Good afternoon.

This meeting will come to order.

Welcome to the May 18th, 2026 regular meeting of the Land Use and Transportation Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

I am Supervisor Mirna Melgar, Chair of the Committee, joined by vice chair supervisor Cheyenne Chen and Supervisor Bilal Mahmoud.

The committee clerk today is Mr.

John Carroll.

I also want to give a special thanks to Jeanette Engelauf at SFGov TV for staffing us during this meeting.

Mr.

Clerk, do you have any announcements?

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair.

Please ensure that you've silenced your cell phones and other electronic devices that you've brought with you into the chamber today.

If you have any documents to be included as part of any of today's one file, you can submit it to me.

Public comment will be taken on each item on today's agenda.

When your item of interest comes up and public comment is called, please line up to speak along your right-hand side of this room.

Alternatively, you may submit your public comment in writing in either of the following ways.

First, you may email your comments to me at J-O-H-N-P-C-A-R-R-O-L-L at SFGOV.org.

Or you may send your written comments to our office in City Hall.

That is one, Dr.

Carlton B.

Goodlit Place Room 244, San Francisco, California, 94102.

If you submit your public comment in writing, I will forward your comments to the members of this committee and also include your comments as part of the official file on which you are commenting.

Items acted upon today are expected to appear on the Board of Supervisors' agenda of June 2nd, 2026, unless otherwise stated.

Thank you, Mr.

Clerk.

Please call item number one.

Agenda item number one is an ordinance amending the health code to prohibit smoking in the outdoor patios of bars and taverns, eliminate exceptions allowing indoor smoking in bars with no employees, bars with historically compliant semi-enclosed smoking rooms and hotel rooms to conform to provisions of California law and repeal suspended and superseded provisions regulating smoking in certain other locations.

Thank you, Mr.

Clerk.

Uh colleagues, this is uh my uh legislation.

Thank you so much for being willing to hear it.

Um I will be asking for a continuance of this item to uh June 8th.

Um we have gotten a lot of communication from the public uh on both sides of the issue.

Folks who are supportive and folks who are not supportive.

Um but most importantly, I uh have engaged with some of my colleagues and the mayor who has offered to uh help us through this process by bringing people together and seeing if we can come up with a timeline and amendments that um work better for folks, and I am completely open to that.

I welcome the help from both the mayor and my colleagues who uh are seeking to have a path that uh is not as contentious.

So with that, I will be asking uh for your support in continuing this item to uh June 8th.

But since it is agendized today, uh we do have to pick take public comment.

Uh for folks who are here to comment on this issue.

Just keep in mind we will be uh continuing it to June 8th and not taking action today.

So uh I don't see anyone else on the roster wanting to uh provide comment or uh have questions.

So let's go to public comment on this item, please, Mr.

Clerk.

Thank you, Madam Chair, land use and transportation.

We'll now hear public comment related to agenda item number one.

If you have public comment for this item, please feel free to come forward to the lectern at this time.

And if you're waiting for your opportunity to speak on this item, you can line up to speak along that western wall.

Let's get the first speaker, please.

Hi, my name's Sophie Lewis.

I'm a manager at El Rio, which is a D9 legacy business.

I've been an employee there for about 10 years.

I'll just like to express opposition to this, particularly from the perspective of running an independent venue in San Francisco.

Um, I think everyone in this room probably knows that uh it has been a very difficult last decade, honestly, of trying to run an independent venue here.

Um, and more and more of those spaces are closing in San Francisco.

Bottom of the hill, the park side.

It's frankly ridiculous how few truly independent venues there are.

Um, El Rio has mostly for most of our 40 year plus history, allowed smoking on our patio, and that is one of the reasons that people do come there, and it would affect our income significantly to have smoking removed, um, especially quite so suddenly.

And um, yeah, I think that it would be very difficult also from the perspective of our employees to be put in charge of enforcing this, especially in a space where historically smoking has been allowed.

I think once again, everybody in this room knows that it is very difficult to make a living in San Francisco on service industry wages and putting the burden of enforcement on employees who are already struggling to survive right now in San Francisco.

It's one more barrier in the way of people having a successful life in San Francisco.

And yeah, I think that's it.