bell Ringing] -- that the drivers that were

here -- and there were a lot on

that day, seemed that they might accept that offer. And I urge you to pursue something. I know the mayor is hopping mad

about this.

And so there is a possibility

of, through the mayor, through mediator, doing something. Because otherwise there will be no taxi industry in the city. Thank you.

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you.

Next speaker.

>> thank you, congratulations,

chair heinicke, vice chair borden.

With the taxi workers alliance and the san francisco coalition.

In the past few years, I and other drivers have been through

sacramento a number of times to

lobby on behalf of cab drivers against special privileges for u ber and lyft.

In visits to legislators office,

we were told instead of asking

TNCs to be regulated, why don't

you ask the taxi regulations to be relaxed. Regulation is necessary. Regulation is good.

It affords needed 0

protections to the worker.

Without it we have a race to the bottom. That's where we are now.

The regulation must be fair, evenhanded. these rules are not.

They're one sided, heavy-handed

and ill conceived. You're picking sides.

Choosing winners and losers.

That is not a legitimate function of regulation.

It's an abuse of power, strangulation.

Medallion holders who purchase medallions need help, but this

is not the way. Give them their money back.

Get a fresh start on a broken medallion system. Regarding this current plan, send it back to -- [Bell Ringing] -- drawing board.

If you need a vote to do that, take it up at the special meeting of January 29.

Because starting February 1, we drivers, medallion holders and cab companies and ultimately the public will be paying the price

for your mistakes. Thank you. >> Chair Heinicke:

next speaker, please.

>> good afternoon, Chairman

Heinicke and directors. I really didn't want to Miss The meeting.

I missed others because it's

hard for me to make this meeting.

But I had to be here how

disappointing and upsetting it

is for me to lose my job.

Sunday, monday, and tuesday, particularly, the slower nights,

the city is not as busy. She did no studies. She has no evidence. She just says words.

Mr. Trump said similar words. I don't know what side you're

on, but I do not like lies and I

do not like people giving information without showing

evidence just to improve their position.

You've shown empathy for us, but

other times destroying the cab industry.

This is the nail in the coffin to the taxi industry. There is a lot of questions that

have not been answered. Kate toran cancelled the meeting

last week where we can get questions answered.

We don't know how this is going

to be implemented. They said they made major

changes to the plan, but it's not major when you're giving privileges to the purchased medallions and putting us in the

back of the line and it could be

an extra hour or two before we get out.

That maybe one or a second trip out. [Bell Ringing] As other people discussed, there could be shortage of cabs and I'm not working and others are not working that know how to work the airport and not there, then

you have a shortage of cabs. So it creates a problem.

I don't think we want to send them to the other side. People are starting to come back to us. Don't do this.

Give us time, because the uber

and lyft drivers are squeezed

due it the rate changes. [Bell Ringing].

>> I hope you can understand.

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you.

Mr. Rath bone, welcome back.

>> good afternoon directors, I'm a san francisco taxi cab medallion holder.

I want to talk about process and three examples I believe are relevant here.

last year, I was a delegate from

your taxi task force, a process that explored transportation in

san francisco for the next 50 years.

The participants were especially

concerned with equity and income

disparities and "finding ways to build consensus to address such challenges and developing

effective ways to reduce inequities".

The facilitators that guided the

process, I was impressed bethe outcome.

-- by the outcome. Some years ago commissioner

heinicke convened a working group. We examined every possible angle and laid the groundwork for a

good plan that solved a lot of problems and had a lot of winners.

It was a good plan from a good process.

Yet another good process was the emerging technology group.

Chris and I participated with

people from lyft, chariot, mta

and other organizations.

Here's what was said.

We invited interest party and took consensus. Directors, the new airport rules

are an example of poor process.

Indeed a process failure.

Instead of consensus this causes extreme divisiveness.

Instead of balancing interests,

it worsens inequity amongst identical taxi cabs.

Please send this plan back to

the process stage.

Get a good facilitator to find a solution. >> Chair Heinicke:

next speaker, please. >> thank you very much for listening to me.

i'm just trying to tell you, I'm

one of the pre-k owners and we're hurting.

It's not just our medallions, but it's also the families behind us.

The drivers, and the children, too.

So please re -- re -- try not

to -- thank you.

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you,

Mr. Wong, for coming down today. >> thank you.

So this airport ban is a bad

policy for the public, for the

taxi drivers, for the companies,

for the medallion holders.

It will hurt tourism and

business convention as well.

Various city supervisors -- the

purpose is to cut the tide of forfeiture by medallion

purchasers, but there is a

separate ish of $50 million that

the credit union can slam dunk you out of. It's clear you fleeced them. The public understands you needed the money for new buses, so I would suggest a bond

measure augmented by a tax to

pay for the damage done and to make people whole who have

purchased the medallions.

The report seemed preordained and just to have the finding

that the way to respond to the taxi industry being crushed by

being outnumbered 30 to 1,

45,000tnc versus the fleet size. That's absurd. I call your attention to the transportation code, there is

something called a surrender policy.

Where if a buyer market emerges,

mta gets 20% of the sales value

of the 800 medallion holders who committed their lives to getting

the permits get the other 80%. rather than you're taking the $40 million, I think you want

the full $200 million, so rather

than wait for the buyout, you're

setting us up where we can't possibly operate. We call on the commissioners, the directors here to change this policy. Maybe have a bond measure and do the right thing. Not crush the cab industry.

Thank you.

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you.

Next speaker, please.

>> my name is ben. After the last board meeting I

decided to cash in my chips of

15 years in the cab and went

out, bought a car, signed up for lyft. I'm making so much money. As a cab driver I'm killing it out there.

If I turn on my phone right now,

I'm going to get a call. It doesn't ever stop. It feels unfair, as someone who was in the cab industry for 15 years, like, I didn't have to pay any money to the city or anything.

I just down loaded an app and I'm making like two grand a week. This is crazy. So like charge us a thousand

dollars a year, right? The lyft and the uber drivers,

that is really like peanuts. That is 40,000 drivers, that is

$40 million a year and that will

bail out these medallions and we

won't have to make everybody all upset.

And half the medallions will pay it off. I'd pay thousand dollars a year

to keep the fountain of money in my pocket going. i'd be happy to pay a thousand dollars a year. And the drivers don't want to do

that, there are driving in from

bakersfield and sacramento, maybe they shouldn't be driving

in, go out to the marina,

they're all sleeping in the

parking lot. It's crazy.

>> thank you very much. Next speaker, please.

>> my name is -- good afternoon, everybody. I'm here.

I'm medallion.

We are 640 people with the

medallion, $250,000.

This time we are surviving.

We are totally out of business.

There is no business. Lyft took all our business, uber. We want your help to give us

break.

Or give us price and pay the city.

And we are satisfied, otherwise,

what the mta do this --

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you very much.

Next speaker, please.

>> good afternoon, board of directors. I'm evelyn.

I'm the owner of alliance cab, small business cab company.

I'm here to tell you that this

plan will ruin the industry.

259 pre-k cabs will be banned from the airport. Others will be given second class treatment and wait 4-5 hours before they get a ride. If you think that banning the cabs from the airport will bring

supply to the city, let's look

at reality.

There are 40,000 clogging the streets of san francisco.

the drivers are not going to go

to the city that is dominated by them.

They will not rely on uncertainty to put food on their

table and pay for their rent.

Let me just give you an example

of the superiority of our competitors that are truly the

root of the problem and that sfmta has not found a way to control.

In the last J.P. Morgan convention last week, a big

group arrived at the airport the day before. There were a lot of -- there is about 200 people there. There were a lot of cabs lined up in the street. Despite the rain, they did not

take the cab.

They were waiting for uber.

One lady took my cab and told my

driver, you know, J.P. Morgan

gave us instructions they will only pay company cards if they use uber.

Not even lyft. Why?

Because J.P. Morgan will be part

of the uber ipo.

What is the domino effect of this? Cabs will sit in the yards. Companies that are paying for the cabs and insurance will crumble and fold up. It will open more avenues for

the ubers and the lyft.

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you very much. >> you will have ruined the

industry and there is no turning back. Hi. I'm here to talk about the randall street.

Thank you for taking that up.

First of all, I'm asking the

bored to put the randall bike rack on hold.

I want to make you aware of the problems with the selection process. The approval that happened on

September 6, also ignores the

citizens advisory council

suggestion that all of the go bike racks be approved by this

board and not a single engineer. Concerned neighbors who know the

traffic patterns and the safety

issues of this location better

than any city hall traffic

engineer nearly unanimously opposed the rack placement. And these neighbors and families

came out in person to say so. About a dozen showed up at the

original hearing on July 6, which was the friday after fourth of July when the city was a ghost town.

And then many, many more showed up at the sfmta observation hours we demanded.

Dozens sent in protests and 70 neighbors signed petitions which

were presented to this board

last summer and shared with the sfmta staff.

It motivates ramped up P.R.

Campaign to get the site

approved, sfmta ignored the signatures. The staff and families got no

notices of either the hearing or the observations.

To understand the other assisted

dying -- side, they did not live

within a half mile of the area.

And were prompted by a zealot to comment.

Over 13 of the e-mails were by him.

He was copied. Over the two observation periods less than a half dozen of those

people showed up while dozens of

people in opposition.

This site, we know the area. [Bell Ringing] We live there.

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you.

>> we're concerned about the safety of the kids, thank you.

>> you heard director torres

will be pursuing that with staff.

Thank you, next speaker, please. >> good afternoon.

I'm also here about the randall site.

I live a block from the site.

It's an area of southern valley, northern glen park, a

traditional neighborhood that includes the fair mount.

I'm here to request this board

adopt the cac recommendations to have the board approve bike share sites. We asked that the recently

approved randall site be placed

on hold and nearby alternatives be explored. We support bike share, our concerns are with a very particular location in front of the school on a very narrow, busy street.

A location that was already a congestion and safety concern for the community.

Going back quite a ways. The bike share program has recognized the problems with the

street and chosen toing I

ignore it.

The traffic of 280, the traffic

of school, pick up and drop off, children running across the

street, ignoring crossing guards, if there even was a crossing guard. There is not.

This is a problem in the community.

No one looked at to see the safety of this before they

thought about putting it in there. The bike program we inquired

about how the site was originally selected.

And we've been given nothing of substance.

They've often -- what they've

given us lacked verifiable data. For instance, they recently said

when approving the 22nd street

site, that their criteria was 90% slope.

Well, randall is 11.5% slope at the very least.

They said, well, it was 11% earlier.

And then said it was 12%. That varies. What they --

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you, sir.

>> what motivation --

>> Chair Heinicke:   sir. Your issue has been heard.

In fairness to everybody we will enforce the time limit. Thank you for coming down and your service to the

neighborhood.

>> yes, good afternoon.

And thanks for this opportunity to speak.

>> Chair Heinicke:   you're welcome. Please.

>> for years driving taxi in san

francisco with clean record and san francisco because we have

loan to pay. And this loan affects separated

me from my family.

I have five children, damaged my

credit card, my living.

So we support the medallion for

one thing, we -- if free

medallion, if you want to work

and join, purchase medallion, nothing wrong with that. if you want to keep driving taxi, there is good opportunity and that's the only help we can get from the city, because we

know the city of san francisco,

they're not going to kick uber and lyft out. We know that. We need help with the proposal. We support it.

And anybody, as me, I drive for

a free medallion and most of my friends. No problem with nobody.

So purchased medallion is going to be great opportunity from

what I see to be able to make a

little money, a living, to pay the loan.

So when the free medallion comes and anybody interested to stay

in this job in my view, welcome.

Drive with purchased medallion, because 23 years in this job, I just want to retire. I want to stay with my family and my kids.

It's not that complicated.

We have no problem with nobody. And with extra money we pay to the bank, because we have a loan. And other people, they have no loan.

If my house is paid off, I don't care.

I live anywhere. [Bell Ringing].

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you very much.

>> you're welcome.

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you.

Next speaker, please. >> thank you.

I am medallion buyer. The other day I was reading through the contract that I signed when I bought the

medallion and in the contract, the mta promises that the value of the medallion would be kept

at $250,000.

And the sales program continues. And none of this is happening right now.

The value of the medallion has plummeted way down.

And there is no sale, no medallion sale for, I don't know, long time, maybe a couple of years.

Anyway, we have invested our life savings on those medallions, okay?

I'm speaking on behalf of myself and other people.

Thousands of people are

suffering because of a mistake

mta has done by pricing the

medallion at this price. And then everything collapsed

when uber and lyft came to the

scene.

Anyway, we are not here against pre-k medallions. We don't want them to be hurt,

but we have invested our money, our life savings into those things. Too many of us are not having

enough money to pay for the rent.

Some of them lost their houses.

Now this procedure is at the airport. It's good. It's not enough.

I'm sure -- I mean, when -- even further, they're going to be

drivers, buyers, who will commit suicide.

I mean this has happened already in other cities and in new york. I'm sure it's going to happen

very soon if the city does not

act very fast, very soon to help us.

You're going to hear stories of suicide.

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you very much.

Next speaker, please. Welcome, sir. >> good afternoon, board of directors.

Good afternoon.

My name is... I've been a taxi driver in san francisco for 30

years and I own k medallion.

We totally understand that sfmta has a crisis going. The crisis that sfmta has to

come up to pay for the purchased medallion owners.

But is that -- how is that fair

to say, k medallions took advantage of the purchased

medallion?

If you went to school. Somebody graduate today and say

to you, you graduated from low school, top school 20, 30 years

ago, you need to get out of the job, is that fair? That's what you're doing.

You're saying the k medallions, get out. Others come and work.

How is that fair?

K medallions, we can help the

purchased medallions.

We can pay 5, $10 extra per day

to work at the airport. You can collect that money, use their money to pay for their loans.

We have 900k medallion owners.

We can give you -- even if you

charged $200 per month, you can

collect more money.

Instead of just banning the

whole out of the airport, just

think about it, how can we come up with some kind of payment that we can use to help the

other guys.

That is better way than

kicking -- you have -- everybody has a family, sir.

>> Chair Heinicke:   thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

>> herbert winer.

>> herbert winer, passenger at risk.

I got the rudest new year

greeting from mta this morning

as I was embarking from the l, the door slammed on me. Now, this is dangerous.

People have actually died as a

result of these vehicles' doors slamming on them.

And I don't want to wait around

for a remedy until some member

of the mta board for mta management has a door slammed on

them. I could be injured or killed by

the doors slamming on me.

With the medallion policy, we have a double standard here. Why is it that the taxi drivers are extorted.

Please stand by. Please stand

by.

You better start catching up.

>> next speaker, please.

>> evelyn engel.

>> I don't own a medallion.

I'm going to be affected by this

compromise plan.

It stands to reason the cabs

that will be not be expedited and that's effectively a ban.

I drive mostly in the city but it's still going to hurt me. My income last year went down.

I expect it to go down next year

as well and even more because of

this plan.

Even or the I most workly in the

the -- work mostly in the city.

It's the only place we stand to

get a long ride from the airport. Soo this is

so this is going to hurt me and it's not going to be possible

for all drivers to purchase the medallion.

The other thing I'd like to

address is the discrepancy report.

Last May they said there was an

over supply of cabs and the mta said there's an under supply and seem to expect if they put more

cabs in the city, there'll be more rides.

That May not happen.

We can't pick up at messonic auditorium or the civic center

because they won't let us or at

the fullsome nightclub because

they come up with lights in your eyes and tell you to leave and

the tourists take uber and lyft and if put nor cabs we won't be able to do this job. >> thank you very much, next speaker please.

>> mary Mcgwire followed by mike spain.

>> I want to address the airport

lockout.

You're take subsidizing those

who have medallions.

The first group are barely making ends meet and some not even. Some are homeless.

They're renting the cabs for seven days and 24 hours a day

and living in their cars and in some cases even the cabs. Some are sleeping outside in the

cold. Where's your empathy for them.

Maybe you can send blankets or something to the cab company.

Another group you've forgotten, an important group is the public.

Not only do they want to take

cabs from sfo which under your plan won't be possible. Last January 7 from 12:00 A.M. To 6:00 A.M. There were 100 people at terminal 1 and terminal 3.

The drivers were going in and picking up the jp morgan people in the early morning hours. There were 100 people at both

stands because of the delays.

In the end people prefer the suv.

Have you determined the number of SUVs?

They like them for their luggage.

As time goes by there'll be a

greatly reduced number of cabs according to the consultant you hired that also works for uber and part of the plan to bring the supply to the city, there's

nothing in the plan to help us get more fares. No cab stands, red lanes, nothing in the capital improvements budget. Maybe I missed it but I didn't

see it.

You haven't looked at the

statistics involving cab drivers. How many originate at the airport? Zero. In case you haven't heard the streets of san francisco are not safe.

Cab drivers are there working in

towns they're re outinely

assaulted and not being paid and. >> thank you >> mike spain.

>> Mr. Spain, welcome back. Nice to see you. >> I don't want to have to come

back to this den of snakes.

So on October 16, you basically couldn't revoke permits.

You didn't have the votes so you

hand it over to the director to decimate one sector of the

industry to favor another. Someone once said when you rob

peter to pay paul, paul won't complain.

What is ironic is you opened up the industry to while you devalling the permit to others

you're saying to outsiders buy

the permits and start your own

company and they'll buy the most de devalued them. Don't give me the look. You'll drive down the value of the permits. They're a fixed cost while

operating a taxi cabin san francisco.

The insurance, the money to the color scheme and to the city.

The people that operate these

cabs, the color schemes will

have an almost impossible time finding drivers to drive the cabs because of the fixed cost of operating them.

The cabs will operate on a zero-income basis or the owners

of the cabs of the ones you have single singled out for the airport policy.

You seem to not understand by flooding the market with taxi cabs three years ago and creating this policy now where

you're under a lawsuit, this is the only answer that you've come up with. And by the way, this policy has

blown a hole in the clean air act. You've now threw that out the

window in the plan to save yourself and you'll have all the cabs ta take people out to the

airport coming back empty because they have to sit there for hours.

>> thank you, Mr. Spain.

>> Clerk:   next, peter miller. Frank faye.

>> thank you, everybody my name is peter miller.

I'm happy for ben up here saying

he's making $200,000 a month

driving for uber however he said. We have to remember people

making money like that are being subsidized by the companies and operating at a loss like chariot

was operating at a loss and just

went under so you need to

support environmentally

sustainable that isn't

undermining the clean air act and economically sustainable to keep going. It's sad because the city has chosen not to do anything to

create a more equitable situation. Nothing has done to regulate uber and lyft at the airport and

it's debatable whether the city

or mta argue about the authority.

They have sportsmanlike to do ---- they can do something

at the airport for equal inspection for uber drivers and

the city has chosen not to. Another thing that can be done because the real thing that needs to be done is the city

needs to refund the money to the

people who have recently bought medallions.

There's $180 million floating around in the educational fund that just popped up. That's some place we should look

at to try and do something for taxi drivers.

Some people are beginning to sleep in their cars.

That money is being -- about being used for the hopeless and let's use it to keep taxi cab drivers off the streets and

teachers should be paid more.

I considered being a teacher but

I felt wasn't being paid there and taxi cabs too.

Uber was just outlawed in brussels. It can be done.

It's been outlawed.

The court in brussels said they're providing taxi service would a taxi loons.

We need to do the -- taxi license without a license.

We need to do the same here.

>> Mr. Sahi. >> welcome back, nice to see you. >> thanks.

I'm usually a troll at these meetings as I've been the last

20 years.

I've seen the regulations reinvented and reworked several

times and not one came up with

the advent of ubers an PNCs

which is surprise which is these guys are supposed to be the most expert in the field of transportation and didn't foresee any of this. Anyway, I want to start with history.

Taxis have been around since

roman times.

I like to tell my passengers it's the third oldest professional, probably.

It's been regulated for a reason it's heavily regulated.

I can't think -- I don't know

that much about regulation but there's so much regulation it

keeps getting added to and added to and there's a reason for regulation. It's for the safety of the

public which is the most

important product that can be

shifd from dp -- shipped from one place to another and now

they say it's a state jurisdiction.

I don't see that reasoning behind there why there can't be

some regulation at left to pay for ,

at least to pay for the wear and tear on the streets of san francisco. Let's talk about this new

proposal to devalue k medallions.

This is clearly unequal

protection under the constitution.

It's imminent domain.

>> thank you, Mr. Fahe. Not troll-like at all. You were heard.

We heard everything you said.

Mr. Swise.

>> followed by taliq mamud.

>> I conducted an industry-wide anonymous survey regarding the

medallion reforms and got over three times the number your

staff got from their quote,

unquote sticky sessions in November.

The respondents indicated that over half their income comes

from sfo from pickups at sfo. 52% said they pick up at sfo at least one a day so the majority

of the people in the taxi cab

industry rely on sfo to make

ends meet and in our fleet 100% of drivers that drive the banned permits indicate they want another permit to drive on so in the process of taking all the permits off the street this is

something I predicted back in October 16th meeting that 60% of the cabs need to be taken off the road.

You don't have to see if that reality's going to come true, it

is coming true. You guys have been taking the approach of taking small changes

and see what happens, well, the

changes is not a compromise solution.

They not only banned the pre Ks

but the vehicles where if it's a

back-up vehicle those are also

banned and they've given

slightly effectively given much har harsher access for the prop k

med ol ons and we're -- medallions and all drivers are

asking for the medallion to

access the airport without restriction.

I have a chart here from SFOs

own data that shows DNCs -- TNCs

have gone up and it won't help reduce congestion.

>> for the benefit much our fellow board members tell us what company you run and the size of your fleet, please.

>> I manage yellow cab of san

francisco three fleets and yell

yo taxi and have approximately 4 5 cabs of the 455 in operation in the city. >> thank you for coming down and what you do for the industry. Next speaker, please.

>> tariq mamud followed by david e emanual. >> something said somebody who

came here 23 years ago was an

illegal immigrant and got a job

and citizenship and a medallion

and raised a family and now he

wants to kill other people by tabling away sfo from them.

That kind of person comes to

tell about medallion side not

caring the other people.

When sfo got 350 medallion they're parked there they're waiting time will be two to

three hours and they'll benefit zero-zero.

The entire project is garbage. Very simple path. Now the people talking about the loan, loan, loan.

They are the beneficiary much this medallion.

A simple driver pays $100 to the company for running the shift

and $3,000 a month. The medallion who bought it

before five years ago, are two loans.

One is paid off, second loan is

now running which is $1100 a month payment next and if somebody messed up it's their headache and the loan payment

total is $2500, I paid $3,000

and I have no medallion and I have no medallion and they're crying and their medallion will

be in their family forever and ever. This is another thing.

Now, talking about what decision

has been made.

He should not be on the board

regarding taxi. He's never loyal for the drivers.

Thank you.

>> thank you, Mr. Mamud.

>> david emanual and rimark minakowitz.

>> I want to talk about the bike

share program proposed for randal street and I'll keep my points brief.

One is we want bike share in our neighborhood. We're very involved in the

process and recommended

alternate sites one 300 feet and one 1,000 feet away. During the process we don't understand why there hasn't been a serious effort by the agency

to investigate and look at these sites to see if they can work.

The second point is that the site's been on hold six months and we've been trying to find

out what is the procedure that

is used to take under consideration, concerns, support, opposition and all that type of thing during the hold

period and we've been unable to find that out and found out what has the agency done differently

in the last six months than they had done previously to select the site. Thank you very much for your consideration. >> thank you for coming down.

Next, next. >> good afternoon, welcome.

>> good afternoon I've been

driving the taxi 25 years in san francisco and I just want to say

the issue of the airport and throwing out certain medallion

owners and letting certain ones

go first and the k go last it's

all a waste of time.

Why are we even here?

First off, there's always

usually 300 cabs in the airport.

Every hour it's moving out.

Rotating 1,000 cabs every three hours. If you start limiting who can go in, you'll never have enough

taxis at the airport ever. There'll be calling for extra.

And the 300 there are always in

there is a mixture of all the medallion holders and the drivers who work for the medallion holders. This whole thing is ridiculous.

A waste of time and hurting all

the drivers and the other point,

it's so simple to solve the problem.

give the money back to the medallion holders that bought.

They can't even make a living. They're starving trying to pay that payment. That whole thing was a big mistake.

Should have never happened to

make them buy medallions in 2010

when she -- the city new full

well uber was already working and nobody knew who was going on

and it was a trick and they tricked these guys into buying

these medallions knowing uber

and lyft is out there and now destroying. The traffic is a chaos in the city and chaos at the airport because of the uber and lyft drivers. 50,000 on the streets.

It's like a war zone out there. They don't know how to drive the city.

They go the wrong way on the one-way streets pippen counter them every day.

I work airport and the city.

They cut everybody off, middle lanes and right. They cut everybody off.

It's a disaster and we're organized. >> thank you very much.

>> and they try to take over our taxi zone too which nobody's done anything about that yet.

>> to keep it fair, your time is up, next speaker please.

>> the past person to turn in the speaker gard on this general public comment.

>> very good, okay.

An earful director. I'd ask a summary or comments

from the taxi industry be conveyed to Mr. Rand and you

heard from director torres on

following up on the glen park

issue and the staff will be communicated from the valley neighborhood with that we'll

move on to item under 10.

>> Clerk:   Mr. Chair, directors,

item 10 is your consent calendar and all are considered to be routine unless the member of the

board severs an item and wishes

a separate discussion.

And d, e, k and l have been searchered by members of the public.

>> do that again.

>> Clerk:   10.2, d and e by one

member of the public and then k

and l by another member of the public. >> okay.

So we have 10.1 and 10.2 and

10.3 all yej but take without

10.2d, e, k and l if I can

entertain a motion to approve. Second? Thank you, vice chair borden. All those in favor say aye.

You will -- all opposed?

Ms. Bloomer, who severed those?

>> Clerk:   Mr. Toronto. >> you come forward.

You 10 minutes to talk about these.

>> first, it's great to see the

wonderful traffic engineer

ricardo alejo.

He's a genius.

Anyway, there's a mislabelling in the agenda. If it's labelled properly

there's no problem and he can

explain but the way it's labelled it shows duplication here. So it doesn't make sense if you

read the two out it says no left

or u-turns northbound.

It looks like patrel avenue -- 22nd avenue is divided on the east side and west side. They don't connect. they're separate.

So it explains it but the way

it's listed in the agenda, it's

not properly agendized.

>> May I interrupt you? Have you explained this to staff?

>> they explained what's on the packet is different than the agenda. >> would staff like to speak to

this and bring this in the same line.

>>

>> Commissioner:   can we address

this so the right lines go in?

>> I'm city traffic engineer.

The agenda has an error in the

sense that the pair -- parenthetical east and west missing and the streets are offset but the package is

correct. >> can I have a motion to

conform the items so the pact controls -- >> why do we need a motion? >> motion to confirm. >> second.

>> all those in favor, please say aye. >> aye. >> very good. >> point of clarification, does

the city attorney need to make a matter.

>> I think we have a clear record of what we're doing, everybody on the same page.

All in favor of 10. D and e say aye. Anyone opposed? Very good.

Ms. Boomer who severed 10.2k now?

>> Clerk:   melanie.

>> the floor is yours.

>> thank you so much.

Every time for several months

now every time I walk down the

street I see people formerly

sheltered in RVs now on the

sidewalk with thousand of stuff in the rain.

A woman told me without warning

her vehicle was towed three days

ago and she rented it and the

owner never informed her of a parking ticket and said she feels like I'm losing my mind

and another person who's rv has been attacked with a knife

through a tent and her remaining property fill property pilfered and destroyed.

You can't imagine the anguish of

being given 15 minutes to get out. The city refers to as a team but

I can tell you it is an army of

two to four police officers and

10 to six dw crew and several

tow trucks and a team of 15 to 20 city official come out and

make a public spectacle of you

until you're left standing on

the sidewalk in utter despair. Watching them seize your property with no power to stop them.

This is about humiliating and

punishing people without resources. Approximately five navigation

centers hold approximately 450

of for instance -- san

francisco's 7500 people.

We're being offered empty, unsustainable solutions again.

Please do not do this.

Thank you so much. >> thank you very much. Any other public comment.

I'll en entertain a motion. >> motion to approve.

>> is there a second? Okay.

All in favor, please say aye. >> aye. >> any opposed? >> no. >> who is the opposed?

>> vase chair

>> vice chair borden.

Acting director with an eye on

that Ms. Boomer.

I believe the items to the

extent they are rv banned not on

the consent calendar I May be not remembering that.

Not to single her out but if our

vice chair is going to vote no

as a matter of course, which is completely fine, I don't think

they should being on the consent calendar. Maybe the course for that is if it's close to the line and want

to check with vice chair about the meeting that's fine.

I don't want board members missing things on consent calendar.

It should be for things staff has no reason to believe anyone would vote no on.

That brings us to the agenda.

Back to the regular agenda to item 11.

>> Clerk:   Mr. Chairman, item 11, presentation and discussion

regarding rail service.

>> there's no seat there but if it were it'd be warm. Thank you for braving this and

coming down today.

>> take it easy on me.

>> thank you, good afternoon,

julie kirshbaum, acting director of transit.

I'm here to have an honest and

frank discussion on the subway performance.

The subway is the backbone of our system and when it's plagued with delays the overall system suffers. Our customers have the expectation that the train

service will be reliable and

when it is not and when that has

been compounded by not having

accurate customer information,

their trip is not a good trip.

So what we've been focussed on

in the transit division and also

agency wide is what we can do to understand the issues we're having in the subway, to address

them in both the short, medium

and long term.

One of our greatest legacies is we're the oldest transit system

in the country but with it comes challenges.

This is certainly not the subway

I would have designed in is in city.

It's extremely unforegiving.

Even when everything goes correctly, we experience a lot of challenges.

We have five routes that show a single trunk. We're one of very few systems

that goes from mixed traffic on

the surface to a dedicated automatic train control system in the subway. We have three lanes that turn

around add embarcadero where we

only have two turnaround slots. So if we slip our turnaround

time by 30 seconds or a minute,

the delays propagate through the

whole system.

We also run frequent service and are living right now with an old

train control system.

As you know from previous issues

we're working with old train and those work against us as we

deliver day to day service.

The sources of delay are spread in a number of areas.

Our largest number of incidents are related to the train control

system.

That includes a train that is in automatic mode and it includes

when we have disturbed segment

clocks or segments of the subway

where no train can be in

automatic while [Indiscernible] Is the largest number of delays

we suffer most from the vehicle breakdowns. They make up about a third of

the incidents in the subway but make up about half the total they are. There's other things we do experience in the subway that we

have less control over we regularly respond to passenger emergencies and altercations but they're a small portion relative

to what we're seeing in terms of

vehicle breakdowns and atcs or

automatic train control system breakdowns. The last area I'd like to flag

for you is not when a train is

completely stopped, but another

delay is slow-moving trains. It's often caused, for example,

by a single train which instead

of being an automatic has to go

through the subway manual mode.

An automatic train can travel in different parts of the subway

upwards of 40 to 50 miles an hour. The max speed for a manual train

is 25 miles an hour. We see this slow-moving train

with six, seven, eight trains

backing up behind it in part because our service is so

frequent. In the last month we have seen

an uptick in complaints on the subway not just from board

members.

We have seen the number of incidents are down but the time per incident has almost doubled.

What that means is the ins cidents we are having are more severe and more disruptive to more

people. Troubling patterns is since the

fall we've seen an uptick in incidents and again in December

the time per incident increase.

On the train side the biggest incidents have to do with how

the trains are connected to one another.

We call where the two trains

meet is the coupler.

When the couplers are having

challenges, there's multiple systems in the vehicles that react poorly.

So it May translate into a propulsion problem or a break

problem or a step problem but

they all fall into an overall

bucket of what we call a train line which is how the trains are connected. So that's an area we've been

very focussed on and are trying

too systematically go through

the entire fleet and when we find two trains happy together, we're doing what we can to keep them connected. So you might for example, being seeing more two-car trains than you would expect on some lines on the weekends.

That's because we made a deliberate decision that hey,

those trains are working. We're going to keep them

together.

The last part I want to call

your attention to is meaning per

line and this is not intended to cause a seizure.

It's intended to show some of

our lines are behaving more

eradcally than -- erratically

than others and when they have gaps, they tend to have high gaps in service.

That's also of a big concern to us and something we've been look at overall.

When we do start the warriors construction that is going to

give us a couple months to look

closely at the kt line and see

what we can do to smooth out the

service including having now that we increased the number of

train operators and new trains,

placing them at a key location

so we can fill any gaps with an

empty train.

The improvements are important

to the day to day operations.

This morning we experienced six

breakdowns which is six

breakdowns too many. It's important this month because the warriors

construction at the chase arena is incredibly complex for our rail system.

We are not going have access at

all to the mme yard for 16 days.

That's our newest most modern yard. It's where we're doing

significant chunk of our maintenance so the trains we

pull out January 22 represent the universe of the trains we have access to.

Furthermore, we have about 35 trains each night that aren't

going to go back to a

maintenance yard at all and

they'll go to sixth and king and

along third street near channel.

So the things I'm talking

through are going to be especially important so during

the construction work, we provide as high a quality service on our rail system and in in the subway in particular.

So some of the things that we'll

be focussing on in the short term include terminal management.

we have to start turning trains

faster particularly at embarcadero.

If you look back ot -- at our data, 18 months to two years ago we were turning trains very

quick quickly. We've now slipped a little and

added about a minute to each

turn around time. That requires both supervision,

having enough staff on the platform.

Even what seems like and what seems like an operator and the

person relieving them for the

restroom and can lead to a service delay. The second thing we're going to

be looking at at west portal, since the twin peaks project we

have experienced some challenges at that signal creating delay at

a location we didn't previously

have it.

And we'll look at the peak at

having the inspectors manually expedite to get trains out of

the subway so we don't have that back up in queue.

We are also going to be putting

in improvements to the software

and there'll be a new panel and

the inspector can move the

switches from a single location

and we can get those through.

I already talked about the gap train.

Most immediately we'll be

putting one at beach yard which

will help us with running time

challenges we'll have on the m

line as well as the "j" and

rolling that out to third

street.

We'll continue to work on the

couplers which we feel is our failure right now and look at putting a more maintenance staff in the subway both on the signal

side and on the mention antic

side so -- mechanic side so if we have a breakdown we're responding as quickly as possible. The two other places I want to talk about is on the infrastructure side and on the customer service. On the infrastructure side, we

are going to be increasing the

maintenance window for the embarcadero turnaround. For example, in the early morning and late night, we don't have a lot of trains in the subway.

We can live without one pocket.

What that will mean is that they

can do a very deep dive on the preventive maintenance and inspection of the switches.

We are also going to be preemptively replacing some of

the motors in our oldest switches.

It is in our capital program to replace the switches in the subway. We've already replaced two

critical ones, controlling

church and debost and we'll continue to replace switches as

we get in new equipment but we also have a lot of older switches in the subway and replacing the motors is a

proactive way of preventing failure. And then the last area that

we're going to be incredibly focussed on is customer information. My goal is to not have delays and when we have delays to

respond to them more quickly but

the absolute lowest hanging fruit is to make sure if we have a delay, we're communicating on

it.

Our current communication

infrastructure is getting better

but limited and we have the new

audio and platform signs and over the next 90 days we'll work

to refine how we use those. I think in some cases we May be

over using them and I think we

need to come up with more standard ways of distinguishing

what is routine peak period

congestion versus what is an

actual mechanical breakdown that

will hold somebody up an extended period of time.

And towards the tail end of the next 90 days and early April, we're finally going to be

rolling out the new radio on our

trains and what that is a game changer in terms of customer

information in the subway.

It is going to allow us to more easily communicate in the trains.

The first thing it will do, it

will allow us to preprograms

operators can use and it's our

training all operators have announcements with delays but we

have a broad range of english skills, comfort speaking and

things like that so having pre-programmed messages saying

we apologize for the delay, we

have a mechanical issue up ahead

will give operators more tools.

Right now we have a single microphone for the rail system.

If a controller is making an announcement to officers, it

means they're not managing the incident. It means they're not talking with operators. It means they're not talking with other key staff.

The new radio affords us the

ability to do multiple things at

the same time and it will

improve the audio in the vehicles themselves because

there's often times when we'll

make announcements but it sounds garbles because of the old system. The new radio comes equipped

with new audio so the quality

of the audio will improve. Looking and we're looking to

replace the aging control system and those are things we're actively working towards but we

need the subway to work now.

And these improvement steps are

intended to do that and minimize

the likelihood of a breakdown, improve our response time when

we have a breakdown and

communicate on it bitter. >> thank you very much good

communicate on it better. >> thank you very much.

Do we have comment?

>> Clerk:   Mr. Peterson. >> I'll ask you to speak and you

can come back for board members

and questions which I know there are.

Mr. Peterson. Welcome, thank you for coming down today. >> my name is christopher peterson again. Thank you very much for the

presentation on this issue. I'm happy to see the problems have been identified.

I want to stress how utterly dysfunctional the west portal

station is especially during the evening

evening communicate.

It's routine to have problems

and you're torturing your passengers when they're stuck

and you should be addressing the technical issues that were identified but I also think you should be looking at the

management of the intersection

outside the station commonly you have trains on the verge of

leaving and some cars make left

turn or some passenger decides to walk or pedestrian decides to

walk in front of the train.

I think you should give series commission how the intersection

is managed or no left turns or

some way to minimize how much it's delaying the trains.

I hope you look beyond just

technical fixes and how can you

really genuinely give the muni rail priority in getting through that intersection efficiently. >> thank you, well said, Mr. Peterson. Thank you.

Bort members, questions or

comments for Ms. Kirshbaum. Director

director eaken.

>> thank you for the thoughtful approach.

You mentioned replacing the trains and addressing the control system.

I wonder if there's any data on

the performance of the new light

rail systems and the hypothesis

the newer vehicles will have fewer

fewer breakdowns by data collected and want you to talk more about the concern of not

switching over to an automated concern system and is the matter

of replacing the control system

is it a matter of cost and is there budget identified to make

those replacements? >> yes, I don't have specific

data on the new trains but we're seeing them increasingly improve

in their performance. We did have some challenges

early on getting the train control systems to communicate consistently and effectively

with the new trains and in some

cases it's led to an information

break which flattened the wheels and took the train out of

service but we've been working

on software upgrades with the manufacturer of the train control system to address those. I believe we're trending in the right direction and ultimately

the new trains will be much more

reliable in the subway.

We do have a portion of the funds needed to replace the

train control system identified

in the capital plan and we'll be more fully addressing that in

the next two-year budget cycle.

But the resources we need now to start planning and designing are in place and we're actively

working on it.

The new technology is much more modern.

For example, it would replace anything intricately wired in

the subway to a passive wireless tag, for example.

And we do intend to do an

overlay replacement.

So as we bring on the new system, we would still continue

to rely on the old system.

So we have started the preliminary planning process for

the train control system and it will be one of our highest

priority as we enter the next capital planning cycle.

>> just a quick follow-up, if as the data becomes available and the performance of the new vehicles, if you could bring that to us that would be wonderful to see and would be

great to see for the new train

control system, best, most realistic realistic realistic

realistic realistic scenario and when the cost might be. >> you mentioned a new radio. When is that going to be installed?

>> it's been on our busses a

year and a half but it's been technically complicated to install on the trains.

And we've had a couple of fleet defects the manufacturer has replaced. We're now in the process of the

final activation of each car.

And all of the technical details have been addressed and we anticipate by the beginning of

April we should be getting that. >> great.

Then I was wondering if you saw particularly with the cars when you're talking about the doors

and other issues, are there

correlation with weather or temperature we're noticing to

better predict the problems? >> the rain always creates

problems on the older vehicles.

The there's filters and critical systems very exposed underneath

the train.

We're very vigilant about standing water and make sure the trains aren't standing over it

and we check areas we know to be prone to weather failures but

rain typically creates nor -- more challenges.

>> like we know this week it's going to rain and wednesday's

going to be the worse day, do we staff up and try to plan in advance of that?

>> we do.

We do with debris and subway pumps. >> and do we have a way of

looking more predictively of the data?

I think you mentioned the

extended times of the delays and

we can probably predict delays like a door they are probably makes 10 minutes, I don't know, I'm making that up but maybe a

person on the track is an hour delay. Can we use that to gauge? I think the biggest challenge is

when someone's waiting at a tunnel or a train stuck between

two stations it's one thing to know it will be five minutes or guesstimate five minutes and

another thing to know or five minutes but not knowing people get stressed where they need to be and are at the station and they don't have enough information to make a decision

to stay on the train or go above surface.

Also I'd love to hear how we communicate, I know you said we

had issues because of the one microphone system but how to better communicate when we know in the station it will be 20

minutes to the drivers at the

street level whether it will be 20 minutes to people can decide to take street transportation. In the downtown core people have that options. Other parts once you get further

out of the core it's more

challenging but there's always busses on the lines.

Do we have the capability to be

able to communicate that now? >> we do. It will be more elegant when

they're in the same location but

they communicate constantly.

Evacuate bus operators be aware

and make announcement like a connection, it's something our operators ask for and something

I think has a lot of benefit and something we're trying to be more disciplined to communicate in staff when we have these

delays.

I'll take back the idea of other

types of delays and the time associated with them.

We do make some automatic judgment like there's never a

quick overheadline delay. If we can get the vehicle

moving, that's the most important thing.

When the vehicles are stopped and we can't get it moving and

we either have to toe it or wait

for a major repair, that's when

we're getting stuck.

There's so much out there in predictive analytics and we can

run our scenarios run through that it'd be great. If we can tell people an estimated amount of time and granted they can't hold us to it but it gives a gauge if they're trying to make a meeting or whatever it is. I think that's the biggest challenge when people don't know if it's going to be 5 minutes or an hour.

That's the kind of thing that matters. We have enough data we could probably easily run it through to figure out.

In materials of the doors, so -- in terms of the doors, what do

we do proactively like there's

certain trains that often have

door issues and have we looked

at on rainy days maybe locking that set of doors or whatever because we know it will potentially be a problem? I know it's inconvenient to make

people move down the platform or

the bus stop but I think if people knew that would prevent them from being delayed they'd be fine with it.

>> we haven't gotten down to the

detail of a specific door but we are very focussed right now on

what we could call a repeater.

So a vehicle that's breaking

down multiple times for the same

problem and we're trying to sit

those until we can diagnose the

problem and convince ourselves

with confidence it belongs back

in the system.

>> I guess that's mostly -- the other consumer information,

again, it goes all together. If we can better inform people

in advance of them getting on

the system and also have a

contingency plan more quickly for what they can do.

Don't know if we run special sut shuttles.

How quickly can we mobilize to pick up people?

>> it can take 30 minutes to an hour.

If it's something like market

street we have a lot of built-in service that can support.

>> can we look on rainy days

having a contingency shuttle or two for convenience and I know

we don't have extra drivers

around but how to maybe deploy

because those days are often terrible on the streets so

getting out a shuttle will take longer anyhow. >> director brinkman. >> thank you for a great presentation. It's helpful to have so much information and drill down to

where the problems are happening. Fascinating to hear the new trains aren't perfect out of the box day one but have issues that are somewhat different to the older trains so I'm glad to hear they're working better on the lines.

We all look at those and think they're our nights and shining armor coming to rescue the system. First point, when we don't have

access to mme for the 16 days

and the trains are going to be

stored not at the yards but the

street I assume we have security crawling all over the night?

>> 4 -- 24 hours. >> great.

And I would support absolutely anything that we think we need

to do as a stop-gap measure

until we have improved the train

control system whether it'sp --

it's PCOs or making rush-hour in turns for cars.

Whatever we can do to get the

trains out of the tunnels quickly, I think every member on

the board and anyone who rides the trains would support.

And when the new radios come on

all trains will come on day one? All will have radio access? >> yes. >> good. And thank you again for the presentation. I know it's challenging and I feel we are making good progress and again anything that we can

support that helps get us through this challenging period, we're there for you.

>> directors?

>> thank you, chair heinicke.

When I heard about the break I wonder how many are versus the

old because there's hope we'll

make more progress as we switch

over the trains and the other thing I wanted to highlight is i was on the train the other day

and it was a new lrv and I think

it got triggered and we were

there five or six minutes but

everyone was getting antsy and

the piece of guesting an announcement, the emergency stop

has been triggered, sounds forward and it sounds like a plan in place around communications with the driver. The presentation's very helpful. Thanks. >> director torres.

>> when will you be permanent? Def

>> she May not want the job

after I'm done with it.

Well, take that as the compliment that it is and I appreciate you coming here and doing it.

I know you're new to the role

and know some things are things you're new in deal with. I think what qualifies me most

to be the chair of this board is

the fact I ride this thing every day.

It's no secret to anyone who rides it and I've been clear

with you and director raskin the service has been spotty at best since the closure.

You talked about the warriors.

For me, as with everybody who

rides it, it comes down to stories and for me it's two basketball games.

I took my kids to the oracle

arena and came back on bart just fine.

Got in the tunnel, it's late for

small children or medium children as these two are and

found ourselves at a delay at

vanes for 45 minutes late at night.

No communication no overahead announcement or what's going on and it's not telling us a driver coming the other way.

I stop and show my badge and say what's going on, he doesn't know.

The situation was bad because

you had a lot of passengers including high school students and younger coming home from the game stranded at the platform and for their parents who wanted to know what was going on, they had no information.

So we failed those riders at two levels. Similarly to Mr. Peterson's point, later in the week I'm going to watch my son's basketball game.

Shut you had be a 30 minute ride

and turns into an 50 minute ride

and again no announcement.

Again the service for the past

six has been spotty. The communication around the

service incidents have been worse. Passengers are frustrated because they're not hearing what's going on.

And they don't understand. What's frustrating to me a

little bit is I understand you're dealing with aging equipment and systems and have been candid and trans parent about that and an appreciate

that personally, but the system

functioned better eight months

ago so we know it can be done. So I want the public to know the

board gets it.

We're not oblivious to it and we see it and get it. You've identified problems I've been hearing about for the 12

years I've been on this board.

I talked about some of the solutions but I'd like to talk

about accountability for those solutions. We spend a lot of time on the board talking about plans for

things that are 20 years off in the future.

Sea rise, these beautiful thoroughfares we May or May not build and that's fine but what

we want customers to know about

is about the present.

We get an awful lot of phone

calls and e-mails about the present.

We hear about the bus service too but I'll start with the metro service.

I'd like to request once a month through the director's report or an agenda item like this, we

have a report back on how the issues are going and specifically, what I would like

to hear is what were the major delays, as you very well put it

the disruptive delays, the ones

that really disrupt commuters' lives and what caused them and

what we're doing to fix it. I will tell you if we keep hearing the same cause and

proposed solution over and over again, that will be frustrating. The second thing, and I welcome

your input on this is a metric.

For me, for the metro service it

seems we can chart the service

time so I propose that as a metric. You're the transit expert.

If you think there's a better metric but we need something

objective to report to the riding community about where we stand.

And then finally, the west portal issue is one, the

turnaround at embark dare yo -- embarcadero is another.

I wouldn't be true if I didn't

mention the notion of shuttle

service to turn back platforms

at embarcadero and west portal

and have twin peaks tunnel.

As I said to Dr. Raskin the experience during the twin peaks

tunnel that was encouraging was

the efficiency.

We joked I'd be easy on you.

I know you're new to the job and know with the system and the

metro system in particular but this is a serious situation. It's not working well.

And if our mission is to get people out of the cares and into the system, the system needs to

work well and when it's not working well they ned to hear and understand why it's not working well.

To me, the difference between having in central command give

up control for 15 or 20 seconds to let thousands of people in the tunnel know what's going on,

that's a no-brainer.

Let the customers know what's going on and if we need to staff that differently in add advance

of the radio change, do that.

I don't want to go through all the solutions, you know them

better than I do, but I have to

say this, it's got to get better

and I'd like accountability and

we need to start with

communicating life -- live time

in the tunnel hon -- on what's going on and what they can

expect to do in an alternative situation. Okay? >> yes. >> okay.

Thank you very much.

>> can I add a point to that? >> please. >> once you're on the train it's a little too late.

we want to signal them to people

as they make their trip planning

decisions and wonder what you

think in terms of the apps on is there one you point people towards where to go for the best

information and I noticed today

as I was planning my trip over

here the google maps does not

link up to the real transit time

with google and I wonder if you had thoughts to make sure the

information you put out is up-to-date and accurate.

>> I think with the question you're stepping outside my areas of expertise.

>> yeah, let me take that question.

With regard to the apps and how

that information flows, we are providing that information as

open data that different apps pick up.

What google seems to do is they pick up our schedule and more

and more on the app if you have the latest version, you can see the prediction.

So there's two different things.

If you are looking at the schedule, it May or May not look

as accurate as the predict but

you have to have downloaded the

latest to have predicted that

and be taent attentive and there's private provider data where

we're looking at other ways to

address that to see purely the

data without getting a commercial offering so we're

looking at how we offer that on our own websites to give better

information.

To the point of getting more communications while you're in

the tunnel or from central

control, that is a partnership

between transit and communication to work on that and we need that information to

come from the transit team and

the communications teams

officers provide that live on

the system or through twitter five days a week, 16 hours a day. What we've not had the opportunity to have is weekend

and late evenings on sometimes special events but we're making some changes in our partnership

to be able to staff that more

comprehensive and I do believe

that will help. We have communication staff

embedded at the control systems working closely with julie's

team to be able to get the updates better and faster. I think you're hearing some of

them but we need from the late evening situation to have more robust and comprehensive

coverage.

>> anything else? Thank you.

Tall order but if somebody up to

it, it's you.

As folks leave on this item,

Mr. Peterson, good luck getting back to west portal.

How many folks are here for item number 12.

How many are here for item number 13? Okay. That makes it easy.

Why don't we go ahead item

number 13 should be quicker, correct? >> yes.

>> call item 13.

I expect there's shy people who didn't identify they're here.

>> and two contracts for

specialized training service to

moran consulting for specialized

training in customer service and deescalation and management of

implicit bias and coaching for

supervisors and mangers for a

contract with a term of five years and nobody's indicated an interest in addressing you from

the public on this item.

>> very good.

>> Mr. Chair, I will be

presenting this item so as roberta has said, we have these two contracts.

These contracts are for specialized training. In part a response to feedback from staff from across our

organization about requests for more training in particular feedback from staff who worked

directly with the public.

The staff has let us know that they want more and better

training and skilled -- skills and how to engage with the public particularly in difficult

situation could compromise their personal safety.

I want to mention that in

particular 250a has been vocal about the need for training operators on xhrs service and

also a requirement of the

agency, and they've been vocal

on training for VCOs and other

labor represents from stations

an permits have expressed better training would support the ongoing interactions on a daily

basis where sometimes they feel unsafe. And unions and staff are both

interested in a training toolbox. And while there is some training

that is currently out there,

this contract gives us the

ability to build and develop

comprehensive training to

envision training that could be

cost-cutting and wouldn't be siloed to their job classification and interested in

training that would allow us to

work very closely with the unions and employees to says

their situations they're in.

They're 24/7 type of jobs at different locations they're in.

We're also looking at customized

training development, training delivery, a coaching component

which is very specifically requested in focus groups we did

in 2017. And include an evaluation component. The contracts are focussed on three things.

They're focussed on customer service which include the things

we've recently spoken about.

Deescalation and reducing physical interaction and

potential assaults which are one

of the most frequent cause of

injury for our employees and we

also have included an implicit

bias component so if employees

are being triggered or their customer's being triggered,

there's an attentiveness to that situation.

And we believe this as-needed will give us the capability to address these things. They're as-needed contracts that

means they're task-order based and it doesn't necessarily mean

that each of these contractors

would get this lex level of work.

It's a contract that goes up to that limit. >> do we have public comment? You said none. We'll close public comment on

this item. Director gordon.

>> I think it's important work and excited we're doing

including implicit bias and hope we test people. In the restaurant world we've

gotten people to do this test

and have some restaurants have

signed up to do it with staff and they've seen the consequence

in doing the implicit bias test

and training and included a

diversity of groups and even on the internal for customer

service we should look at this

overall as a larger agency-wide

measure in how we interact with employees and each other. The only thing I saw I didn't

see in here that was missing was

around dealing with and granted

no one is going to come in as a mental health professional, but

a lot of what we're seeing

particularly with drug addiction

are the mental health concerns. There are people who are angry because you're giving them a parking ticket but there's the next level of people at night

using our system who May be having personal challenges.

I see anyone with a medical expertise with the contracts but

I would say if we can add that

component

component in and see if the contractors can respond to that and think there's a greater need

in all customer-facing roles and better understand people

compromised from mental health or drug addiction concerns.

>> if I May respond, I think it's an important point and while the contracts don't address the mental health aspect, we are looking at our

front-facing employees as being

almost first-responders. There's been publication and

works on work trauma so dealing with people who have dealing with trauma or having to work

with traum tiefd -- traumatized people.

We thought that was attractive

to have in the contract. >> director brinkman. >> thank you for moving quickly on this. It's going to be so important

and what we hear from public

facing staff particularly the

female operators and giving

them the tools to de-escalate

will go a long way in keeping operators happy and healthy and

in particular hire more female operators.

I'm happy to make a motion to approve this and thrilled we're doing this. >> we have a motion. Is there a second. >> one comment? >> please.

>> to say happy to see this and

the monitoring and performance measuring as the best practice to see that in the contract

we'll evaluate how successful this was. Two questions. What's the difference between the two contractors. One is significantly more expensive so if you can speak to

that and are there other industry best practice where's this kind of intervention has

been implemented in other cities.

Are there lessons to learn from or are we the pioneer in this area? >> in terms of the last question

I'll mention that first. There are other cities who have

done something similar I believe

it's septa in philadelphia who

has worked with vendors more localized to the east coast who

have done this work and to some degree we have modelleded this

approach on their work.

And though the vendors are

different, we do believe we can

leverage the learnings that are

out in the space both from the trade industry as well as the

work of at least septa. That's the one we know most about.

In terms of cost, the two vendors which are the two responsive and responsible

venders, the two that bid on the

work, they're quite different. Moran consulting is out of

chicago and they focus specifically on customer service.

They have more of a customer

service training model. They've trained many types of

employees including types like

our own and dtui focuses more on

equity and diversity and here locally.

And we believe the contracts

close to the same size with

different offerings we can cover the work we need.

>> I note it's as you said

spread contract so it's not as

if we're agreeing to pay $3 million to two vendors but it's

on a work-order basis. May I request as we go and decide to go as we decide to spend more on the vendors, we seek the input and feedback of

the unions particularly because they're the ones requesting this? So since we're doing it for their benefit and retention, I want to make sure they're

finding these programs and

providers effective and if not, we can adjust within the contract? >> yes, we can. >> very good.

So a motion and second.

All in favor, please say aye. Opposed? That passes. Thank you very much.

Acting director hsu we move on

to item 12.

>> Clerk:   presentation

discussion regarding response

acts of responsibilities and no

members of the public have stated wanting to address the topic.

>> I can't imagine why.

>> members of the board I'm mark

blake a city attorney.

>> nice to see you. >> good afternoon.

My area of specialty is public

finance and I'm one of three attorneys in the city attorney's

office that work in this space

and collectively we have about

100 years of experience with the municipal bonds and on every bond offering in the city we

work as the city's in-house

attorney with respect to dis disclosure matters.

What I'm going to do today is probably do a truncated presentation because the next

bond offering isn't until 2020.

So this training is just hit

highlights and we'll revisit it

to a bond offering so you can bring some training together and

apply it to the bond offering.

Be that as it May, this

presentation will cover and

maybe get a purchase agreement

and maybe disclosure document

and you'll act to approve those documents. In some ways it's the most important document in the group

will be an official statement

like a prospectus.

so you're the final arbiter

whether it goes to market or not.

Because of certain circumstances

with respect to failures with

municipal bond offerings they

imposed certain duties for offering documents.

What they'll go through on this presentation not to make you security laws experts or anything but what's the law here, what's the context in

which we're operating.

What's the learnings associates

and it's the municipal offerings. What's the official statement and what's it do and how do you

as board members discharge your duties? Okay. The principle is there's no

direct regulation by the

securities and exchange commission. They enjoy broad securities an

exempt from the comment period

opposed to corporate securities. Most you have to register with the securities and exchange

commission and there's a review and comment period before you

can access the capital market.

Municipal securities are not

required to register and are

exempt and there's a reason for that.

One is if there's 55,000

municipal issuers and legal

constraints and the second is

the view is if the securities

laws were enacted 33 and 34,

munis were still viewed as safe instruments and the opportunity

for fraud was just not there

unlike your corporate counterparts. Indeed, I think the failure rate

for munis where investors

actually lose capital is minuscule and the fact of the

matter is if an investor was

actually doing his or her due

diligence the likelihood of a loss of capital would go to zero

because you know when your local

government has one taxpayer, one

large taxpayer and that taxpayer's failing if you're

doing your diligence.

But the sec indirectly regulates through brokers and dealers.

So investment banks and now

financial advisors so by

imposing duties on those

intermediaries they indirectly regulate municipal securities

and they cannot under write them

without a document and a commitment from the securities

office to provide annual ongoing market data.

I would say 20 years ago when

municipal issuers issued bonds,

there was no obligation to provide continual financial and operating data and so therefore

if you were purchasing that security in the secondaries market there was no way for you

to do other than to do your own diligence and investigation to determine whether the financial

health of the underlying issuer.

And the other way the sec rith regulates the market is through

the enforcement of the securities laws.

So basically the sec views

itself as the protector of the

market ensuring that when you invest your capital, you get a fair rate of return for the risk you're taking.

So they require issuers to

basically make a full complete

disclear -- disclosure of all material facts related to that

offering.

so some of the observations to train around staff and be sure

when a disclosure document comes

for approval we have conducted

on our part so one is that some

of the securities enforcement actions have seen staff has not been trained so the professionals charged with preparing documents to come to market haven't been trained in terms of their requirements and

in terms of their diligence obligations and in terms of ensuring that they have the most complete and accurate information prior to the time

they go to market. Secondarily, in other enforcement actions they've seen

there's been no opportunity for different departments within an

issuer to talk to each other. So in one circumstance I'm

familiar win

familiar with, the individuals would speak to department individually and there would never be an opportunity for cross-poll cross-pollination so one

department could not make a observation on another

department to get a more

complete view of the issuer's project situation.

And the lack of controls and procedures.

The sec has commented favorably

in recent speeches and

enforcement actions an they're better served with internal controls and procedures and we have worked with all of our departments throughout the city

to make sure each department has

controls and procedures and the sfmta controls and procedures and we'll bring those to you by end of year for review and

approval.

In the sec has observed issuers

have made misstatements or not painted a complete picture because of political influence.

That's to say what we try to tell staff is the official

statement not a public relations document.

And I believe investors quite

frankly that investors are aware

issuers have challenges,

financial and individual challenges and they're more concerned frankly with the current of their money than a return on their money.

I believe that's the municipal

space that in part returns here are not significant.

This is really a safety security market.

We tell people, tell all your

challenges and that you will be rewarded in the marketplace where you tell your challenges and then talk about how you're managing your challenges and

that's the better spot to be in.

So one question is when did the

securities laws attach.

They attached in two instances

and one is through primary offerings and secondarily when

board members such as yourselves

make comments on the sfmta's

financial health.

Those are likely to reach the

marketplace and May be tested against the provisions.

What we attempt to do is when we're accessing the marketplace

or alternatively, when there are

turbulent times, we we encourage board members to exercise caution in making statements about the financial health of

the sfmta or when we're coming

to market to discourage investment to say there's no risk, you should buy it. Those statements will be tested

against the anti-fraud provisions of the securities

laws. And generally we're talking about material statements and

the anti-fraud provisions make

it unlawful to make a statement of a material fact or omission.

In our context unlike corporate

security where's there's strict

liability they have to prove we made a neglect statement.

So we bro vide the training and -- provide the training and

have controls and procedures so if something did slip through in

our process, we can at least defend ourselves that we had

taken every precaution to ensure

that we weren't neglect but nonetheless, something slipped through.

And one of the purposes here is

simply to address the informationalized symmetry between what we know as the keeper of all financial

information and data and what

investors need to know before making an informed investment

decision. So what is immaterial?

It's a likelihood the omitted fact would have assumed significance in the deliberations of a reasonable investor.

We're talking about important

information, significant

information and so there is some

space for forward looking

statements which are projections but it's material information we're looking for.

So who's the sec has gone after? They've gone after good afternoonal

governmental bodies and so far

to date government officials or

sfo, director of -- cfo,

director of finance have been sanctioned. I would say one of the trend

lines of the sec has been to sanction professionals

financially with no in dem -- indemnity by the governing body

and third parties, underwriters,

financial advisors, lawyers, etcetera have been all subject

to sanctions but no individual members of the board have been

sanctioned by the sec.

So again, guidance for board members, potential liability from misleading statements when

we access the market in a

primary offering and then

official statements and then

communications likely to reach

investors and make annual filings of financial information and operating data to the

financial marketplace and those statements on an annual basis

will be tested again the

releases and some will not reb viewed before they go out.

In some ways the seminole and

only guidance we got from the

sec arises from the orange

county bankruptcy in 1994. In that case the county of

orange approved a number of

short-term financings and failed

to disclose they were dependent on investments from their pool and when they pool failed and

they had to declare bankruptcy, they were subject it sanction by the sec. Without getting too far into what types of financial products

they're investing in, it's

simply that they were accessing the market and were dependent on the pharmaceutical of the investment pool and and failed

to disclose how risky the

investment pool was and the

inability of repaying if the

pool were to fail.

So what the sec states with

respect to the orange county, is

that while they had knowledge of

their dependence on the investment pool they took no steps to ensure when they approved official statements to access the capital markets that that information was accurate

and that information was disclosed and mainly how they took they know no steps is they were approved on the consent

calendar and they viewed it as a

routine matter and delegated to

the then treasurer, tax

collector, so in any event let's move on. The bright line rule is if you

have information you know is misleading and can't approve a

document or May you recklessly disregard information and not

take steps to ensure it's

included in an official statement.

What is acting recklessly, if

you have knowledge of facts and taking appropriate steps and

we're taking steps including

reading the document. Such steps could have included

asking staff and so here's a diagram of the official statement.

The principle audience for the statement is the investor.

So when you review an official statement or read the text put

your shoes of an investor, would

I need the information it clear and accurate based on what I

know.

Is the sfmta an official statement.

we will come to you with a team of professionals to bring that to market it's the official statement to the text and understanding of your operation

and financial information has to

come from the sfmta and not

outside professionals. And I think the answer and the

key here is that by telling your complete information you'll get rewarded in the financial

marketplace by getting viewed as

a credit that people can rely on disclosures.

You can rely on disclosures made

and the market will reward you

for providing good information

by which they can make an investment.

So here's also what we kind of

trained staff on. And here's -- I'll give you the

big takeaway we advise staff to

take care and be critical and if they're not ready, if they're

not comfortable basically say so. If something doesn't make sense, say so. Before a document comes to you it would have gone through six

or seven iterations with that

kind of as the underpinning.

So s when we prepare financial

statements is the agency has

20/20 hindsight.

If we make submissions looking

back they'll say that that was

material and then observation

two is when we have a debate whether to disclose we look at observation one as our guide

post.

So real quick, the sfmta has controls and procedures on the

website when we renew them we can go through them and they're simply a set of internal controls to guide decision

making in the absence of when

those decisions have to be made.

Theyal kate the competitive

bidding standard and retention of professional and that type of

thing is spelled out in the control and procedures so we're

not making it up ad hoc. The reason we're doing the train

in some ways it's a prophylactic

so if we make an error in the

future we can say we trained up

and did the best we could.

How do you discharge your responsibilities? You could read the official statement and then you're going to ask but can't I rely on staff

and the answer is yes, you can rely on staff if it's reasonable and in good faith.

If you see red flags in an office document and you don't make queries, it's not reasonable to rely on staff but on the other hand if you're

aware that staff has retained experienced professionals and has controls and procedures and

has gone through a robust and diligent process presenting that

document you can rely on staff. Okay.

Real quick, so then we'll just

and we'll come back -- how do you go back?

The questions you should ask on any information statement is

when it's before you is what's

the purpose of the transaction

and are there any unique risk

associated with the transaction. Do we have the wherewithal to

pay it back and am I comfortable

that everything I know is

presented in the document and do I have an questions for staff that hasn't been addressed and I'm not comfortable. With that we'll end there and then promise to come back when

you have an actual transaction

in front of you and then we can

tie some of these up. >> excellent. >> if you have any questions.

>> I think all of us have had

this training before except for

director eaken and that completes our 2019 training on

this which is great and if we have bond offering we'll ask you

back to give a refresher.

Directors are there any questions? Okay, seeing none we'll move on to the closed session?

>> item 14, yes, the discussion to invoke future and client privilege and conduct a closed session. >> very good.

I will ask for a five-minute

biobreak for the board as I hear rumbling as needed and before

you do that, I will entertain a

motion to go into closed session. >> all those in favor, please

say aye. Opposed? Okay. We'll be back in five minutes

and I'll ask directors to use

the back dor -- door so roberta can close the front door.

Safely, so that folks who live here and especially our senior

community, so they feel safe in their community, I want to see him clean streets in the

tenderloin, I want to see safe streets and the tenderloin, and

I want the people who live here,

who spent time here to take care of the tenderloin too.

This is an effort that is so

critical to the success of this

community, and I say yes, community, because there are so

many people from so many parts

of san francisco that live here,

that enjoy this community. Some amazing park space, and part of what our responsibility is is to make sure that the resources that this community

needs, they get.

That is why this opportunity for

lighting, and I know people are thinking, well what is the big deal about lighting?

It is a big deal. Every community in this city, they want pedestrian lighting.

They want teardrop lighting. Lighting fixtures that look this

beautiful. The tenderloin, we have made it

a priority so that this community knows it is a priority , that we are going to

continue to make sure that the resources are brought to this

community on a regular basis.

I want to thank cpmc for their community benefit package that

includes funding for not only

pedestrian safety like these

lights, buffer housing opportunity, for job opportunities, they are a part of the tenderloin community and so they have invested in the

tenderloin community. In addition to all of that, there will be free services and

care at the package to take care of the residents of this community. It is absolutely amazing. Is a true testament to a real

partnership between cpmc and the city and county of san francisco I can't wait to be there in

March when we cut the ribbon to

open the new hospital on van ness avenue. I also want to thank harland kelly and the guys and gals at

P.U.C. For your work. Thank you so much for finally getting this job done, because a

randy, not only did he harass

the mayor at the time, he harassed every mayor of the

board of supervisors, and that

is why we finally have got it

done, and yes, in less

bureaucracy years than typical. I also want to thank the san

francisco police department. Thank you for so much for the

officers who continue to walk the beach and develop relationships with the community on a regular basis. It definitely means a lot to

have community policing so that members of our community feel safe when they are walking the