Speech
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
MC: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Mayor of San Francisco–Gavin Newsom.
MGN: Wow. Well, thank you all. I’ll wait till everyone takes their seat. First and foremost, welcome, and thank you all very, very much for taking the time to be here tonight. I think my staff has been in the back of the room all day laying bets on how long this speech will be. There are long odds that it will extend beyond the normal term. Of course, I established a much higher bar last year, didn’t I? So I obviously have great confidence, and you should have great expectation that we won’t exceed last year’s. Those 13 different speeches on 13 different topics accumulated in a 7.5-hour speech. But I’m very grateful you took the time to be here, and, as you’ll hear in a moment as we begin, there are a lot of folks on stage that deserve recognition. They will be recognized tonight for their outstanding example in leadership and steadfastness. They are all here with a particular meaning and a particular story.
I will begin, though. I think it’s perhaps appropriate while here at the Asian Art Museum to remind everyone of the old Chinese curse that said, “May he live in interesting times,” and these are certainly interesting times by most objective analysis. I think most of us agree that up until the beginning of last year, we hadn’t reflected in some time on the 1930s. We may have read a little bit about it, or maybe even reflected about it in some of our textbooks, but it was a fleeting memory. That is, until the mortgage write-down and then the ensuing global financial meltdown of last year. People lost their jobs. People lost their homes. People lost their confidence. Not just in themselves and their futures, but their family’s futures as well. Clearly, I speak to you here tonight a year later, but there’s still a lot of anxiety and I recognize that. There’s still a tremendous amount of uncertainty, and it’s right if you feel that way; I know people at home certainly do. I chose this location and I chose the collective people behind me and in this room for a reason.
This is a special place, the Asian Art Museum, and I think in so many ways, it represents what’s good and right in San Francisco. This remarkable museum is the largest of its type in the Western world to hold an exclusively Asian collection. It contains 6,000 years of history and some 17,000 artifacts and pieces of art; each and every one with a story, each and every one with a story that I believe connects all of us together. Certainly, it connects this city together, and is one of many displays of what’s right with this city. I think about what’s right with the city when I reflect on its short, yet remarkable, 160-year history. Don’t forget, 160-years-ago this was a small fishing village with less than 20,000 people. It wasn’t until the discovery of gold that San Francisco saw hundreds of thousands of people coming from all over the world. They descended upon the city for riches and new beginnings, and it was then, 150-years-ago at the very foundation of this city, that I think our fate and future was set forth. We became one of the most diverse cities then, in what is now a vastly diverse region. I think about reading the paper and reflecting on the nightly news, about what’s wrong with the rest of the world. Where nations of people are being torn apart because of racial and religious and ethnic controversies that, by definition, are fuelling fanaticism and fuelling terror, and I think about what happened here 160 years ago. I think about the fact–and I’ve always believed this–that the world looks to us to see that it’s possible to live together, to advance together, and to prosper together across every conceivable difference.
There’s something magical about the city and county of San Francisco. It is one of the most diverse cities, in the most diverse state, in the world’s most diverse democracy. We are a city that doesn’t just tolerate our diversity, but we struggle and fight hard every single day to celebrate it. And it’s the fact that we unite around our common humanity, the things that bind us together, that makes this a special place. Remember, this is the city that had the first and largest Chinatown in the United States of America. In the 1860’s, the first delegation of Japan came here to our shores on Ocean Beach. Their ambassador came to the United States, but they came here to San Francisco first. It was President Eisenhower who called former Mayor George Christopher and said, “It’s time for the United States and Japan to establish diplomatic relations, and the way we’re going to do that is to establish the first sister city relationship between our respective countries.” In 1957, that sister city bond was established between San Francisco and Osaka.
From there we formed a sister city relationships with Taipei, Seoul, Ho Chi Minh City and Manila. More recent sister cities include Bangalore and the government of Karnataka. We also established a framework of regionalism not just between the City and County of San Francisco, but between the San Francisco Bay area and the broader Bangalore region. This year we’ll celebrate the relationship between Shanghai and the City and County of San Francisco. It’s in that spirit, stead and sense of optimism that we decided to open up our first foreign office in San Francisco. We opened up what we called a China desk in our sister city Shanghai, led by Director of Economic Development Michael Cohen and our economic development team, and I’m very pleased with the success of that endeavor.
Tonight I’m very pleased that two people, who simply wouldn’t be here had it not been for the development and establishment of the China desk office, are about to open up the tenth company headquarters in the Transamerica Building here in San Francisco. That company is Upsolar, and those two people are Troy Dalbey and David Cheng. Much like Trina Solar, that handful of employees they start with will grow, and through their commitment and efforts and dividends, San Franciscans will benefit. And I am proud of that. We are putting San Franciscans to work, that’s why we did it, and that’s why we are here. We will be making five announcements in the subsequent months that I’m looking forward to, but we need to do more. We need to do better. We not only need to attract businesses, we need to retain businesses, and you saw that example with Levis.
I always joke that in politics, unlike baseball, you don’t get credit for saves. We were very fortunate we were able to keep Levis from leaving the San Francisco area, but we had to do things differently. It’s in that spirit that we need to focus on stimulating job growth in the city and county of San Francisco. Now, we didn’t wait for out State of the City to do that. Over a year ago, we introduced a local stimulus plan. I don’t know many cities that actually introduced local stimulus plans, and I want to just quickly update you on some of those initiatives and the status of those initiatives. Remember the liquidity and credit crisis? We wanted to get money out there that couldn’t otherwise be distributed in our communities, so we created a revolving loan fund of microloans. We’re out there in Noe Valley, in Bevan Dufty’s district, and we advanced that first revolving loan fund. It was just a few thousand dollars. You wouldn’t have thought it’d make all the difference in the world, but that little beauty shop was opened with that small microloan. $1.8 million was put up in that initiative.
We expanded our outreach into making sure that companies who were eligible for federal tax breaks–enterprise tax breaks, state tax breaks–were actually taking advantage of it. We had a concentrated effort in our office of economic development, and this year we saw a 46 percent increase in the number of businesses taking advantage of state and federal tax credits that most were unaware they qualified for. We initiated marketing programs, like Shop SF and staycations, and started to make a case that we don’t just need to market the city overseas or market the city out of state, but we could start marketing the city in our own back yard. We started to focus on neighborhood revitalization, advancing the reach and the investment in our community benefit districts, while also doing the same with our neighborhood marketplace initiative.
We also did something I know Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi and President David Chiu both appreciated. We expanded the reach of our one-stop shop career centers. Just a few years ago we only had two. Last year, we added two additional. The year prior, we had placed another two. We now have six of these one-stop shops. In the last number of months, 28,267 people, unduplicated, have visited these one-stop shops to get career advice, update their resume, and find employment. Speaking of finding employment, reaching out and investing in people and places, we recognize, we have a very diverse business community. We need to act accordingly and reach out in a culturally competent way, and one of the very specific targets of our economic stimulus was to reach out to Spanish-speaking businesses in San Francisco.
Working with Supervisor David Campos and others, we initiated a first-of-its-kind outreach to get specific and provide a framework of support for those businesses. Soon, we’ll be doing something that I think is pretty extraordinary, though we’re waiting for a waiver from Housing and Urban Development. We will develop a $23 million loan fund, taking money that was coming in and was going to go out in the same old traditional way. We’re reconstituting and creating an innovation fund. We’re putting $11.5 million in framing the city with an innovation corridor that will span from the Central City down to Mission Bay, the central waterfront, and all the way out to Bayview, Hunters Point, and the shipyard. We will focus on those new businesses that are struggling and those businesses that want to get into this city and provide loans. In addition to that, another $11.5 million will be put into the mid-Market corridor. I know this is long overdue. We’ve all been talking about mid-Market for many, many years.
We’ve done a lot of interesting things, a lot of pilot programs like Art in Storefronts, and we’ve got a framework and a plan, but we don’t have the resources. So the framework of this resource distribution, again, is $11.5 million targeted in that mid-market area and will be part of the better Market Street initiative. In about four to six weeks, we’re going to be reintroducing a version of the old redevelopment plan in mid-market. It is long overdue to look at tax increment financing, and to finally reconcile the fact that we should have been doing this five, ten years ago, and we will finally substantively address the needs of the mid-Market. That’s something I’m looking forward to and I hope something that many of you are supportive of.
Now, I want to be fair here, but I also want to challenge. There are three pieces of legislation that I haven’t been able to pass. In fact, I have had a hard time even getting them calendared at the Board of Supervisors, and I say this with respect and admiration. We all have different points of view, but I need the Board of Supervisors to immediately calendar these three pieces of legislation. One is a payroll tax exemption on all net new jobs over the next two years. The second is a tax credit for businesses between 20 and 49 employees who are providing health care for their employees under Healthy San Francisco. And third is an extension of the extraordinarily successful biotech tax credit that the Board wisely passed a number of years ago. Incidentally, we had two biotech companies five years ago. We now have 56. This tax credit is working, it’s making a difference, and it needs to be extended. So, I am hopeful.
You know, there’s a gentleman here who, if you’re focused on the industry, you can’t miss. But even if you’re not focused on the industry, it’s going to be impossible to miss him soon. Mark Pincus has an online gaming company here in San Francisco with close to 1,000 employees. I don’t want to describe it, except to say Mark came to me some months ago and said, “You know what? We’re growing. I’m getting concerned about the growth, and we think we’re going to double the number of employees, but I’m hearing about things not taking shape in terms of those economic incentives. I’ve got folks all over the Bay Area that are recruiting me. I get to go across the Bay and they don’t have a payroll tax. I have 1,000 employees, and I’ve got 200–” Mark, you said then that you had 200 open recs. You now have 300. He’s trying to hire 300 people in this economy. Mark is here tonight because he’s concerned. I went down to their headquarters, and I’ll tell you, this is exactly the kind of workforce you want in your city. A creative workforce and one of the most diverse groups of people I’ve ever seen.
These are the kinds of companies we want, that our fate and future are tied to. That’s why these tax incentives are meaningful and purposeful. Mark’s employees go to lunch, go to dinner, and have drinks in the city. Most of them live in the city and are re-spending money. Any amount of money, even the modest amount it may cost us in losing revenue in that 1.5 percent, I assure you, is made up in terms of the stimulating impact those new employees have. I hope we can keep Zynga in San Francisco, and I just want to underscore the importance of getting those initiatives calendared as soon as possible. Following up on that, the planning department has legislation–Jen Matz and my team have been speaking out about it and working hard on it–to stimulate the private-sector construction industry. We have some real estate development legislation that is in front of the Planning Commission and it looks like it has got support. We’ll see. I look forward to hearing from the public and members of the Board to strengthen the legislation, and then hopefully getting it front of the Board as soon as possible so we can jump-start private construction in this city.
Now, as you know, we are not waiting around for these things. We’ve done something already that I think is really extraordinary and meaningful. It’s a program called Jobs Now. We believe in Jobs Now. No other big city has done this. L.A. just found out about it and just started to do it. I’ll be going up to the Governor’s office literally tomorrow at 4:00PM for a meeting because I can’t believe that the State of California is not doing something about it. $1.7 billion exists in federal money. Guess how much money has been drawn down in the State of California to subsidize private- and public-sector jobs? $21 million. This is $1.7 billion of free money for the State of California as part of the economic stimulus, 100 percent wage subsidy. If you pay someone $70,000, we’ll take care of it. We have someone making $135,000. We will subsidize 100 percent of that. It’s too good to be true, and that’s why people don’t believe it. I’m very pleased that as of yesterday–and I’m going to round up, because tomorrow I’m confident we’ll meet this number—we’ve helped employ 1,495 people. Tomorrow I’m sure we’ll have over 1,500 people employed under this Jobs Now program. It’s extraordinary, and I want to ask– Where are you guys? There they are. You guys stand up.
If Tammy Matthews can stand up and Nadine Wong and Zinia Gaines and Theshauna Swain and Wanda Theponia, these are the faces of this Jobs Now program. These are folks that were out of work until Jay Soo said, “You know what? I want to join this effort.” He hired 11 folks on the Jobs Now program, and you guys are living, breathing examples of the success of this program. I just want to thank you for the courage to get back in the workforce and to stand up and be here. It’s an incredible program. The state needs to be doing more of this. Imagine if the Governor just saw the entire Chamber of Commerce and 150 employers and said, “I have $1 billion, and I’m going to subsidize all these wages.” The only requirement is you have to have a dependent. That’s it. That’s the only requirement. There shouldn’t be a nonprofit in San Francisco that’s not taking advantage of this, not one businessperson that’s not taking advantage of this. It’s an extraordinary program.
We recognize, though, you can’t just get that job. The importance of workforce and workforce training is very real, and–I’m very proud, and Sophie Maxwell, congratulations–we worked hard on this together for a long time. Our City Build program, 380–Excuse me, 358 graduates, former graduates from our academy. This is remarkable. 1,300 people have been placed through our City Build academy in over 250 construction projects in San Francisco since we initiated it, so thank you, Supervisor Maxwell. Thank you to the team that’s making this real. It’s a great success story. Really is, and by the way, appropriately, that academy is now evolving into a green academy. We have an environmental services academy, and–how appropriate is this, Supervisor?–hazardous waste focus, dust mitigation focus–you and I can appreciate that–air and water monitoring, and soil sampling part of the discipline of the new efforts and focus of the City Build program. So when we talk about jobs, we talk a lot in City Hall about the environment. We talk about green-collar jobs. We actually are doing it. We’re not just reminiscing about a new day somewhere in the future, reflecting on a better tomorrow.
Let me tell you exactly what I mean by that. We did something a year and a half ago that was so extraordinary because a) it was difficult to get done; and b) it’s because it just took off, that it became its own worst enemy. That was a program called Go Solar. You know, San Francisco, foggy as this city is, is a great city for solar generation. If Berlin could generate more solar than any city in the world on a per-capita basis–and let me promise you, you haven’t been to Berlin; there has never been a day as beautiful as today in Berlin–then San Francisco could certainly lead the way. So, we said, the only way to jump-start solar is to take advantage of the tax credits at the federal level, and the million solar roof initiative at the state level, but we had to localize those incentives. We put together the largest incentive program of its kind in America. The leadership of my friends at the PUC and Ed Harrington are working hard to put this together. The Board of Supervisors worked hard to make it happen and the good work of Supervisor Mar who’s been out front supporting solar and Bevan Dufty, who came to our rescue at the right time to get this initiative done.
Let me tell you what’s happened since we started this in July of 2008. 1,141 applications have come in. $9.5 million has been set aside. Four megawatts of solar is up, and we have doubled the number of solar installations in San Francisco in literally a year and a couple of months. As a consequence, we now are the leader of any large urban city in the State of California in per-capita solar generation. Now, that’s the good news. Here’s the bad news. We’re out of money, and I know, Phil Ting, you led a task force on this. You must have been in my office three dozen times saying, “We need to do more, and it’s not good enough to give me the excuse we ran out of money. You got to find the money,” and I said, “Well, you got to find me more money as the assessor.” He’s working on it. But we got creative, and we are blessed–Steve Kawa, my Chief of Staff– to have a strong relationship with our former Controller and now Director, Ed Harrington, of our PUC. He was kind enough to agree, with the support of this commission, to formally extend the program with another $5 million into the new fiscal year. He’s doing even better than that. He said, “Well, we had some backlogs of folks in this current fiscal year, and we’re going to put another $500,000 up, targeted at low-income solar installations.” So thank you, Ed Harrington. Thank you, Phil Ting. Thank you, the Board of Supervisors, for your leadership on this. All of those jobs are green-collar jobs. They’re real, and they’re happening, and we’re leading the nation in that course in that effort.
We have someone, and I thought we’d take this time. This is a pretty interesting guy. We finally got a chance– I read about him. He runs a company called Skytech Solar. He’s here with us now. Colin Swan, raise your hand. Colin, this is a smart guy. He learned about our incentives, so he said, “I have to do business in San Francisco,” and so he’s gone out. He’s already– We started, it was at 36 yesterday. He said, “Nah, I’m about 40, 42.” He focuses on low-income households, and he provides the solar completely free. The payback is immediate to people on fixed income so it’s not necessarily an environmental initiative as much as an economic imperative for folks to do the right thing. So, he came in the city taking advantage of these credits, and then he learned about the Jobs Now program and said, “It’s just too good to be true, but I’m going to take advantage of it.” To his left, your right, are two people that were hired to do some of that work in installation and marketing and the rest that are also here, and–you guys, if you would stand up–are other examples of our Jobs Now program. I appreciate your leadership in making a difference, enlightened businesses, so thank you, guys.
Now, the best is yet to come, Supervisor Mar, because I know this green financing is about as good as it gets. See, there’s still the up-front cost of putting in energy efficiency and water conservation and weatherization and putting wind or solar on your roofs. There’s still a little bit of cost in most cases. Well, what we’re about to do in San Francisco in March is to remove all the up-front costs. This is so extraordinary that I would only put it up there on par with the too-good-to-be-true Jobs Now program. We will finance everything. We put $150 million up in green financing. No other big city on the West Coast has done anything close to this. I want to again thank the Board of Supervisors and Supervisor Mar’s leadership and every member of the Board that supported this overwhelmingly. In March, we’ll start the distribution of these funds. We did a little back-of-the-envelope analysis and we estimate that this program alone–and, Supervisor, you may not have seen this, it’s brand-new; I got this today—1,860 jobs that we believe we can identify just with this one piece of legislation. Thank you. Congratulations, and this is really exciting. I think it deserves a little bit of consideration, a round of applause for San Francisco getting jobs program.
I’ll try to be brief. I read in the paper today, it said the most aggressive green building standards in America were just passed, and I thought, “Wait a second. Is that a year old, the newspaper?” and what a knock because San Francisco a year ago established the most aggressive green building standards in America. I read the article, and it was about the state finally playing catch-up. Now, that’s good. States raise the bar. It’s still, though, a lower bar than San Francisco’s green building, so much so, I had the opportunity to be with a gentleman–and I know, Mayor Brown, you know him–Tony Malkin. He owns the Empire State Building, and he’s working with the Clinton Global Initiative, and they’re very proud. They’re going to make the Empire State Building one of the greenest buildings in America. So we invited him out here to learn about what we have already done in San Francisco. See, our iconic building–the West Coast version of the Empire State Building, the Transamerica building–just reached a new threshold as one of the greenest buildings in United States, LEED gold, and you know what it did? It marked the 88th green building in San Francisco. New York–not an adjusted basis, raw numbers–a modest 76; L.A.–eat your heart out–only 56. We lead the nation. Thank you to BOMA. Thank you to all the architects. Thank you for your efforts. This is exciting. All of those jobs, green-collar jobs. Every energy upgrade, energy retrofit is a green-collar job; a five-fold increase in one calendar year. In 2009, we went from 3.4 million square feet of LEED-certified space in the city to 16.8 million in one year. Just think about that. One year.
So, don’t let people say this stuff is a little, you know, fanciful. “Eh, it just seems a little theoretical.” It’s very practical, and it’s very real, and I’m very proud of those efforts. I want just briefly to let you know we’re going to make this year in San Francisco the year of energy efficiency and retrofits. Thank you, President Obama and Speaker Pelosi for all of that stimulus money that’s coming our way for our power savers and peak energy watch programs. This is exciting but only if this is interesting to you. Many of you may go, “Boy, that really wasn’t that exciting,” but we’re going to convert–and, mark my words, this is not just one of those announcements; we have a beginning, middle, and end date–we’re going to convert every single public light pole in this city. Those cobra poles, look like this. Every single one of them are going to be converted to LED lights–there’s 17,600 of them–in the next 18 or so months. Thank you again to the PUC and Ed Harrington and his team and our Department of Environment for leading the charge on that. Finally get that done, which is good. PG&E has to do all the others that are under their jurisdiction, and we also will be challenging PG&E to get to all the rest.
By the way, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got to think, well, this is one of the biggest stories of the year and, arguably, the decade. Mayor Brown worked hard on this tirelessly. He was so helpful in getting the Hunter’s Point power plant shut down. We got to take credit for it because we were there when it officially shut down, but it was a lot of his hard work. But this one, we’re going to take credit for appropriately, and I say we because so many members of the Board were outstanding leaders, in particular, Supervisor Maxwell. Again talk about tenacious. She was in the office over and over again. Sometimes very calmly, sometimes very pointedly saying we need to shut down that other most polluting power plant in San Francisco–the Mirant plant. Finally, we have a deal to shut down that plant this calendar year. This is a big deal, and so I will only say this. The best green-collar job that will be developed this year is the green-collar job to tear down that power plant, clean up the toxins, and start rebuilding that site. Thank you, everybody who worked so hard on this–the City Attorney, the City Attorney’s Office, and other members of the Board, Michela Alioto-Pier, who kept us on the right path for a long time. Thank you, guys, and all my team in the Mayor’s Office, Christine and everybody. Thank you for a great job on that.
So, when I said tear it down, I mentioned just briefly that we’re going to clean up and then we’re going to revitalize it and reconstitute the area. That goes to the issue of infrastructure. You know, I’m very proud of this. Working with the Board of Supervisors and Supervisor Elsbernd, we established a frame work. We didn’t do this in the past. We have a 10-year capital plan. It marks this. This is amazing. Ben Rosenfield, who was part of that plan, can attest to this. $18.3 billion in a 10-year plan that can retain or generate some 200,000 jobs. I want to just talk about, and very briefly, some of the infrastructure projects because I’m not sure everyone has ever put all this stuff together. One of the biggest wins recently was the work that was done in my office and the work, the baton that was carried by Mayor Brown and his work, and that was finally getting the deal on Treasure Island to develop 6,000 housing units on that island. This is a big deal for our city, and we’re going to formalize that in just a few months. That would not have happened without Speaker Pelosi. It would not have happened without the stewardship and leadership of Senator Dianne Feinstein, and it certainly would not have happened without leadership of Michael Cohen and Todd Rufo and the entire team in my office. It’s something to be proud of. 30,000 construction jobs associated with that, 5,000 of those jobs permanent. It is a carbon-positive, climate-positive development. It’ll be one of the most sustainable developments in the history of the United States when this gets done.
The second big project is Hunter’s Point. We are just months away, finally, on getting the environmental review done in Hunter’s Point. The voters wisely supported overwhelmingly rezoning that area for 10,000 housing units, new green R&D space and retail and hotels and the like. Finally we’re going to get that environmental work done. That’s another 30,000 jobs and then 10,000 permanent jobs. I want to thank Reverend Brown and others that have been steadfast in holding our feet to the fire to fulfill the promises of the southeast section. But nothing more important than this–and I see Tori Moses and others out there–and that’s this remarkable fact. We have received–Dr. Katz is intimately familiar with this–in just the last few years $625 million from the federal government to clean up the toxins in Bayview-Hunter’s Point shipyard. $625 million; it’s extraordinary. This is a big thing, and thank you again to Speaker Pelosi. It is good to have a Speaker in your back yard. It’s good to have a former Mayor in the Senate. Heck, it’s good to have a former mayor that can show up at events that I can’t make, Willie Brown.
This will not always be the case, and if you’re from L.A., I know what you want to think or you’re thinking and saying, but this is our moment. This is our time, and we’re delivering on these promises. $625 million, all those green-collar jobs, right, cleaning up toxins and so on, and, by the way, I can’t say this because Speaker’s Office is here. They told me I cannot announce next year’s contribution. All I can say is, it’s more money than all the other shipyards in America combined that is going to be invested in cleaning up that shipyard. This is good news. By the way–and this is something we’re working on that we’re very excited about–we rezoned the southeast sector of Bayview-Hunter’s Point, and the shipyard. We clean up the site, revitalized it, we want to anchor–and this is something we announced a few months ago–United Nations. We are the birthplace of the United Nations, so it seems appropriate, that just a stone’s throw away from UN Plaza the UN would commit to investing in our city in Bayview-Hunter’s Point and putting what we refer to as a UN Global Compact Center. This is an environmental think tank and a green tech complex, and we hope this becomes for a Bayview-Hunter’s Point, the shipyard, what UCSF has become for Mission Bay. We plant that flag as we did for UCSF in Mission Bay to anchor the biotech and the life sciences and the nanotech around here. We hope that the UN Global Compact Center does exactly that for green tech in the southeast sector. How appropriate. In an area where breast cancer rates, cervical cancer rates, and prostate cancer rates are two to four times the state and federal average. Where two of the most polluting power plants in the State of California were residing, and now we’re converting it. We’re cleaning up, creating jobs and opportunity, now anchoring a global think tank in terms of the sustainable future, the UN Climate Center.
This is real. The announcement was made. Their commitment is made, and one of the reasons I went to Bangalore was to go visit some of my friends at Cisco to try to get them to invest in putting an innovation center out there, and I’m hopeful–and this is called public leverage–that we’ll soon be making an announcement about their commitment to do the same. We also have a commitment to start dealing with earthquake preparedness in the city, and I’m going to talk about that just in a moment in the context of the obvious since what happened in Eureka and, obviously, tragically in Haiti. We have a $652 million proposal that’s in front of the Board of Supervisors, and I want to thank the Board, who almost unanimously have cosigned that investment.
The fire chief is here, Chief Joanne Hayes-White, and understands the importance with John Hanley, the firefighters union, upgrading our auxiliary water supply system. The backup system was created after the 1906 earthquake. It is in need of repair, so this bond goes to address that. We also need to deal with the Hall of Justice. God forbid that they move City Hall down to the Hall of Justice and the rest of us are burdened with the realities, the Hall of Justice, one of the most seismically unsafe buildings in the city. We need to move the Medical Examiner and the crime lab. We need to move southern police station. We need to start that process now, and so I’m hopeful that we will support not just legislatively, but ultimately at the ballot this significant earthquake preparedness bond.
By the way, just those three projects–Treasure Island, Bayview-Hunter’s Point, and the earthquake bond–generate 79,700 jobs, which I think is significant the next few years. Briefly, I had an engineer in the office the other day and he said, “I mean this with sincerity. I’m not trying to suck up and get the job. I already work in the city. I don’t know a city in the United States that’s doing more on infrastructure than San Francisco,” and he started listing some things, and I said, “Keep going,” and I decided tonight to share it. Reminded us of the water system improvement project–$4.6 billion, 28,000 jobs as part of that project. That’s the regional water system that we’re upgrading. Went through that litany in the central subway, what a big victory. We got the approval for the final design for a $1.6 billion investment, and we’re just a year or so away of drawing down $1 billion by getting the full funding grant agreement from the federal government to build that 1.7-mile extension, that Phase Two of the original light rail system, that $658 million project, all the way out into Chinatown. This was a significant thing.
Went on to say, “What about Doyle Drive and all the wonderful inconveniences we’ll have as we revitalize Doyle Drive?” A billion-dollar investment, it’s happening now. Transbay Terminal, the temporary facility opening up this spring. San Francisco General Hospital–$887.4 million, hundreds and hundreds of jobs–under construction. Terminal Two at the airport– $383 million proposal, our project, 850 jobs attached to that. That will be done in 2011. 525 Golden Gate, one of the most sustainable developed buildings of its type in this country–under construction, underway, $190 million, 1,300 jobs. Exploratorium is going to invest $200 million down at our waterfront. The cruise ship terminal, Monique Moyer’s work and efforts and advocacy, invests $60 million and creates 650 construction jobs. 50 UN Plaza–$121 million of federal stimulus. They hired half the [indistinct]. They’re going to start construction on that project in just a few weeks, and how about our parks? 167 parks and recreation facility projects had been complete in the last few years. 14 new parks and recreation facilities will be done in 2010. We are going to jump-start and have 17 additional projects that will be underway and complete shortly after that. Our fields campaign is working.
If you go to Silver Terrace, you go to Garfield, you go to Crocker-Amazon, if you go out and–I hope soon–enjoy new soccer fields at Beach Chalet or you go down to Franklin Park or South Sunset, you’ll see the benefits of the private sector joining the public sector and that $60 million investment into revitalizing our fields. Not just the play fields themselves, but the infrastructure and lighting around it. This is happening in our city. This is extraordinary. How about the libraries? We’re in the former main library here. What city expanded hours in its library system in the middle of its recession the last year? Only San Francisco. That’s pretty extraordinary. No other city. 13 of them are done in this branch library improvement program already. We have 11 to go. Three of them will be inaugurated this next year. Now, David Chiu is sitting there saying, “But wait a second. Am I interested in all of that? Sure, I am, but what about these streets? I’m sick and tired of doing town halls and people complaining about the pot holes. It’s getting worse.” Ironically–Ed Reiskin will acknowledge this–we paved more streets last year than any previous year in memory. Next year, we’ll pave even more, some 347 projects from 320, but we’ll never catch up to deferred maintenance. David Chiu knows that. I know that. In fact, let me give you a number. In order to get where we want to go, we need to invest $751 million. This is because 30 years of lack of investments, so we have all this deferred maintenance. It was never a high priority. People, not potholes. You know the routine.
We’re putting $12 million of general fund, on average, into streets. We quadrupled that. It’s over $48 million, but, again, it’s still not enough. So we have a $751 million need to get our scores where we want them, but–guess what–we have only have identified $247 million. How’s that for a gap? The supervisors and I have been working, and I just did a joint letter, and we’re forming a workgroup in collaboration with the Board of Supervisors, and we’ve given them a specific mandate to the Director of the Department of Public Works. In the next 120 days, they’re going to tell us how to address this issue. It is important, and I recognize it is a quality-of-life issue. It’s a basic fundamental issue that you expect government to address. We’re trying to do our best. We know we need to do more, and I look forward to working with the supervisors, and I know Carmen Chu has given me more streets and addresses that are to be paved. I know it’s an important one for her, and we’re going to make progress on that.
Final point on the infrastructure, and I’ll quickly get to final points here. I thought it was horrific what happened in Eureka and all those tweets, watching all of those images until we woke up, or, rather got home, most of us, last night and turned on all the national news shows and find. And they’re still uncovering what happened in Haiti. It’s so horrific; it’s beyond description and imagination. Arguably, hundreds of thousands of people injured or have lost their lives. Devastation, and it is right to reflect on that, and it is right to consider what we can do. Soon, we will be organizing those thoughts in a meaningful and actionable way, but it’s also right to reflect on the reality of Mother Nature’s fury out here and consider the fact we still have hundreds and hundreds of structures on corners with garages above them. We have these soft story buildings that will simply buckle and collapse as they did in the 1989 earthquake unless we retrofit them. The problem is, it costs $79,000 to $132,000 to upgrade those, and where’s the money going to come from in this economy? So, we put together a framework where we were doing voluntary investment. Clearly, that hasn’t paid dividends. We needed to do that. We needed to process that, but it is high time, and it is in my firm commitment to have in front of the Board a mandatory soft story legislation to require every building owner in San Francisco to upgrade those soft story structures in the next few months.
This is a high priority in this new calendar year, as it will be a high priority to help finance the costs associated with these fancy things called Mello-Roos or creating a Mello-Roos district or Geobond or reconstituting our unreinforced masonry bond. Don’t worry if that confuses you, but we have ideas. We have plans, and we’re looking forward to working together to do that. I talk about investing in infrastructure, but there’s no more important investment than people, human capital. That’s why the issue of education is always top of mind, and I want to just thank Carlos Garcia, our Superintendent of Schools, for his incredible leadership and his stewardship. Thank you, Carlos, sincerely. We established a partnership for achievement. We created a framework. We’re all getting along. I don’t know if you know this. The race to the top money, all this federal money– Did you know San Francisco is the only urban school district in the State of California whose superintendent, whose school board, whose mayor to the extent it matters, and it’s union, the teachers union, have all signed off to support the application and the distribution of those federal funds? No other city has done that. This city has done that, top performing urban school district in the State of California. I know what you’re thinking. The bar is low, but the bar is getting higher every single year. The top performing urban school district in California is San Francisco.
Well, we can do more and do better. Here’s my number-one priority into the new year, and that’s to focus on the issue of graduation gap, the issue of the achievement gap, or, as Carlos Garcia says, opportunity gap. This needs to be our number-one priority in the new year–truancy and dropouts. 32 percent of African-Americans aren’t graduating. 20 percent of Latinos. It’s unacceptable. In San Francisco, that’s unacceptable, yet we’ve accepted it, haven’t we, for decades and decades, and we lament about it. We talk about it. We have meetings about it, but we’re not doing anything about it. Well, we have a new framework, and we’re going to advance a new paradigm this year. We’ve been having a series of meetings, and now we have specific plans. In fact, next month, we’ll be opening up what now we’re commonly referring to a truancy assessment referral center–this is the first time we’ve done this in San Francisco–at 44 Gough Street where folks that are out on the street corners and sidewalks that are breaking the law–these are our kids that should be in school–will be picked up and brought to school, and they’ll be engaged. We will create incentives to keep them in school. We will work with merchants so the merchants are not preying on these kids and spending time with them all day when they should be spending time with their teachers in schools. We have a partnership with JPD, which is the Juvenile Probation Department, and a partnership, an enlightened one with the police department. There’s a new general order going out on this. We have partnerships with our nonprofits on this, and we’ve got a new framework of data sharing, and to the extent that the data sharing matters.
I had to sign a waiver, a legal document, to do this. I started this a couple months ago. I spend my Saturdays–I’ve done this at least the last seven out of ten Saturdays, I think–calling truant kids at home and calling their families, and let me assure you, sometimes it doesn’t go over so well. The parents can be tough. “Why are you calling me? What are you saying, I’m a bad parent?” I said, “I just was checking on the kids.” But what I’ve learned is, in each and every case, this issue will never be solved by the school district alone, never. These are kids in crisis, and these are families in transition, and they need the support of the entire community. So we have a new framework, and I look forward to engaging more on this and talking more about this, but this is our number-one education priority into the new year, as is building on success.
Universal preschool. We’re the only big city in the State of California that has universal preschool. 5,695 people enrolled in our universal preschool program. We’re going to enhance it this year, more money, not less, in the new fiscal year, and I just wanted to quickly recognize that Wendy Xa is here. I love Wendy. She got frustrated. She had a new, beautiful kid who’s here–a child named Jocelyn, her daughter–and she wanted to bring her to preschool, but didn’t know where to bring her because she couldn’t find the preschool that she desired. So she decided to create a preschool and open up the first Mandarin-emersion preschool in San Francisco, the Presidio Knolls School. Wendy, if you could just stand up, I want to just congratulate you on your example, and also, I want to recognize Emma, who is here, and Noe, and Eli, who’s here, wherever you guys are, and Jocelyn, wherever Joce is. They’re all falling asleep. It’s bedtime, but I just want to just– There’s Eli. There’s Jocelyn and Emma. They’re just so cute, I had to bring them up to the stage, these kids. Thank you, guys for your patience. Thank you. Is that for me? That’s just a pen. See, already pen in hand, eager to work. This one speaks Romanian and how many other languages?
>> Spanish, Mandarin, and English, and she passed the Mandarin proficiency exam the 13th.
MGN: Not bad, eh? Four years old. So let me thank you, Wendy, for your example and thank you, guys, for your patience and coming up. Yeah. We talk about the paradigm Pre-K to 12 a lot. San Francisco, our paradigm is Pre-K to 16. We believe in higher education. It’s not just good enough to graduate from high school. Worked with Roberta Achtenburg. She came to me. She said, “We have a great idea. We can guarantee everybody a four-year college education.” I said, “That’s impossible. No one would believe it,” and she came together with folks at San Francisco State, and we worked for about six months, and we put together a program called San Francisco Promise. It’s now in six middle schools, and over 1,400 kids are enrolled in San Francisco Promise, and one of our superstars is here. Joseph, stand up. Joseph Malapeai, 14-years-old, seventh grader at MLK, lives in the Sunnyvale housing projects. He’s already been to SF State, and he is going around bragging about his college years, and he’s just in 7th grade.
This is great. It’s amazing. This guy– Watch this guy. I joke with him. I said, “I’m the future ex-Mayor. I may need a job.” This guy, I think, is going to be able to hire me. This guy is a superstar, and, by the way, I’ve always believed this. Once a mind is stretched–and his mind is stretched–it never goes back to its original form. That is the power of San Francisco Promise. It’s the expectation that he and his mother have about his fate and his future. So thank you and thank you, Roberta, for your example and all your hard work.
And finally, on education, you know, we did this a couple of years ago. We said we weren’t recognizing teachers. Unbelievable. What a simple thing. Just have a thank you and come down. Well, we recognize one of our teachers. We just did not know what we had on our hands. Valerie Ziegler? Valerie, where are you? Stand up, Valerie. I want to talk about you and brag about you. 12th grade teacher, Lincoln High School, teacher of the month in October of last year. As soon as she becomes a teacher of the month in San Francisco and you say that is wonderful. Well, word comes out that she was nominated for a teacher of the year in California, and a few days later, she became the first San Franciscan teacher of the year in the state of California. Valerie, thank you. Well done.
So if it is preschool, San Francisco Promise, investment in workforce training, job retention, and job strategy, that is all good. But still people fell through the cracks, and that is why we got to deal with poverty in all of its forms and manifestations, but none more acute than the issue of homelessness. And mark my words, this was my passion when I got into office, and I’m more passionate now than ever; more engaged, more enthusiastic, and more believing in the power of possibility. I don’t think we can solve this problem. I know we can solve this problem, and I’m going to share with you some evidence to support that belief. We started a couple of years ago with a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness. Led by Angela Alioto, who is here today, and I thank you, Angela, for being here and I thank you for your leadership. It was a focus on supportive housing, a focus on housing first, a focus that established the framework that shelters solve sleep. But housing solves homelessness, and we needed to change the paradigm away from managing a problem to solving a problem. We needed to connect to the community to the problem, we needed to engage new innovative models in drug courts and our mental health courts and establish a new framework for the Community Justice Center, and a collaborative court model.
We moved forward and started to work on a framework to promise over a 10-year period 3,000 new supportive housing units that would be constructed. Never in our history have we come close to doing that. I want to mark this day and occasion and Angela’s work and the entire team–1,633 brand-new supportive housing units have been developed and are occupied since we started that program. Hundreds were opened up last year. Hundreds more will be opened up next year and the year after. We will exceed this 10-year goal, and I’m very proud of it. Now, let me put a human face on this. We did something else–we started to do outreach. I always joke with, the leader of the effort, that we did in-reach before. We said, you have to come in, and then we’ll do some outreach and look to hand over the table and try to get you in a program. We actually have 38 people that walk the streets now. One of those people walked up to Melvin Morris. Melvin, where are you? He’s somewhere around. There his is. Melvin. Now, you may recognize Melvin. If you don’t, you are about to.
For just under eight years, he was out in the streets. In March of last year, not that many months ago, one of those homeless outreach workers came and said, “Can I help you?” They actually went out and immediately got him a stabilization room. Melvin wasn’t very high on going to another shelter but we got him a stabilization unit. Soon as he did that, we started a deal with some of the underlying issues–I don’t want to talk too personally, but you shared this and said it was ok–some substance abuse issues in the past. Issues you had to address. The drug courts model helped turn his life around. Now, he recently became engaged in a program through DPH, Department of Public Health and the library. It’s called San Francisco First Power Vocational Program. An internship at the library that became a job offer at the library and became a front page celebrity profile in the San Francisco Chronicle just a few weeks ago. That’s why you may recognize him. He is housed. He’s no longer homeless. That’s the power of possibility. And you know, he was housed through our Care Not Cash program. 83 percent–thank you, Melvin—83 percent reduction in the caseload. 2,868 people have been housed because we had the courage to change and think differently. 2,868 people have now been housed, like Melvin, since we started Care Not Cash, including Gerald Waldron. Gerald and I just had a great conversation along with his friend Vince Smith.
Let me talk to you briefly. Both of them now have housing at the Elk Hotel, but Gerald said, “Mr. Mayor, this is an interesting moment for me because I didn’t like you much.” [Laughter] “I cursed your name everywhere I went. Care Not Cash. There is no care there. Just some political slogan.” Well, things have changed. He not only made his way in and out of MSC south, and finally got on the county dole assist program, but now, Gerald is on SSI, and his skepticism of Care Not Cash has begun to evolve, and Gerald is now no longer hopeless. I’m proud of that and proud of you, Gerald, and thank you for your example. Thank you for your commitment.
His partner, Vince Smith, is here as well. For nine years Vince was out on the streets. At a certain point, it’s amazing they didn’t give up. On and off the county adult existence program, and in March again of last year as well, he went out there, and someone reached out, helped lift him up, got in the Elk Hotel. And–I love this–he is now the tenet rep at the Elk Hotel. So he is a leader out there, and I want to thank you as well, Vince. Stand up, you guys. Be counted. Bill, get up! We can solve this. We can solve this. Don’t ever believe someone who says we can’t solve homelessness. They’re just wrong. 26 percent decline in homelessness since we started. 40 percent decline in the street population. I will not leave, and don’t worry, I’m not arguing for a third term, but I will not leave office until we reduce the street population by half and we reduce the overall population by at least one-third. We have marked very specific goals into the new year, and I’m absolutely confident by working together we can get there. And when I mean working together, I mean by continuing to support programs like Project Homeless Connect.
221 cities in three countries have replicated this model. 22,073. Not a duplicated number. 22,000 volunteers have participated in Project Homeless Connect, 300 businesses. Remember a few years ago, businesses were doing full page ads and billboard’s attacking city hall because we couldn’t get our act together from their perspective. Now, 300 businesses are engaged in participating in our homeless efforts. 250 service providers, dental care, chiropractic care, eye exams, podiatry. If you’re waiting, you can get a massage. Got the opportunity to get legal services, state IDs, all kinds of remarkable things are happening with this program. I want to just recognize–Henry, did you make it? I know he was on his way, but I know Kendra is here. This is a great story. Very briefly, guys. Kendra? Kendra, wave–raise your hand. This is amazing. If you go to–If you used to go to Brownie’s Hardware, you’re going to recognize Kendra because that’s where Kendra was living, up on Polk in San Francisco.
Five years ago this month, one of those outreach workers, those enthusiastic outreach workers was at Project Homeless Connect, found Kendra on Turk Street. Brought Kendra around, and within five hours–we were just talking about this–Kendra had a view of the Bohemian Club and a refrigerator that she had to fill. With that stabilization unit, she was able to move towards permanent housing and was so grateful of Project Homeless Connect that she decided to volunteer. She worked her way up where she is now part of our senior management team and is a leader in Project Homeless Connect. Kendra Stewardson, thank you. Stand up. Say hello. An incredible example. This works. It works. Thank you, Kendra. So we need to take this model and we need to make it permanent. By the way, the next Project Homeless Connect is February 24. It’s our 33rd. If you haven’t engaged in it, please engage. Call 3-1-1 for information, but please engage with this program. But in the interim, we want to make this permanent, and so one of our pledges and promises that we will fulfill is a 24-hour homeless connect in the central city, 24/7, connecting all of these service dots, and we will make sure that a lot more success stories like Kendra are advanced and communicated for years and years to come.
Let me quickly go through some things that deserve consideration. You know, poverty doesn’t happen with just homelessness. We came up with something years ago called the local earned income tax credit to allow working families to keep more of what they earn. The only LITC in the United States of America. Draw down some of the federal earned income tax credit. 7,821 people in 2008 took advantage of this with the leadership and stewardship of Jose Cisneros. The problem was they did not have any place to put their money that they were drawing down, so we came up with a program called Bank on San Francisco to move people from a check-cashing mentality to a banking mentality. This is a remarkable statistic–48,209 people are now banking since we started Bank on San Francisco. Half of the African Americans in San Francisco and half of Latinos had no banking relationship before this program. This has become a national model, and it has been replicated in the state of California, Bank on California. It is an extraordinary success story, and that success has reached a human dimension.
And I’m going to ask just briefly–I’ll just ask you to stand. Tyrone Hopper and Herman Terinsio. Where are you guys? These guys are recipients of the largess and the success of this program. Rebuilding credit, getting out of the check cashing places, saving money, and getting their lives back on track. I want to again just thank the team and thank the leadership of Jose Cisneros on this program. Now, Jose, we came up with this other idea, found a few dollars and Jose brought a team together and work now with 13 credit unions to create something called Payday Plus. One of the biggest problems in this country is the predatory nature of payday loans. Average payday loan–$250. Guess how much you pay back in interest to pay back that 250? The average person pays back $800. You take a $250 loan–99 percent of people can’t pay them back in the first two weeks when the loan is due, so what do they do? They take out another loan. Average person takes out 10 loans, and it’s a cycle. Guess what the interest rates average? You are complaining about the interest rates you have on your credit card–I hear you, but how about this interest rate? 450 percent? 500 percent? And it is legal. It’s outrageous, but we’re doing something about it with Payday Plus.
First of its kind in the United States of America. A national model that will change people’s lives. This is a big idea whose time has come. Thank you to the supervisors for supporting it. Thank you again to the leadership Jose Cisneros. You mark my words — this will be replicated in cities large and small. Let’s take these check-cashing businesses out of business. Let’s end payday loans in the private sector and bring them in the new sector.
Healthy San Francisco, a quick update. Can you believe this? Of those who did not have health insurance, 82.3 percent of people that did not have health insurance are now engaged in a role– we’re not talking about it. We are doing it. And last I checked, when I left City Hall, the American flag was flying. It was not replaced with the Canadian flag. This public option works. This is not socialized medicine, and this is a model for the country, and it is something to be very, very proud of. Thank you, Tangerine Bingham. Thank you for Mitch Katz. Thank you, the Board, for all your work. Is Julie Macone here? Did Julie make it? Just–I just want to–Julie, I don’t want to ask you to stand up, but Julie said this. She said this program saved her life. Saved her life. I mean, how do you respond to that? Actually, you opened up a small business. You found out health care is not so inexpensive, the insurance, so you did not have it. You got sick with pneumonia. Had a little private insurance before, but got into the private sector to open up her own business and lost it. You got pneumonia, you went to SF General…and you relapsed. Two weeks, seriously sick. But you learned about this program and signed up for it. Engaged Sister Mary Philipa, community clinic. And we will end at that. It’s just as good as private health insurance. Thank you, Julie, for being here. Thank you for being one of the 50,000 people with health insurance, with health care. I’ll just run through this, deserves attention.
We did something a couple of years ago to rebuild public housing in the southeast sector. It’s a disgrace. The federal government’s the landlord. Go look at the condition of public housing. Even in this city where we did more under Brown’s leadership, Mayor Brown, and Speaker Pelosi’s good will than anytime in our history, but all the money dried up when Clinton left and Bush got into office. Instead of just rolling over and accepting that, we came up with a local plan. We put $95 million up working together, the Board of Supervisors, $95 million, and now finally, we’re just weeks away from a ground-breaking success finally at Hunters View. We’re going to take 267 units, convert them to over 750 units, and we have leveraged state and federal dollars in historic ways. One of the residents who is going to get the benefits of this is Lottie Titus. Lottie, where are you? You’re somewhere. There she is. 14 years in Hunters View, has five grand kids under her custody. Was at Geneva Towers, was evicted. You hit the jackpot by ending up in Hunters View. I don’t think you thought that the last 14 years, but now, she started in our Hope SF Leadership academy and now has become a facilitator, is really one of our leaders out there. Again, her life is about to dramatically change for the better. You missed out on Geneva, but you are not going to miss out on Hunters View, and her grandkids will be the beneficiary.
So this is exciting stuff, the ground-breaking in just a few weeks at Hunters View. And then we’ll get to Sunnydale, we’re going to get to Potrero, Westside Courts, and don’t forget Alice Griffith. All of these are on cue, online. This is going to happen in our city. Five years ago, we said we were going to build more housing than any time in the city’s history over the next five years, save reconstruction in 1906. No one thought it was possible, and I almost lost my director of housing Matt Franklin because he said it can’t be done. Don’t set yourself up for failure. Well, eat your heart out, Matt, because we just got the new numbers. 10,585 homes have been built in the last four years. 2025 under construction, and based upon the number of permits, even in this macro economic climate, we’re going to reach and exceed our goals. Here’s the big thing–we have built more affordable housing. 5,268 units of affordable housing than any time in history, and that is in the bank. That is something we all should be proud of as well. We have done that. So thank you. The entire Board, thank you for your funding, for your leadership, and thank you for always pushing us to do more.
Community Justice Center, 568 clients. Judge Albers has been an incredible leader with Tamika Moss. It’s amazing. You go to the Hall of Justice–80 percent chance you are not going to show up when you are supposed to. You go to the Community Justice Center, about an 80 percent chance, 76 percent chance you do show up. Lives are being changed. This program is working. This will be a model for others in the future if we have the courage to commit to it. This program is so successful that the Judge now has two sites–we now have two judges. Judge Georgie, who’s going to be down here on Polk Street, and Judge Albers is going back to the Hall of Justice just to keep up. We have someone here, Sheila Keller. Sheila, where are you? Here is Sheila, and I don’t want to get too much, but Sheila had a felony drug conviction. Three years on probation, got involved with a program called Safe House. In June of 2009, maybe not enthusiastically, but nonetheless, she became an intern. You started working with Judge Albers down at the Community Justice Center. He was so impressed by you that he reduced your probation, and now, everyone is so impressed by you that they were all clamoring to say, “Get her down here because she needs to be recognized.” And I love it. You said, “If I can succeed with this, trust me, anyone can succeed.” So Sheila, thank you for your example and thank you for being part of that.
Crime, very briefly. Our new police chief is doing just a fabulous job. Police Chief Gascon is here. And this is just great news. Listen. Violent crime is down again this year by 10 percent. In the Mission, it’s down 13 percent. Bayview, it dropped 17 percent. Homicides dropped to the lowest level in half a century. They dropped 54 percent this year. In the Mission, they dropped 75 percent from the previous year, and in Bayview, they dropped 42 percent. Clearance rates are moving back to where they should be. We had more than doubled the clearance rates, so we’re holding people accountable. We have a chief who understands the importance of accountability on a whole new level. Supervisor Dufty has been to every single one of these ComStat meetings, so he can attest for the success of the ComStat program. Real accountability. Real transparency. This is real change using real data and real-time policing. This is very good news for the citizens of San Francisco. As Chief Gascon said when we announced these numbers, over 50 human beings are walking around the streets than would have been had we continued the status quo from the previous year, so I want to thank the chief, thank all of you on the Board of Supervisors for your leadership and your stewardship. Thank you to the community and all the violence prevention work. Thank you for that effort, and we’re going to continue to do even more, I believe, in the subsequent years, using data is going to be the big change into the new year.
Speaking of data, the MUNI system is being informed, and the changes at MUNI are being informed by data. I should not. We had a big debate in my office. They said don’t bring up MUNI. You can’t win. Mayor Brown is not smiling. [Laughter] Because he knows intimately that you cannot win on this topic, so I hesitate to say this, but MUNI had a record on-time performance last year. [Laughter] It did. Just the facts. I know. I won’t even bring up accidents, but Supervisor Dufty knows this–pedestrian collisions are down 37.7 percent. Who would believe that? Collisions generally are down 18.4 percent. No one believed that. And overall accidents are down 8 percent. I went down to De Haro and 17th just a few days ago, and there was just another example. So the stats belie the reality for so many people. Look, your bus doesn’t show up, this system is calamitous. But we are improving. We’re making a difference, and you know we made big service changes on December 5 all informed through this Transit Effectiveness Program and the good work of the Controller’s Office, the support of all members of the Board of Supervisors, and we will be making tough choices. We have a $22 million remaining shortfall on this team. But they will be informed by real data, not anecdote, and that is the big shift and the big change that gives me confidence that these numbers can continue to get better. And by the way, ridership went up at MUNI last year. It went up. Six million more boardings than the previous year. Do you know it went down in almost every other city in the United States some 3.8 percent. It went up in San Francisco. That, to me, is the most important statistic. More people are using it, but we know we need to do better and more.
I mentioned the budget. Look, I’m going to spend plenty of time on the budget. I’m not going to burden you tonight with a budget speech. And I recognize this is the number one priority, should be in the interim as we build job framework for economic growth and jobs and our recovery. We have to reconcile our budget. We made tough choices on our midyear cuts. We have made, I think, appropriate choices, though I know there is still some controversy, but that decisive action has kept our bond ratings high, and it’s allowed us some breathing room to address the half-a-billion-dollar shortfall. I won’t even begin to reflect on Governor Schwarzenegger’s budget, and I want to just leave it at that because I may see him tomorrow. [Laughter] But I’ll tell you, we’re already over $200 million in cuts, and we’re still adding up. It just cannot happen. So I’m not even going to indulge you any more on what we’re finding in terms of the details of that budget. Suffice it to say we have got a lot of work. Here’s what we’re going to do, though. We’re going to have a series of town hall meetings outside of City Hall. We are going to connect with real people, not just folks who spend their time at City Hall, and we’re going to have a series of these town halls in February. And I hope people participate. Not just everyone that’s in this room, but folks that are at home need to participate in the development of this budget.
Our focus, and this is my final point, my focus and the focus of this budget must be reformed. We cannot tax our way out. I have not met one human being–I just haven’t; maybe tonight someone will come to me and say, “We’re under taxed in San Francisco.” I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t support appropriate tax measure, but we got to justify it and we got to think about who it’s impacting and the unintended consequences. Nor can we cut our way out. So we got to reform our way out. We got to do things differently I want to just briefly tell you because I’m not sure folks know this. The reforms we’ve already done? Eat your heart out state of California. Everything they’re trying to promote, we have already done in San Francisco. Two-year budgets, we’re doing that. And thank you, David Chiu for all your support and leadership on that. And of course Van Rosenfeld for his support on that. Three departments will be doing a two-year pilot this year. Five-year financial plans–we are now doing it. Pay-as-you-go. The voters approved a pay-go initiative. A rainy day reserve. We’ve had it for years. That is why no teachers were laid off last year, capturing all that one-time revenue for one-time uses. We have that.
Civil service form–36 out of the 45 original recommendations I have made have been implemented. Faster hiring times. Performance reviews for the first time in history for every employee in government. We had never done that before. The remaining proposals have all been wrapped up into civil service reform, too, which will be rolled out this year. Mickey Callahan and the Civil Service Commission will address. Overtime is down 20 percent. Workers’ comp is down by millions of dollars. We have eliminated four departments and consolidated the back-office functions of 23 others. That is where the real savings is. We’re working on contract and reform with the President of the Board. We have reduced our contracting reform with the President of the Board. Working with Carmen Chu and others on this. We’ve reduced our sole-source contracts. I remember when Angela Alioto was running against us for mayor, talking about sole-source contracts. We have reduced sole-sourced contracts, Angela, which I know you are happy about. Even though I’m going to request the Board to approve a new one. That is a new topic.
We’re streamlining permitting. DBI is a better department than it was years ago, and Planning will be a better department in the new year. A lot of reforms. John Ram is going to be advancing permitting. More transparency, open source, open participation, open data. Open Data SF has now become an international model. New applications. People designing government in their own image. I won’t burden you with this, but this is a big idea that’s being recognized across this country. More accountability. San Francisco statistic: 3-1-1, 24-hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, a human being answers the phone in 179 different languages. Tell me you used to get that kind of service in the past with 2,300 telephone numbers. Now we have one. I know the matrix offends the press in this city, but the accountability matrix does not offend me, and we continue to put that out. That’s our own scorecard, our own progress. But the big one is pensions.
We made a lot of progress working together with labor, and I want to thank them for their example on pension reform a year and a half ago with Supervisor Elsbernd. We started to address unfunded health-care liability, and now new employees are starting to pay into it, but the big one is upon us, and I want to challenge everyone to consider just briefly the following facts. 10 years ago we invested $383.7 million into people’s retirement, social security, and health insurance for all retired and active employees. Do you know what we pay today? $890 million. That’s a 132 percent increase. Guess what we’re projected to pay in 36 months. $1.4 billion. $400 million to $1.4 billion. That’s on an annual basis. Where does that money come from? It comes from the sheriff’s office. It comes from our work in revitalizing our diverse communities. And it’s certainly not coming from the state and federal government. So we’ve got to own up to this, and we’ve got to acknowledge this, and we need to advance our pension package through the Board and allow the voters to make a determination about that reform this June. And I just want to encourage all of you to consider the same. I want to end just by saying a few things about my feelings about this city and wrap up tonight.
You know, Will Rogers–when in doubt, quote Will Rogers–said something I appreciate. He said, “Even if you are on the right track”–And I think in many ways we are–”you will get run over if you just sit there.” I think that is true. I have always believed, and many folks in my office have heard me say this, “Our destiny is not written for us, but our destiny is written by us.” It’s our decisions, not conditions that determine our fate and future. A destiny, our destiny in this city, in the past has been determined always by our resolve. Think about our experiences through earthquakes and fires and recessions and depressions; from the gold rush to the dot-com bust. If we can move away from situational values and start advancing more sustainable values; if we can play to our strengths, a culture of innovation, a culture of imagination, that wellspring of ingenuity and creativity and that freethinking that defines the best of the city; if we can remind ourselves of all of the good examples, all of the good examples that are here and the fact that they are worth more than a thousand theories; and if we can remain most importantly hard-headed but at the same time big hearted, then I promise you, the best is yet to come. Thank you all very much. Thank you for your time tonight. I appreciate it–the opportunity to be here. Thank you, guys.
[End of speech]