Good morning, everyone.

This meeting will come to order.

Welcome to the regular meeting of the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for Thursday, October 23rd, 2025.

I'm Supervisor Matt Dorsey, chair of this committee.

I am joined today by Vice Chair Balal Makmoon and Supervisor Danny Sauter.

Our always capable clerk is Ms.

Monique Creighton, whom we thank for staffing us today.

And together we'd like to express our gratitude to Jeanette Egenloff and the entire SFGov TV team for facilitating and broadcasting today's meeting.

Madam Clerk, do you have any announcements?

Yes.

Public, excuse me.

Please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices documents to be included as part of the file should be submitted to the clerk.

Public comment will be taken on each item on this agenda.

When your item of interest comes up and public comment is called, please line up to speak on your right.

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

First, you may email them to myself, the public safety and neighborhood services committee clerk at M O N I Q E.

T-O-N at SFGOV.org.

Or you may send your written comments via U.S.

Postal Service to our office in City Hall.

Number one, Dr.

Carl Carlton B.

Goodlit Place Room 244, San Francisco, California 94102.

If you submit public comment in writing, it will be forwarded to the supervisors and also included as part of the official file on which you are commenting.

Finally, items acted upon today are expected to appear on the Board of Supervisors agenda of November 4th, 2025 unless otherwise stated.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Before I ask you to call the first item, I want to ask Vice Chair Mahmood to uh welcome some people.

We have some students from Gateway High School here today in the chambers.

You guys want to stand up?

Um I'm gonna ask a couple of I know you weren't expecting this, but I'm gonna ask a couple of you to come up to the podium and say what you're looking to learn today.

Uh can uh the principal of the or the teacher uh pick someone?

He's looking for he's looking for other students?

Okay, I'm just gonna call on you then.

Come on up.

Right there.

Oh wow, this is weird.

Oh, it's loud.

Oh, hello.

Uh just tell us a little bit about yourself and the school and what you're here to learn and what you're looking forward to seeing more about.

Um I'm Noah.

I'm uh 12th grader.

Oh my god.

Um I'm a gateway.

Uh I've been a gateway for all four years of uh my high school time, and I went to get my middle school as well.

So yeah.

Um I don't know how much to say about myself.

It's just like I'm here.

Um I was always I was very excited to take the civics class because I'm very interested about the process.

And um something that I am curious about is how many um meetings like these until change is enacted.

Because I feel like uh, I mean, I didn't actually realize that this was something that happened so consistently.

Um I have no idea how often they happen, but just seeing this, it makes me think that maybe this is something that happens a lot.

But I am I am like uh I'm very curious about when change is made and how long it takes for that change to be inputted.

Um, and how long, also how long feedback takes to get processed.

I think my colleagues and I would all agree it takes too many meetings.

You want to chair you want to walk through the normal process though?

Um, well, you'll see to today how uh we've got um some legislation that we're considering.

Uh and then after that we're gonna have a hearing.

Um the board of supervisors is as the legislative branch has the power, unlimited power of inquiry and review.

So we can ask city departments to come report to us on things that we are interested in or that our our constituents are interested in.

Um and then there's legislation that you know we usually it is introduced.

It wait, it waits for 30 days.

Um, and then it comes to a committee.

So this is the public safety and neighborhood services committee.

So usually it's things, public safety-related things, and we're gonna hear from the district attorney's office today about uh something that they're doing.

Um then there's other things like motions, but I really this I just want to say how much I appreciate everybody being interested in this.

I don't know about you but I was kind of a sixth grade like person who was fascinated by local government and this is this is where I ended up I guess you thank you Noah and thank you so much there's not going to be any tests after today.

So you're all good for today otherwise so hopefully hope you enjoy the session.

Great welcome okay Madam Clerk will you please call the first item yes the first item is a resolution authorizing the district attorney and the district attorney's chief of staff to solicit donations for prosecutorial operational technology needs and to support public safety prevention and intervention initiatives for six months notwithstanding the behested payment ordinance please note that this item will be referred to the full board as a committee report for consideration on October 28th 2025.

Thank you Madam Clerk this item was introduced by Supervisor Melgar's office and I believe we have Jen Lowe here from her office to give opening remarks and then we will pass it over to Monifa Willis from the district attorney's office for a brief presentation.

Jen welcome floor is yours.

Thank you Chair Dorsey and supervisors for hearing this item today.

I'm here on behalf of Supervisor Melgar who is a sponsor of this resolution to allow for the district attorney and their chief of staff to do behested to have a behested payment waiver as we all know we are all dealing with budgetary constraints and unfortunately that has also impacted the services that the district attorney's office can provide and so often we talk about how prevention and diversion and resources is really key to prevent to public safety and so this is what we're hoping to achieve here is having um the office be able to freely be um allowed to solicit for donations and private contributions to help support this work primarily for those um survivors and those um that might be impacted um through the justice system that we'd like to prevent from having to go through further trauma and so that's why we're asking for this behested payment waiver today and I know that we've had a lot of debate about this at the board and sometimes we don't know who is an interested party and this has come up a number of times with other departments and so out of an abundance of caution we want to be able to have the district attorney's office be able to do their fundraising but also uphold the integrity of the office and ensure the public's trust and so we do request that they provide that general reporting of who they're asking from if there are any relationships that do teeter into that interest interested party category that they would be able to disclose that and to also allow for this to be publicly available.

And so that's why we do trust that um this is something that we should grant it's for a six month period and so without further ado I will hand it over to Monifa Willis from the district attorney's office to share more about what they'd like to fundraise for thank you.

Thank you so much and I really want to acknowledge all of the support that we received around this waiver and thank you to you all for giving us this opportunity as she mentioned my name is Monifa Willis I'm the chief of staff for the San Francisco District Attorney's Office and actually before I move on I want to acknowledge our future leaders back here.

So it's wonderful to see young folks getting involved in civic engagement.

As mentioned we are asking for authorization to fundraise for uh improved technology for our prosecutorial platforms in addition to supporting our access to hope initiative which is a prevention and intervention strategy that promotes public safety.

So public safety is our office's golden thread uh there are two main categories there in which we um engage in public safety efforts the first obviously being restoring accountability and appropriate consequences.

However, as district attorney Brooke Jenkins has consistently said, she believes in both sides of public safety efforts.

And so it is also her mission to really lead responsible reforms and programs to prevent and disrupt cycles.

So as we all know, the situation that we have here is a budget constraint.

And over the past three years, our operations side of the house has been underfunded by two to 2.4 million annually.

And that has drastically hit us as we do not get more staff as we actually have had grants taken away from our victim services, which has led to us freezing hiring.

And although those holds are happening, we are still serving the people.

So really we are asking to raise this money to increase our technology capacity on software and technology that already exists because it's this concept that you actually can do more with little if you are maximizing the tools that you currently have.

So starting with the technology upgrades, eProsecutor is a system that we enacted three years ago.

It requires annual maintenance to work at its full capacity, and that has been underfunded for the past three years.

And so some of the upgrades that we are hoping to engage in would be improving victim advocates' way of documenting their encounters with victims, which in turn will support the attorney's work with the victims when they have to turn over the information and the services provided via Brady Laws.

Other upgrades that we are looking at to our existing systems is with our Everlaw.

It is a complex management tool.

It's used on the civil side, it virtually subpoenas organizations for records.

It's also used during the PRA process.

We get thousands of documents.

It can be loaded into our Everlaw system, and then it will basically delete duplicates and create a nice report that we can quickly move through and produce subpoenas.

We can produce the PRA reports that are requested of us.

Currently, we are at a capacity for storage with Everlaw, and so this would upgrade our storage capacity.

It creates read receipts, it makes sure that if there is a change in courtroom number, they will be alerted to that right away.

So really it's about efficiency.

Last, I want to talk about the digital evidence management system.

This is really about we are in a time of digital assets.

Let's just acknowledge that.

We get a ton of video surveillance, we have ring cameras, and so all of that has to be stored somewhere.

Currently, it's stored all over the place by different folks.

It is the obligation of the prosecution office to turn those over via discovery, and this particular tool will allow that to happen seamlessly.

It creates read receipts so there's no discrepancy of whether that discovery was sent over in the first place.

So again, I just want to reiterate with all of our software requests, these are upgrades, these are just enhancements that is typical to request when you have software working in your systems, and really the key here is that when we have software working at its optimum, we need less people.

So it really helps our current staffing operate and be more face-to-face with folks instead of shuffling paperwork in the background or sending emails.

The biggest bulk of the fundraising efforts goes towards access to hope initiative.

This is really from the vein that prosecution offices need to engage and reform.

We need to build trust with communities, and to do that, we actually need to be in the community.

We launched our Youth and Young Adult Service Unit, a non-prosecutorial unit that virtually takes in youth all throughout the city, particularly youth in zip codes impacted by crime.

We offer immersive cultural experiences.

The biggest one is sojourn to the past, taking young folks down south, where they're able to see the impact of the justice system on individuals, particularly black community, and by understanding that history, they can then hopefully change the future.

We also offer fellowships and internship programs to high school students and young adults.

It's a great opportunity where not only do they learn about what we do in our prosecution office, we take them to all of our different law enforcement agencies and they learn about the various ways that they can engage civically to change the criminal justice system.

And then lastly, we do our annual keeping it safe children's community event, which is targeted towards elementary school age children, and it really comes from the notion that if we expose young people to law enforcement in positive ways, then they'll learn to actually trust our systems.

And so when they come into the community, there's not a feeling of fear, but hopefully a feeling of safety.

In addition to during that event, law enforcement agencies actually provide activities for the children, and that then hopefully changes the hearts and minds of law enforcement to really get to know the communities that you serve.

It's really a beautiful event.

We just had it.

The two big projects that are new is the first is our women's project.

We are currently working on an acute housing intervention for women who have had a traumatic event.

They will virtually be put into a house if they choose to with their children directly after the event and receive wraparound services.

What we know is that when individuals get immediate counseling post-traumatic event, they are less likely to have PTSD down the line and furthermore, less likely to end up back into a criminal justice system, whether it be as a victim or unfortunately as someone engaging in a crime.

So that is the biggest uh fundraising effort that we have.

We have nonprofit organization partners that are behind this, and so really it comes down to the funding.

The second big project that I want to highlight is our re-entry.

So we also want to make sure that we are acknowledging that folks that come back out need a pathway to success, and the best pathway to success is actually getting people engaged in a vocation and a lifestyle worth living.

And so through that, we again another huge housing project where folks coming out of prison would be placed into a house where they are put on a vocational track, and after they complete that vocational track, they will be pipelined into an actual career.

And so we have been working with organizations that are willing and ready to receive folks and also willing and ready to train them.

So again, uh, this would be a huge fundraising effort here, but we have the uh support, the community and stakeholder support on both of those.

Uh and then other pieces much of this work has really come from the hearts and minds of people in San Quentin and Child Chillow.

Uh so we want to continue to do those visits because they are the ones fueling what we should do with youth.

They are fueling how we should help women and furthermore, how we should support the re-entry community.

As mentioned earlier, our steps for transparency, it really is to disclose any donations that we receive and any relationships that we might have for them.

Uh, doing this behested waiver is is really an abundance of caution, as mentioned earlier, because we don't know exactly what we don't know.

And so we want to make sure that we are covering all of our bases as we go out and begin to fundraise.

So at that point, I will pause for any questions that you guys might have.

Um, thanks so much, Ms.

Willis.

I think um I was gonna ask about the uh the Sojourn project.

Is that something that um I know the police department police academy sends their new recruits through that project also to go down south and learn about the civil rights history?

Are the students with the police academy at the same time?

Yeah, great question.

Um yeah, it was actually through the police department that the district attorney was inspired to do this for the children.

What we have currently are um chaperones from the police, from uh adult probation.

We've had them come, the sheriff, so they are actually a chaperones to the youth.

Uh the young folks are not on the trip with the whole PDE crew.

Okay.

Yeah.

I was on the first one.

It was really good.

Yeah, we let the adults enjoy that trip themselves.

No, that's the only question I have.

So I don't see anybody on the roster with questions or comments.

Thank you for the presentation.

Uh, Madam Clerk, may we open this up to public comment?

Yes, members of the public who wish to speak on this item should line up now along the side by the windows.

All speakers will have two minutes.

It appears we have no public comment.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Public comment is now closed.

And I'd like to make to make a motion to send this item to the full board with our positive recommendation and as a committee report for consideration at our October 28th full board meeting.

Yes, and on the motion to forward this item to the full board uh with the positive recommendation as a committee report.

Member Sauter.

Member Sauter, aye.

Vice Chair Mahmood, Vice Chair Mahmood, aye, Chair Dorsey.

Aye.

Chair Dorsey, I have three eyes.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

The motion passes.

Madam Clerk, can you call item two?

Yes, item number two is a hearing to receive a report on the status and performances of the neighborhood emergency response team program.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

This hearing was called at the request of Supervisor Sauter.

Um, we're joined today by representatives of the fire department and community partners to discuss the impact of the neighborhood emergency response team that are known as NERT.

With that, uh Supervisor Saudder.

Thank you, Chair Dorsey, and thank you for letting us have this hearing today in this body.

Um, colleagues, I think many of you know, but um just a quick background on NERT, and then we'll hear a presentation.

Wanted uh give this space and time today to hear about the great work they're doing.

I think this is a fantastic partnership between the fire department and citizens at large, um, and also to see, you know, how we need to keep improving this program, how we can support it, um, because I do think there are great opportunities to really keep improving this.

Um, this has been around since 1990.

It's trained thousands of everyday San Franciscans to be ready.

Um, and probably in 1990, some of the ways we thought we might need to be ready have changed.

I mean, we of course earthquakes and fire, you know, we had our tsunami scare last month, so um we really see that we need to be working as a community, working as one city to get ready.

Um, this is a great partnership again with the fire department.

Um, I took a uh NERD class and graduated seven or eight years ago, but uh unfortunately I'm a labs member, so I need to get back in there.

Um but I had a really it was a really eye-opening experience, and um, because of that I always wanna uh look out for NERT and make sure that we're doing more to support it.

Um so I know we do have a presentation.

Um we're gonna hear from Gary Pigueros, who's the chair of uh the NERT advisory board and really committed member of the public, uh, and then of course uh Captain Brandon Tom, who's the program coordinator from the fire department.

So um Gary, Captain, take it away.

Thank you so much, supervisors, for the opportunity to speak for you.

As um Supervisor Sauter said, my name is Gary Pegueras.

So, Supervisor Dorsey, you know me through my volunteer work at the South Beach Rincon Mission Bay Neighborhood Association, where I've been the secretary since it began in March 2008.

So that's 17 and a half years ago.

Supervisor Sauter knows me through my volunteer work at the Eastern Neighborhood Democratic Lab, where I've been a member for most of its eight years and a board member for the past two years.

Uh but today I'm wearing my NERT vest.

Uh this year marks my 20th year as a NERT volunteer.

I serve as the coordinator for the neighborhoods of South Beach, Rincon, and Mission Bay, as well as the chair of the NERT Advisory Board.

And as you mentioned, I'm joined today by our program coordinator, uh San Francisco Fire Department, Captain Brandon Tom, and a few of our uh fellow uh advisor board members, Nathan Kharkovski and Lisa Dunmeyer.

So I'm gonna start off with a few slides.

Um so let's talk about NERT.

And I'm really glad that our audience is here because what we're gonna talk about started a lot longer before you were born.

So you get a little history lesson here.

So NERT, neighborhood emergency response team.

Let's see, how do I, I'm sorry, move forward?

That one.

Okay, thank you.

Neighborhood emergency response team.

It is free training offered by the San Francisco Fire Department on disaster preparedness and disaster response, available to anyone who lives or works in San Francisco.

So our mission, do the most good for the most people.

And how do we accomplish this?

Where training teaches us that we must first prepare ourselves and our family, get our own house in order.

Do we have emergency supplies?

Do we have extra food and water?

Do we have a family plan?

And what I brought to share with the committee and for your staff members is a kit list on one side, suggested items to put in your supplies, and on the back, it's suggestions for how to put together a family plan, a disaster plan.

So I will pass that into the group later.

But it's again to get your own house in order.

Once you do that, the next step is to reach out to your neighbors on your block, or if you live in a building, those on your floor.

Do a wellness check.

There might be some neighbors that may require some assistance.

So it's just kind of reaching out a little further to help your neighbors.

Great way to know your community.

And with the full training, the next option, if you so choose, is to join your fellow NERT volunteers to support the fire department during a disaster.

We're basically boots on the ground.

We're extra eyes and ears in the neighborhoods because we know that after disaster hits our firefighters, police, and other first responders, we're going to be overwhelmed.

They can't be everywhere, they can't respond as quickly as we'd like them to.

So we, as trained volunteers, can survey our neighborhoods and see where our needs are.

We are taught some low-risk skills that we can help so that we don't get ourselves hurt.

We can address those low risk incidents, incidences, anything that's above our pay grade, so to speak, we have the ability to contact our battalion station to alert them.

Hey, there is a building that's fully engulfed in fire.

We can't touch it.

Maybe we can secure the area, but we're not going to address that, but we can advise the fire department.

So we're going to take a step back to the origin of it.

This is where the history lesson comes in.

So we're going to set the scene.

It's Tuesday, October 17th, 1989, 36 years plus six days ago.

Beautiful fall day.

Many people were leaving early from work that day because it was scheduled for game three of the World Series between at Candlestick Park between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A's.

The game was scheduled to begin at 5 30, but at 5 04 p.m., an earthquake struck, centered in the Santa Cruz Hills, known as the Loma Prieta Quake.

It measured 6.9 on the Richter scale.

In San Francisco, the hardest hit district was the Marina District.

And if you look at newsreels from those days, what you'll see are spontaneous volunteers, neighbors who raised their hand, what can I do?

How can I help?

You saw them carrying the hose that was connected from the fire boat in the bay into the neighborhood to help put out fires.

You saw them helping firefighters identify neighbors who might be missing.

So after the earthquake, those same residents of the marina reached out to the fire department and said, you know, if you gave us some skills, we could actually be more help.

And thus in September of 1990, in the garage of someone's home in the marina, the very first NERT class was given, 24 graduates, and it's been free and continued every ever since then.

In 1993, the NERT program became a registered FEMA compliant CERT program.

Across the country, CERT is what most people may know it as community emergency response team.

It is the same.

NERT is a CERP program, but we are neighborhoods.

We're the Marina District.

We're Chinatown.

We're the mission.

So that's how we identify as NERT.

So let's talk about training.

The training is offered, as I said, to anyone who lives or works in San Francisco.

There are different options.

The full NERT training is six classes, roughly four hours per class, so 24 hours.

All the instructors are firefighter instructors.

We go through a series of topics that we cover, among them earthquake awareness, preparedness, basic disaster skills.

We talk about disaster medicine.

If we come across a lot of victims in a room, how can we sort through them quickly to identify who needs help the quickest?

So we triage them.

We do light search and rescue.

We identify by looking at a building.

If it's lightly damaged, we're able to go in if we need to to search for victims.

If it's heavily damaged, we're not going to go in.

So we uh learn the differences how to identify that.

We talk about team organization and management.

This is not a sole person endeavor.

This is by neighborhood by team.

We work together in a managed organized way to address the incidents that we're able to address.

Disaster psychology is super important.

During a disaster, people go into shock, people shut down.

Whether you're a victim or a responder, you go through a lot of changes.

So we learn about that.

Our final class is kind of a hands-on to everything.

We learn how to put out fires, small fires, and we review all our skills.

And again, I want to emphasize it is free training, and all the instructors are firefighters from San Francisco.

Another, we understand that 24 hours of training, it's a big ask.

It's a lot of information that we cannot cover in a few hours.

But if you're saying, well, I want to get some sort of training, because it's very important that you have some sort of knowledge, some sort of training.

So through NERT, they also offer a 90-minute workshop called SF Ready.

And that focuses just on personal preparedness.

What you can do in your household and your family to get your household ready.

That's one less household that first responders have to worry about.

And just by coincidence, for anyone who's available tonight, at the West Portal Library, 190 Lennox Way from 6 p.m.

to 7 30, there will be an SF ready workshop.

So come on by.

And it is an eight-hour training targeting our Spanish-speaking community.

It is taught by Spanish-speaking firefighters in San Francisco.

They teach the basic ideas of preparedness, empowering participants to share their knowledge with their community.

And another option is map your block.

So that's where you're really connecting with those neighbors that maybe you haven't met yet.

And you work as like a small little mini team to help each other out during a disaster.

So with that, I am going to pass it on to Captain Tom.

Thank you, Gary.

Good morning, Chair Supervisor Dorsey.

My name is Brandon Tom.

I am a native San Franciscan.

I was raised in the Chinatown.

I started my school career at uh Gordon, what is Gordon Lao Elementary now, which is Commodore Stockton back in the day.

So I grew up in the Chinatown, and I moved when my parents moved out to the sunset.

I ended up at Lowell High School.

At Lowell High School, I did my best to do well, and I ended up at Cal.

Luckily, when I was at Cal, I was working as a VEC teller, and I talked to a firefighter that used to come in to caption his coins because they used to have vending machines in the stations.

And I was lucky enough to say, take the entrance exam at that time.

And I scored high enough where I was accepted into the next fire academy right when I was graduating from Cal.

So instead of going to, you know, having a career path where I wanted, I was actually pre-med at the time.

Instead of doing that, I pivoted and went into the fire service.

So now I'm here 27 years later, uh, been in the fire service, uh, been the best move of my life.

I was able to utilize my pre-med uh education to become a paramedic.

So I was served as a paramedic firefighter for 22 years in the Bayview 100-point area.

Um I worked at every single firehouse in the city uh as a firefighter paramedic.

And in 2021, I was able to or had the opportunity to move into the role as NERTS program coordinator, and I've been uh lucky enough to have the support of my advisory board uh to help me guide me and what I can do to help the city.

Instead of saving lives one-on-one, I'm saving more lives by training people to be able to help each other.

So thank you for having me.

Um there are many things that nerds have helped out over the years.

Uh, and it can't be quantified in dollars, it's quantified in hours.

And there's three sayings that we tell our nerd members.

Uh, first is you heard the first one do the most good for the most people.

Uh the next one is nerds don't get hurt.

And the last one is nerds don't get paid.

So we they're volunteers.

So the way that we quantify the help that they have given us for these events is in hours.

So our volunteers have donated 7600 hours of their time to help in these events.

That's many more than we can ever hope for, and we are uh thankful that we have um members of our NERT community willing to volunteer for these events, and obviously we have to give them the training to be able to respond to these events.

So, how do I keep engagement with my NERT members?

Uh we try to spread the word about NERT because like Gary has said, uh 36 years later, many citizens still don't know what NERT is.

So we try to publicize ourselves as much as we can, try to be where the public is at NERT Tabling Events.

Uh we hold two big drills every year, uh, one to commemorate the 1906 earthquake in April, and one in October, which we just had to commemorate the Loma Prieta earthquake.

Uh every third Saturday of every month at the division of training, I hold a special uh monthly training session just for NERT members, and we hold um quarterly meetings with our uh with our neighborhood coordinators.

So we try to keep everybody engaged as much as we can.

We want to uh make sure that neighbors are helping neighbors by keeping that engagement.

And I would like to pass it off now to uh Nathan Karkowski.

Thank you, Captain.

Good morning, supervisors.

Uh, thank you very much for taking some time with us today, and also uh thank you, uh President Pegueros and Captain Tom.

Uh, thank you very much for this time.

Um on the slide right here, just want to call out that here in the city of San Francisco.

Uh the Department of Planning notes that we have about 7,000 blocks out there, and we've got about 10,000 active nerds, so doing some quick back of the napkin math, that means we have about one nerd for every single block in the city.

Um kind of a low number, I would argue.

Um, but just imagine if that person's out on vacation, now all of a sudden you have no people on that particular block.

So we certainly want to champion the idea of growing the number of people in the program.

Captain Tom has a goal of getting four percent of the community trained and ready.

That would move us from one person per block to five people per block.

That's now five people who have a cache of water, a cache of food to keep themselves and their family ready when that disaster strikes.

It's going to take days before we're able to spin up all of the public services we hope to offer to our community.

So having our citizens prepared is so important.

As we look at this map, also I want to call out the fact, you know, we align ourselves by neighborhoods.

So Supervisor Dorsey, you know, we've got the midmarket, we've got SOMA, we've got Rincon Hill or East Cut, whichever you prefer.

Uh South Beach, Supervisor Mockmood, Western Edition, Haight Ashbury, Fillmore, Japan Town, the Tenderloin, and Supervisor Sour.

We've got Chinatown, North Beach, the North Waterfront Neighborhoods, the Union Square.

These are all neighborhoods of voters who put you into place and we are members of.

But only three of our neighborhoods have caches of supplies for our teams.

We've been blessed with beautiful weather these last few weeks, but that's not always the case here in San Francisco.

So imagine us as volunteers out here working to be force multipliers for the city, standing in the rain, unprotected.

These three caches include things like pop-up tents with sides, tables and chairs, wrenches, shovels, masks, all kinds of tools that we need to support our community, support the fire department, and make our communities resilient.

So we certainly want to celebrate what we've achieved over the last years, but to continue being that force multiplier for the city, we ask for help.

Certainly after that last slide, we may feel a little despair thinking about only one person on each block being prepared.

But keep in mind, there's opportunity in front of us, and that opportunity sits on your dais.

But we could use your help to spread the word.

You want to leave the city better than you found it.

So as we look at expanding and bringing people in, we've spun up the Teen NERT program, which actually brings NERT into high schools.

We've had some great successes.

Was that at St.

Ignatius?

If I'm.

So we've offered NERT training at St.

Ignatius High School, once again, and we're looking to find ways to bring that to other schools across the city.

We have programs such as the Medical Reserve Corps, which is run in partnership with the Department of Public Health.

And this is actually a program that's a subset of a state organization called the Disaster Healthcare Volunteers, which is part of California's emergency medical services authority.

And in this particular program, we offer additional training to nerds to make sure they're understanding of things like HIPAA compliance.

You know, how do you work at a vaccine center or how do you work at a testing site?

Things that we've actually been able to do to support the city.

We also have a program called Disaster Corps, which we are reenacting.

This was put together at the state level almost a decade back, and as priorities changed at the state level, that program went away.

But the disaster core team is a program we are working to bring back to San Francisco.

Our disaster core members become a team of highly trained individuals who are then deployable across the state.

When a disaster happens in your backyard, you may be focused on your well-being and your family.

So having a team from an unaffected part of the state who's able to come in and be a force multiplier, that's how we make our state a greater place.

So I'd like to just wrap things here with three key points.

First, we ask you as supervisors to extend an invite to not only your offices, but your fellow supervisors and their offices to become NERT trained.

Or more importantly, suggest that you strongly encourage your staffs to become NERT trained.

By having your staff NERT trained, they're now resilient at home, so they don't have to worry about do I have enough water, do I have enough food?

They're able to say, I do have enough food, I do have enough water, my family's safe.

I can now go to work as a disaster service worker and support my supervisor.

So that's one ask.

Help us get more people involved, starting in your offices, and then certainly we would love it if you would include announcements about our training in your newsletters.

We can certainly feed those details to you.

We can uh wrap them up in nice copy and paste uh bullets you can drop into your newsletters once again, looking to grow community resilience.

Key point number two is help us build equity here in San Francisco for our neighbors.

Right now, only three neighborhoods out of the 108 or so named neighborhoods in the city have disaster supply caches.

Previous supervisors, folks who've sat right in those chairs, are the ones who funded these caches for their neighborhoods with their discretionary funds.

So we invite you to follow in the footsteps of your forebearers to help us build those caches so we can be ready with stretchers and wrenches and shovels and caution tape.

And finally, or my third key point is that this isn't just talk.

When the city has needed our help, we've been able to deploy within hours.

Several years ago, when we uh had those heat emergencies, uh Deputy Chief Artaceros Brown was asked to spin up cooling centers, and within 12 hours, we got to ask on a Friday night.

We had NERT members spinning up these cooling centers on Saturday mornings.

When we had the horrible fires in the counties to the north of us, NERT members as disaster corps members were able to deploy and work in shelters and points of distribution to get people new clothes and food.

And then lastly, when the pandemic came to our shores, NERTS delivered.

Captain Tom had mentioned we provided over 7,600 hours of volunteer service.

Let's just do some math on that one more time.

That's over 1,013 work days.

202 weeks.

Or to put a finer point on it, that's 4.04 years.

That's longer than a term as supervisor.

So literally, as volunteers, we've put in as much as you put in in one of your terms of service.

And that was compressed into the time frame of one year working at testing sites, food banks, vaccination centers.

We are the help, we are the force multiplier, we are community members, and we're asking for your help to get the word out, get your constituents prepared, and help us get those supplies so we're ready to help you and the city as a whole.

With that being said, I thank you again for your time, supervisors, and would like to open ourselves up for any questions that you may have.

Thank you for the presentation and the details of all your work.

Really, really helpful to see.

I'll start with a few questions and then certainly invite my colleagues to do the same.

Maybe I'll just start on you know to ask about funding of the program.

I think it's my understanding that the funding hasn't really grown through the years.

Can you give us a sense of kind of resources, what that looks like?

So, in the beginning, uh it was grant funded through FEMA.

That grant funding has gone away, and graciously, because of the support from our CD1 chief of department, they have uh added it to the San Francisco Fire Department budget itself.

That number is above my pay grade.

Uh, you would have to ask our uh chief of department or his staff or our CFO about that exact number.

I don't know what it is.

I just know we're trying to do more with less.

It never goes up, it only goes down.

And you're through the certification.

I mean, that you're certified by FEMA with the CERT program.

But are you currently getting any funding from them or additional resources?

We get zero funding from grants at the moment.

Okay.

Um, and talk to me a little bit about the I mean, I I really I think this idea of embedding this training and this education in other places is really important.

I mean, obviously, you know, there's going to be some people that come for the full NERT trainings, but if you can just give that slice of the training, you know, in other settings, school work, um, you know, is this something that have you had talks with like, you know, with uh SFUSD or with other large employers?

I mean, I know that all takes your time to go in and do those trainings, but is that something you're pursuing?

So that is something that we've actively done.

Just last week I've had a talk with the SFUSD um, I forget his full name, but we're trying to get into the SFUSD uh curriculum.

Uh it's it's a work in progress.

Uh the easiest way to actually get buy-in from teenagers right now is through clubs.

Uh so uh, like we just mentioned, we worked with SI.

I will be working with Soda, um, and we're actively having a meeting with the uh ROTC uh teams to have training with them.

Uh in terms of big companies, uh, we just had a SF ready training at Adobe last week.

Uh week prior to that, we were at Autodesk.

Uh, so there are companies that are aware of our training, and they do reach out and we do give them the training.

Uh, I've also had trainings over at the um state building for state um government.

Uh we've also done uh chase in the past, uh Chase Bank.

Uh so yes, what there are many people who reach out to us, and we uh if we're available, we will do it.

Good.

And I think that's certainly somewhere that we want to be helpful um on on the board is is those introductions and making that available to our constituents, community groups.

Um can you tell me a little bit more?

I wasn't aware of the the the cash the the all the emergency supplies um and only having a few sites uh at the ready is definitely concerning is that is it is it a uh what are the barriers is it funding is it just a physical space to store these items what does that look like it's multifaceted so first of all it's uh getting somebody to donate the space required to house this stuff um so there are only three sites that actually donated the space for a container uh for the equipment that we put into those containers uh there are so a big thing is that wreck and park has not been they don't like it if we put things on their property uh even though it should be for the community um we are gonna actually talk over about our MOU our memorandum of understanding about how we use their sites uh that is scheduled for december uh but it is a it's gonna be a big talk about how we can get more of their space uh just for community use um they are very tight about using anything that is on their property yeah yeah because you know we have um we have a lot of city owned land and property and some of it is very active and you know probably this doesn't make sense to put there but there's other places and there's far too many places that are not very active that are uh I think almost forgotten about so um I think there's a great opportunity there.

How how large are these caches?

So it's about a a container is about 40 feet 40 by 12.

Okay.

So that's that's usually what uh is used for our storage you need.

And and can you disclose or or do you remember the three locations that they're currently in right now I mean where do we have gaps?

So there's only three uh there's one at Murilima Park.

There's one at Bayview Hunters Point uh which is outside our um BOE so it's on fire department property.

And there's one at uh for uh Stonestown lakeshore area but they actually share it with the other two so they don't actually have a site it was supposed to go to the Park Merced area but there's a turnover there so it was not ever completed but they have the they have the supplies they just don't have this place to store it we have major gaps I mean um all of the densest neighborhoods in in on the east side have a lot of gaps okay um certainly something I I want to work with you on last question before I see if my colleagues have any questions um I you know I'm really encouraged to hear about the listos program and you know representing Chinatown I want to make sure that we take inspiration from that model um whether it's a a program like that or doing the 90 minute training in Cantonese um you know that's something I'd love to work with you on I think that is uh so important to get the get the message out get the preparation out to to every resident no matter what language they speak so I look forward to working with you on that.

I totally agree I I believe that if the information is delivered in a native language there's more buy-in so I totally agree with that.

Good thank you Captain It's not in the agenda but I have a sizzle reel that S of gov TV just made for me.

I was just wondering if I could show it please turn on it So this uh video was made by SFGov TV.

Uh they've come out to document a lot of our drills uh and to try to get the word out.

Um our biggest problem right now is that uh the demographics.

Uh we want to identify uh the range from 20 to 60 uh to try to get them more involved.

Uh right now it's shifted toward the older side.

I'd say 40 to 50 plus is what our people are more of that demographic comes out to volunteer to become members.

And so we're hoping with the work with SFGov and other things and using social media to try to skew a little bit of our younger crowd into joining our NERT program.

So this was just one of those.

Stop breathing, no pulse.

I can touch my name.

The NERT basic training is six classes long.

Uh, we'll give you a quick overview of the whole basic training of what NERT is.

Progress, not perfection.

A lot of the training that you do, we've done.

Who wants to give it a try?

Ready?

Okay.

So NERT.

When a disaster happens, fire department's gonna be super busy.

And I might not be there, be able to be there for my family.

So I might need some neighbors, right?

Some neighbors that help with my family, just in case.

I'm Captain Norm Cava with the San Francisco Fire Department, and I'm here teaching nerd.

So a lot of nerds, nerd, it's an acronym that stands for neighborhood emergency response team.

It's one of those things that we've done here in San Francisco for a long, long time.

Started right after the 1989 earthquake.

We clear the area.

We do not have enough medical personnel to be able to handle you if you get hurt here.

I'll show you a film later where you'll see a lot of citizens working, um, helping.

They came out and asked the fire department.

How can we organize ourselves so we can be of help?

It's really how do I take care of myself?

If the earthquake does happen, what do I do first?

And then how do I take care of my family?

And then how do I take care of my neighbors?

And then we go on how do I help the community, which is working with your nerd teams, which work with the fire department.

Little Prieta earthquake was a major disaster for the marina and people wanted to do more, so uh the program was developed.

So we've had members involved with NERT since 1989, since the Loma Prieta earthquake.

People just come and reach out and just want to be able to help.

Our program will talk about earthquake preparedness.

So NERT to me, it's just really nostalgic.

Um, growing up in San Francisco, being a San Francisco native, I'm really passionate about educating the citizens of San Francisco and hoping that we're all safe and that we can all help and contribute when the big earthquake hits or there's another big natural disaster.

Yeah.

Away from you, away from you.

Oh, yay!

It does two things.

Certainly, everybody who takes this course will be able to take care of themselves.

If you can get them, please vlog for two.

Okay, can you stand?

If that's one person that the bar department doesn't have to take care of, then that's great.

Those same people can go out to their nerd teams, and they can help others.

The more people who have this kind of training, the better.

See if they're breathing.

Okay, not breathing right now.

Let's clear all the debris out, and then I'll start teaching you guys how to crib, and then we'll go from there.

Bam!

Hashtag!

You were the first underneath it, you'd be pretty safe.

We try and put it into doable doses and bring it to a level that people can understand and appreciate.

Why would I we gain this person with a yellow?

Okay.

So we are looking at the community to see how you can help and be an asset to your community as well.

All right, we need groups of clothes here.

Okay, slow it down, back it up.

Just the fact that they have this information.

They can take care of themselves and maybe their family and neighbors, that takes that much more of a burden off of emergency service.

Oh my gosh, you're crazy!

I'm very thankful about the fire department has this program because I feel like I've learned a lot and I've met a lot of interesting people.

When they take that information that we give them, they are taking care of themselves, their neighborhood, and working together as a team.

I love being a firefighter and teaching this program.

That's great.

Thanks for bringing that in.

Um, and thank you for the presentation.

I'm gonna turn it back over to Chair Dorsey to take it from here.

Okay, thank you.

Supervisor Sauter, and I I just want to express my appreciation for this presentation.

This was really informative.

Uh, you know, absolutely the thing that this committee should be looking at.

And beyond that, um, just my my thanks to the people who are involved in this.

Obviously, it's a big, um it is a big deal, and I think representing the district I represent that is going to be at disproportionate risk for liquefaction if, you know, God forbid a seismic event happens.

This is something that we have to um expand and make sure that we're funding and giving adequate resources for.

Um I don't see any uh other colleagues on the roster, so madam clerk, why don't we open this up to public comment?

Members of the public who wish to speak on this item should line up now along the side by the windows.

All speakers will have two minutes.

It appears we have no public comment.

Thanks, Madam Clerk.

Public comment on this item is now closed.

And now I will send it over back to Supervisor Sauder for uh to make the motion reflecting his procedural preference for this hearing.

Yes, thanks.

I'd like to make a motion to have this item heard and filed, please.

Madam Clerk, maybe we have a roll call on the motion.

Yes, and on the motion to have this item heard and filed.

Member Sauter.

Member Sauter, aye.

Fleischer Mahmood, Vice Chairman Mood, aye, Chair Dorsey.

Aye.

Chair Dorsey, I have three eyes.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

The motion passes.

Uh Madam Clerk, are there any more items before us today?

That completes our meeting agenda.

Thank you, Madam Clerk, and thank you all for your participation.

The meeting is now adjourned.