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tv   Commission on the Environment  SFGTV  April 11, 2024 3:10am-5:01am PDT

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charles, can you take it from here? good evening. this is a meeting of the san francisco commission on the environment. the date is monday, march 25th. the time is 5:07 p.m. please note that the ringing and use of cell phones, pagers and similar devices is prohibited. please be advised that the chair may order the removal from the meeting room of anyone using a phone or similar device. public comment will be available for each item on the agenda for comments on matters that are not on the agenda, there will be an opportunity for general public comment. participants who wish to comment will be asked to come forward one by one and speak clearly into the mic. each speaker will be allowed three minutes to speak. alternatively
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members of the public may submit public comment by email to environment at sf gov. org comments submitted via email will be forwarded to the commissioners, who will be included as part of the official file on a more procedural note, our former commissioner affairs, kyle wiener, has unfortunately moved to another city department. we're sad to see him leave, but excited for his new opportunities while we begin a process to find a replacement, there will be temporary clerks who staff the commission meetings, starting with me. all of us will be doing our best to ensure these meetings continue to run smoothly. and we do have one change for this evening for the presenters. you will be presenting from the laptop, and you will be controlling your own slides instead of it being through webex, thank you for your patience on that matter. i will now call the roll, president juan is excused. vice president sullivan here. commissioner ann here. commissioner bermejo here. commissioner hunter here. commissioner tompkins here.
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commissioner. un here. vice president. sullivan, we have a quorum. thank you. charles and, as we've been doing for the last few meetings, we're going to be handling several of the introductory items as a consent calendar, the first item in the consent calendar is the president's welcome, so charles isn't the only one doing something for the first time? this is my first time running one of these meetings, so i'm sure i'm going to get something wrong at some point. and, and i hope you'll all bear with me, so, commissioners, department staff members of the public, welcome for this meeting. i'll be stepping in for president juan, who is excused today. today, we are poised to explore crucial topics that will shape the future of our city. the agenda includes updates on our efforts towards building decarbonization, specifically focusing on the cap building operations. chapter and policy proposals to support this through all electric major retrofits. we are also thrilled
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to extend a warm welcome to our esteemed colleague, the san francisco unified school district's environmental literacy and climate resilience program administrator. that is a very long title, who will be joining forces with our department? senior environmental education strategist. together, they bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table and will be sharing exciting updates on our environmental education programs on a final procedural note for the meeting tonight, we will be calling items seven and eight together. with that, let's get started and i'll read the land acknowledgment. the commission on the environment acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the ramaytush ohlone peoples, who are the original inhabitants of the san francisco peninsula. we recognize that the ramaytush ohlone understand the interconnectedness of all things, and have maintained harmony with nature for millennia. we honor the
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ramaytush ohlone peoples for their enduring commitment to mother earth as the indigenous protectors of this land, and in accordance with their traditions, ramaytush ohlone have never ceded, lost or forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland as uninvited guests. we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and pay our respects to the ancestors. elders and relatives of the ramaytush community. as environmentalists, we embrace indigenous knowledge in how we care for san francisco and all its people. thank you for that important acknowledgment, so now we'll move to the approval of minutes as item four, i believe item oh. item three. thank you. there's the first one, charles, item three is, director's report, director ju, would you like to introduce new staff? staff introductions? so, we have two
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new staff to introduce, at this meeting, one is a familiar face. so if i can ask annie to come on up, i think you're the only in-person one. and for sheila to get ready, pleased to introduce annie wong, who is and was an employee of the department, in a new role as senior government. zero waste coordinator. so i'll allow annie to introduce herself. her background, how long she's been working for the department, and whatever else you'd like to share with everyone. sure thank you. hi. good evening everyone. so my name is annie wong, i first started at the department five years ago as a 9920 on the environmental education team, then i had the opportunity to be part of the environmental justice team, which was really important and impactful work to me, and now i am the 5640 city government zero waste coordinator. so i will continue to work with city departments, facilities and staff on their zero waste programs, green
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purchasing and the virtual warehouse program. thank you, thank you. and joining us remotely, we are very excited to have our new contracts and grants manager. as we all know, david kashani left us a few months ago for another city department as well, and we were really excited, that sheila, offered her services to our department, and she's been working out great. so, sheila, if you want to say a few words. sure. so i've been working with the city for over, over ten years now. i first joined on working on contracts with the juvenile probation department, and then after that, i went on to work at sfmta on contracts there. and now i've been with the environment for maybe about 5 or 6 weeks now. so i'm getting my feet wet there and trying to help move some of the contracts and rfp along. and that
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concludes our staff introductions. thank you. so the final item on the consent calendar, is the minutes of the february 5th meeting, commissioners, we have an action item for this matter. is there any discussion or any proposed changes to the minutes? if not, i have a motion and a second on moves to approve the minutes. okay motion by commissioner on a second by commissioner tompkins, can we go to public comment? charles sure. thank you, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on items two through four of the agenda, as well as the motion on the minutes? seeing none, public comment on items two through four is closed. thank you. charles, can you please call the roll? president? one is excused. vice president sullivan, i commissioner on i commissioner bermejo i commissioner hunter i
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commissioner tompkins i commissioner yuan i motion passes. next item please. charles. the next item is item five. general public comment. members of the public may address the commission on matters that are within the commission's jurisdiction and are not on today's agenda. are there any other members of the public come on up who wish to comment? just please stand in line over there. go ahead. you have three minutes. good evening, vice president sullivan. commissioners director ju and dedicated environment staff. i'm mark palmer. honored to have served as the department's first green building specialist from 2001 until my retirement in 2017, witnessing the ongoing achievements by my successors, eden bruckman and now nick kastner, along with cindy comerford, fills me with immense pride, last summer i had the distinct honor and privilege of
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touring the new leed gold southeast community center, a true cultural gem enriching the bayview community. following retirement, i downsized in more than one way and moved to sausalito, a town of 7000 residents, in 2020, the city council appointed me to the sausalito sustainability commission, where i now serve as chair. noteworthy accomplishments this year include the first time appointment of a dedicated resilience and sustainability program manager, a comprehensive energy analysis of all municipal properties, implementing a ban on gas powered landscape equipment, and the installation of four heat pump water heaters in city buildings. our collaborative efforts extend beyond city limits, fostering partnerships with the 12 local jurisdictions in marin county. notably, we align closely with brian reyes, marin county sustainability planner and fellow sfa alum focusing on electrification, reach codes and
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the marin county electrification roadmap. i've always held this commission and department in the highest regard and the exemplary work of my esteemed colleagues, barry hooper and rich chen, both during my tenure and beyond, continue to inspire. san francisco remains at the forefront of environmental thought and action, setting a powerful example for communities near and far. frequently, i find myself referring to policies, programs and initiatives championed from this side of the golden gate bridge. in closing, from one environment commission to another, i extend my heartfelt gratitude to each one of you for your unwavering dedication and guiding the department toward ever greater significance. you and the department continue to be our guiding light. thank you, thank you, and welcome back. are there any other members of the public who wish to comment? seeing none. public comment on this
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item is closed. thank you. next item, please. next item is item six. presentation of the joanna wald environmental service award to maggie johnson. this item is for discussion, i will note that maggie is joining us remotely for this item, and we will also have a few staff and former colleagues of maggie joining us remotely as well, before we turn it over, i'm going to see if i can elevate maggie here because we had some technical difficulties here. so one second. maggie, can you hear us? maggie, are you able to hear us? you
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might be muted on your device because you're not. i don't believe you're muted via webex. okay. maggie i still show you as muted and. we may have to come back. take it out of order. yeah we may have to take this out of order. one second. i'm getting. yeah. let me just try one other thing. give me a second.
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maggie, we'll try one more time. are you there? are you there? maggie. okay, let's. let's take this out of order and move to the next agenda item and try and come back. great. that's a very important item. so we'll come back to it, but let's move on to items seven and eight. okay. next, agenda items are items seven and eight. we'll be calling these two items together, so item seven is a presentation on the climate action plan building operations chapter. the sponsor, cindy comerford, climate program manager. the speakers are nick kesner, senior building decarbonization coordinator, and barry hooper, senior green built environment coordinator. this item is for discussion and item eight is a presentation on policy proposal on all electric major renovations. the sponsor
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is cindy comerford. climate program manager. the speakers are nick kesner, senior building decarbonization coordinator, and barry hooper, senior. green built environment coordinator. both items are for discussion. okay. good evening commissioners. again my name is cindy comerford. i'm the climate program manager. as charles said, we're going to take the two items together because they are related and both topics are going to discuss the progress we've made on building decarbonization as a city, so given the impacts of climate change and the use of fossil fuels, our communities need safer and healthier energy solutions for buildings. and last year, with the general fund support that we received, we were able to finally create an official building decarbonization team. this was a mix of existing and new staff and i'm really excited about the progress that we've made over the last year. so we have, as a department, we have been tasked
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with leading the charge on supporting homes and buildings to transition in to clean electricity, and we've been engaging diverse individuals, businesses, community based organizations to really build a coalition around building decarbonization to create a more sustainable future for all of us . so our first presentation today is going to be given by nick kesner. can you bring up the slides? charles great. and he is going to give an overview of the impacts of climate change and emissions on our buildings. he's also going to remind us of the targets and the goals that we set forth in our climate action plan related to building things. and then he's going to discuss the progress we've made on building decarbonization action in terms of policies, and then also highlight one of our
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flagship programs, the climate equity hub. then nick's going to introduce barry hooper, our green building specialist, who's going to talk about one of the policies that we've co-created with our community members, which is our draft policy on all electric major renovations. so we can pause at the end of the first presentation and take questions. and we can also wait till the end and take them there. so with that, i'm going to turn it over to nick. thank you. thank you cindy. good evening commissioners. i'm excited to be here for my first presentation. nobody mentioned that i shouldn't sit right there because i will be seen in the camera for all previous speakers. but now i understand why my colleagues are all on this side, i'm not able to advance the slides. charles, is that, well, i can't through this right arrow, so. was it up? down
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. should be. there we go. set the. okay. there we go. great. thanks okay, well, cindy covered the agenda, so i will move right into a reminder about our emissions. i'm sure this is. you dream about this every day in our efforts to reduce our emissions. but you know that building operations is one of the two big kahunas in the room, in terms of addressing greenhouse gas emissions in the city of san francisco. of note, those emissions, the building operations emissions used to be mainly focused, let's say 6040, in the commercial side of the house. but over time, as electricity has gotten cleaner in san francisco, and because commercial buildings tend to be dominated by electric, there are greenhouse gas emissions, tends to be dominated by the electricity use. as our electricity has gotten cleaner, commercial buildings. now, as of about eight years or so, represent a minority of our building emissions. and the
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majority of those emissions comes from the residential sector, but they're pretty even. and so obviously, we have a lot of work to do in both areas, if we look at the commodities that create those greenhouse gas emissions, not surprisingly, as our electricity gets cleaner, natural gas is the main source of emissions in the building sector. and you can see on the right side that our renewable mix in the electricity sector has gone up to about 85. and that leaves just natural gas that we burn in our buildings, mainly for heat and hot water, but also for a few appliances as the source of emissions in the city of san francisco. so we have some very ambitious goals for the city as a whole. our 2030 goal, of course, is calling for 61% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and then on the way to being net zero emission by 2040. but there's also some very specific goals for the building sector that i want to highlight. i also want to point out that these goals are definitely not all we need to
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do. so you'll hear about a lot of programs that were tackling right now to address building emissions that go far beyond the new construction ordinance, which of course, we passed in 2021. and then the goal of having all large existing commercial buildings reach zero emissions by 2035. i'm going to take you on a whirlwind tour of what we've been doing in the municipal and in the private sector, starting with the municipal. a quick reminder that we updated chapter seven early last year just before i got there. actually got to the department. and so now we have a pathway for our municipal buildings to become all electric and zero emissions over the course of time, where that essentially means is that we have a time of replacement policy at the municipal level, which we don't yet at the at the private level for private buildings. and that means that we need to catalog and have been doing so all of our natural gas equipment in the city. and when a department goes to replace one of those pieces of equipment, it must replace it with electric alternatives. my colleague elise has been doing some really great
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work to catalog all those pieces of equipment in the municipal natural gas equipment inventory that we are about to release, and departments will be using that inventory as kind of the basis for making a plan for how to prepare for all these time of replacement initiatives as they, as they happen. because as you can imagine, without a plan, it will be very difficult to just suddenly switch out a natural gas piece of equipment and a system that's based on burning fossil fuels with one that is based in all entirety on heat pumps. and the other point i want to make related to municipal buildings is that having a plan is, yes, very important. but the other piece, of course, is finding a way to fund that plan. so cindy and others are working very hard to make sure that we align these individual department plans with the city's overall capital plan. and that we identify ways that we can fund what will likely be quite an impressive capital investment to shift our municipal buildings to an all electric future. on the private side, you know about our 2021
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new construction ordinance for the past eight months or so, we've been working on expanding that ordinance to major renovations, which are commonly called gut rehabs. and that means, essentially, that we're doing so much work on a particular building and that the scope is very similar to new construction, and therefore a gut rehab provides a similar opportunity to switch to all electric equipment with a minimal net cost compared to business as usual. because you're most likely replacing your gas systems anyway. and a lot of times the distribution system as well. that's a perfect time to make the switch and not invest in a dying technology. so we've been working very hard on that, but obviously not just as a department sf environment, but with a lot of stakeholders that we've engaged along the way in what we call our building operations task force. we meet once a month on the first wednesday with representatives from unions, business associations, community based organizations, climate emergency coalition engineers, other city departments and utilities all of
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us working together to provide feedback on policy proposals. but as you can see here, part of the reason of getting this group together is also just to identify opportunities and challenges to share best practices and to use that as a venue for educating our stakeholders about the work that lies ahead. so that they, in turn, can then share that with their with the communities that they represent. a good example is the building is boma, the building owners and managers association obviously has many, many, many members and the topics that we discuss in the building operations task force end up showing up in their sustainability committee meetings, usually with about three weeks delay, one of the things that's been really helpful from the bottom is just to get a sense of what's really important to our stakeholders that we might not have thought of. and so i just want to share some of those things, some of those lessons that they've told us. one is that especially looking ahead to some of these electric requirements at the regional level, from the air quality management district, for
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example, they realize that we need to do a lot of work as a department to prepare our residents for these upcoming mandates. and so, while barry will talk about electric readiness in relation to the building code, i'd like to talk about electric readiness in relation to our residents and all of us as we try to think about what do we need to do to plan for a future where i will not be able to go out to home depot and buy a gas water heater, or i will not be able to hire a contractor to put in a gas water heater to replace the one that exists now. so as a city, we need to get ready for those future mandates. the other task that the batf will be tackling, now that we've checked off, i will say or almost checked off the major renovations ordinance is a building performance standard for small buildings like 1 to 4 stories. for example, it's pretty straightforward to replace an existing piece of equipment with an electric alternative like a heat pump. but for a big building like, imagine a downtown high rise. oftentimes tenants move in and out, not in the entire building, but a few floors at a time. and
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so making a plan that allows the building owner to electrify in those buildings, in those floors, as they become available, is of utmost importance. and aligning those individual retrofits with a bigger goal of being carbon neutral by 2035 is a pretty challenging, endeavor. as we learned today on a focus group with many of those very same stakeholders. so we in the building operations task force, are spending time to educate ourselves about what other cities have done new york, boston, other states like oregon and washington, and figuring out what best practices we can pull back into our own ordinance, which we hope to propose later this year or early next year. and then i apologize. that third bullet is actually very similar to the first one, so i will just skip right over it, another big component, which we are excited to launch sometime this spring is the climate equity hub. you probably heard during the conversations around the zero zero emissions building task force that some of our community stakeholders have asked for us
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to put together resources that help, bipoc and low income neighborhoods benefit from the green transition. and understand what they need to do to prepare for it. and so we're in the process of developing online and in-person resources, not just for this community, but for all homeowners and renters in the city of san francisco, particularly exciting for me is the next bullet the d planning concierge that we plan to put into place, which you can think of as a basically a friendly voice on the phone or during office hours that can help you figure out how to decarbonize your home. and then critically, we're also looking to develop and are in the middle of developing a direct install program that will install initially heat pump water heaters at no charge for low income communities in san francisco. and this is modeled on a lot of the ca programs like that are happening around us in cities all across the bay area. two other important pillars of the climate equity hub is to think about the growth of our workforce and how we can make sure we uplift those that have
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not been part traditionally of the construction workforce in san francisco and elsewhere. and also to think about ways in which in particular sfa and dbe, but others as well can help to remove barriers to electrification in the building code or in building processes. finally, i just want to share that we've been doing a lot of resident engagement already in the form of farmers markets and community events, and even some presentations with our community partners. but as i mentioned, we're planning to launch the climate equity hub officially later this spring, and we have plans to really institutionalize our outreach and work with partners. so that this becomes so that electrification becomes the next reuse campaign in san francisco, where everybody understands the importance of building electrification and what it means for them personally. so that means doing things like library events, organizing home tours for people to see electrification in action , having displays in, hardware stores, etc. and then really working with with pta meetings,
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churches and other community meetings to get the word out to as many people as possible, i already kind of covered the workforce development piece. one other thing i just want to quickly mention is that we are always mindful of the impact of electrification, or the impact it might have on the rollout of affordable housing and housing in general. so we definitely keep that in mind. and then in particular within the housing space, we want to make sure that none of these mandates lead to displacement increases in rent, or extra costs for our tenants. so we have tenant representatives, as you probably saw on this, on the building operations task force. and we were in close communication with the rent board and others to make sure that those concerns flow into every one of our deliberations. so i will pause there for questions and then we'll move on to the second part of the presentation. yeah why don't we take questions on item seven and then again at item eight and then public comment at the end? commissioners, any any questions for nick or or the team. and obviously i'll be
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here. so we can, throw none i have one okay. great so we read in the media and we hear anecdotally about the difficulties of residential conversions to all electric and the problems that people have with pg and e and the time it takes to get to get the whole process done. or do you have any any thoughts on that? or is the department in communication with pg and e, or just any thoughts on how to how to sort of solve that problem? yeah, i think i have at least two and i'm sure, barry, if i miss something, you'll have something to add. the first one is that there is a i think it's strong enough to call it a myth, that it is always necessary to upgrade your electric service when electrifying and i think one of the most important things we can do at sfe is to strongly understand when it is in fact necessary and when it's not, and to provide that information about resource efficient electrification to our residents. so as part of that kind of electric readiness that i was talking about, one of the
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things we have to do is definitely address that elephant in the room and make it clear to people that they do not, that those two do not need to go hand in hand. so that's the one piece. of course, it is true that in some cases, if your home is particularly old and large, then you may not be able to get by with your electric service. and so we do have pg and is a member of the building operations task force. that topic is a topic that we have planned for later this year. and of course the state, there's some recent state legislation, legislation that seeks to mandate, essentially timelines for upgrading electric service and getting back to homeowners, among others, in a reasonable manner. so that process doesn't take as long as it can currently take, so that's that part of it is mainly happening at the state level, even as we on a local level, try to make sure that we identify the vast majority of projects where that isn't a concern and start driving electric action forward until those other fixes come in place. barry, do you want anything?
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okay great. thank you. well, for your first presentation to the commission that you did a great job. thank you. i will be here, obviously, in case there's some more questions later. move to item eight. good evening, vice president sullivan. members of the commission director zhou, so i'll talk about a specific policy proposal that's forthcoming, seeking, as nick described, to address electrification at time of renovation. and so a few years ago, we worked on a new construction policy. we focused on residential. for a moment. we can see that a reason to prioritize residential new construction is the bulk of, project activity where there's definitively going to be a change out of electric systems occurs or construction of electric systems occurs at new construction. and much more frequent than renovation. however if we look at it in terms of the number of housing units delivered, however, a lot
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of single family homes or existing single family homes do go through renovation, and that is a very opportune time for making that upgrade, you saw this image earlier on the left of the new construction building out a new mixed use building out at mission rock. the image on the right is the former triple a building, which in recent years was had went through a massive change of use reskinning and is now a residential building in everything except for terminology in terms of the energy systems of that building, it's new construction. it did retain the structure, did, retain some significant benefit in terms of embodied energy, but that really needed entirely new systems to make that massive of a change. you see also a little bit comedic examples here in town. so in the image before you, the small l at the bottom
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corner of the right corner of the image, there's the eight story, aronson building. it's a historic structure, a 46 story tower, and a three story museum were constructed as a addition to that building. and so that was held to a different standard because it's an addition rather than new construction. now, the both of these projects predate the new construction requirements. so they're examples rather than specifically speaking to their fuel type. but if you build them today, they would both actually be able to proceed and remain mixed fuel without a change in public policy, as a reminder, our new construction policy extends to all of the major uses of gas in new construction. so heating, cooling, hot water, heating, cooking, clothes drying it applies indoors and outdoors, and gas can't be added to the building after the fact, a renovation then really the crux of how should we address major renovation is, is how would we
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define a major renovation. so we'll get there in a couple of slides. but the fundamental is we're replacing those mechanical systems serving the building. and there's a substantial enough body of work occurring that it just makes sense to build for the future, another way of putting that particularly to ground it in a residential context is that that terminology , a gut renovation, sometimes a project can be a little bit smaller, but still, we are talking about the major systems being, updated. and enough work of the building is unoccupied. now, if we turn around and we want to move that to asking, how would we define that in a building code context, we'll go through that now. we're going to introduce two terms. and the first terms is a major renovation. and so i have a little bit of text highlighted there in green, a major renovation is an alteration or an addition to an existing building that includes a substantial upgrade of mechanical systems. so the
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reason that phrase is in green is we're going to go through the definition of what a substantial upgraded mechanical system is on the subsequent slide. but, on the right hand column of this slide is a simple explanation for each of these terms. and we're tying into existing definitions that are enforced today in the building code for other criteria. so a major renovation under this proposal would mean when you're replacing the mechanical systems and you're doing one of the three items below, you're either substantially moving, interior walls over at least two thirds of the space. that would be a nonstructural alteration. you're dramatically modifying the structure, or you're adding on to the building, and in the process, investing more than 50% of the pre-construction value of the building, each of those are detailed in much more detail in the handout that you've received, as well as in this. the existing definitions that are referenced on the left, a substantial upgrade to a
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mechanical system. in one sense, we'd know it when we see it, right? it's the replacement of the mechanical system, but it also could mean when we're adding onto the building and that in the process of adding on to it, we're modifying systems that actually serve that addition or more commonly in a very large building, may not actually replace 100% of the systems. and so when you're doing enough work that you're you're replacing the systems that serve 80% or more of the building. and this would be a more common approach in an office building, that would trigger this requirement as well. there are some existing exceptions, under our ordinance today, and the proposal would be to maintain those exceptions as they are as a reminder, those are if there was a conflict with the energy code, that prevented building all electric, if there was an inability of the utility to provide sufficient electrical service to meet your needs, or if there's a physical constraint that couldn't be resolved, any of those would be a basis for an
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exception on the basis of feasibility. there is also an exception for commercial cooking processes for specific, food service enterprises. those exceptions, each of them could only possibly be allowed to apply if it is demonstrated that the building is that it is not feasible to build all electric, and that allowing gas would be the specific change that would resolve that issue for the building owner. there have been no claims to this to date and, not expected at this time. the key question is what's this going to cost? what's the cost impact? and that's really a lot of the motivation when there's a major investment that's planned, the incremental cost to go to the effort of building all electric becomes a lot lower. and so we look to here on this slide, we're summarizing studies that look at the construction cost for a marginal cost of constructing all electric in new
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construction. and then for additional context, also the incremental costs that are typical on the low end and on the high end for renovating all electric and it's a lot of information, but it really boils down to it should be at the least cost, the least cost impact to the owner is when they're making this major investment, and the cost should be similar to, or can even be less than the cost of an electric renovation in. these projects are also eligible for incent significant incentives, and so really, it's an opportune time to make the investment in all electric. and so with that, i'll pass it back to nick to talk about how we've come to consensus with stakeholders about what makes sense. thank you. thank you. yeah. i think you'll see some familiar actors as well as themes. we did some specific outreach to the batf, which i've already kind of described, but the batf, of
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course, just represents some representatives from a variety of areas. and when you're putting together a major policy like this, it's always a good idea to go one level deeper, at least. so we had separate focus groups with affordable housing developers, particularly on these definitions, to make sure they were comfortable that we were not going to inadvertently capture projects that don't have that minimal net cost difference to new construction. we had the same conversation with building owners who wanted to make sure that they wouldn't be required to electrify if they're only replacing, you know, if a new tenant takes up 2 or 3 floors rather than the majority of a building, we also did a survey for tenant advocates, to get their feedback, they've been a little time constrained. so we've found ways to get feedback to make sure that those voices were heard as well. we obviously have regular conversations with other agencies, particularly dbi, but also most cdd and we've reached out in separate meetings to environmental groups,
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contractors, business representatives to basically share our ordinance as the task force was developing it. and get feedback, particularly in the definitional phase, to figure out what what language to use to make sure we capture the intent that the task force was sharing with us. but grounding, grounding that intent in in existing legislation or in existing regulations and then finally, we've got a couple more outreach opportunities ahead. a chinese media roundtable coming up, later, i think that's in april. or is it later this month? later this month? that's right, and then meeting with the chinese chamber of commerce in middle of may. so we've done a lot of work, also with the batf to identify additional stakeholders that need to be involved in this process. and then the themes we've heard back are ones that you will now recognize preserving affordable housing, protecting tenants, educating residents about these upcoming changes, and then identifying funding and preparing the workforce. so
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these this feedback was specific to this ordinance. but we've heard those themes over and over again in every conversation we've had with the task force and with other stakeholders. so i'll wrap it up there and invite my colleagues to come up to answer any additional questions you might have about building decarb writ large. thank you. commissioners questions for staff. yes commissioner tompkins, great presentation. i just have one question. technology moves at such a rapid pace. how are you keeping pace with the changes as you apply these policies, well, the simple answer is that we are on every possible list, serve and working group that deals with those technologies. barry, for example, is a member of the steering committee of the baaqmd working group that's putting together the regulations for the air quality management district. so he hears stuff before anyone else does, and then we also invite we invite other cities
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and other stakeholders from that have already gone through some of these processes, whether that's a building performance standard or major renovation ordinance, to share what they've learned during the implementation phase. that might inform us. so, for example, today i had a focus group with stakeholders from new york to share how they are decarbonizing their high rises because, as you can imagine, that was an even higher priority for them than it has been for us, because of the large number of them in their building stock and in some ways, minds were blown on that call because a lot of our building owners have not thought about how do you do that from a technology standpoint, let alone from just a management standpoint? so i think those are kind of the two big ways. by being very engaged on the stakeholder side, but also on the policy development side across the country, in the world . yes. commissioner barry mentioned there are some incentives available for some of these retrofits or renovations. is that have you identified those? what are the pathways or are you helping, you know, construction companies or people who are doing the homeowners who
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are doing retrofits, to access those funds? are they, from the state, from our city and county or other sources, i don't know if you want to answer this, but there are incentives all over the place, and our energy team is also heavily involved. but i think you have a lot more. sure, there was a i believe the commissioner's you might have received a 3 or 4 page summary of this policy, and an examples of some of the available incentives are included there in detail for summarizing what they would their value for different project scenarios, separately, nick's team is doing a lot of outreach to ensure that folks are aware of the opportunities. yes i have a question about timing. this is a proposed amendment to the existing ordinance. do we have a sense of timing? when might we be reading about this in the paper? i'll mostly defer to cindy about this, but it's we have completed our work with stakeholders and
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it could be taken up by a legislative sponsor at their pleasure. okay all right, seeing no other questions, we can move to public comment. are there any members of the public who wish to comment on item seven and eight? seeing none. public comment on these items is closed . thank you. charles, have we solved our technical problem with item six. not yet. we are working on it. i have several people working on it, we hope to have maggie up and online, so we can do item six, but i don't see her yet. so let's move to item nine. yes. next item please. okay item nine is an update on environmental education programs. the sponsor, shraddha mehta, community partnerships and engagement program management manager, the
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environment department speakers are esther tang, senior environmental education strategist from the environment department, and vanessa luis carter, environmental literacy and climate resilience program administrator from the sfusd. this item is for discussion on. good evening commissioners, i'm shweta mehta. i manage our community partnerships and engagement team at the department and the environmental justice environmental education program is a part of this team. i'm excited to introduce esther tang, who leads our environmental education team. and as you'll hear in esther's presentation, the team has been working really hard to build strong partnerships with the school district and with a number of community partners to expand our environmental education youth efforts, they also have been moving beyond just educating youth and really thinking about how we can inspire and empower youth to take action and with that, i'll turn it over to esther. thank you. thank you. thank you. start
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out. good evening, commissioners , let me try to slice. okay my name is esther tang, senior environmental education strategist. this is my first update since i took the role about a little over a year ago, so one of my goals since i taking on this role is to build the full team, which we now have since mid-december. so for a while we've been, i think the last couple of years of team has been, you know, the in transition. and at one point we were down to just four of us. so it's very excited to have everyone on. and now that we're three newest members, you know, then onboarding and going out to schools, especially very excited
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to have, one of our coordinators who specialize in curriculum development. so it's really good to have that addition to our team. so i just want to give a general overview of our team. we offer several curriculums and programs to schools. so what we do is our team actually go out to the schools. so instead of training teachers to deliver the programs, our educators from our team, every one of us will go out and, and one thing that's really fortunate we do have a team of multilingual speakers. so we're able to offer it to the demographic of san francisco so we can offer it in english, in spanish and chinese, both in cantonese and mandarin. and then so we do offer zero waste assemblies and the assembly style usually involves the whole school, and then it's usually in
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different sections just so that, you know, because the grade levels could be pretty different. and then we do have in-class grade specific presentation. in that case, our curriculum is designed to be great specific, just so that even if we go back to the school, the following years, the same students or usually they might not stay in the same class, but they they will learn different things while reviewing some of the similar concepts, and then we coordinate field trips to the garden for the environment, as well as recology transfer stations with that, because we do have limited spots, unlike visiting classrooms, as much as the capacity we can, we can offer almost unlimited, you know, per request. field trip slots are limited. so what we have been doing is instead of just per request, because they're very popular field trips, we also save significant numbers of field trips, spots for underserved schools and title
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one schools, especially most of those teachers just don't have the bandwidth to plan for field trips. so we would take the initiative to reach out to them, and also take out as much barrier as possible to sign up for field trips. here's an example of one of what strada mentioned earlier. our effort this couple of years has been really empowering the students to take actions and let their voice heard and take, you know, they can do something so, from the curriculum side, for example, this is an auditing project. so we figured while they're learning how to sort, if they put on that auditor hat, then they would be less likely to sort their their waste wrong. and so this is one of the examples of a student work. and another effort that has been
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becoming a larger part of our work. now that we have a full team, one of our staff members actually focused, majority of her time on youth empowerment. one of our high school climate action fellowship, which i'll explain more in a little bit. and then we have green team support. so with that we go out to schools that has eco clubs and green card, clubs. they call it differently or we help them to set it up too. so if it's like a smaller school without the support, then you know, they if they reach out to us or when we go out to their schools and, have our programs and a few students like, reach out and say they want to start some something peer to peer or, education or some something at their school will go out to the school and support them. and then we have lunch sorting support. so these, supports where we go out during lunch time and, you know, help them to
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train. they have their monitors so they have adult monitors as well as student monitors where they will help their peers, their fellow classmates, to sort properly. so and then we also offer youth internship and fellowship opportunities with our team as well as with the department. and this happened throughout the year. so we do have several events that we participate as well. and here are just a few examples of events that would definitely make an effort to support. so these are events that, not put up by us, but we definitely make a presence, whether it's tabling activities or have workshops. so this picture here, i just want to make a comment. it's one of the recent ones at, we did it at chinatown, tabling as well as the rock family night at
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california academy of sciences, because it's chinese new year. so we use the wishing trees, you know, for them to make a wish, but really, for the student to make a pledge of what they can do for the earth. and it's really popular and it's really nice to read their, their messaging, another big upcoming events that we're organizing. it's our first scale up events, which will happen april 25th. during climate week. so we have decided to have it partnership with youth. sorry, with yerba buena garden, and so that's where we will host it in this location where the children's garden, at the amphitheater. and then it's from 10 to 1 during school time. so it will be a field trip style, we're expecting about because the capacity is 1000 students. so this is by invitation only. so the way it works is imagine a
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science fair. except students are not presenting their presentations is not limited to just posters. so they could be presenting in different ways. they could present in, objects and this year, we actually have some exciting and i'm giving it off a little bit. this actually a dance by high school students. so we're looking forward to that. so the presenters so you now can see the presenters group about 20 to 30% of this 1000 students will be presenting. and that include our climate, action fellow students who have been doing a climate impact projects. they'll be presenting that. we also have san francisco, sfusd teachers who participated in the solution tree fellowships, and they have their class involved in a year long design of climate impact projects, and they will
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be presenting it with their students, too. and we also invite community based organization partners that have youth presence. so they will be presenting as well. so then the other about 70% of students are selected students that we invite, and they'll come and get inspired and have a great day out there celebrating earth month as well. so, here's our fellow students. so just now we, as you know, we're expecting our partner from sfusd. unfortunately, she's stuck at home with a sick, five year old. so yeah, so i should have time to read a note. she sent her note, and i'll read it off. okay, so i'm vanessa lewis carter, as of ucsd's environmental literacy and climate resilience program
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administrator. we're thrilled to have launched our pilot climate action fellowship for high school students in sfusd. thanks to the partnership with sfe. thank you for everyone here who has supported youth development work in general and specifically this program. gratitude to tie and strata for attending climate action fellowship meetings to inspire students and share their stories as a pilot this spring, we're working with 12 students from seven of our district's high schools over the course of a semester, we will expand the program to recruit from all of our district's high school to serve additional students during a year long program. the program supports the next generation to thrive in the 21st century in a pursuit of climate justice, students gain climate literacy. we take climate action, explore college and career options, earn academic credits, and receive a
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stipend for their commitment to the climate action fellowship. in this destabilizing time of climate crisis, paired with the ongoing recovery from the pandemic, our cities adolescents are experiencing a mental health crisis. fortunately, we now, through extensive research that an antidote to climate anxiety is the opportunity to take action. this is the central focus of the fellowship. participants attend bi weekly interactive online workshops on tuesday evenings, hosted by experts in the multiple climate related fields to build their knowledge base while practicing their solutionary design and project management skills to lead climate action projects in their communities. along the way, they receive professional coaching to support their climate action projects. this process provides perspective into new career paths. it takes a village to pursue climate justice. meanwhile, students are developing community with
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climate active peers across sfusd high school and participating in periodic in-person retreats. they earn college and career readiness credit through asynchronous online coursework supporting their resume cover letter skill development and interview preparation, as well as earn a stipend through completion of the fellowship. we will culminate april 25th at the sf climate week youth summit, where students were presented projects which ranged from starting garden clubs at their schools, eliminating plastic bags at sf farmers market, documenting their personal zero waste challenges, bridging the climate literacy gap in the asian community across generations, to identifying how to navigate greenwashing in our consumer habits. this youth summit will also highlight the work of environmental solutionary teacher fellows and their k-12
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classes, who have spent the year designing in class action projects, allowing students to realize their solutionary potential. in future years. we hope to formalize a san francisco youth climate advisory board, where fellows will provide feedback to city agencies and sfusd in climate related policy program and design. thank you very much. i'm ready for questions. thank you, commissioners, questions for staff. esther. fabulous job, generally, these kinds of programs are personally important to me as 20 years ago i got involved in the environment in a high school club from our local government, generally, you inform me about how the program operates. i misunderstood some fundamentals, but what i want to reframe some of the questions that i did have. generally, my north star vision for this kind of program is everyone in sfusd would have
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the opportunity to engage with the department. realistically, i don't think you could go into every single classroom and deliver the curriculum back of the napkin math here. how many students within sfusd is the department engaging with? and if i were to impose my north star vision, how would we get there? thank you, i have that goal, too. when i first joined the department. and so during the pandemic, we really shifted our relations with the school as a instead of classroom by classroom, which we still do, but we want to build a whole school relationship, which we can definitely see a big move in the last couple of years. so having a whole school involvement that makes a huge difference. so as long as we have one teacher reaching out, we can get the schools and schools that we haven't served because we've been keeping track of that. we go out actively and now that we have a full team, so
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i, myself and a couple of people can focus on that. so we go out and recruit, you know, talk to principals, having principals buy in, that makes a huge difference as well. so that really moved the directions. and also with not just offering programs to bring awareness, since we've went past that phase, we continue to build their knowledge. but then really trying to involve schools and activities and events where they can do, you know, take actions. i think that's also making a huge difference. but i'm open to any ideas and we continue to partner with not just sfusd, but a lot of local partners and joined forces. i think that makes a huge difference because everyone is doing a lot of things with the same goals. but if we join forces, you know that one plus one greater than two impact, it's going to help us reach that goal. thank you, i guess my quick follow up
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question to that would just be along the lines of behavioral change, right? kids are so impressionable. simple comments. get them to update how they brush their teeth, turning off the faucet. does the department ever follow up after those assemblies to say, hey, we gave you this pro tip? how did it go about using it? yes. so along with switching to the whole school. so in the past it's a lot of one time visit or max two times visit. so we start offering more than one visit. i mean i would need multiple reminders to change anything and so having that it's helpful. so you'll go back to the schools and students recognize you. and then we also tell them before we leave, we're coming back, you know, and you know, in in a month or so would you share with us. and then sometimes teacher would share their progress as well. of course, we're still in the progress of making, you know, the curriculum better and plan better, and hopefully to capture that more. so, so that's our goal in improving that.
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thank you. and thank you for all you do. thank you. other questions, commissioner, on just more of a light hearted question , i noticed, phoebe, the phoenix on one of the slides has phoebe made a comeback yet? i was always a big fan of the way phoebe came out in front of classes and everybody would cheer. thank you. i meant to i forgot my line. after i introduced the team, i meant to say, don't forget, i'm important. team member phoebe the phoenix, she's back. and so, in fact, she came back right when school restart. and it was a request of principals. they say, oh my gosh, we need refresher for our whole school because lunch is a mess. can you come back? and phoebe comes back and we did. thank you. and phoebe will be at the event on april 25th. well i don't have a question, but i do want to offer kudos to you and your team for your community engagement and consistency in making these
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programs so accessible to our community and ensuring that they understand how they will offer impact to the future. so thank you for that. thank you. thanks for your support and i'll contact you offline. my goal i would love to have cleanups at every single sfusd school to keep the schools itself clean and around it for the neighbors. so so, let's partner together. thank you. i meant to share with you one of the solutionary teachers project. last year, her third to fifth grade class students worked on the cigaret butts issues in in chinatown. happy to share that later on. okay, well, seeing no further questions. thank you, esther and sarita for a great presentation. get well soon to vanessa's five year old. sorry that we weren't able to hear her in person. thank you. thank you so much.
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oh, let's go to public comment, charles. sure are there any members of the public who wish to comment on this item? seeing none. public comment on this item is closed. okay how are we doing on our technical difficulties with item six? i don't think we're going to be able to resolve those technical difficulties. so if you are online via webex, i think you can you can go ahead and stick around and watch, or you can leave if you're here for item six, because i don't think we're going to be able to get to that today. but we'll do that at a future meeting. we'll do that at a future meeting. correct? okay so next item is item item ten, item ten review. and vote on whether to approve resolution file 2020 4-03- co resolution authorizing clean transportation grant. the speaker is charles sheehan, chief policy and public affairs officer. the explanatory document is resolution file 2020 403 dash co. this item is for discussion and possible action.
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i'm going to move to the other computer. to. okay, commissioners, thank you for this, we can have the slides from sgtv. and while they're pulling those up, i want to note that this grant that was presented to you just as an update, because we had newly won the grant, i believe, in october of last year, a couple of months ago, it was about a $605,000 grant from the department of energy, and it's to expand a state funded e-bike program that we already have underway. and it's providing e-bikes and trainings to delivery workers to make food deliveries, and one of the objectives is to create an online calculator and a selection tool to spur deployment of e-bikes among delivery workers. as you can
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see, the state funded cec grant, allowed us to select 30 e-bike participants, and the dau expansion grant that we got allowed us to expand that to around 75 e-bike participants, what we're asking for your approval today is a resolution authorizing us to disperse, per the grant, about $537,000 for about three years. september 2023 through september 2026, from the department of energy to our prime contractor administering the program that is grid alternatives, they're going to administer and implement the expansion of the city's e-bike program, including recruiting participants, procuring equipment, administrating the surveys and other methods of data collection, and that's the resolution. that's before you, when i sit back down, we do have one slight technical change to
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one of the dates in the resolution. i'll offer that language, i also believe we have someone here from grid alternatives, who may say a few words during our public comment, i'll pause now to see if anyone has any questions. seeing none, let's move to the proposed amendment. really, really quickly, commissioners. thank you for that. on the second page, the resolve line totaling 537,286 to be dispersed. we want to strike everything from during fiscal year 23 to 24. and that's a very short window of time. and we want to change it to be dispersed. and then the amendment is through 2027 to the following organizations. so that is the technical amendment. we were hoping that you could make a motion on and incorporate, any questions about that amendment. and if not, we have a motion and a second. so moved motion by
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commissioner cahill. second, second by commissioner hunter. let's go to a sure public comment. but actually, do we want to make a motion to move the amended get a second, then we'll go to public comment. let's do that, we have a motion and a second for the amended resolution. on moves to approve the amended resolution motion by commissioner on second by commissioner bermejo. great public comment. public comment. are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? please come forward now. thank you everybody, it's great to be here to talk on behalf of grid alternatives, my name is edgar. my pronouns are he, him, grid's mission is to have a rapid transit. transit to a clean future, we work with communities to bring community
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powered solutions to make that change towards, to mitigate in economic and environmental impacts to our communities. we help people reduce, we help people by reducing the costs and burdens of the energy sectors. and we really believe that using e-bikes is a way to do that as well, essentially taking, the impact from a pump to an impact based off of an electric based sort of way of moving around, at grid, we focus on people. we've helped clients save $714 million in lifetime savings with our programs. we focus on planet supporting the decarbonization and reduction of using well hitting an ultimate total in the bay area of 2 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions. and then we also focus on employment having more than 33,000 participants, having some hands on training with our programs, we're really happy to be part of
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this team with san francisco environment, specifically in this e-bikes sort of, program. we've got a lot of amazing feedback from our participants, from the people that are taking part in this program, they are really loving the e-bikes. they love the benefits of having this type of transportation for their delivery purposes, 1st may, she shared that since she switched to an e-bike, i almost never had to worry about expenses compared to that of a car. no more parking expenses, no more gas, no insurance, no maintenance, etc. and what's more, for a student like me, an e-bike is a perfect option for commuting to school as well. the fact that the e-bike comes with a basket and net it holds everything that may will ever need. she'll never use a car for delivery again, so we're really happy to be part of this kind of program, we've been really learning what it means to have people take on this type of technology and put it as part of
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their both their daily stuff, but also their work based sort of activities. and that's what we're learning here at grid is how to better serve our communities so that they can take part in our other offerings, for those that are curious, you can always look up more benefits to our community over at access clean california. org and basically every participant that takes part in our programs, they get that type of messaging as well so they can take it a step further. i appreciate your all's time today. thank you so much. thank you. are there any other members of the public who wish to comment? seeing none. public comment on this item is closed. thank you. charles, please call the roll, president one is excused. vice president sullivan i commissioner on i commissioner bermejo i commissioner hunter i commissioner tompkins i commissioner un i the motion passes. next item please. next item is item 11. the director's
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report. the speaker is tyrone chu, director and charles sheehan, chief policy and public affairs officer. the explanatory document is the director's report, commissioners, we have a couple items, we'll go through the agendized items as listed here first, and then i'll give kind of a wrap up summary of all the different activities we've been up to and what we're looking forward to for april, during earth month. so charles. thank you. thank you. commissioners i've got a quick grants and external funding sources, update. so if we could have the slides, you are familiar with this slide deck and we continue to update it as we continue to apply for grants and ideally receive those grants, this first page kind of gives you the total count of our proposals submitted, 24. and we're still counting, and then
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we have plenty that we're still evaluating, preparing. and then there is, of course, our total requested amount at the bottom, here's the follow up slide. and you see, where we're waiting decisions where we've, you know, had grants that have been declined. and of course, most importantly, what has been awarded from each of those categories is and how much funds we have secured from each of those categories. and kind of additional funds that we're projecting. those are based on. follow ups to grants or block grant funding that we, have more, more certainty that we're going to receive. that's why we call it a funds projected column . and then for the final slide, you may have seen some of this in our budget presentation in february, but this is a more complete list that includes, grants and awards that we have gone through and accept and expend process for. and of course, some grants and awards that we have just one in
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particular, the sb 1383 food recovery grant. that was more of a block grant, that we were expecting and that we applied for a total of 1.3 million and calrecycle came back and said because of the work that we were doing and the good work of the zero waste team on food waste, they awarded us $2.1 million. and so that is the change that i do want to note. i also want to take a take a moment to talk about block grants just because they're a block grant and you're entitled to it doesn't mean you always get it or get the full amount. or if you are exceeding in this particular policy substantive area, you can sometimes get more than what you ask for. and so we take those grants just as seriously as we do the other competitive ones, i'll pause to see if anyone has any questions. charles, the baron grant dwarfs the others in size. can you just remind remind the commission what that's about? sure it is a program that
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we have been administering for many years, the funding comes from somewhat of a public goods charge from the investor owned utilities that's filtered through a bag and then into the baron program. and we are an administrator for that program. and so not just for san francisco, but for other bay area counties. and the program evolves and, you know, has changed from year to year. but its energy efficiency programs, its outreach to get people to sign up for those energy efficiency programs to work with energy efficiency contractors. it's rebates and incentives to pay for some of those energy efficiency upgrades. it's, you know, outreach about the rebates and incentives. it's, it's multifamily, residential, often focused on lower income multifamily, it's small business . it's, it's very, it's very comprehensive. and it has changed over, over the years. but that's what that grant is.
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thank you. the questions. okay. if i may, i do want to give a shout out to all the staff, all of those grants that you see that we're bringing in, each one of those takes a specific proposal, a project, a team. so. we have our grants manager and administrator, we have all of our program staff that are working specifically on coming up with creative ideas of how can we make an attractive proposal to the federal or state government to fund something that we think is going to accelerate climate action here, and also have replicable effects outside of our city? and so the fact that we're bringing in this, this amount of revenue into the city signals, what high regard that federal and state government sees our work here in san francisco. and not only that, what high regard they see our department in leading a lot of the efforts around our climate initiatives. and i always say that that our
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initiatives are really grounded as as we always say around equity. and i think that's one of the things that makes our proposals. really attractive, is that we give a lot of thought to how are we reaching underserved populations and hard to reach populations in every single grant proposal that we put forward? because those are where the opportunities most lie in terms of being able to tell this story of how impactful this this climate work is in investing in our community. so i want to give a lot of recognition to the staff that have worked to bring in these these dollars and as you can see, there's a lot more in that pipeline, and as i joked around to others, you know, if you were in an investment firm and you were investing, let's just say your general fund dollars of, you know, the roughly $1.3 million that we get from general fund and we were able to turn that around and get you a 40 x return on that, you would think that's a pretty good
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investment. and so we're really happy with the work that we've done. and you can see there's a lot more, down the road. i just want to add that it's really great to see, the office, the team take advantage of those opportunities right now and to really make sure that when we're talking about equity piece. that it does reach a lot of communities. and i think that there's an unprecedented time right now. so thank you for that and for focusing on that right now. thank you tyrone. is that it for, yep. and then we had a second item that charles is also going to give to update, on the departure of kyle wiener, as you can see, we've had some technical difficulty today. it's not because kyle is gone, not only because of that, but partly due to that, and so charles is going to go over kind of the plan we have in the interim and the long terme to fill his
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position. sure. so we have begun the search process, that does take a little bit of time. so we have already begun it, i'll talk about the interim plan, in the interim, we are seeking a, temporary six month, 56, 38 that we will hire from within the department to help with some of the commission affairs responsibilities, and some of the other things, some of the administrative work that that position normally does. and so that will kind of tide us over for the next 4 to 6 months, although that will take a little time to hire, but not as much because it's a temporary position and it's a internal recruitment only. and so it gives some of our 99, 22 seconds and other folks a chance to experience something different, maybe learn some new skills, so that's the short tum interim plan. the more long terme, plan is to find a new commission affairs officer, but we're, doing it a little bit
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differently this time. there are a number of commission affair positions for other commissions throughout the city that are single positions, like one person, one commission. and that's the classification, this position is one of those, the city and dr. are trying to move away from those single person positions to make those positions that staff the commission a little more flexible and a little less specific. and so to that end, we are planning on converting what was a 1543. that was the position for our commission affairs officer to a 5642, which is, pretty much a department of the environment only classification. but there are multiple people that fill that at the department, and so this will give us maybe a little more flexibility. it allows us to better align some of the policy things that kind of my team does with the commission responsibilities that my team also does. and so that adds a little more flexibility. and it also allows for supervision for
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a team to be under that 5642 position. because the commission and everything that that position does isn't really a one person responsibility, as you can kind of see from where we are today, there are many people that are involved in putting it together, and so that will give us some extra personnel flexibility by making that a 5642. a more general department in the environment specific classification section, and we will continue having this to be a permanent, exempt, position, just like all the other ones are permanent exempt because that's just how the commission position is. i'll pause to see if anyone has any questions or if you have anything to add. tyrone commissioner, on, so what you're just describing, does that add more to the workload of potentially a commission affairs officer in the future? it might add a little more to the workload, but it will it will
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also add more people, to help with that workload. it'll kind of centralize and better combine certain commission affairs activities with certain policy activities. and then there'll be extra staff to get everything done. the cautionary note i would strike is, as i remember, the commission, the commissioners ourselves are only supposed to interact with the department through the commission affairs officer or the director of the department. so, i, i'd like to think we're not a handful. like, we are actually very good about, you know, making sure the commissioner affairs officer is not overloaded, but it is something i'm mindful of. it's right to be mindful of that going forward. we'll still have that person be the single point of contact. just because it's easier that way. and so that won't change. okay. seeing no other questions. we can move to
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public comment, well, i think tyrone is going to a couple more items. sorry, so these are just the quick general updates. april is earth month. april. 22nd is earth day, april 21st through the 27th is sf climate week. it is going to be a very busy week for our department, in a good way, this is our chance to really highlight all of the great work that we're doing within the department. so there are a number of activities being scheduled throughout the entire month, i did want to make sure the commission was aware that mayor breed will be hosting an event on the mayor's balcony, next week. so each of the commissioners will be receiving an invitation in short order. i believe it's tentatively scheduled for april 3rd, but that invitation will be coming directly from the mayor's office to all of you, that will kick off all of the festivities for, earth month. and so we have a lot of work, leading into sf climate week, which we've heard a lot about between the 21st and
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27th, if you visit sf climate week. org, and i encourage the public to do so, there are a growing number of activations and events that are happening throughout the city. and actually in the bay area, i was just looking at the list because it just got published last week, we have obviously our youth climate summit, which you heard about from esther, there's a kickoff event, there's technology focused events around carbon removal, financing, climate, how to be a startup to work in the climate space. and what do you need? and so, it's having the intended effect, which was we wanted to create an organic platform to link together and network all of these different activities that are happening already in san francisco, so that we encourage more growth in the area around the climate technology area. we connect that growth also to the many community activities that we need to center all of this work in and so we have community
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activations around, you know, earth day event cleanups, bio blitzes by the california academy. it's all being organized kind of around this same week to create this energy, and at the same time, we're engaging with all of our small businesses and restaurateurs in the city, encouraging them to get involved for this week, to say, hey, maybe for this week you can have a climate special, thing on your menu. and we've been getting a lot of great feedback from them, we've been getting venues and asking them to let us know how many people can you accommodate within your venues and then sharing that list to all of the people that are thinking about doing events, that week. and so, again, great energy, we have 50 plus events already. calendared. and that was just the initial swath of events. we got over 500 organizations that were interested in doing different types of events. and so we expect that number to grow, over the coming weeks. so it's going to be a great showing. i think, for the city for all of this work, yeah. so we're excited, so happy to answer any questions
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about about climate week. a couple of other press things, it's too bad we didn't get maggie on because, we had a great, media showing for our safe medicine disposal program about three and a half weeks ago. where we highlighted the fact that this department has helped kind of safely re divert or divert 140,000 pounds of unused and expired medications away from our environment for safe disposal. and that's all the work that, maggie, you saw the entire toxics team that was here from polly and huey and chris, all of them have been leading that effort to get to that result. so we were really proud of the coverage that our department got, we also, as you heard, we are doing a chinese media roundtable this friday to talk about all of the incentives because we want to make sure that everyone is connected to all the various incentives from building electrification, electric vehicle charging. so
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we're doing as much as we can to connect with everyone, on that front. and finally, last week, we had an amazing press conference with supervisor mandelman. so thank you to, commission president juan, commissioner sullivan for showing up, but we talked about our city plan to get curbside charging into our city, we've been a little bit slow in getting those chargers out, mainly because, you know, there's a there's a lot of friction, i would say, with the public right of way, curbside spaces, street use, coupled with our drive to try to move everyone into public transit, biking. and so there's been these natural conflicts which are good because we're a transit first city, but i think we've had recent development, thanks to supervisor mandelman, thanks to the mta, thanks to our team at the environment department. and kind of like removing some of those barriers and having a commitment to remove those barriers. so we're doing a study right now. we plan to have that study done by july, which is
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going to indicate where we think curbside charging will have the biggest effect in the city. so it's not going to work for every place around the city. but strategically, there are going to be locations where we think curbside will help multifamily residential, residents convert to electric vehicles when necessary, we also will be doing kind of a expanded pilot that we hope to run, and roll out this summer going into next year with those curbside charging. so we expect to expand this model as we go forward. and then finally we have our actually have two more things. sorry we have our green business awards on april 30th. for commissioner bermejo, who participated in our past event, we're celebrating the over 100 small businesses that are certified green businesses in the city. and it's a great event. all of you are going to get invitations to it, we're doing it at the california academy of sciences this year, and so i hope all of you can
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come out to celebrate all the amazing work of our small businesses and being sustainable and being leaders, you heard about sb 1383, which is our food waste reduction, senate bill. we're doing kind of a very unique pilot project, focused on food waste reduction and focus, again on equity and justice around food access. so we're focusing on areas, low income areas to see whether or not we can connect kind of, rightsizing the amount of food that you get, making sure that, you know, that food can be used up to a certain time. a lot of times, expiration dates that we have on all of our cans are not real expiration dates. they're just dates on there, and all of this yields kind of waste, both from an environmental side and economically for, people that are buying things, thinking you have to throw them away when they're still good. and so we're
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launching a campaign focused on the excelsior bay bayview and a few other areas with single family homes, partnering with small grocers in those areas to do a whole marketing campaign on really educating people around, you know, how to keep their produce fresh when something is good and when it should be disposed of, how it should be disposed of, and also how to rightsize what you're buying because one of the things we've learned is, you know, a lot of times and we all make this mistake, we buy too much, not thinking and planning ahead of what we actually need. and that yields waste. and so we're trying to do all of these different facets. and we're launching a huge campaign in april during earth month. and finally, i will mention the city municipal refuse contract, there was an article about that, this is the hauling contract for all of our city departments, allied waste, which was the winning
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bidder for that contract, pulled back their their application. and so now the city, being led through the office of contracts administration, is working on negotiating with our second, actually, there were only two bidders on it, but working with the second bidder, which is recology, and so the city will likely be moving forward with an extension on our current contract and then negotiating what that future contract may look like, and then bringing back that back to the board. and i think that's all i got. and i'm happy to answer any questions, the april 3rd event with the mayor, do you recall what time that is? time of day? i believe it's probably going to be at the end of the day or now. i'm being told it's going to be around 1230. okay, great. there you go. hot off the press. all right. thank you. any other questions for, yes, commissioner bermejo, you mentioned that on the 30th. it's a small business,
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green business awards that the academy of sciences and also the day before on the 29th, it's the kickoff of national small business week. and there's going to be an event, i think, at the war memorial. so before we knew who those small business winners. and that was in the secret, maybe it would be a good idea to invite them and probably, like, be there and highlight them as well. so yes, thank thank you for that, commissioner hill. we are well aware of that, that event we actually talked to the office of small business about whether or not we combine it and i think we wanted kind of an event because one of the what the benefits, as you saw from the last time we had this event were the green businesses talking to one another and like and that was part of the part of the reason why we like doing this is because we want them to be seen and recognized, but also for them to see and recognize each other and like the energy that's
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there created in this like amazing cohort of businesses that have agreed to step up and be sustainable, like having that kind of forum and platform to themselves, we find it's kind of an important, important part of our program, and when we talk to the office of small business, i think we realized that they would be recognized, they could be recognized, but they would kind of get lost in the shuffle with all the other small businesses. and so we will have a presence definitely at the event on the 29th. but we won't be recognizing the green business awards, and we'll be or the green businesses in san francisco will be doing that at our private event. and i think our hope is and we've gotten tentative approval, that i think the mayor plans to attend both of them, so both the 29th and the 30th. so we're we're really excited. okay. other questions. seeing none, we can move to public comment. are there any members of the public who wish to comment on this item, seeing
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none public comment on this item is closed. thank you. charles. next item, please, the next item is item 12. new business future agenda items. the speaker is charles sheehan, chief policy and public affairs officer. this item is for discussion, so thank you, commissioners, first i want to remind everyone, form 700 is due. so, please complete if you haven't done so already. and then, of course, the associated trainings that go along with that in terms of new business and future agenda items, the next commission meeting is april 22nd, and there may be a number of events that are on that day. and so we have to take a closer look to see if we can still schedule that, because i know we've already got some folks that are may not be able to attend, the commission meeting after that i believe is june 3rd because of the may memorial, weekend holiday event, and then we typically, i believe it's, june 24th is the one at the end of june. so there may be a
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little bit of reshuffling for the next meeting or two, and we will work with you shortly to finalize that schedule, but coming up for our next meeting, we do want to present to you, results from our ghg inventory, we also may be taking a deeper dive into some of the ev charging issues and topics that, our director mentioned in his director's report, and, of course, we are always open to suggestions that you may have for agenda items, so i will pause now to see if there are any of those suggestions, yes. thank you. i do have a request to have an evaluation of the san francisco african american reparations committee and the plan that they put forth with some 100, recommendations. and look at that with an eye toward what's in scope for the department of the environment and what we might have as suggestions for current state
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port, activation and implementation that may be already in progress, and what we can look at for future planning. great. thank you. any other discussion? seeing none go to public comment. are there any members of the public who wish to comment on this item, seeing none public comment on this item is closed. thank you. charles. next item please, the next item is item 13. adjournment the meeting is adjourned. the time is 6:42 p.m. thank you for joining us locals.
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>> (music). >> the work go ahead offered i didn't the rec and park friday's local young people between 14 and 17 to be part 6 the workforce and eastern responsibility and professionalism and gain job skills and assignments in neighborhoods parking and recreation centers and includes art and crafts, sport, cooking, gardening and facility support and so many more.
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>> (multiple voices). >> i think we're part of the this is the fact we're outdoors and it is really great to be in nature and workreation is great first step to figure out what you would like to do workreation covers real life working skills and expansion can be allowed (unintelligible) it is a really great program because um, students get placed all the time for what they like. join us in the experience and opportunity and i really like the workreation program it is fun to workout at the summer camp with all the kids each is different
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and the staff is really nice. >> why? is because i used to go to the local park often when i was a little kid. with my mom i often had to translate for my mom i applied in the hope to provide assistance for other people with first language was for the english. >> i like this job we have fun and working and i feel welcome. >> hi. >> like how a job actually works like maybe before then i didn't know like all the jobs i don't know any of that now i do. >> it has to be self aware of things and independence of value
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of this taught me how to be progressiveal but still learning as i go on. >> i learned a lot like a got to adapt and challenges and obstacles come up everyday and . >> i like that we're able to really work with other people and gaining experience like how in the real world hoe how he work with other people. >> if you're looking to develop your live skills as well as cash and working in the parks, and meeting great people and working with great staff i definitely recommend the corporation. >> it is fun. >> i definitely do the scombrifrm again that the workreation and park and i'll do that again.
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>> i will >> [music] in the town inside here i'm young. he was putting art, music and drinking together upon today have a nonpretentious pretentious spitz that the community can enjoy each other and the time off we get in this world. [music] >> spends energy elevating artists and credit a safe place. a place to have a community.
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>> it is i great neighborhood the art district because we have the contemp refer museum of sf. yerba buena for the arts all of the operators and businesses here we get together and xhoukt and support each other this is a very cool neighborhood to be a part of. [music] paint on canvas is primary low when we do. this is guilty pleasures an all female artist show. it is going to be great. fun we have interactive elements. >> we love having this gem. you know people come in and discover it and get to feel at home. this is like home san francisco >> never be afraid it anybodying on our door.
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[laughter]. if the hours are post and you had want to seat art we are here 9 o'clock to 5 o'clock most days. [music] >> conduct a field shelter exercise where we open up a number of tents that animal control has they have supplies and equipment and staff and volunteers. we simulate the need for cape ability after a disaster or
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earthquake. >> animal care and control is your city's animal shelter. we care for approximately 10,000 animals a year. we are opinion for san francisco's animal in thes upon effect of an emergency. we got our tents and practicing how to deal with that. >> this is the shelter is overwhelmed with animals after a disaster this shelter is full regularly. if we torch have an event that would cause a number of animals to escape or injured or stray or separate friday their people that's where we would respond. >> pets are part of the family and need to make sure they are taken care of like people with the supplies and equip we are able to provide shelter for pets in addition to the existing shelter. >> we have formulated a plan so this in the event of a disaster
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we are hear ready to help and support the city. >> we are able to use the muni bus to transport the people. animals and other equip if the shelter. >> encourage people there is an evacuation order to take your pet with you. >> very first thing everyone should do is microchip the pet. and pack a bag >> shelter cert not a place where you want your animal to end up unless the last resort and like to keep most out of the shelter when we can. >> take care of your people and your friend and family. pets need to be taken
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>> [music] you are watching golden gate inventions with michael. this is episode exploring the excelsior. >> hi i'm michael you are watching golden gate inventions highlighting urban out doors we are in the excelsior. pickleball. let's play pickleball! pickleball is an incredited low popular sport growing nationwide. pickleball combines tennis, bad mitton and ping pong. playod a bad mitton sized court with paddle and i plasticic ball. starting out is easy. you can pick up paddle and balls
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for 20 buck and it is suitable for everyone in all skill levels you see here. the gim is played by 2 or 4 players. the ball must be served diagnoty and other rules theory easy to pick up. the game ends when i player or team reaches a set score 11 or 21 point bunkham win bright 2 pickleball courts are available across the city some are and others require booking ahead and a fee. information about the courts found at sf recpark. org if you are interested in playing. now i know why people are playing pickleball. it is so much fun you play all ages. all skill levels and pop on a court and you are red to g. a lot of fun i'm glad i did it.
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all right. let's go! time for a hike! there is i ton of hike nothing excelsior. 312 acres mc clarin the second largest p in san francisco. there are 7 miles of tris including the there was fer's way this spreads over foresxeft field and prosecute voids hill side views of the city. and well is a meditative quiet place in mc clarin p you will siendz labyrinth made of rock:now we are at glen eagle golf course special try out disk golf >> now disk golf! so disk golf is like traditional golf but with noticing disks. credit as the sport's pioneer
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establishing the disk ballsorption and the first standardized target the disk ball hole. the game involves throwing from key areas toward i metal basket. players use different disks for long distances driver, immediateerate. mid range and precise shot, putters. players begin at the t area. throw disks toward the basket and prosecute seed down the fare way. player with the lowest number of throws the end wins the game. disk golf at glen eagle cost 14 dollars if you pay at the clubhouse. there is an 18 hole course this is free. du see that shot? i won! am i was not very good now i
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have a huge respect for disk ball player its is difficult but fun. thank you for joining me in the excelsior this is goldenate adventures.
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the meeting will come to order. this is the april 1st, 2024 rules committee meeting. i'm supervisor hillary ronen, chair of the committee. i'm joined by committee vice chair shamann walton and committee member, ash-shafi'i will be here shortly. our clerk is victor young, and i would like to thank corwin color tv for broadcasting this meeting. mr. clerk, do you have any announcements? yes public comment will be taken on each item on this agenda. when your item of interest comes up and public comment is called, please line up to speak on your right. alternatively, you may submit public comment in writing in either of the following ways. email them to myself. the rules committee clerk at victor young at sf gov