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Minutes of Meeting on October 12, 2004
A meeting of the Immigrant Rights Commission (IRC) was held on Monday, October 12, 2004 at City Hall Room 421.
I. Roll Call:
Members Present The meeting was called to order on 5:25 p.m., Commissioners Alexander, Haile, Huie, Jones, Lau, Lee, Melara, Specktor, Tran were present. Commissioner Tran left at 6:41 p.m.
Members Absent Commissioner Bondoc, Ow & Zheng were absent. Escobedo, Kaff & Nguyen were also absent, but they were excused.
Others Present Dang Pham, Executive Director & Winny Loi, Commission Secretary
IV. Presentation:
2. Nicole Douglas from the Department of Elections: The Commission invited Ms. Douglas to explain the ranked-choice voting for this election. Ranked-choice allows San Francisco voters to elect local officials by selecting a first-choice candidate in the first column on the ballot, and second- and third-choice candidates in the second and third columns on the ballot. Ranked-choice voting allows for a majority vote without the need for a separate run-off election. Every first-choice vote is counted. Any candidate who receives a majority (more than 50%) of the first-choice votes is declared the winner. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the first-choice votes, a process of eliminating candidates and transferring votes begins. First, the candidate who received the fewest number of first-choice votes is eliminated from the race. Second, voters who selected the eliminated candidate, as their first choice will have their vote transferred to their second choice. Third, all the votes are recounted. Fourth, once the votes are recounted, if any candidate has received more than 50% of the votes, he or she is declared the winner. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes, the process of eliminating candidates and transferring votes is repeated until one candidate has a winning majority.
1. Laurel Pallock from the District Attorney’s Office Consumer Protection Consumer Fraud: The Commission invited Ms.Pallock to address concerns of consumer fraud. They receive about 100 consumer complaints a month. Anyone who has a problem with any business in San Francisco can come to consumer fraud. As long as the transaction was in San Francisco, they can try to help. Anyone could come to them for assistance before they go to small claims court. When they get complaints the mediators who are volunteers can help the consumer. They also have others who speak different languages that are able to assist them. A company who pretends to be Citicorp was doing some fraudulent e-mails to the public just to get personal information. Commissioner Tran wanted to know how to prevent this from happening to others. Ms. Pallock explains that Phishing is a scam where an individual pretends to be a bank or credit card company to get your information. When you get this, delete the message immediately. SFDA consumer complaint hotline is 551-9595. They have volunteers who come in on certain days who speak another language to assist with the complaints. She is the only full time staff left out of seven. If the commission knows of anyone who can speak another language that is interested in volunteering, please have them contact Ms. Pallock at 551-9575. They do request that the volunteers work at least 10 hours a week. Over the years they have had radio shows & TV coverage in the Asian & Spanish community. They also do presentations & out reach to different groups in the community & people in the community help out with translating. There are so many scams these days that Ms. Pallock recommends that you throw them out. You can also sent them to the National Fraud Information. By the time you get the scam the authorities usually know about them. She also suggest to forward any scams to FTC, which has a really good website at ftc.gov.
- Approval of minutes for August 9th: Commissioner Haile moved to approve the minutes with a few grammatical changes & 2nd by Commissioner Kaff. The Commission unanimously adopted the amended minutes. Commissioner Alexandar, Malara, Jones, & Lee abstain from the minutes, because they were not present for the August meeting.
III. Resolution to Enhance the Communication between SFPD & the Linguistic & Cultural Minority Resident in San Francisco: Commissioner Haile moved to approve the resolution, which was 2nd by Commissioner Huie. The commissioners unanimously adopted the resolution.
V. Nominating/Electing Vice Chair: Commissioner Escobedo received 6 yes votes & 3 no votes. The Commission voted Commissioner Escobedo to be the Vice Chair for the commission.
VI. Planning December Neighborhood Meeting: Commissioner Solomon suggested going to Western Addition. Commissioner Malara has suggested that we could contact the community leaders & ask them what issues concern them, so that the public will be interested in attending the meeting. She also recommends that if the commission can have a community sponsor. Commissioner Lee also suggested that we pair up with a community organization or offer a service, example, free legal consultation that brings people out. Commissioner Lau suggested that we line up the Excelsior & Sunset District for the following neighborhood meetings to come.
VII. Goals & Objectives for the Commission in the next 12 months: Commissioner Huie is the chair for the Performance Review Task Force. Commissioner Haile, Huie & Lau met with Bill Lee, City Administrator, last week to discuss improving the effectiveness of the Commission. They would like to work more closely with the Executive Director thru a work plan. They want to give priority to the Ordinance, to make sure that the Tier 1 Departments are in compliance & also eventually work with the Tier 2 Departments. Mr. Lee suggested asking the commissioners for their input to see what they would like to work on. Commissioner Huie would like to get the feed back by Oct 20th.
VIII. Director’s Report: 1. Update status of the Day Labor Program (DLP): Mr. Pham is out of the office & Ms. Loi will be reading the Director’s Report. The Mayor asked William Lee, City Administrator, to issue the RFP for the DLP on August 23, 2004. He assisted Mr. Lee in this process. On September 8, 2004 there was a pre-proposal conference in Mr. Lee’s office to answer all questions related to the RFP from two potential applications. On September 20, 2004 at 5:00 p.m. was the deadline for the submission of the proposals. There are two submitted proposals: Volunteers of America and La Raza Central Legal. He did work with the City Attorney’s office and Gary Wong of the Human Rights Commission to create a review panel. There are five members of the review panel to assist the City in the selection process. The review process will not end until October 14th at 5:00 p.m. After that, they will tally the score of each proposal and then Mr. Lee will make the announcement of the winner. Mr. Pham will have to start to negotiate the contract with the winner so we can begin the project on the beginning of November 2004.
2. The Mayor’s Town Hall in Mission District: On Saturday, September 18th, Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services invited Mr. Pham to attend the Mayor’s Town Hall meeting in the Mission District. At his town hall, there were numbers of questions related to the Day Laborer Program and bilingual education.
- Other meetings: A. Mr. Pham met with Mrs. Orla O’Keefe, Coordinator of the Student Placement Center of the San Francisco Unified School District. The purpose of this meeting was to continue to dialogue in details of the placement process for the immigrant students. B. On September 21st, he met with Eric Cohen, Legal Program Director of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) to discuss about the backlog of the naturalization applications. C. On September 27th, he met with Steve Kawa, Mayor’s Chief of Staff, to discuss about the need for the citizenship education program and naturalization assistance to better serve the immigrant residents here in San Francisco. D. On October 7th, there was an orientation session for all members of the review panel for the Day Laborer Program.
X. Next month’s Agenda: Planning Neighborhood meeting & Goals & Objectives for the Commission
Adjournment: The Commission meeting was adjourned at 6:45 p.m.