The San Francisco Board of Supervisors Rules Committee convened on July 20, 2026, chaired by Supervisor Shiman Walton with Vice Chair Stephen Sherrill, President Rafael Mandelman, and Supervisor Mahmoud. The committee processed multiple unanimous reappointments to city commissions and debated the proposed Affordable Groceries Act.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the July 20th 2026 Rules Committee meeting. I am your Chair, Supervisor Shimon Walton. I am joined by Vice Chair Stephen Sherrill and President Rafael Mandelman. And we also are joined today by Supervisor Mahmoud. Our clerk today is Victor Young. And I want to thank James Kawana from SFGov TV for making sure that this meeting is publicized and made available to the public. Mr. Clerk, do you have any announcements this morning? Yes. Public comment will be taking 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 in writing in either of the following ways. Email them to myself, the rules committee clerk at VICTOR dot Y O U-N-G at SFgov.org. If you submit public comment via email, it will be included as part of the file. May you also send your written comments via U.S. meal to our office in City Hall. One, Dr. Carlton B. Goodlit. Please, room 244, San Francisco, California 94102. Please make sure the silence all cell phones and electronic devices. Items acted upon today are expected to appear on the Board of Supervisors agenda of July 28th, unless otherwise stated. That completes my initial announcements. Thank you so much. Would you please call item number one? Item number one is a motion approving rejecting the mayor's nomination for the reappointment of Joshua Arce to the Public Utilities Commission for a term ending August 1st 2030. Thank you so much. And Commissioner Arsay, would you please come and tell us a little bit about why you want to continue? Thank you so much, Chair Walton, Supervisors Mandelman, Cheryl Mahmoud. My name is Joshua Arseh, and I'm grateful to Mayor Lurie to be nominated for reappointment to an additional four-year term at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. I am coming up this October-November on what will be the my third year in the unexpired term from my predecessor, Commissioner Maxwell, who like me serves in the ratepayer advocate seat of the Public Utilities Commission. For me, it was an opportunity when I was ratified and uh first nominated by Mayor uh previous mayor, Mayor Breed, and conferred by this body. I'm grateful to earn the the nomination from from Mayor Lurie to continue to advance what I think are some of the most important issues at the Public Utilities Commission, namely as the ratepayer advocate. Three things that I've sought to focus on, particularly in the current year that I've served as Commission President is really addressing the core interests of ratepayers around affordability and rates. I know that uh uh Chair Walton, you asked us to be concise in our remarks, but I'm happy to talk into some of those headwinds and some of the challenges that we faced when it comes to rates, some of the ways we've done everything possible with our general manager and staff to make those rates as affordable as possible and even bring them down on the short term. We have long-term challenges there, and if reappointed and confirmed by the uh rules committee and the board, I look forward to continuing to address in the long term because we do have long-term headwinds and challenges in front of us. Second has really worked to really align our our the impact that we have, the economic impact of our investments to really leverage them to go as far as possible to respect to jobs that we create and respect to contracting opportunities through our LBE policies and local hire ordinance. We're able to really move so many opportunities beyond just the investments we make, which are billions of dollars. We have a 12.5 billion dollar 10-year capital plan at the Public Utilities Commission, can do so much good in terms of the economics. Along the way, I'm really excited that we increased our investment in the partnership with SF Environment, our contribution to that agency's coordination of the citywide climate action plan. I think it's really important that we're also not just leveraging for the people, but our climate objectives for the city and county. And lastly, I've really tried hard to increase the community presence of the of the commission and the agency. I've been to oh gosh, a a few dozen community meetings, and whether that's uh individual advocates who invite me to go join a community meeting, labor union conversations. I've been to places like Millbrae, Burlingame. Folks may not uh know this. Well, you probably do. You are the supervisors. But uh we're the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, but only one-third of our water customers are San Franciscans. Two-thirds of all of our 2.5 roughly million water customers are outside the city down the peninsula, San Mateo, Santa Clara, even into a little bit of the e-space. So I've worked really hard to get out there, show face to the regional ratepayers and make sure they have access and I bring that back to staff and share the information with fellow commissioners.