Remarks by Stephanie Cajina
43 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 2
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
So if I'm tracking this legislation allows us to harden some of the areas whereas in the current How it's currently? Legislated we can't harden If we wanted to is that does that track with my understanding? Okay.
And in terms of outreach and engagement, have we connected with some of the charitable organizations there? We heard about some of the religious organizations, but there's also a theater there, Counter Pulse, other different. Just curious to understand how that has gone and what feedback you have gotten from folks.
And so based on the current configuration, based on our observations, we're seeing that most hosts use that loading zone, and they don't need additional loading areas on the north side? Correct. Okay. Yeah. Notices sometimes aren't enough to let folks know that these types of changes are coming. So I'm just curious to know if we wanted to be surgical about our outreach and engagement, is that something that staff is ready to do or open to doing? There aren't a lot of businesses here. It's a few phone calls just to see if we can talk to a human on the other side and just say, hey, these things…
And typically, I'm very hesitant to approve something if there hasn't been robust outreach and engagement. Considering that this is just a change that has already been socialized in some ways, I still think it would benefit us to close the conversation loop with some of the handful of commercial tenant or activators in this space. rescinded these types of decisions in the past. And I just would want to see staff create a pathway to get that feedback once implemented from the handful of merchants there. And if they're seeing that they're struggling with this, bring it back to us and then we…
Thank you, Chair. Thank you for your presentation, Brian. And Lieutenant Flores, thank you so much for being here with us today. I appreciate all the public comment we heard today. I know it's a very difficult situation. It's not easy on a Tuesday afternoon to come out here and be vulnerable with us and share what you shared with us today. So I just really want to appreciate all of you for taking the time to do this. It does seem, based on public comment, I could completely appreciate that this intervention has improved the quality of life for some folks, but not for all. And I heard from…
So it occurs to me that there's a prevalence of violent acts that are related to sex work and are not related to sex work. And I wonder, and I heard this a lot in public comment, that there's this desire to try to understand if there is a multi-agency and maybe even a multi-departmental approach within the SFPD to explore solutions for the area. Within the last 18 months, have you all Conversed about that, thought about that. Is that something that has come up for you all?
Brian, I don't know if you could step up for a little bit. So curious to understand how we've also been working with Department of Emergency Fire, different emergency responsiveness in that area. I did hear that also come up for some folks. So just want to see if over the last 18 months you've seen something there or something noteworthy or we've made changes to try to accommodate those issues or address those issues.
Operationally, how are we getting feedback from the community?
Are we doing any surveying? Are we working with key community partners? Any of that going on?
All right. OK. What I'm seeing just from public comment presentation, also hearing from you fine gentlemen, is that there is a real need for us to have better metrics to evaluate this pilot program. And what I'm also hearing is that We did actually have in our the last time that we approved this a request for a six-month evaluation report and a presentation to this board and and that also did not occur and so I I do have some reluctance to approve this as is, given all of that. And so I do have an amendment to propose to this legislation. I'm happy to read it into the record if that works for…
Right, so it anticipates approval and it establishes a request from SFMT and SFPD to create evaluation metrics for the program. So currently there are no real evaluation metrics that we're using to evaluate if this is a success or not. We're really just relying on being responsive to a handful of community feedback that we're getting. And there is no real way for us to get – there's no feedback loop that we have with the community right now. And so if we are to approve this in the future, I really do think we need to make data-driven decisions. This is not a data-driven decision right now. We…
Yeah. Would you like to add to the language? Or is this a, sorry, Susan?
I think for the purposes of this particular legislation, the door is open right now to work with community to establish those metrics. So I don't want to kind of force you to pick one or two. I think that the effort is to try to see with the community what are the metrics that resonate the most. with folks that have been directly affected by the crime issues that have been occurring in these two streets, and then developing metrics accordingly. And so it could be something that is squarely into some of the purview that you have, but it could be something that's within the purview of your…
OK. And perhaps, I don't know, Julie, if you all have worked with SFPD on other similar sort of projects. And perhaps you could speak to kind of the process that you all take when you're establishing these sort of metrics that go cross-departmental, these cross-departmental metrics or evaluation points that you guys have.
Thank you, Chair Tarloff. Thank you so much for your presentation. I am so excited about this program. I know we talked about it at length at our vision through our subcommittee. And so I just really want to thank staff for being responsive to this request that we had at the subcommittee level where we wanted to find ways for folks to really embrace daylit areas and see them as their own and instill community pride in their particular neighborhoods. And so I just really, really want to thank you all for taking the time to figure this out. We presented this challenge. We said, hey, can you…
Got it. Well, I definitely want to echo what Director Henderson said about just coming back and giving us feedback and to see how it's going. Would encourage maybe the Streets Quarterly as a space where that could happen. But I'm excited to see what happens. So thank you so much.
Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much for your presentation, Vic. It seems like you're doing a lot. And I so appreciate how you're packaging the work around schools. And I think that's so important to just understand. And I think it speaks to your time as the head of this department, just seeing where there's areas where you can, through efficiencies, kind of bring the team together and start packaging everyone's work. So I just want to call that out, that it is a little bit of a manager level, just looking at everything from a higher level view and seeing where there's some connections that…
Yeah, and I would definitely encourage, as a team is defining different work streams a little bit more and just trying to get feedback from different stakeholder groups, to see what folks are saying about safety solutions and moments where these barriers are more prominent. Is it when they're waiting for the bus? Is it getting to the bus? Is it just trying to get a sense of where these hotspots are in their journey to see if there's anything in our toolbox that could be a solution, or if not, again, the one city mantra right now, seeing if some of our sister agencies can support us with…
I think it would be great as you work with DPH in looking at those trends, perhaps in a future quarterly, if you can just highlight those for us. I'm super curious to see what's been going on and what's coming to the surface. And again, just seeing at a policy level if there's anything we could do to help with the situation.
Yeah, there was a comment that we heard at our Vision Zero subcommittee where someone did note that, that there is a Vision Zero network nationally even, and that changing the name might signal something to those that are part of that network and that see us as like a partner in that. I want to surface that just in case that makes someone feel a certain way, but it did come up during the subcommittee hearing.
Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much, Director Ahunsi, for that really robust overview. Hopefully it gives everyone a sense of the deep discussion that we had about the high injury network and all the different things that come with being part of the Vision Zero subcommittee. Something I did want to highlight just a bit more, the committee did ask staff to bring forth at our next meeting some more information about different policies that perhaps are acting as a hindrance or could help us be a little bit more aggressive with our goals. And so I did just want to sunshine that for the folks in…
Thank you, Chair Chodlow. I'm also very supportive of the 29 rapid. And I think thinking about this more comprehensively as a program makes a lot of sense because I think there are ways that we could start determining what the criteria is for a rapid route and what are the considerations that we have and start planning accordingly. So I do think that a discussion like this at the board level makes a lot of sense. And to have some staff time just to tee up and prepare us for a potential dynamic where we actually can fund something like this is super helpful. Again, we are constrained with our…
OK. Will they be able to just visually denote where some of the changes are happening and just, OK. And can you present those today, or does the team need some time?
Sure, you can put it on the projector. Sure. Thanks, Steve.