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tv   SF GovTV Premiere  SFGTV  March 22, 2024 3:00pm-3:31pm PDT

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>> good morning and welcome to the 2024 resource fair. good to is have you guys here. hopefully this is the first of many. >> we are here today to look for lbe and dbe and minority business across the different classification, and also looking for top notch talent. >> there are real ea great opportunities for individuals all most every table had opportunities for jobs, all most every table had opportunities for businesses. you have fooget out there and network and is the best place to do it. >> please make the most of your time, engage with exhibitors,
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attend one of the two break-out sessions, and take advantage of networking. >> i learned about contracting opportunity in the break-out sessions so all i came what i came for. >> people get what they need. >> there are plenty job opportunities for people in the city. i believe there is a space for everyone. >> i'm trying to find a connection, find collaborative work and getting to where i fit in. >> there is a lot of employers in one place i wouldn't known were hiring. >> i'm proud to work asfo because the values we hold drive us to seek inclusive equitable outcomes. we believe in eliminating systemic barriers and understand, this is necessary for continued invasion and business success. >> if you want to learn what the qualifications for contracting at the airport,
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this is quhie you want to come to these events. >> we are lbe subcontractor and here to find more opportunities. >> this has been amazing. it is so hard to believe that this is the first one. so well run, so many people. i think that the talent we are meeting is great, and then the range of businesses has been incredible. >> so pleasantly surprised how many are here engaging and interacting and making the connections they need to try to grow their businesses and opportunities and jobs available to them. >> thank you so much to our exhibitors, this wouldn't be possible without you, so city partners, our primes, our first tier subcontractors, our concessions, tenant employers, community based organizations, all in the room, thank you so much for taking time and willing ness to support us and
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>> lithium i on battery is used in laptops. >> other defenses like scooters and cover boards and with those beats overheat can cause dangerous conditions and lithium fires have dmrrd dramatically in san francisco causing death and series injuries and property dangerous as avenue 2024 the fire station will take effect in the buildings up to 4 powered mobility devices are allowed per unit their certified by will looters approved but the san
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francisco fire department like the u l or is index s example the defenses must be charged accordingly to the mufrgs standards and involved in an accident must be inspected for damage there are one and two family dwellings a they're united workers l and certified if charges 5 to one powered mobility devices requires a charging of 5 or more devices and the smoke deck text system and the three i on batteries only use the manufacturers charge on our device never unified approved other charger and make sure the mobile devices are okay with charging and always be wake and present with
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the defenses are charging never charge batteries on a bed or couple. keep 3w5er89s at room temperature don't store in sunshine and if you hear odors or make an unified usual notice plug into are out let never through lithium i on batteries into the trash call for a free pickup. learn more visit us at sf gov forward
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[music] >> san francisco is known as yerba buena, good herb after a mint that used to grow here. at this time there were 3 settlements one was mission delores. one the presidio and one was yerba buena which was urban center. there were 800 people in 1848 it was small. a lot of historic buildings were here including pony express
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headquarters. wells fargo. hudson bay trading company and famous early settlers one of whom william leaderdorph who lived blocks from here a successful business person. african-american decent and the first million airin california. >> wilwoman was the founders of san francisco. here during the gold rush came in the early 1840s. he spent time stake himself as a merchant seaman and a business person. his father and brother in new orleans. we know him for san francisco's history. establishing himself here arnold 18 twoochl he did one of many things the first to do in yerba buena. was not california yet and was not fully san francisco yet.
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>> because he was an american citizen but spoke spanish he was able to during the time when america was taking over california from mexico, there was annexations that happened and conflict emerging and war, of course. he was part of the peek deliberations and am bas doorship to create the state of california a vice council to mexico. mexico granted him citizenship. he loaned the government of san francisco money. to funds some of the war efforts to establish the city itself and the state, of course. he established the first hotel here the person people turned to often to receive dignitaries or hold large gatherings established the first public school here and helped start the public school system. he piloted the first steam ship
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on the bay. a big event for san francisco and depict instead state seal the ship was the sitk a. there is a small 4 block long length of street, owned much of that runs essentially where the transamerica building is to it ends at california. i walk today before am a cute side street. at this point t is the center what was all his property. he was the person entrusted to be the city's first treasurer. that is i big deal of itself to have that legacy part of an african-american the city's first banker. he was not only a forefather of the establishment of san francisco and california as a state but a leader in industry. he had a direct hahn in so many things that we look at in san francisco. part of our dna.
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you know you don't hear his anymore in the context of those. representation matters. you need to uplift this so people know him but people like him like me. like you. like anyone who looks like him to be, i can do this, too. to have the city's first banker and a street in the middle of financial district. that alone is powerful. [music]
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>> >> a century ago, building a dam
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in the high country of the sierra to bring a supply of fresh water to the san francisco bay area was a monumental undertaking. mayor sunny jim rafh turned to michael to mastermind the project. michael was a force of nature. air fwant in some ways but also a man's man. he supper advised the construction and it was the greatest engineering seats in the united states. >> the remow location of dam and reservoir made getting to the site a challenge. >> they had to get access to the slopes of the sierra nevada so they her to build a railroad to get construction equipment and materials into the site. they had to generate power so they built another reservoir to generate power and they did a remarkable amount of work with
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much less sophisticated equipment than what we have today. >> concrete for the dam was processed at a plant just upstream from the construction site, using sand and rock from the valley. nearly 400,000 yards of cubic concrete were poured around the clock. >> oshansee was a detailed oriented guy. he was having his man dig down the bedrock and they would dig and dig and pull, you know, out debris and they come and say, okay, we've gotten down. we're down far enough. we need to personally look at it and say, no, dig deeper. >> in may 1923, the dam was completed and named first chief engineer and behind it, an 8-mile chef of the hetch hetchy valley was flooded and holding back 115 billion gallons in the new reservoir. it would take another 11 years to finish the
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system and bring that water across california to the san francisco bay area. >> this was the moment. it was made pos you are watching san francisco rising with chris manor. today's special guest is sarah phillips. >> hi, i'm chris manors and you are watching san francisco rising the show about restarting rebuilding and eare imagineing the city. the guest today is sarah phillips the executive director of economic workforce development. welcome to the show. >> thank you for having me. let's talk about the city economic plan and specifically the city's road map to san francisco future. can you give a brief overview and update on progress? >> absolute e. in february 2023 mayor breed
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released the roadmap comprised to 9 strategies to move the city forward understanding there was structural and lang lasting changing by the covid impact. 134 were shorter term impacts how people using transit downtown and coming out and are using small businesses, some of them remember long-term structural impacts. the way we work. how often we are in an office and how much office space companies who had headquartered in san francisco need. some of those were structural impacts how we stop. there has been a long-term change as online shopping takes up a greater share how we performs and covid-19 took a shift that would probably take 10 to 15 years happen and collapse what happened ofern the timeframe to 2 years so saw structural impacts how people shop. we have seen a lot of progress
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rchlt we are 9 months in and significant things we have seen is efforts creating permitinant services and homes for people experiencing homelessness is dramatic. we increased the number of shelter beds dramatically and take-up of the beds dramatically, and there is more work to do. on the safety side there are exciting things that happened. we increased our police pay among the highest in the bay area which is a important thing for recruitment. police recruitment across the country is down so recruiting the best we can means we need to give a high pay set. august the highsh return in graduates. we see 75 decrease in reil theft and 50 percent reduction
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in car break ins which is quality of life crime san francisco experienced so there is real progresses we are seeing on clean and safe sides. one thing important in the mayor roadmap we are not trying to get back to 2020 vision. i think covid showed having a downtown with people sitting at offices isn't the best downtown it can be. i think it is a opportunity to bring 24 hour life use downtown. >> music and concerts is a great way to bring people to a specific location. golden gate park we had lots of events in plazas throughout the city. can you talk about those and if there is upcoming events too? >> i think you touched on something key to the mayor road map. for san francisco and particularly san francisco downtown to move forward and be
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successful as a great american city, it is about bringing people together because they want to be together not because they center to be together and music is a strong part that. the planet concert sear ries coming up and happening throughout the city not just golden gate park but downtown locations are a great example. there are smaller examples as well. the landing at--is a new plaza we constructed in the mayor roadmap where two streets come together akwraisant to a couple restaurants closed to cars in daytime, chairs and seating and throughout the week they have lunch time and evening music to bring people together after work. they participate in that. something we are working on setting up for next year which is really exciting is our sf live program and that will bring a full 2024 concert series where we match local
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venues bringing their work and partnership to useian square, music center plaza and embark cadero. we will be able to announce concert series through the sf- >> you mentioned vacant to vibrant, that program has a lot of attention lately. can you talk generally what exactly that program is? >> yeah. so, we opened a program where we put out a call for landlords willing to offer groundfloor space for free for 3 to 6 month jz small business or storefront operators who had a proposal what they would do for 3 to 6 months. it is pilot. we had a incredible amount of interest.
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we had--i'm forgetting the number of landlords, but more then we expected because we are in a place where commercial real estate understands they need to come to the table to help make our groundfloor lively and resulting in a transition where the groundfloor is seen less as a money making operation, but more as a leader to lease upper floors. if you have a active ground floor yields better on the other 80 percent of the building you are trying to lease. that was great, a lot of cooperation scr over 700 small business or operators responded to that call. it is pop up. there is no intention this would result in forever small businesses, but there is certainly a hope and i think what we are hearing, i don't have the final data, but there are 17 activators in 9 different spaces, some are colocated, which is why the difference, and out of those 9 spaces that are being leased for free, now 7 of them are in
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discussions for long-term leases so the spaces continue. it is the program. we are hopeful to have a second and third traunch and hoping to pilot in other neighborhoods with other partners. it is not an inexpensive program because there is a lot of capital that goes into popping up for short amount of time but what we are seen is they visit the businesses, the businesses are successful and san francisco want to support this activation so hopeful to expand it. >> that's great. can you talk a bit about why piloting programs and testing things is so important? >> absolutely. you know, i would say not only the important generally but important in san francisco specifically. the benefit of pilot programs in the reasons they are really important here is, it allows us to try something and say, there may be consequence but let's understand those in real time rather then waiting to start a strategy while we think about
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them on paper and if they are too great we can modify the program as we go. mta has absorbed the strategy whether a bike lane or other to figure how best to use the street? is this working? is it working for bikes and cars and buses? maybe not, let's switch it around and pilots have been important to oewd to our office particularly because we tend to have the ability and the mayor's support through the budget process to pilot things through request for proposals or rfp process where we can put out a small amount of funding, try activation and small public plaza, see if it works and i think the benefit there is, if it doesn't work we tried it and had the benefit of seeing real time and when it does work, we are able to uplift that and
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move into a permanent strategy and that is where our agency turns over something we piloted to another agency because it is part of the city operating procedure. pilots also give people hope. when we have the short-term whether it is physical public plaza or activation that shows change is possible and allows them to vote for what they like. >> lastly, in lith light of the current ai boom, do you think there is a way to leverage those new changes to take a bunch of san francisco's status as a tech hub? >> i do, i think they work together. san francisco right now has a strong vacancy problem in our office space. and there is a back-story to that. our zoning downtown has not prevented other uses, in terms
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of permitting uses of the multi-story building has been open including allowing residential but we put other barriers, cost and code barriers et cetera and what happened also during the height of our preevious boom is that, the amount that tech companies were willing to pay for office space bid everything out so we-without intentionally zoning a single use downtown, we de facto became a single use downtown and thereat is the opportunity you are pointing out. now because downtown was so convertible from work from home, particularly as tech based downtown was and how much companies put at the market in the office spaces we are seeing high vacancy now, all most 30 percent so there is lot of square feet but that presents a lot of opportunity. we have the ability to absorb expansion of the tech industry we are so strong at. we have seen over 800 thousand
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square feet of ai space leased just in 2023 alone and there is still more demand out in the market, more ai companies looking for space so that is a growth spot absorbing some of the vac ancy. the opportunity too is prices for downtown lease s have also dropped and that opens up a breath of opportunity to a breath of companies that were priced out in 2018, 2019, 2020. san francisco has always been great at starting companies and allowing them to grow here. when our prices are too high it prevents that growth so now we are a super fertile ground for more start ups and invasion on the smaller end of the sector because they can come and enter our market and we have the space to offer. to talk about san francisco's assets and the leveraging that, we sit at the epicenter of really great university and educational institutions. we are between uc berkeley and
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stanford. the graduates produced just from those institutions alone stay in the bay area and want to rise up and work here, provide a real opportunity for the start ups to build their companies and companies to grow here so we confident we will absorb a certain amount of office space with ai tech. with that, we are interested in increasing our human capital growing graduates. downtown university is something the mayor is open to pursuing and we are in conversations with uc berkeley we love to have as a partner in our downtown and then residential conversions are a great partner to that. as we build back the office space, people will want to live downtown again and we have a number buildings that can be converted to residential. the costs are high. mayor breed and her partners on the board made significant changes to reduce the costs. we waived fees for change of uses in the downtown area.
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there are code changes that will make the conversions easier. there is a ballot measure on the march ballot that will attempt to reduce costs for those as well. it is ongoing process and none of those changes we talked about absent ai growth downtown, but institutional growth downtown, arts growth downtown and residential conversions downtown are long-term changes so one thing i want to say recollect i do think there is a opportunity per your question, but we also need to be patient because what we are talking about is is a real shift to the make-up of the downtown since from the growth it has been starting at since the turn of the century so that isn't a 2 year change, that is a 10 year change and we center to watch as it goes. >> thank you so much. i really appreciate you spending the time here today and your creative vision and positivity, so thank you so much. >> thanks so much for having me and hope you all downtown and shop. >> that is it for this episode.
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for sfgovtv i'm chris manors, thanks television. >> a lot of housing advocates to speak out again poison pills that president peskin my name is jay the san francisco oregon director for mba action and from the action coalition owe a lot of housing advocates as well as some of our elected leaders joining us to push back against this i want to briefly just mentions