Municipal Transportation Agency - Regular Meeting

regular meeting of the Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors, and Parking Authority Commission to order. Secretary Silva, please call the roll.

On the roll, Director Felder.

Present.

Belger, present. Director Hemminger?

Here.

Hemminger, present. Director Henderson? Here. Henderson, present. Director Hinzey? Present. Hinzey, present. Director Kahina?

Here.

Kahina, present. Chair Tarloff? Here. Tarloff, present. We are expecting Director Chen to join us shortly. For the record, I note that Director Hinzey is attending this meeting remotely. Director Hinze is reminded that she must appear on camera throughout the meeting and in order to speak or vote on any items. Places you on item number three, the ringing and use of cell phones and similar sound-producing electronic devices are prohibited at this meeting. The chair may order the removal from the meeting room. Any person responsible for the ringing or use of a cell phone or similar device places you on item number four, approval of minutes for the May 19 regular meeting.

Directors, are there any changes to the minutes? Seeing none, we'll now open public comment for item four for two minutes each.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. There'll be a warning sound at 30 seconds and a chime when your time is up. Any speakers for the minutes can come up to the podium at this time. Seeing none in the room and no accommodation requests.

We'll now close public comment. Colleagues, is there a motion and a second?

Second.

Secretary Silva, please call the roll.

On the motion to approve the minutes, Director Felder?

Aye.

Felder, aye. Director Hemminger?

Aye.

Hemminger, aye. Director Henderson? Aye. Henderson, aye. Director Hinze? Aye. Hinze, aye. Director Kahina? Aye. Kahina, aye. Chair Tarloff? Aye. Tarloff, aye. Thank you. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

Please call the next item.

Places you on item five, communications. I have none.

Thank you. Please call the next item.

Places you on item number six, the director's report.

Good afternoon. I'm going to cover a few topics, starting with special events streamlining legislation. On May 20th, Mayor Lurie signed legislation that makes it easier for people to have events on San Francisco streets. As of June 19th, people who are planning low-impact events will no longer need to attend a hearing. These are events that won't close more than three blocks and won't affect intersections or muni routes. This streamlining process we estimate will benefit 80 to 90 percent of event applicants. It will make neighborhood events like block parties and farmers markets and small street fairs simpler and quicker to produce. SFMTA staff, the Entertainment Commission, and the Fire and Police Departments will be reviewing applications and issuing permits to ensure the events are organized according to city requirements. But by shifting low-impact events to administrative review with public noticing, we will reduce permitting timelines while still making sure residents are aware of upcoming events and can provide input before an event application is approved. I also want to share that on May 29, the California Air Resources Board voted to adopt proposed regulations to the state's cap and invest program, which was authorized by the legislature and the governor last year. These amendments are estimated to reduce revenue to California's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund by half, from approximately $4 billion to just $2 billion annually. The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund expenditure plan places programs that we rely on in Tier 3, which will not be funded at all if the revenue drops as expected. We are still studying the impacts this change is going to have on the SFMTA. But to give you a scale, we have been awarded more than $600 million in cap and invest funds in the last 10 years. Among the programs in Tier 3 that we rely on are the Transit and Inner City Rail Capital Program, which is an important source of capital funding. including $130 million for our train control upgrade project and $55 million for speed and reliability improvements on the Anjuda and the Kay Ingleside lines. We also benefit from the low carbon transit operations program. which provides about $17 million in annual funding that supports the Muni free and reduced fare programs for seniors, youth, and riders with disabilities, and the Affordable Housing and Sustainability Communities Fund, which funds Key Street improvements near affordable housing projects in the city. We are working closely with the California Transit Association. We worked closely with the California Transit Association to oppose these changes. Michael Pimentel at the California Transit Association was pivotal in organizing more than 100 transit agencies, housing, environmental, and labor, and other stakeholders to voice opposition to this proposal. including a letter signed by Mayor Lurie and the mayors of Los Angeles, San Diego, and Oakland. We will continue to provide updates to the board on the impacts of these changes, as well as our next steps for state-level advocacy. So there's still, I think, a lot of steps to understand where the pieces are going to fall on this, but it is going to have a key impact. Now on to some good news. On Memorial Day weekend, Caltrans finished repaving 19th Avenue. Thanks to a great collaboration between our transportation engineering team and Caltrans, we got construction down from 40 days to just 10 days of work. I really want to thank our staff for working so closely with Caltrans to get these amazing results. I also want to thank the SMTA parking control officers who are out there directing traffic during the construction and dealing with frustrated customers. It's a great outcome that the project took far less than the original planned. And we know drivers and muni riders are really appreciating the smooth ride that they're now experiencing on 19th Avenue. Also, I want to take a moment to talk about all of the work that's gone into preparing for the FIFA Men's World Cup soccer tournament, which is coming to the San Francisco Bay Area. San Francisco will welcome visitors from around the world. The World Cup is going to be held in 16 cities across North America in June and July. Locally, there will be six matches played in Santa Clara. Four of the matches being held in Santa Clara will end later than regular transit service. So to support World Cup attendees, Muni will be operating a late-night downtown shuttle, connecting customers transferring from Caltrain and BART to downtown, SOMA, and Union Square. And our regional partners at BART and Caltrain are also providing modified late-night service to help folks get home. You can learn more at sfmta.com slash World Cup. In addition to the matches, there will be fan zones and watch parties and other celebrations across San Francisco. So we're definitely expecting people to catch soccer fever. We're sponsoring, I think, a particularly fun citywide World Cup crawl with the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce called the Muni Goal Rush. To learn more about the event, go to sfmta.com slash goalrush. But it is a partnership with over 100 participating businesses with very fun prizes and a spotlight on the partnership and the role that Muni plays in supporting all of our unique neighborhoods. At this time, we are not expecting any significant street closures or impacts to transit. But this will be a busy and fun time in San Francisco with many large events happening during the FIFA World Cup tournament. And so everything that we're planning to support soccer will also coordinate with the Juneteenth parade, the 4th of July celebration. There's an IVB boxing match in Civic Center. It's expected to attract tens of thousands of people. We're excited for the One City Day. which is a citywide day of community service being sponsored by the First Lady, the San Francisco Pride Parade, the Fillmore Jazz Festival, and others. So a busy, busy summertime. I'd like to end my report by showing you some photos of recent community events our staff has organized or participated in. It's very important to me that we celebrate the cultures and the customs that make our city so unique. At our last meeting, Director Wise mentioned that we had decorated one of our cable cars in honor of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. This is a photo of us out at that event. I really want to thank the API Heritage Foundation President Claudine Chang and community leader Rose Chung for partnering with us on this event. Their vision for it was to get the traditional cultural outfits, which they highlight at the beginning of Heritage Month in a theater setting out into the community. And so that was really fun. I want to thank Chair Tarlov and Director Chen for attending that event and for Director Chen for his remarks. And then on Memorial Day weekend, we participated in the Carnival Parade. We were excited to be there to celebrate the diverse Latin American, Caribbean, and African roots of the Mission District and the San Francisco Bay Area. Thank you to Chair Tarlov and Vice Chair Kahina for joining us. We have more events coming up in June, and we'll be marching in the Juneteenth Parade on June 20th and in Pride Parade on June 28th. And I wanted to thank the many SFMTA staff who support our special events throughout the city, including our event permitting staff, our parking control officers, our transportation shine shops, and our transit special operations teams who make all of this look seamless to our riders. That concludes my report.

Thank you, Director Kirschbaum. Before we move to comments from my colleagues, I would like to open public comment for the director's report. I'd like to remind members of the public that they may provide comment on the topics that Director Kirschbaum shared. Those were special events streamlining legislation, CARB cap and invest regulations, the 19th Avenue repaving project completion, World Cup and other events coming in June, and the AAPI cable car event and carnival. If you feel the director missed addressing a topic, you may comment on that during item nine, general public comment. If you are here to speak on an item later in today's agenda, please wait to make your comment until that item is called. With that, public comment on the director's report is now open for two minutes each.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. There will be a warning at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. I do have a speaker card for Barrie, Toronto. Barrie, Toronto?

Hi, good afternoon. I'm here because I did some campaigning for somebody this morning, and I might as well stay and do public comment. So happy Election Day and happy Pride Month. First, I would like to address the fact that Maddie, no, no, excuse me, let me go start over, sorry. about the special events. I asked Bryant Wu about that during an ISCOT meeting, and he said it would be less work for him. However, there should be a way of knowing these items that are not going to ISCOT, by having some link on the website to know these are going to be approved without public hearing. So it would be great if there was a way to know that, so at least we could provide input to somebody directly, like to Mr. Chapman or to his assistant, Annie, I think. Anyway, it would be great. that there was a way of knowing that these are getting approved without going to ISCARD hearing. So that would be really appreciative. The next thing is that, are those pictures gonna be on your Instagram page? No, anyway. And that, and let's see. And, oh yeah, the events for June. It'd be great if the PCOs were extra diligent, finally, during this month. It's like the second busiest month of the year for taxis. And there's a big convention, in fact, later in June, that they really are diligent on ticketing any car that's not a taxi in a designated taxi zone, whether it's a permanent one or whether it's temporary. Because the boxing match and Pride attract thousands of people and they are going to take taxis because not everybody has an app on their phone. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon, Boyd Griffin Lee, representing Connected SF. No comment here, but just a question I wanted to make publicly, and maybe a comment actually. We are overall supportive of streamlining, but what's the difference between the streamlining legislation Director Kirshbaum is referencing and what's going through THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS RIGHT NOW, I THINK IT WAS AT LAND USE AND TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE YESTERDAY REGARDING THE AMENDMENTS TO ISCOT. CLARIFICATION ON THAT WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

THANK YOU. ANY OTHER SPEAKERS IN THE ROOM FOR THE DIRECTOR'S REPORT? SEEING NONE IN THE ROOM BUT I DO HAVE AN ACCOMMODATION REQUEST. SPEAKER, YOU'VE BEEN UNMUTED. YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES.

I would have liked to have seen comments on the route changes for Muni. I mean, this is a significant change.

Pardon me, Mr. Weiner. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but this is public comment for the director's report, and I don't recall Director Kirschbaum talking about muni service changes. If you'd like to talk about that, you may during general public comment.

Thank you.

No other speakers. Thank you. Public comment is now closed. Director Henderson?

Thank you, Chair. I just had one question about the men's World Cup late night shuttle. Is that similar to what the transit team does around New Year's? Or is there a fare cost associated

No, it's going to be different. So our regular aisle service will be running, and then this will be an additional shuttle essentially running from Caltrain to Chinatown that will connect people coming off of Caltrain into the muni system, as well as coming off of BART, which is going to make only one stop in San Francisco at Powell. and then on. So it's just like an extra bridge to get people home.

Thank you, Director Hemminger. Director Chen?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Sorry. Who? It was Mike, and you'll be next. Oh.

Director Hemminger was first. Thank you.

Oh, that's why I called you Director Hemminger. Thank you.

Okay, age before beauty in my case. Julie, I wanted to talk a minute about this action by the California Air Resources Board, which is really a body blow. These are not small sums of money that we're talking about. And in some cases, they were continuously appropriated, meaning we didn't think we had to worry about them. But clearly we do. And I hope, first of all, that we'll be including this as a prominent part of our legislative program going forward. And we do have a new governor coming to town, maybe as early as today. And the governor, I believe, appoints some members of that body. So I hope we could pour it on on this one, because it's a very significant loss. And personally, I'm just having a hard time understanding why they did what they did. Did we get any votes for our position on the subject at the hearing?

I'm going to ask Chief of Staff Judson True to.

Well, and maybe Judson, you could just expand a little bit upon what you think happened and what we could do to reverse it.

Thank you, Director Hemminger, through Chair Tarloff. Good afternoon, Chair Tarloff and Board Members Judson True, Chief of Staff and Director of External Affairs. And I will say first to answer specifically the vote at the California Air Resources Board on Friday was 10 to 3. There was also, you know, some very robust dialogue from some of the members who voted in favor of it. GESTURING AT THE CONCERNS OVER FUNDING FOR TRANSIT AND HOUSING IN PARTICULAR BECAUSE IN ADDITION TO THE PROGRAMS THAT DIRECTOR KERSHBAUM MENTIONED THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES PROGRAM WHICH IS FUNDED OVER 2100 UNITS OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING IS ALSO AFFECTED AND ALSO HAS FUNDED MANY OF OUR PROJECTS THAT IMPROVE STREET SAFETY AND SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION OPTIONS AROUND THOSE PROJECTS. So there was a really broad coalition of transit and housing advocates. As Director Kirschbaum said, they gave public comment on the Thursday before the vote and then Friday the vote. And so I think that some of those Air Board members will be continuing to watch the impact. And they're going to look at it right before some of the initial auction that contains the allowances. Broadly speaking, we are definitely focused on this moving forward with the California Transit Association and other operators in the Bay Area and around the state. We are heartened that so much support was voiced for TRANSIT FUNDING IN SACRAMENTO, AND AS RECENTLY AS I BELIEVE TODAY OR YESTERDAY, SENATORS WEINER AND ARAGINE, WHO MAY BE FAMILIAR TO YOU AS THE TWO SPONSORS OF THE SENATE BILL 63, THE CONNECT BAY AREA ACT, ADVANCED A SIGN ON LETTER THAT IS SIGNED BY A NUMBER OF MEMBERS OF THE SENATE AND THE ASSEMBLY REALLY PUSHING FOR TRANSIT FUNDING AS PART OF THE UPCOMING BUDGET, INCLUDING CALLING OUT SPECIFICALLY THIS ACTION BY CARB AND THE TURCEP AND LCTOP PROGRAMS. So broadly speaking, really an incredible amount of debate at CARB. I mean, the governor released a statement soon after the vote, you know, applauding CARB for the vote and, you know, recognizing or sort of articulating a case for, you know, affordability. Of course, we strongly believe that transit is key to affordability in the state and to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So that's a difference of perspective. We're very heartened by the mayor's support as well. So It was a little bit of an all-over-the-place answer for you, but I'm happy to answer more specific follow-ups as well.

Thank you.

Thank you. Director Chen.

Thank you, Chair. I also have a CARB question. And I'm sorry, I came a little bit late. In terms of the timing of these impacts, is this something that we expect to, in terms of some of the, at least let's say for the operational funding, is that something that as soon as this coming fiscal year we'd have to account for?

That's one of the next steps that we're really looking at, Director Chen, through the chair. First, we do expect some significant discussion of these potential impacts in the budget process. And as a reminder, the state has to have some form of a budget by June 15th. It doesn't mean every budget issue is solved by that date, so we do expect some discussion in the next several weeks. The regulations that were approved take effect in September, and the first auction would be in October. So that's where we might foresee the revenue impacts to GGRF. There are a lot of open questions about what kind of resources are already kind of in the bank, so to speak, and how long those might last and be able to sort of fund existing awards. So we don't have answers to those questions, but we're working closely with the California Transit Association and the California Transportation Agency, as CalSTA, to get those answers. And similarly, for the capital projects where we have awards but don't have the money yet, we don't yet fully know, but we know that they're at risk. Some of those are multi-year awards where the money would come in over the next several years.

Got it. Thank you. And then on the capital question, so the award happened in, let's say for train control, the award happened in 2025, let's say, and then that gets, that money gets, the award happens and the money then is dispersed over multiple years? Correct. And so, for example, for train control, that was something that we expected to come in over the course of four or five years?

Yes, we have a $130 million award for the train control upgrade project, or TCAP, through I want to say it's cycle seven, but don't fully quote me on that. And so we will be very closely advocating for those funds to flow our way when they need to. And that's something that's near the top of our priority list on this issue. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. True. Unless there are any other comments or questions, we'll move to the next item. Thank you.

Directors, that places you on item number seven, the Citizens Advisory Council report. We have no report today.

Thank you. Please call the next item.

Places you on item number eight, new or unfinished business by board members.

I think we have none. Please call the next item.

Very good. Places you in item number nine, general public comment. Members of the public may address the board of directors on matters that are within the board's jurisdiction and are not on today's calendar.

I would like to open public comment for item nine, general public comment.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. There'll be a warning at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. Speakers can come up to the podium at this time. I do have a speaker card for Barrie, Toronto. Go ahead.

Good afternoon, board. Griffin Lee here, Connected SF staff. One thing I would urge the board to consider and work with the agency on is coming out publicly, being transparent about what the right amount of staff is. for the agency to run an efficient and an effective transportation system. I know behind the scenes, well, it's not really behind the scenes. It's been publicly spoken about, sort of the eagerness to want to hire more. But over the last year plus, of course, due to the budget deficit, you've had the higher freezing. If you're asking for money, more money, taxpayer money, hard-earned money, It would be a useful test and evaluation to identify what the right amount of headcount would be to continue operating at the level of service today. If you can't tell us those numbers, share those numbers, and we're urging Mayor Lurie's office to do this as well, then we have a problem. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi, I'm Richard with HVSAFE. For 77 consecutive weeks, we have documented ongoing noncompliance with the Hays Street Shared Spaces Permit. Despite a clear and unbroken record, SFMTA has failed to enforce its own permit conditions, failed to articulate any meaningful compliance standards, and failed to respond substantially to our April 10 administrative complaint. Instead, the same block is now being layered with another year-long weekly farmers market while that complaint remains completely unaddressed. This is being advanced with little to no dialogue or consensus from the broader commercial corridor. This pattern reflects an agency that has grown negligent in its basic duties and complacent in the face of documented violations. Decisions appear driven more by political considerations than by process, evidence, or the interests of the court as a whole. Small businesses and residents continue to bear the consequences on a primary commercial corridor, even as the agency faces a fiscal crisis. The public deserves an agency that enforces its own rules, not one that has subordinated its responsibilities to political influence. We will continue to pursue every available remedy until that changes. And as I said, I have been coming here probably for about two or three months. And to me, it's getting a little old in the fact of we're repeating the same things. We're seeing not only no addressing by the director but also by the staff. They're not posting signs for no parking. So we can't enforce cars that come there and drive there. And they're openly violating the permit. So I ask you, please do something. It's ridiculous I have to keep coming this many times to speak. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon. It's Barry at Toronto again. First, I would like to see if we can honor Maddie Rubelow. Maddie Rubelow is a planner in the TAMS division. And she chairs or facilitates, we now have monthly taxi outreach meetings. for two hours. And she does a great job considering the patients you need when you hear the opinion and the frustration of different cab drivers, because the industry is diversified and can be a little angry at times. because of what's going on in the industry. So I want to applaud her for doing that. I'm glad that Keturian gave her the job of facilitating the meetings, which is done online and in person. In fact, more people are showing up in person. So that's a very good thing. And also, we're working on different plans. We're trying to create a minimum fare from the airport and surrounding areas, because it's not fair when Uber and Lyft can charge three times more than we do, and yet we get stuck with all these short fares and then have to take 20 minutes to get back to the airport because the traffic's so bad. The next thing is, almost four years ago, you approved the third-party dispatch, which is actually Uber, through Flywheel and through Curb. And the problem is, drivers have not gotten used to it, that they need it for income. But they're treating us like Uber drivers, and therefore they're cutting drivers off from having access to it without an explanation, without transparency, without an easy way to do appeal. You approve this. So you need to try and have your lawyers talk to Uber and say they're taxi rides. We agree they're taxi rides. The driver has to go through the disciplinary system of the taxi division and not through Uber. So you approve this. Do something about it. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi, my name's Andrew Signer. I'm the Hays Valley Neighborhood Association's representative on the Hays Street Shared Space Permit. We're just over halfway through our one-year permit, so I thought I'd come and give it a little bit of an update. When I stood in front of you at the end of last year, when permit got approved, I said our goal was to activate every Friday, every Saturday. and we had the funding to do it. We've very nearly done that. Since I last saw you, we've had 39 musical performances on Fridays and Saturdays. All local musicians, the vast majority being SF Conservatory of Music students and graduates. We've had volunteer days. We've had pet markets. I think the most exciting update I have for you is this Saturday will be the first ever Hayes Valley Farmer's Market. Every Saturday from 10 to 2, our street is going to have a farmer's market. It's going to be transformational for our neighborhood. We also have on July 18th a carnival. It will be the first time that we activate our entertainment zone. And a public life study is on the way through SF planning. And last but not least, our petition to make Hays Promenade permanent continues to grow. We have over 2,700 people that have signed it. Appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other speakers in the room for a general public comment? Seeing none in the room, we do have an accommodation request. Speaker, you've been unmuted. You have two minutes for general public comment.

This is Herbert Weiner. I would like to have some comments on the route changes that are being made on the 6th of June. Also, I'm wondering if any bus stops have been shifted significantly that affect walking distance, especially seniors and the disabled. Also, I wish to comment on the street parklets. There was an incident, I believe on Sunday, with a car crutch in the parklets. Unfortunately, no one was sitting there. Now, this brings up the whole question of parklets, with all the vehicles running in the parklets,

potentially killing people.

I'm really wondering if pilots are a wise idea. That's all the comments I have. Thank you.

Thank you. No other speakers?

Thank you. We will now close public comment. Secretary Silva, please call the next item.

places you on item number 10, your consent calendar. These items are considered to be simple or routine and will be acted upon by a single vote unless a member of the board or public requests that an item be taken off consent and heard separately. For all speakers providing public comment, please identify which item number you are speaking to. Item 10.1, approving various routine parking and traffic modifications as listed in the agenda under 10.1. ITEM 10.2 APPROVING THE SAN FRANCISCO MUNICIPAL TRANSPORTATION AGENCIES 2026 PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION AGENCIES SAFETY PLAN. ITEM 10.3 RECOMMENDING AND REQUESTING THAT THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS AUTHORIZE THE DIRECTOR OF TRANSPORTATION to enter into a loan agreement with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission as a lender for a maximum principal amount of $200 million for SFMTA public transit operations pursuant to Assembly Bill 117. And that concludes your consent calendar.

We will now open public comment for items on the consent calendar for two minutes each.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. There'll be a warning sound at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. I do have a speaker card for Joel Chemisher. Chemisher.

Hi. I hate to be the voice of doom, but I wanted to comment about 10.2. In the package I saw there, it said that if the city proclaims a state of emergency, the employees can expect contact by phone or email. But if there's a massive quake, there could be no power, no cell phones, no internet, no email, and our DSW notification required by law is supposed to come to us, so I don't know how we would be able to respond if there's no power. And we're also told we should be at home monitoring TV and radio. But if there's no power, we might not be able to have that. And some employees could be injured or even killed and not be able to come to work. We might not be able to have enough disaster service workers. And I hope you're out of one South Van Ness before the next big one hits. I wouldn't want to be in that building. But I hope you have a plan to maintain alternative services remotely, like payroll and other things that keep the city going. Most of the crossing guards are here in the city, but we have, as you know, an awful lot of employees that live outside the city. How are we going to get the essential workers here, like the PCOs and... and many others, the drivers. I understand there might be a possibility for the police and firefighters that live out of town to be brought in by ferry. Hopefully some muni workers can be brought in. I have less than two minutes, so Julie, I think we're going to have to discuss some of these in our LMC meetings. I'm also concerned about the fact that, well, I'm actually hoping that the ballot measures pass. It would be bad enough if our transit service is reduced in normal times, in a really bad emergency, it would be even worse. So I hope people will all vote for all of those. One other thing is that our crossing guard employees need some better training in safety and learning more about how to the see something, say something programs, suspicious packages, hazmat. Our management seems to be reluctant to offer that. But that, as crossing guards, is vital training for us. It's offered in the active shooter training, but a lot of people don't take it. I hope I might hear from some of you board members. If not here, I have a standard email address, so I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon, board. Griffin Lee again. On the consent calendar, the speed limit reductions, I actually did a little bit of investigative work, which is out of my norm two years ago. But between Great Highway and 26, where the proposal is to reduce the speed limit from 25 to 20 miles an hour, This is where I think SFMTA, we think SFMTA is employing people to do something that's not critical. And that's why I urge you to reevaluate how you come up with the right headcount to run an effective transportation system. And the reason for this is because the average speed on TerraVal between that corridor is 14.96 miles an hour westbound and eastbound 15.6 miles an hour, and I think I saw March of 2026 when I last looked. These are data points publicly shared on the SFCTA dashboard. That's 10 miles below the average speed limit today, and they want to reduce it to 20? They were out there, engineers, two times, I think, on a Saturday for two to three hours, and they found that during those two to three hours they were out there, cars were going 21 miles an hour. That's still below the speed limit of 25. Let's rethink how we're hiring and what the jobs are to be done, and that's running an efficient transportation system that's financially responsible. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Any other speakers in the room?

Seeing none, and we have no accommodation requests. Thank you. We will now close public comment. May I have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar?

So moved.

Secretary Silva, please call the roll.

On the motion to approve the consent calendar, Director Chen?

Aye.

Chen, aye. Director Felder?

Aye.

Felder, aye. Director Hemminger?

Aye.

Hemminger, aye. Director Henderson?

Aye.

Henderson, aye. Director Hinze? Aye. Hinze, aye. Director Kahina? Aye. Kahina, aye. Chair Tarlow? Aye. Tarlow, aye. The motion passes unanimously.

Secretary Silva, please call the next item.

Places you on your regular calendar. Item number 11, approving the expansion of pay or permit parking, paid parking for visitors, local permit holders exempt from payment throughout residential parking permit area HV in Hayes Valley, additional accessible parking spaces, blue zones, and amending Division 2 of the Transportation Code to authorize the Director of Transportation to provide for limited parking meter discounts for residents, guests, and merchants, employees in pay or permit residential parking permit areas.

All right. Good afternoon, Chair Tarloff, Vice Chair Kahina, members of the board. I'm Victoria Wise. I'm your streets director. And I am very, very pleased to bring you today the expansion of the pay or permit parking program in Hayes Valley. This is precisely the kind of innovative parking management that we need to be doing because of three things. Number one, it is customer service forward. Number two, it is absolutely operationally efficient. And number three, it combines innovation and technology to be responsive to what we heard from community and businesses in particular. Let me explain each one. Customer service front, this project is going to create additional parking turnover and availability. And we know this because we've already tested it in Hays Valley before. And number two, it's going to allow customers to park beyond the two hour time limit. So if you're visiting your friends, you can have a dinner is longer than two hours without having to get out and move your car if you didn't get a permit in advance. And you can also go into Hayes Valley neighborhood and shop a little longer and have a little bit of a leisurely lunch. Then in terms of operational efficiency, it reduces the number of times a parking control officer has to go on the street to check for the two hours. So with this proposal, it really goes towards the parking efficiency plan that I'm working overall globally with that I've talked to you about, just to making sure that our PCOs are more efficient in enforcement. And last but not least, I think it's responsive to feedback we heard from both residents and merchants. With the merchants in particular, it uses tech to help address employee parking concerns, which we will describe in detail in just a minute. So to me, this is a culmination and a confluence of benefits for residents, businesses, and overall agency efficiency. And so with that introduction, I'd love to ask Brian Manford to come up. He is our project manager. You're right behind me. That's going to share with you the details of this entire proposal.

BRIAN MANFORD- Quite tall. Thank you, Director Wise, for the introduction. And thank you, Chair and directors. Good afternoon. My name is Brian Manford. I want to thank the team that worked on this project, and in particular, acknowledge Teema Younisarad, Pamela Johnson, and Amy Fowler for their contributions. I'd like to start with a brief background. Residential Permit Parking, or RPP, was established in the late 70s to manage commute parking using time limits. As the city has grown and changed, these limits have become less effective in many areas. It's gotten harder to find parking, and the 40-year-old program wasn't working for everyone. This led to a citywide evaluation of RPP about 10 years ago, resulting in the creation of pay or permit parking as a new tool to better manage parking demand and availability. Payer permit parking comes out of that RPP study and is a variation of RPP. So here, I'll compare them to explain how they work. With traditional RPP, we use time limits, usually two hours to keep parking spaces available. Visitors can park for free for up to two hours and then have to move their vehicle. We also use permits, mostly for residents. Drivers who have a permit do not have to follow the time limits. With payer permit parking, we get rid of the time limits and visitors instead pay an hourly rate of $1 to $3 an hour, simplifying the system and improving flexibility. People don't have to move their cars after two hours anymore. For residents, there are no changes to their permits. They can continue to park where they parked today and do not have to pay the hourly fee. Permits are still available for caregivers, business owners, teachers, and long-term visitors. There are one to two pay stations per block, as you can hopefully see in the photo. Also note that the sign says, accept HV permit. This is what distinguishes payer permit parking from what we call general meter parking or our traditional meters where everyone has to pay. The first large implementation of pair permit parking was in Hayes Valley on 58 block faces. This was part of the Hayes Valley curb management plan that this board approved in 2022, along with other parking changes in the neighborhood. We completed an evaluation of the existing pair permit parking, and it has achieved all of our goals. It's made more parking available and improved the experience for permit holders. Parking availability increased about 5% or one extra space per block. This is because people without permits who would leave their car in an RPP area all day have decreased. The parking availability improvement has maintained throughout our continued monitoring. At the same time, twice as many visitors are staying two to four hours, showing demand for the flexibility that payer permit parking supports, and that makes it easier for people to visit the neighborhood. Payer permit parking is also much more efficient to enforce. It only takes one pass by a parking control officer rather than multiple. With the same resources, we can more effectively enforce parking, which is important so that our curb regulations work for everyone. Building on this initial success, the parking team applied for a grant And we won the grant, $1.5 million from MTC that covers the capital costs of payer permit parking expansion. The project team studied multiple areas and selected places that already had RPP and where there were a lot of visitors parking, and parking was difficult for permit holders to find. I'll skip past this slide, since I think I've already covered the goals in previous slides. But the project initially studied and began outreach in four neighborhoods in late 2024. After initial outreach in the Marina, Cow Hollow, and Lower Haight, there were concerns about paid parking, guests having to pay, and employee parking. We listened to this feedback and paused the project and ultimately focused on Hayes Valley. Hayes Valley had expressed the most interest and pair permit parking was working well there already, so we're pursuing an expansion there. After phase one, we also began developing some innovative new discount programs in response to the feedback we had received, and that I'll go into more detail later in the presentation. This map shows existing parking regulations in the HV permit area today. I like to orient myself with Patricia's Green just north of the center. You can see the general or traditional meter parking around there as thin green lines. These are meters where everyone has to pay to park, and they serve commercial and high density residential land uses. The purple lines show the existing two-hour RPP today, and the blue lines show the existing payer permit parking. The background colors show the permit eligibility, and there's a small legend in the right bottom corner. This map shows the proposed changes where 68 block faces that were previously purple or two-hour RPP are shown in orange for the proposed payer permit parking expansion. Overall, this simplifies parking in the neighborhood while maintaining some two-hour RPP along the edges. There are no changes to the blocks of general metered parking in the neighborhood. Initial parking rates would range from $125 to $250 per hour and operate Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., consistent with existing RPP hours to maintain evening parking availability for permit holders. These rates are determined by nearby parking rates and will be adjusted quarterly based on demand as part of our demand responsive pricing policy. This project also includes the addition of accessible parking spaces or blue zones to meet the SFMTA's goal and federal guidelines. I'll be brief on the benefits since I've covered them already, but I want to highlight that improving parking availability has secondary benefits such as reducing circling and congestion. For businesses, I want to highlight that turnover is higher with pair permit parking compared to time limits, which is another way of saying that more people are using the same number of parking spaces in a day. There are only so many parking spaces on our streets, so we need to make this limited resource work for as many people as possible. In summary, with pair permit parking, we find a balance of more available parking than RPP time limits, but lower costs than traditional meters. Next, I want to talk about the most exciting part of this project, which is our new and innovative discount programs. These programs utilize the technology of our new meters and our smartphone parking payment apps. These proposals were developed in response to feedback from phase one of the project and refined with further input during later outreach. The first discount is for residents to sign up for 24 codes a year that would give them two hours of free parking that they can share with their guests. This code-based discount would work on the pay stations. They just enter the code and get the two-hour free parking. We're also working to add this to the parking payment smartphone apps as well. We worked with our IT team to develop a plan for an easy-to-use sign-up portal. The other discount would be a local business discount to reduce parking costs for employees and support local businesses and workers. Unlike the code-based resident guest discount, the business discount is an account-based approach that uses the corporate account or business account feature of our parking mobile payment apps, smartphone apps, and would then also add in the discount. This would make it easier for businesses to manage and for the SMTA to administer and would reduce the cost from $2 an hour to $1 an hour on average. It's intended to help employees with fewer alternative transportation options. For both programs, the discount would only apply in the HV payer permit parking area shown on the map with the blue and orange lines. And the geographic eligibility is shown in teal. Anyone with an address in the teal map would be eligible. And a permit is not required to participate. Our goal is to keep this simple for the public to understand and for the SFMPA to administer while maintaining the benefits of payer permit parking. And this is new, so we're proposing to pilot and test both discounts for a year, evaluate and adjust based on performance and feedback. This slide and the next one have some of the implementation details I already discussed, so I'll move on to outreach. The gray boxes show the phase one of the project when we looked at more neighborhoods, and the blue shows our outreach just in Hayes Valley. We conducted extensive outreach over multiple years, including open houses, stakeholder meetings, surveys, and direct engagement with neighborhood groups. We utilized multiple modes of sharing information and gathering feedback. We also used multiple ways of notifying people about the project and inviting their feedback. As you can see from the numbers, the team put in a lot of effort to inform the neighborhood about the project, and promotional materials and the online open house were available in English, Spanish, Chinese, and Korean. I'll be covering what we heard on the next slide as well with our response to the feedback. So based on the feedback, we've removed the east side of Webster Street from the project proposal based on concerns from residents, both along Webster and nearby. So that would remain to our RPP. We also increased the proposed number of annual resident guest discount codes from 12 to 24 after getting feedback saying 24 would be more meaningful and helpful. And lastly, we're updating the payer permit parking signs to include the hours and days since that was the number one comment we got in our survey about how to improve the program. Lastly, I want to talk about the financial impact. As mentioned, grant funding pays. This has a grant, so grant funding pays for the meters and signs. And our shop's labor to install the meters would provide the local match. Our goal is managing parking efficiently. But in terms of financial impact, pair permit parking is a net revenue positive, even after accounting for maintenance and estimating the cost of the discount programs. Today, we are requesting the SFMTA Board approval to convert 68 block faces from time-limited RPP to payer permit parking, add accessible parking, and amend the transportation code to allow for the discount programs. If approved, implementation prep work would begin this summer with physical installation starting in winter. Operations for the meter and the discount programs would start in early 2027 with an evaluation to follow. Thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Manford. Before we move to director comments and questions, I'd like to open public comment for this item for two minutes each.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. There'll be a warning at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. I do have a couple of speaker cards. Michael Williams Lee in Barrie, Toronto.

My name is Michael Williamson. I have owned the property at 388 Lilly Street since 1971. And it's a wonderful neighborhood. It's gone through many, many changes. And this proposal to expand what I consider to be a failing system. It's already established on Laguna Street and several blocks much closer to the Patricia Green area. They're proposing to expand it all the way to Webster Street. It's a massive transformation that they would like to do. And I was hoping to see a lot more of my neighbors here, but sadly, I guess they're not really aware of the fact that the meters are not user-friendly. and especially for the older people in the neighborhood, they see those meters and they're almost impossible to use because you can't see the screen. The screen is either glaring or there's something... It's an unusable system. I'm hoping that you'll see that you don't want to expand the existing failure. Please allow us to keep our neighborhood intact by not changing the already restrictive, but still viable, we're able to live with nine until nine every day, including Saturday. But those two hours are critical for the local people to have people coming and going. It's a bad idea to expand the system that I believe is not user friendly at all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon. I've been following this through the ISCOT meetings for many years, and so I have some questions to ask and just some concerns. First, I think it shows by not many people here that I'm hoping that it will be worth checking out, but you should also ask for an update, at least in a year. in order to find out if it's working. I would have another hearing and update, really, because this is a controversy. And it's good to know all the players. However, they've got to pay for a PCO at Hayes and Goff and have some passenger loading zones. Because Gulf Street has now become a parking lot at certain hours of the day. So the reason I bring it up is because people are going to look for parking when the street is closed. And Hay Street goes all the way through, but Grove does not go all the way through. Grove stops at Steiner. So related to this is the other thing is it goes till 9 p.m. You got to be kidding. You got to be kidding. You can't get a PCO to show up for a taxi zone violation. So how can you go to 9 p.m.? Maybe certain parts till 9 p.m. But at the latest, maybe seven, because you don't have the staffing. So unless you're going to hear from Ms. Wise that the PCOs are going to work later, you're going to have overtime, it's ridiculous, because you're not going to have the enforcement, I promise. I have experienced this myself, a private citizen as a taxi driver, that the enforcement is lackadaisical or nonexistent after 7 or 8 o'clock at night. So it's ridiculous to go to 9. And so the thing is, I think it's worth a try. But at the same time, you have to be aware that it should be evaluated and brought back to you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Chairperson Tarlow, directors, good afternoon. My name is Lloyd Silverstein. I'm the owner of Optical Underground in Hayes Valley and the founder and the immediate past president of the Hayes Valley Merchants Council. I'm here today to support the Pay or Permit Parking Extension Project and specifically the proposed Small Business Discount Program. For several years, I served with Catherine Studwell and Renee Cooper on the stakeholder committee that helped shape the Hayes Valley Parking and Curb Management Plan from which this expansion proposal was derived. That process brought together residents, businesses, MTA staff to tackle some challenging issues in our neighborhood. While not everyone agreed on every recommendation, it was a thoughtful and collaborative effort that produced meaningful improvements. As a merchant, I understand that parking policy is always a balancing act. We need parking availability for residents, turnover for customers, and practical solutions for employees. The proposed small business discount program is a smart and pragmatic refinement. It recognizes the important role small businesses play in the neighborhood vitality and provides a reasonable way to help employers and employees manage the cost of parking. I should note that most merchants, including myself, encourage our employees and customers to use transit, walk, bike, or use other alternatives whenever practical. I actually take the train three days a week. But for many employees, commuting from outside the city or other working schedules don't align well with transit. driving remains the most realistic option, especially since many of these are minimum wage employees. This proposal acknowledges the reality while still supporting the city's broader transportation goals. Most importantly, and I can't emphasize this enough, the proposal demonstrates that MTA continues to listen, learn, and make adjustments based on experience and feedback from neighborhoods like Hayes Valley. In closing, I want to thank SFMTA and Brian and the rest of the team for their continued focus on Hayes Valley and for the significant effort they have invested over the years to understand and address our parking challenges. We don't always agree on every issue, but I appreciate the partnership and willingness to work collaboratively with our community. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi, Andrew Signer, Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association. I just want to express my support for this expansion. I really appreciate the accommodations for workers and for residents in the neighborhood. I live at Goffin Grove. My block will be affected by this expansion. Across the street from me is a Bay Wheels bike share station, a 6 Hayes Parnassus bus stop, the performing arts garage, which accommodates 600 vehicles. A few blocks away is Civic Center Park. Van Ness, Muni Station also. What all these have in common, people pay to use all of these things. In many cases, it's money for transit. Free parking is the one outlier. So I really appreciate bringing that in line with all of these other modes that people use. It raises money for transit, and it encourages people to use transit. It's a win-win. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello, my name is Autumn Adam, and I own a business in Hayes Valley, Dark Garden, since 1995 in Hayes Valley. I'm also the current president of the Hayes Valley Merchants Council. I am also here to speak in support of this measure. Anything that will make it easier for people to come and stay and shop, that will make it easier for my employees to focus on their work rather than needing to worry about moving their cars every two hours. And to consider small business employees currently to pay for metered parking, a minimum wage worker needs to work two full hours before their parking is paid for. So I'm in full support of this measure. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi, my name is Erica de Maussan, and I live on Oak in Buchanan. And I wanted to start by saying I appreciate the proposed discount resident and business permits. I think that's a thoughtful step in hearing what we're going to do for the people that work and live in Hays Valley. My concern is with the requirement that vehicle need to be registered at the applicant's home. I've lived at my address for 15 years, but I share a car. And so the registration isn't at my home. Under the current rules, that means that I pay extra just to park on my own street. and that I might not qualify at all as a long-term resident. I remember when the street parking went from no two hours to now a two-hour parking sign, which has been challenging in the past few years. And I'm worried it's going to get worse. So I asked the board to do two things. First, please review the residential parking permit costs for both residents and business staff. If this is going to pass, we want to make sure it's fair for the people who live there and who work there who need a car. And then please allow other forms of proof of residency, a lease, a utility bill, a deed, rather than relying solely on vehicle registration. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Griffin Lee, Connected SF. A couple of things here on the proposal. Encouraging to hear the small businesses are happy with this proposal. That's important given some of the vacancies and loss of businesses we've seen on this street in recent months in the past year. did want to talk a little bit about like the balancing act between charging uh for paid parking on residential streets versus commercial i think it i shouldn't say obviously but makes sense to charge uh some sort of fee to pay on commercial corridors but keep in mind Residential areas should not be a piggy bank, and I know that might sound sort of harsh, but a piggy bank for visitors, or sorry, for the agency to charge visitors. Supportive, of course, of paid permit parking, the residential permit program, that makes sense for those that live in the area. We're already losing a lot of visitors to San Francisco coming in from the North Bay, South Bay, et cetera. And I know these are small fees. But when my grandma wants to come over or my uncle or my friend not living in San Francisco, they may think twice if they have to pay on a residential street. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Any other speakers in the room for this item?

Hi, Richard Johnson again from HD Safe. I'm here because Hayes Valley is being asked to serve as the guinea pig for this expansion, while other neighborhoods were not, and because the existing pilot has not delivered the clear success being claimed. We understand the pressure. This is tied to a $1.5 million grant. But the original pilot was developed in close coordination with the HVNA, a local nonprofit. That relationship has made it structurally harder for residents and small businesses who raise concerns to have their input treated as equally valid. The marina, cow hollow, and parts of Lower Haight pushed back, and those areas were removed from the proposal. Hayes Valley has not received the same consideration. Because of HVNA's involvement here, this expansion has become, for all practical purposes, untouchable. This expansion is projected to generate only about $250,000 in net revenue after discounts and costs. That's a modest return for putting a neighborhood through a program whose results have been modest at best. about more outreach. It's about whether the board will apply the same standards across San Francisco or whether grant pressure and institutional relationships with a nonprofit will decide the outcome. Please do not approve this expansion. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other speakers in the room for this item?

Good afternoon. My name is Pete. I'm a resident of District 5. I live up the hill from Hayes Valley, and I'm a resident in Area Q. And since we got a parking permit, things have improved greatly. People can come and people can go. Divisadero is an extremely busy corridor. So I think expansion of parking permits in residential areas can help the city greatly. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other speakers in the room for this item? Seeing none in the room, we do have one accommodation request. Speaker, you've been unmuted. This is for item number 11. You have two minutes.

This is Herbert Weiner. Hopefully, we have affordable parking. And it isn't a real charge on the public. I am really distressed by the unavailability of parking spaces.

Thank you. No other speakers.

Thank you. Public comment for this item is now closed. Colleagues, thoughts, questions? Director Felder.

Thanks. I think I just wanted to comment on a couple aspects of the program that we heard a little bit of public comment about, but which I think are valuable pieces of the program. Obviously, the accommodations being made for employees and small businesses I think are really important, particularly in this neighborhood that has so many constituents. And I think it's a fairly unique dynamic in Hayes Valley to have the combination of of residential parking and residents looking for parking in an area that is highly impacted by the adjacency of Civic Center and the working population there, in addition to the merchant population and the small business. district that exists there. There are other neighborhoods that have similar dynamics, but I think Hayes Valley really is unique in sort of the extreme impacts that those various constituents put on the parking resource. And I think that this program really has acknowledged a lot of those dynamics. I think the one dynamic that I was particularly impressed with how this program addresses, which there was also some public comment about, is how it treats visitors and the ability for for residents to get visitor permits through the program in a way that is actually much easier than exists in other neighborhoods in San Francisco. So my hope is actually that this actually gives an example of how we can easily accommodate in other neighborhoods that just have an RPP program the ability for visitors whether it's grandparents or parents or others, to easily access permits on demand as opposed to having to do them either online and have them sent via mail or to go down to an office to purchase them, which is currently the practice. So I think if that works here, I think that's a good model for the rest of the city. And I think it's a great example of how a program like this can really make things easier for everybody. So those are my comments. But I'm at the most supportive of the expansion.

Thank you, Dr. Felder. Vice Chair Kahina.

Thank you, Chair Tarloff. Thank you so much for your presentation, Brian. I did have some follow-ups for you all. But first, I just also want to echo Director Felger and say congratulations on just a really great outreach and engagement effort that you did with this project. I know that you had a head start with that small pilot program, and we're able to expand off of that. But I think it speaks volumes that there aren't a lot of folks here that are opposing this. That must be a testament, I hope, to all your great outreach and engagement efforts. I also want to really commend the team for really thinking about those challenges with the merchant community and just trying to see how can we offer this as a solution to some of the issues that they're seeing on the ground and support them with some of the challenges they have for their own staff and making sure that it's easy for folks to work in Hays Valley and to operate a small business. So I just really, really want to thank the team for being creative and thinking about the solutions. These are not easy issues to solve. And so I just really want to commend the team for that thought process. I did have a question about the technological aspect of how we're thinking about this more on the operational side of things. We heard today in public comment that there is a good percentage of seniors that live in Hays Valley. And I'm sure there are other folks that might have some digital barriers. and just access to technology and other things. And just curious to understand how staff is thinking of supporting those folks to adopt this particular program that does seem to have a bit of a reliability on technology.

Yeah, thank you for your question. For the resident discount, we're looking at ways that it can be used with technology. It does require interfacing with the meter, but that would be the lowest technology possible. In the same way, if you were parking and had to pay, you would have to interact with the meter. But it wouldn't require, you wouldn't have to use a mobile phone for that one.

And in terms of just outreach and engagement and getting folks to start adopting this, what were some best practices that you saw with the current pilot program and that you're thinking of scaling for this version of it?

Thank you for the question. To clarify, This is all brand new in terms of the discounts. The pair permit parking exists today. For that one, because it uses the permit system, everyone who has a permit already can park without paying. And then on the payment side, the parking meters provide the information for payment. And then we've layered on the smartphone parking payment apps as well. So getting a variety of options for people to pay for their parking. And then as far as information or how that was engaging the community, On the RPP team, we use postcards to inform all the addresses that are affected. And then we also do postings ahead of the changes. People also get to see the changes happening to some degree. And then we also leave notices on people's cars and do kind of a buffer week or two when we first start to give people time to adjust and get a permit if they need to.

Thank you for that detail. It does seem like there's a little bit of an intake process as well. And we heard in public comment, somebody mentioned proof of residency is a component of that. For folks that, you know, the current, well, first speak to that piece. And if there are folks that have more unique situations, how are you, how is the team prepared to accommodate those things?

Yeah. Hank, do you want to talk about this?

Afternoon, Directors. Hank Wilson, Policy Manager for Parking and Car Management at SMTA. That's a great question. The residency or the registration to the RPP area is a requirement that's been around for a long time. Long predates payer permit. It's part of the RPP program. It's in Transportation Code Section 905. And I imagine you could guess why that's in there, obviously. There's a fraud risk if people don't have to have their car registered to the RPP. to the area that they're parking in than maybe an area like Hayes Valley, as Director Felder said, which is adjacent to lots of transit, lots of jobs. People might want to register their car there. There are a couple of exceptions. One is if you have a company car, then obviously the car is going to be registered to the company. It's not necessarily going to be registered to your address. So that's built in. If you are a student, I think if you're in the military. So we do have some carve outs that we have created sort of over the decades that the program has been around. We can certainly look into this issue of somebody sharing a car and maybe that car is registered in a different part of the town or even a different city. We can take a look at it, but I think we would have to, we would want to be very careful that we're not making it too easy for somebody to just say, oh great, I'd rather park my car here next to work rather than where I live.

All right. Thank you so much, Hank. No, yeah, and it's great to know that there are already carve-outs that we've thought about and that have existed. And so I think as folks, again, I think when programs like this get implemented, a lot of folks really start understanding the nitty gritty of it once they start engaging with the process. So glad that the team's already prepared to hold those conversations. Something that also came out of public comment, which I think is a fair suggestion, because of the newness of this program and because it's something that we're trying out for the first time, I would also like to see staff come back within a year of implementation. just to give us a briefing and more of an informational item, just to give us a sense of how it's going. And it could be folded into Victoria's briefing or something like that. It doesn't need to be super, you know, a big prominent thing, but just give us a chance to understand, like, how is this going? Is it working? Where are the kinks that are getting worked out? And how the team has been responsive to some of the challenges they're seeing with full-scale implementation.

Absolutely. We can do that. Thanks.

Thank you, Vice Chair Kahina. Mr. Manford, thank you so much for your presentation and thank you for answering all my many, many questions about this program. I have a keen interest in it and I am very optimistic that the approach of leaning into solutions that are newly available through technology will assist us in managing parking. It's one of our most important mandates for a number of reasons. And I'm hopeful that based on the initial response of the last few years that we can have innovations like this more widely adopted. A couple of more specific questions. questions, if I may. Are we modeling this program on programs that already exist in other cities? Or how did we kind of arrive at this plan?

Pay your permit parking is something that exists in many other cities in the US and globally. It's not every city has it, like meters and residential permits, but like Austin, Portland, Columbus, Ohio have it. In terms of our discounts, the way we've developed them specifically here, it is a fairly unique and innovative approach. So we've been working with Meter and the parking payment smartphone apps. They have existing products, but ways of making it work specifically for our situation.

Thank you. Well, that kind of leads me to the employee parking part of it, which is the most innovative element. And I'll be very interested to hear how that's going, speaking as a person who employed approximately 100 people in the Glen Park area, where it is almost entirely RPP parking. And fortunately, it's a very transit-rich neighborhood. So most of our employees did take transit, or they lived close by and walked. There were people who had children who were in school who needed to pick them up and those sorts of situations. And I really can't tell you how many parking tickets I've paid for employees when just things went wrong at work and a ticket resulted. And so for employers, I think that this is something that could become a really helpful tool in making employees' lives better. You went into a lot of detail about how it's administered and how the employer is going to be able to assign the codes to the employee's license plates. If you wouldn't mind just explaining that again for the public's benefit.

Sure. The reason we're using the mobile payment apps Hotspot and ParkMobile is because they offer or they have a corporate or business account already that they use in different markets. And so that allows a business to pay for or kind of streamline how they're managing employee parking. And so what we're layering onto that is the discount. So once a business was approved for the discount, they would set up their account in one of those apps. Their employees would also set up an account, and they would link them so that it was linked to their specific plate and their employee. And then they would get the discount through that. the employee left and they got a new one, they could reassign them as they needed. So it would be easier for businesses to manage.

Has it been contemplated or is it already part of the program that employees might be able to park at the performing arts garage?

It's something we're looking into, yeah.

Well, the reason I ask is that for public-facing businesses, that parking that's right close to their business is the most important parking for potential customers. And I know that we always encouraged our employees to not park in the area immediate commercial corridor, which I understand in Hays Valley has traditional meters, space-by-space meters. But the further away they can park or the... the less impact the employee parking can have on customer parking, the better in my view. Since we have the performing arts garage there, I think it would be an interesting thing to consider because I don't know how many spaces are at the performing arts garage. I believe it's kind of out of sight, out of mind parking and convenient to the commercial corridor.

Yeah, absolutely.

So a couple of things that came up in public comment. I have shared the frustration with the kiosks that was mentioned. I think sometimes there's a wide variety of kiosks throughout the city. Some of the ones that are, say, used in the Presidio are really, honestly, very bad. And people may not understand that we don't manage those. My personal experience with the kiosks that MTA has been... But I also just want to say that the payment apps are fantastic. You know, it took me a long time to be willing to try those out. But once I have it, I'll never go back. It's just so convenient to be able to plug in the number for your space. And it reminds you later that you need to update it. And it's really, really terrific. So I'm a fan. Anyway, I really feel that this is an innovative step. I'm very glad that it's... landed well in the pilot phase and is moving on to expansion. And I think it's going to be a really important tool as we lean into the modern age and use these new tools to manage parking for the benefit of all the people who want to park in the city, all the different kinds of people. So thank you very much. I'm happy to entertain a motion to approve this item. I'll move the item. Thank you. Second. Secretary Silva, please call the roll.

On that motion to approve, Director Chen. Aye. Chen, aye. Director Felder. Aye. Felder, aye. Director Hemminger.

Aye.

Hemminger, aye. Director Henderson. Aye. Henderson, aye. Director Hinze. Aye. Hinze, aye. Director Kahina. Aye. Kahina, aye. Chair Tarloff. Aye. Thank you. That motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Secretary Silva, please call the next item.

Directors, that places you on item number 12, discussion and vote pursuant to admin code section 67.10D as to whether to invoke the attorney-client privilege and conduct a closed session conference with legal counsel.

We will now open public comment for item 12 for two minutes each.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. There will be a warning sound at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. Speakers can come up to the podium at this time. This is to go into closed session. Seeing none in the room and no accommodation requests.

Thank you. Public comment is now closed. May I have a motion and a second to go into closed session?

So moved. Second.

Secretary Silva, please call the roll. On the motion to go into closed session, Director Chen.

Aye.

Chen, aye. Director Felder.

Aye.

Felder, aye. Director Hemminger.

Aye.

Hemminger, aye. Director Henderson. Aye. Henderson, aye. Director Hinze.

Aye.

Hinze, aye. Director Kahina. Aye. Kahina, aye. Chair Tarloff. Aye. Tarloff, aye. That motion passes unanimously, and the board will now go into closed session. It'll take just a moment to get us into closed session.

Amen.

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SFGov TV, San Francisco Government Television.

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San Francisco Government Television.

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SFGov TV. San Francisco Government Television.

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SFGov TV. San Francisco Government Television.

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SFGov TV, San Francisco Government Television.

SFGov TV, San Francisco Government Television.

Bye. Thank you.

and voted to settle item number three. Places you on item number 14, motion to disclose or not disclose information discussed in closed session.

Motion to not disclose.

Second.

Secretary Silva, please call the roll.

On the motion to not disclose, Director Chen?

Aye.

Chen, aye. Director Felder?

Aye.

Felder, aye. Director Hemminger? Aye. Hemminger, aye. Director Henderson? Aye. Henderson, aye. Director Hinze?

Aye.

Hinze, aye. Director Kahina? Aye. Kahina, aye. Chair Trawlow? Aye. Trawlow, aye. That motion passes unanimously and concludes the business before you today. Thank you.

Colleagues, staff, and members of the public, thank you. We are now adjourned. Our next meetings will be on June 16th and July 21st. Thank you.