disabled. including being a part of the group that started what is now the institute on aging. so i'm very familiar with in-home supportive services. i think the learning curve will be a little flatter for me, but give me a chance to learn what is going on now. in addition, i have a special needs granddaughter who is 11 years old and i have helped and assisted with. she is severely disabled. she is in a wheelchair, cochlear implants and uses an ipad to communicate. it's brought me into this age of disability, and i'm aware of the barriers. i'm looking forward to serving on the commission. >> president serina: thank you. honor to have you on our commission. i would like for approval of the february 5 agenda? motion? thank you. second, thank you. any comments or questions? all in favor? any opposed? thank you. the motion carries. item number 3, approval of the january 10, 2020 meeting minutes. do i have a motion to approve? >> so moved. >> a second? thank you. any comments, questions or changes? hearing none, call the question, all in favor? any opposed? thank you, the motion carries. >> item number 4, the director's report, shireen mcspadden. >> good morning, commissioners. shireen mcspadden. i want to just welcome commissioner sklar looking very much forward to working with you. and you bring such great experience in disability and aging services. i know you'll be a real asset to this commission. i also just want to acknowledge commissioner loo and say how much i've really enjoyed working with you. so -- >> thank you. >> and also just to say, obviously, we've had a lot of changes in the commission since last month. and i think we're actually going to see a few more changes, but you know, we have a fantastic commission. i really, really appreciate the dedication all of you have to this work and to the populations we serve. and i'm looking forward to working with you and the new members coming hopefully in the next month or so. i wanted to start with the federal level act, reauthorization. last week, leaders on the senate health education, labor and pensions committee introduced a bill to reauthorize the older americans act for five years. the supporting older american act of 2020 reflects a diligent effort from senate and house lawmakers to achieve an older act reauthorization. it also includes a lot of the priorities that the national association of area agencies on aging has been lobbying for at the federal level. the final compromise measure includes many of the same or slightly modified provisions in the house pass bill that i presented -- i talked to you about earlier. this is good news as many legislative specifics were carefully drafted and input from other aging advocates. so they've endorsed the bill. and we're super optimistic in the advocacy, aging advocacy field that, senate and house will advance the compromise measure, but we need to continue pushing on the legislature to get this passed. i think maybe the joint legislative committee could take this up when they meet next. and see if there is something we can do locally with our lawmakers. just to remind them how important this is. second thing i wanted to mention, at the state level, we continue to work on the master plan for aging. as i mentioned before, i'm on the research subcommittee of the master plan for aging. and really that subcommittee is focused on really thinking about what data is available already that we could collect that could be used statewide. what systems are available that could be expanded. you know, how do we really think about good outcomes for older adults in california and how are we going to track that once the master plan is in place. in addition to that, the california association of area agencies on aging, which i am president of and then also the california welfare directors association have very strong opinions on the actual structure of the master plan and how the money flows from the state into localities. so there is definitely difference of opinion between those two groups on what that should look like. the california association of area agencies on aging really wants to the triple-a as they are now, but to really be kind of the place where people come for services, right? so right now, there are 33 area agencies on aging in california. obviously, there are 58 counties. the california welfare directors association is really interested in having the triple-as sit within welfare departments in every county. they are urging the state to increase the number of triple-as. and then there is a philosophical argument about whether that is the best way to do it, because the triple-as are charged with serving all older adults regardless of income. from my point of view, we really need to figure out how to get people to access services. how are people going to want to access services no matter what their income level, no matter their background? and we should think about person-first and what is going to work the best. there are a lot of interesting conversations going on. there certainly some great conversations going on in the master plan advisory committee where they're saying there is distinct things that need to be in the plan. and it's pretty comprehensive. tomorrow i'm going to be going up to sacramento to have a conversation with the california association and california department of aging and we're going to continue to discuss what we think the structure should ultimately look like. it will be an ongoing conversation. and the director of the california department of aging says the plan has to be done and on the governor's desk in 2020, but we may not even know then what the structure is going to look like. it's a to be continued conversation. i'll be updating on the state level activities. one of the things they're doing is webinar wednesdays, where the california department of aging is picking a topic and going intensively into that topic. and anybody can access those. so if you get on the california department of aging website and you're interested, you can look those up and log in and listen and actually, there is time for public comment at the end of those, too. they're really trying to make this as public a process as possible. so while they wanted comments in early in december, the director of cda is -- has assured me and others that they're still collecting information and comments and input from the public. so more to come on that. and then locally, i wanted to announce that human services agency is receiving a good -- or some managers at the human services agency are receiving a good government award. this is an award every year put out by spur. and they -- commissioner knutzen, i know you know about this. yes, it's really exciting. it's a very prestigious award and goes to managers who have been innovative and collaborative and really done great government work to serve san franciscans. and so it honors -- the awards honor outstanding managers working for the city and county of san francisco, recognizing them for their difference to the community. this year, one of the awards is going to the cal fresh expansion team. we have talked a lot about cal fresh expansion to ssi recipients. the team has done a phenomenal job of reaching out and getting new people on cal fresh. a lot of them are older adults. one of the -- i think one of the things that is really great about this team, it's an integrated team. human services agency obviously has three departments. we have an administrative team. and there were people from all parts of the agency that really worked on this together. and we really blew the state's estimates on who would get onto cal fresh, kind of out of the water. the numbers were incredible and that's really because of the work of this team. the people who are being honored are jemile, phillip, our cops director, and krista, in-house supportive director. it was the department of human services staff, our communications team, certainly in-home supportive services all coordinating together to make sure that people got on cal fresh. and we're continuing to work to ensure that new people are getting onto cal fresh when they qualify. so really excited. they're going to get an award on march 4. second thing, i mentioned a bit about the racial equity work that the human services agency is doing. some of you may have gotten on the website and looked at the racial equity report that the planning team and human resources team did together. it's really comprehensive. we decided as a leadership team at human services agency to focus first on our internal practices and staff. and part of the reason for that, we feel like if our staff feel safe and feel supported, and that we're really thinking about equity internally, that we're better able to serve san franciscans in general. so we're going to be really digging into our human resources practices, looking at, you know, our promotional -- how we do promotions, how we outreach to the community and how we think about the lived experience that people bring and not just the degrees. and you know all of that. and then also thinking about disciplinary processes. at d.a.s., we're going to be pulling together to think about culture and equity in our own department. hopefully, this will be staff-driven. i would like our staff to take leadership in this and have people at all levels of this organization be involved in it. we will be -- a lot of this is hard work and experimental because we don't always know what is going to work and what isn't add we need to be able to try some things. and you know, keep our eye on the prize and make sure that if something is not working, we're tweaking and shifting it. but our ultimate goal is to make sure that we have a culture that celebrates our diversity, that really it does create equity for people at all levels of our organization. and then as you probably know, we've also done work with dignity fund to look at how we're serving the community, how we're serving san franciscans and we've done some of the equity deep-dives and that really has helped us inform our own work with respect to how we're funding across san francisco. so i'm really excited we're doing this work. it takes a lot of intentionality, it takes a lot of, you know, focus for us, and it's really, really important. and so i will also be talking about this fairly regularly. i just want to thank you because -- did we already -- well, never mind. we'll let that go for this second. i want to just mention also a couple of other things. we are kind of starting up our interface work again. tom nolan is the lead on d.a.s. staff for that and we're working with michael pappas and the interface council. we had a roundtable in august with the d.a.s. team and represents from the interfaith council to talk about what we could do together to make sure people are served well, that they know about services. that faith leaders know how to recognize things like elder abuse, understand the aging process, understand more about disability access for people in physical buildings. things like that. and we thought it would be great to come up with a tool kit that faith leaders and lay leaders could use to better serve people in the faith communities. and then also, we thought it might be great to have some of those faith leaders work with our own staff around spiritality and understanding the different traditions people come from. thinking about cross collaboration. i'm excited we're using community living campaigns we serve program. so the interfaith council was able to hire a deacon to really help project manage some of this work. so tom and michael pappas and i met with her on monday, yes, time flies. we met with her on monday and i'm excited she's going to take leadership in some of the work. so i'm saying this to just say that it's helpful for people to get the word out. i think if we have a really good group of people from various states think being how to -- how do we come together to really work on this tool kit, what should be in it? if any of you are interested in being involved, let me know, but if you know people in the community who come from different faiths who would be interested in working on it, please let me know as well. and then reframing aging phase 2. we had a great first phase of our reframing aging campaign. i know everybody in this room probably got to see a lot of the wall scapes and the signs out in the community and got to wear the buttons and be involved. the next phase is really thinking about how do we tell people about services that are available and address internalized ageism? so it's going to be a number of months for us to really pull this together. it's a lot of work and there are challenging concepts in this next phase, but i'm confident after the first phase that we can do it. we're going to need some creative help. certainly need the expertise of our community partners and staff. so you'll be hearing more about that in the coming months. but we're about to embark on that phase and i'm hoping that by summer or, you know, mid summer, maybe early fall we'll have the next phaseout. we're continuing also to use the materials that we had. meals on wheels has offered to take some of the images that we currently have and wrap them around their vans. so we'll get to use them. we're going to refresh them and maybe change the messages so people aren't seeing the same thing. but i'm excited they're offering to do that and we're hoping to refresh the signs and put them inside buses, as opposed to outside, which is more affordable for us. things like that. hopefully you'll continue to see the images around and we can think of new ways to get information out into the community. lastly, i just want to mention, heads-up on the area plan. we're working on the area plan which for those of you who don't know is a report due to the california department of aging. every four years, as part of our role on aging. the report outlines how we use funding to address community needs. older americans act funding is about 10-15% of our overall budget for community services. we're sharing the draft report with the advisory council in february to gather their input first. and then we'll present the report to you at the march commission meeting. and we'll get a draft to you in advance if you like. i think people like to take a look at it before the actual meeting because it's dense and there is a lot in there. so bridgett, i think we'll have it ready by the 21st of february and then bridgett can send it out to you then. and then we'll seek approval in april for the final plan. it's due to the department of aging on may 1st. the office of community partnerships and the planning team and budget team work really hard on the report every four years. i've seen the draft and i think this is the best one i've seen yet. it is really great. and they've taken what can be a very dry template and really given it life. and there are things in there that are san francisco-focused and highlight the great work we do. i want to say that they worked very hard to align it with the work that we're doing locally in our five-year strategic plan, so it's not just a plan that we have to check a box on. i mean the planning team in particular has done a good job of aligning this with the work we're doing here and the plans we have here. so that we're not doing these separate things that have no connection to each other. and i think that's it, unless anybody has questions for me? >> president serina: thank you. any questions or comments? one observation, sort of philosophical difference you mentioned between the welfare departments and the areas on aging. i think one of the things that is of concern to me, and i suspect other people, you don't want people to think they have to be eligible for welfare to access the programs that are available. and that could easily happen if it was rolled into the welfare department. so it's obviously something to be concerned about. >> i agree. and i think we are an example of an agency that managed to make that work. i think generally speaking, people know that they can -- well, people who know about our services now they can qualify for them and don't necessarily have to qualify for medi-cal, but we're still doing a lot of work around that, too. and need to continue doing work, because we know from the community assessment, a lot of people don't know about our services at all. i think other entities in california are really concerned about it, especially some of the small rural counties where one of the triple-as covers many counties and they're seen as a different entity from the human services department in those places. so you know, it may not have to be a one-size-fits-all approach. it may be that different parts of california just kind of tackle this differently and maybe that's okay. but it's a good point. >> president serina: thank you. the next item >> commissioner knutzen: it seems like it is two different philosophies going on here and it seems like a pretty critical thing to happen. and i'm wondering is the city supporting you and is there sort of a coalition forming around the two different approaches to this? around whether it's phasing welfare agencies or the welfare agency becoming the umbrella for it, or whether or not there is a real philosophy around how comprehensive those services need to be? do you feel like you're getting enough support for this? or is san francisco sort of -- what is the sense of that in terms of a strategy around getting -- >> yeah, i think the strategy is more statewide. for me, it's walking a fine line, because i do believe the way we have it set up here works really well. i think the administrative report we get from human services agency as three departments within the agency is phenomenal. and we're just special in san francisco. we have thing that other counties don't have. we have the dignity fund, for instance. we have worked over the years since we merged with human services on a really collaborative approach to things. and we meet very regularly to discuss those things. for us, i think it works well to have that. and essentially, we are in the situation where the welfare department is our umbrella in a way. but we don't talk about it like that. and, therefore, it's about how we message it to the community, right? but i do think at the state level, it's a much different conversation because there are these kind of two proposals that have been put out there that are very different. >> commissioner knutzen: do you feel like you're getting adequate support? are people sufficiently aware of it to fight that battle if you need to? >> i think so, yeah. thanks. >> president serina: thank you. item on the agenda is employee recognition. thes d.a.s. commission and executive director shireen mcspadden will honor ken yeung from the d.a.s. benefits and resource hub. >> come on up, ken. [applause] >> could everyone from the d.a.s. benefit and resource hub stand, or wave your hand, or both. so does -- i want to talk a little bit about the d.a.s. benefits and resource hub, because we've been trying really hard to make sure that people know about it. people in the community know about the hub. we call it the hub because it's where people can come to get all kinds of services for people with disabilities and older adults. and all of you have worked really hard to become super knowledgeable about all the programs we have, which is really hard to do. we have so many things going on. and you know, i think when we recently brought together some eligibility workers who are really working on medi-cal eligibility, ssi, cal fresh, with people who are really thinking about doing intake services for adult protective services, for home-delivered meals, giving information referral and assistance to people, letting them know about high cap. letting people know about services in the community for people with disability, older adults. there is a myriad of things you all have to know. i'm super impressed how you've all taken on that challenge and how you're continuing to learn and teach yourselves and how you're now going to be out in the community sharing with people. and being experimental, how do we reach san franciscans and make sure that everyone knows about our services and how great they are? and where to get them. so for those of you in the room who don't know about the hub, if you get a chance to go by the hub and talk to people so you know where it is, so you can take people there, or let them know about the one phone number we have. it would be really great. i just want to thank all of you for the work you do. and ken is so exemplary. so i'm really excited, ken, that you are employee of the month for february. ken, you know, i don't get to know all of our staff anymore. when i started working here, i tried to know everybody's name and i did. but then the department grew, i was like, oh, i don't know everybody and i'm sad when i'm in the elevator and i know somebody knows me and i don't remember their name. but ken is somebody i know, because one of the things he's done, i know he does a great job and i'm going to read what his coworkers said about him, but he's somebody to steps up and does extra work all the time. he's worked on planning events when -- planning events for ihs, he's done work -- when we did the alzheimer's walk, he helped with the bake sales, plan parties. there has been ken and other coworkers who really formed a great bond and a great team. and certainly his leadership has meant a lot to our department as a whole. and so, ken, thank you so much for that. so i'm going to read what your coworkers said about you. so ken yeung joined human services agency 15 years ago and joined the d.a.s. hub team in 2016. he's a team player and is always ready to extend his help to other staff in the hub. ken has been instrumental in building collaboration and coordination of all the services. his leadership at the hub makes him a go-to supervisor. he pushes his team to consider all the needs of his clients. ken is passionate about serving older adults and adults with disabilities and it shows in his approach. ken considers the whole person. which is really the role of the hub and why it's such a great model. ken doesn't just hand clients a hotline number, but takes the time to call clients back to address their concerns and find them additional resources as needed. this additional personal touch makes a big difference to clients and staff. it is a pleasure to work with ken and we're grateful he's part of the hub leadership team. so, ken, congratulations on being employee of the month for february. [applause] >> good morning, commissioners. shireen, good morning. cindy, kate, jillian, managers and colleagues. on behalf of the department of disability and aging services, the golf team, thank you for the recognition of the services we provide, the entire team at the hub. on a personal note, it's my honor to accept this award and thank you for the vote of confidence. i could have never done it without the support of all the managers and colleagues. in terms of looking at a person instead of a case, so i will strive to continue to work with management to develop innovative high-tech services to the disabled and older adult community. thank you. [applause] >> president serina: the next item is the council advisory report. welcome, diane lawrence. >> welcome, commissioners, commissioner sklar, look forward to working with you. we welcomed a new member, alan cooper, from district 6. and potential member janice petty from district 7 also attended as a guest. we're working through with supervisor yee's office to get her formally appointed. we're having a few problems with applications and having the correct application can be filed. we had a representative from census 2020 to speak with the council. we reviewed the timetable. we talked about the process for the census. they'll be working with meal sites to help answer questions. and the questions. we'll be making available to the council members the nine questions available online. some of our members have applied and begun working for the census, so we'll get insights as we move along. we got an update from dr. marcy adelman on the alzheimer's task force that is part of the overall master plan for aging and they are still moving forward. as of january they hadn't met. we also had our second presentation on the area plan. as i mentioned last fall, we put together a different timetable where rose came to us in august, reviewed the process since we had new members and many of us had not been here when we were starting from scratch. we put together a timetable. january's meeting was to give us an update. we did level setting. talked about, as director mcspadden mentioned, the five-year strategic plan and those goals and how they fit. we will discuss and finalize at this month's meeting. if there is a specific objective the council may want to focus on as we move forward from the area plan. we've sent all members, old and new, previous plans -- the department's strategic plan so we're prepared when we come to our february meeting. our goal is to have -- as director mcspadden mentioned -- the preliminary report presented at our meeting in two weeks. and then we'll get the copy in early march and do our final presentation, because our goal is when you get it in april, i've already signed it. so we meet the may 1st deadline. so we're on target with our plan. and membership we continue to work on membership. we had a new member and then lost a new member, so we'll continue to work through that. as i mentioned before, we really want to -- there are four of us that are commission appointees, have all our paperwork, come to you at one time to get that through and hopefully be able to do the same thing with the board. go through the rules committee all at once. so we'll be working on that. that was it. in february, we're going to focus on the area plan. that is our big part of the meeting and then we'll get updates on site visits. so are there any questions? >> president serina: any questions? >> commissioner knutzen: can you tell us what categories of members that are really vacancies for? >> so we have four new reappointments to the commission -- from the commission and then two vacancies so far. and then we have, i think, four or five from supervisors -- and we still have i believe it's two supervisory districts, so we'll reach back out to them >> commissioner knutzen: can you say what the districts are in case we -- >> i know it's supervisor ronen and supervisor fewer. >> commissioner knutzen: okay, thank you. >> it's a test early in the morning [laughter]. >> commissioner knutzen: i didn't ask for the numbers. >> no, no, no [laughter]. >> district 1 and 9 i think. >> president serina: thank you. >> commissioner knutzen: i didn't mean to do that. >> president serina: any other questions or comments. the next item, the joint legislative committee report, again, diane lawrence. >> we focused this month, because it was early in the process, not much had been done, we focused on those bills held in submission at the end of last session which are in the report. in part of our discussion, we know that the master plan will impact legislation so that we'll probably see some of those held in submission bills or some of the other bills. their numbers become something different as we move through the legislative calendar. again, very little action the first two weeks of the session. the 24th was the last day to hear and report to the floor on bills that had been introduced last year. so an assembly bill introduced in 2019, had to be discussed on the floor of the assembly by the 24th. also it was the last day to send any bills to the legislative council to look at. last friday was the last day that the house could introduce bills in that house. so house-specific. and it was to introduce -- re-introduce, if you took the number, it was on a bill for last year. given the two-year session, we're not going to see new bill numbers. and then the last, the 21st of february, so we'll have probably a lot to report in march -- is the last day for all bills to be introduced, so we'll see action there. the senior legislature is still looking for sponsors on their 10 bills. the medicare -- medi-cal long-term care personal needs allowance is back again. this is a bill that has been there i think every year i've been on the leg committee. and it's to raise the personal allowance from $35 to $80. this is for things that aren't covered. the co-behalftant bill, which our local assembleman phil tinge is a sponsor of that. that's to allow if you need a caregiver and you're in a senior housing and that caregiver doesn't meet the senior housing requirements, that they could live you with so someone doesn't have to move out. we did discuss the older americans act, but director mcspadden covered that in her report. if i may, i'd like to make -- there is -- a comment comes up at the tack meeting where the 33 area agencies meet. as shireen mentioned, they're every -- every county, every tack, every area agency is different. we're unique because of the city and county. one of the things that often comes up, and it came up discussing cal fresh, it comes up with other things, even though someone may be eligible, often times, generationally, people see this as welfare and they have an aversion to it, any kind of help. we have one member who points that out every time the issue comes up. so it is -- i just wanted to make that comment. >> president serina: thank you very much, diane, for, as usual, your comprehensive report. thank you. the next item on the agenda is the case report. >> good morning, commissioners, director mcspadden, welcome commissioner sklar. >> president serina: greg, would you introduce yourself? >> greg moore, cochair of case, coalition of agencies serving elders and people with disabilities. last month, we had -- case had the honor of hosting the first dignity fund service provider work group meeting under a new leadership model which has case and the dignity fund coalition co-leading the group and its four meetings per year. this was the first one. we were quite pleased that there was an attendance of about 40 people for both case and the service provider work group, which is many more than either of our groups had seen in quite a long time. a good indication that this will enable more individuals to attend and better align the work for all of us. melissa mcgee and rose johns of d.a.s. presented on the dignity fund data and evaluation report at the meeting. and we had conversation about where attendees that day wanted to see this group going. what they wanted it to become to make it a more effective group. at our case meeting, which preceded the work group meeting, we had dr. louise arenson, and author of the "new york times" bestseller, elderhood, with a great presentation. if you're not familiar with the doctor or the book, i suggest reading the book. and if you have a chance to hear her, by all means. very informative. very interesting. at times very amusing. at our monthly case officer's meeting with director mcspadden, we continued reviewing our budget asks for fiscal year 2021. we also talked about and updated on the status of efforts towards city college and the cancelled senior classes. got the latest update around that. and let director mcspadden know we would be continuing our efforts in advocating for full restoration of those classes as well as work to try to fund a long-term or permanent funding stream. >> some updates that are getting there together. 2.0, getting there together, 2020, our first steering committee will be actually this afternoon. we're very excited. and we'll be begin. our goal is to begin fundraising efforts next month for that. you'll hear me talking a lot -- case talking a lot about getting together in the months ahead. at next month's meeting, we'll be featuring a transportation panel with individuals from sfmta's accessibility services. someone as well as transit riders. heads-up, at our march meeting we'll have mason smith from gm company with autonomous technology coming to talk with us. they've been getting a lot of press. i actually attended a session with mr. smith back in the fall. very interesting. and i'm hoping that we are -- our participants, attendees, will be able it give them good input and feedback on efforts -- needs of seniors and people with disabilities in this field. and i think that is it. can i answer any questions? >> president serina: thank you, greg. any comments. >> commissioner spears: just one. what is the date for the getting together? >> sunday, september 13. >> president serina: any other comments or questions. thank you very much, greg. >> thank you. >> president serina: item 5. old business. is there any old business? none? new business? requesting authorization to modify the existing grant agreement with self-help for the elderly for the provision -- >> commissioner, we skipped the ltccc. >> president serina: we missed? >> right before the case report. >> president serina: i'm sorry. yes. thank you. the long-term care coordinating council report. no offense intended [laughter]. thank you. thank you, bridgett. >> yes, good morning, commissioners. my name is j.c. cohen and i'm director of the partnership at san francisco which is a life long learning center for transition age youth and adults with disabilities. i serve on the long-term care coordinating council in the member category of transition-aged youth. i'm here to show highlights of the january 9, 2020, coordinating council meeting. a dignity fund update was provided, which included an allocation plan for the $3 million growth funding. an update was provided on san francisco city college, which included the potential closure of 58 classes, 50 of which are part of the older adult learning program. and 17 of those classes were provided by d.a.s. providers who reached out to the department for potential one-time dignity funding to support the classes over the next three years. a discussion was held around the challenges with the class closures. the nominations in membership provided an update on open long-term care coordinating council member positions, which included a discussion of the vacant labor seat, the in-home support services workforce representation and the open seat in the hospital and health services category. the nominations and membership group are looking to increase the council's diversity and identify potential new members. the steering committee introduced a recommendation to move from monthly meetings to meeting every other month starting in july. members discussed the recommendation and further discussion in greater detail will take place at the february meeting. there was a presentation to the council from the department of public health on the health care services master plan and a presentation from department of public health providing an overview of the san francisco health improvement partnership. a city-wide initiative designed to improve the health and wellness of all san franciscans. members had lots of questions, so there will be a follow-up discussion about the san francisco health improvement partnership at the february meeting. updates on related partner efforts were provided, including a brief update on the california advancing and innovative medi-cal, the 2020 census, the behavioral health work group and the transportation and workforce group. >> president serina: thank you very much. >> you're welcome. any questions? >> president serina: comments or questions? thank you. >> you're welcome. >> president serina: now we get on to new business. item a, requesting authorization to modify the existing grant agreement with self-help for the elderly for the provision of health insurance counseling and advocacy programs for older adults and adults with disabilities during the period of february 1, 2020 through june 30, 2020, for an additional amount of $62,103 plus a 10% contingency for a teal amount not to exceed $486,308. welcome, michael zaugg. >> good morning commissioners, executive director mcspadden. welcome new commissioner sklar. i'm mike zaugg, the program director with the office of community partnership. this item before you is to modify one-time only funds for our high cap, administered by self-help for the elderly. the high cap program is a medicare education and counseling program. sort of most commonly known for providing one to one counseling around medicare benefits for people on medicare, who are imminently eligible for medicare. they do that through a staff and training counselors at 10 locations throughout the city. they do -- last year they provided counseling services to over 2000 consumers. they're on track to do that again this year. these funds before you, $62,000, perhaps the biggest chunk is going to go for purchasing and formatting of laptops for each of the counselors to use as they do their work. the program requirements require that sort of data go right into a computer. don't use any paper in order for privacy and hipaa and various other things. right now, they're kind of hustling with a couple of computers to make sure everyone has access to computers at every site. this will give each counselor a computer they can use. the rest of the funds are going toward covering costs that have been over budgeted this year. these are things -- i think we saw building and maintenance costs. modest increase in staff salaries, things like that. >> president serina: thank you, michael. may have a motion to approve for discussion? >> so moved. >> president serina: thank you. any comments or questions from the commission? any comments or questions from the public? hearing none, may have a motion to approve? >> so moved. >> president serina: a second? any further comments or questions? all in favor. any opposed? thank you. the motion carries. thank you, michael. item b, review and approval of the d.a.s. fiscal year 20-21 and 21-22 budget. welcome dan kaplan. >> thank you, commissioners. i'm dan kaplan. i am the human services agency deputy director for administration. and the business of putting together a budget proposal is a business that h.s.a.'s budget team shares with each of the departments, so we're here today to talk about the d.a.s. budget proposal, of course. and this is something that we have framed within the context of the larger human services agency budget. and i will mention a few facts about the human services agency budget as they're part of this discussion. so, what i'll be talking from here and what has been sent to you by bridgett is a high-level summary of the proposed budget proposal, what i'm here today doing is asking for your support and approval to make this proposal to the mayor's office. which we are scheduled to do before february 21st. and to answer questions that you may have. and then to sort of go through some of the issues that we've been talking about already around potential new initiatives in this budget. so the first thing i'd like to say, this is always a cooperative effort between program staff in the department, shireen is involved, various program directors involved and the budget staff. and here today are three members of the budget staff who have worked most closely on the d.a.s. budget. those are emily gibbs, who is our agency budget director, ruth who is a principal analyst and alex gleason, all the way in the back, who is an analyst who focuses almost entirely on d.a.s. issues. as i said, we will make a proposal on february 21st and then the process will shift to a discussion between the agency and the mayor's office. we'll work through many details in the budget, including both what i think of as the base budget and concepts that we have for new initiatives. and that will take several months because the mayors office will be weighing issues within each of our h.s.a. budgets against those with budgets in other agencies. and i'll come to this in a moment, the city is facing some financial challenges. they are small in the scheme of things, but they're not nothing. and the mayor has also made quite clear that she is very concerned with homelessness issues, as many san franciscans are, and really wants to be thinking of the budget as a tool for addressing homelessness issues. as well as issues around clean streets and equity in the community. so we will go through that phase where we're talking about the mayor's office, questions and thinking about creative ways to do things. the mayor presents her budget on june 1st, which will have all of the agency and department budgets. and then we move to the legislative phase of the process, which will go on for about six weeks, where we are answering questions from the board's budget and legislative analyst office, and we will be discussing and justifying and explaining and then we'll be doing hearings before the finance and budget committee and then ultimately the bard will vote on -- board will vote on a budget and it will get to the point of having an approved budget by the middle of july and then the mayor will sign off on that presumably. so that is the process. i would like... just to sort of say, a word about budget context. and this is something we talked about a little more in the finance committee meeting that we had several weeks ago, but the bottom line here is that the city is still in an economically healthy shape. revenues are continuing to grow, maybe a little bit more slowly than recent years. we've been in a recovery now for ten years, which is a long time. and growth of revenue is slowing up. costs are growing faster than revenues. and this is the age-old problem in government, we're talking about structural deficits. this is a case of a structural deficit. most of the cost growth is associated with the city's labor force. for the most part, there are existing labor agreements in place that prescribe raises from year to year. certainly a good thing for workers in our high-cost city, but that also puts pressure on the budget. there are some other items that go into the cost growth. they're mainly inflation-related items. so at the bottom line, the mayor's budget office, controller's office and budget and legislative analyst office working together have estimated a funding gap of $195 million in the budget year and $224 million in the second year. and as a result of that, the mayor's office has instructed agencies to reduce their general fund costs in their base budgets by 3.5% in the budget year. and 7% in the budget year plus one, or the second year of the bian um. for h.s.a., d.a.s., department of human services, the office of early care and education and h.s.a. administration all together, we share this target. the reduction target is $2.2 million of general funds in the budget year. and $4.4 million in the budget year plus one. i should say that if you actually looked at the general funds in those combined budgets, and took 3.5% of that, you'd get to a much higher number than 2.2 and 4.4. and the reason for that is that the reduction is not figured on all local funds. it's really figured on, what i like to think of as the discretionary local funds within the budget. so some funds are set-aside funds. in d.a.s., the largest set-aside fund is the dignity fund. that is pulled out of the equation. in the office of early care and education, there is another large set-aside fund that is called peef and that fund is also pulled out. the largest area pulled out of the equation are the funds that are associated with aid budgets. aid budgets include a lot of different kinds of benefits that go more or less directly to clients. so in d.a.s., the largest aid budget is the ihss budget. in vhs there are foster care-related budgets, adoptions assistance budgets. so those are not in the equation either. that's how we get to the number of $2.2 million in the budget year. the good news around this is that the state budget has been fairly strong over the last two years. and in the current fiscal year, our revenues from a number of programs have come in above what was anticipated in the budget. those include the cal works program, the cal fresh program, the medi-cal administration budget -- which is very important for d.a.s. clients and certainly ihss clients within d.a.s. -- the ihss administration budget. these have all come in a little bit above what we had anticipated in the budget. and when we look at the governor's budget for next fiscal year, it looks like there will be growth in two of those areas. one is the medi-cal administration budget and one is the ihss administration budget. and state has committed to allowing the medicaid administration budget to grow with inflation. and the ihss administration budget to grow with case load. and so when we take all of that together, there is more than sufficient additional revenue to cover the target reductions. which allows me to say that we ill meet the target -- we will meet the target reductions without laying off staff, without cutting positions, without eliminating contracts and without reducing any client benefits. that's the good news. in doing this work, the mayor's office has also directed agencies not to add positions unless they are revenue-backed. and we are trying to stay within that request, that direction in our budget proposal. so we won't be adding positions here. and what we will be doing instead -- and i'll come back to this later in the description -- we'll be repurposing some existing positions. as time has gone on, needs change. in d.a.s. we've done small reorganization, but not insignificant reorganization. and partly what we will do is take positions and repurpose them to better support the running of the department as it exists today. anyone who sat through these conversations know we think in terms of three views of the budget and we call them sources, uses and character. sources are, of course, where the money is coming from. uses is where are we spending it on a program level. and character is what sort of expense is it? is it a personnel-related expense? cbo expense? service from another agency, et cetera, et cetera? so the first of these slides is the sources slide. and as you can see, we divide money up into several different colors. so importantly we have federal revenue that supports a number of programs within d.a.s., certainly the ihss program, the medicaid program is heavily federally supported, the aps program has federal money in it, the public conservator program has federal money in it. the state also contributes money to the ihss program as its largest share. and then we have two small buckets which are really state money, too. those are things that we've labelled as 1991 realignment and 2011 realignment. you can see 1991 is considerably bigger. in both of those years, what the state did was it passed laws that shifted financial responsibility for a number of social services programs to count these. and in 1991, the biggest d.a.s. -- the biggest program in general that was part of that shift, but certainly the d.a.s. program that was part of that shift is ihss. and in 2011, the a.p.s. program had its state money shifted to counties as an area of responsibility. and what the state did when it did that, it said, we'll come up with a dedicated revenue source. that won't be part of the state general fund. but will help counties meet the obligations. and the dedicated source is a percentage of the state sales and use tax, and the percentage of the state vehicle licensing fee. and the mixes were different in 1991 and 2011. and the various uses among a whole range of programs were different in the two years. but in both years, money comes out of the state use and sales tax and the state vehicle licensing fee. so that is an important part of the d.a.s. budget. and then there are some other parts, what we call here, gifts and grants. the largest piece of this is older americans act funding. there are some smaller pieces in there. and then, obviously, the community living fund you're familiar with. the dignity fund you're familiar with. the general fund is obviously -- this is the piece of unrestricted money, except to the extent that it relates to ihss costs. in which case, that piece of it is pulled out. and then the last item here is the work order recovery. so work order in san francisco speak is money that travels from one agency to another, work order expenses money that we pay to another agency to do something. work order recovery is money we get from another agency to do something. so in this case, we get a few little things, but the big thing we get, the 98% share of this is money that we get from the department of public health to the support the local costs of the ihss health benefits. so ihss health workers are eligible to receive health benefits if they work a certain amount. many, not all ihss providers opt to get those benefits. and there has traditionally been a federal, state and local share of those costs. the local money for those costs come to d.a.s. from the department of public health. so that is almost all of what that slice of the pie is. as we shift to -- we haven't labelled it uses here, but this is what we would refer to as uses. this is where we spend the money. and as you can see, a very large share of the pie, with multiple slices in it, have the letters ihss within them. ihss from a financial point of view is the largest program in d.a.s. and it also serves a large number of clients. and we have several different pieces to this. so if we start at the pale blue ihss contract mode slice, those are contracted services for home care that we buy from our contract mode provider, which is home bridge. the second slice, the gray slice is what we call the maintenance of effort payment. when the state reworked the funding of the ihss program in 2012, it established a maintenance of effort payment for every county. this represents the local share of the costs of the program. i didn't look up this year what the full cost of the ihss program are, but half a billion dollars a year roughly, give or take. so the local share is covered by this $146 million. the rest being state and federal. the ihss public authority cost is really got -- well, this is the health and dental piece. this is the big piece. this is money that we pay to the public authority which administers the health and dental program for ihss providers. so this money is basically all for health and dental benefits. there is a very small slice, which is the ihss public authority cost. that is the administrative budget at the public authority. it's a range of services provided by the public authority. and then there is the ihss services and county staff budget. this is the staff within d.a.s. that meets with ihss clients, assesses need and monitors their care. then the other slices of the pie are also familiar public guardian administrator, conservator and payee slice is about $10 million. the county of veteran services office about a million dollars. the office of community partnerships, which now includes clf, reflects one of the reorganizations in d.a.s. over the past year, also includes the dignity fund expenses. and the a.p.s. program, about 11 million bucks. and integrated intake, the group that was here before. for the employee of the month honor. these are the uses within the d.a.s. budget. if you look and compare from year to year, you will see that it's pretty stable from year to year. i'll go into a slight difference with the ihss, because it's very significant budget driver, but by and large, the changes that we've got in here are very small. they reflect growth in the costs of county staff. they reflect growth in the cost of contracted services through cost of doing business increases or codb increases. and they reflect something new this year that will happen only this year, which is a small mco, or minimum compensation ordinance increase. so last year -- or the year before i guess at this point, the board passed a minimum compensation ordinance. minimum compensation ordinance is governing the way the lowest paid workers in community-based organizations are compensated. and san francisco has had a minimum compensation ordinance for a long time, but what had happened is it had sort of slowed up and wasn't the controlling wage for the lowest paid community-based organization workers. the lowest wage was actually the city minimum wage. and the board came along and said, well, it was always our intent to pay workers contracted providers at least a little better than the minimum wage. and so the minimum compensation ordinance was amended in a way that pushed up the minimum compensation to be received by workers in contracted agencies. it also had a fairly profound impact on the ihss program. and as we were analyzing the impacts of the minimum compensation ordinance -- and this was being done while the legislation was being contemplated and discussed -- it was clear to us that about two-thirds of the cost city-wide would be in the ihss program. so -- but that has been factored into the ihss piece of this. that adds a little bit of cost this year. and then when we move to the character representation of the spending. you can see that about $250 million of the d.a.s. budget goes to aid payment. this is again large -- i guess almost entirely -- in the ihss program. and then there is the cbo grant bucket, which is significantly dignity fund, not exclusively dignity fund. salaries and fringe benefits respectively at 9% and 4% of the budget. and then there are a few much smaller buckets of expenditure which are support-type expenditures. so software consulting and professional services is really things like -- well, software, computer support that we buy, some consulting services. but that's a small bucket. and then ancillary client support includes things like the ihss provider training, a.p.s. placement beds, and the small amount of money we spend on transportation. so this is -- so if we go to this slide. this is the ihss moe slide. the reason we have this is not because there is anything controversial happening with the moe this year. there has been in the recent past years. and in the later period of governor brown's tenure, there was a really dramatic change to the ihss m.o.e. law that very significantly increased the costs to counties for the ihss program. and it was, i think, always contemplated by the brown administration that law would be re-looked at in a subsequent period and the timing they picked on it was what turned out to be the year after the end of the brown administration. but that happened last legislative session. governor newsom proposed significant changes to the ihss m.o.e. law which reversed the tide and made the cost structure more favorable to counties than it had previously done. what you can see, if you look at this chart that the budget team has put together, the top row is what we had contemplated the cost of the of the m.o.e. would be when we submitted last year's budget. and the changes had been made. we didn't fully understand them. we didn't fully understand the way they'd be implemented -- or the changes had been proposed, excuse me. and we budgeted for growth going out into the upcoming bian yum, which was fairly conservative. as we worked our way through the legislation, as the implementing regulations got written, it turned out that the treatment of counties and the treatment of this county were more favorable than we thought they would be. and so if you look at the second row, what you see is instead of a cost of $144 million, which is what we had contemplated last budget season, our current estimates for our costs this fiscal year are $136 million. so a not insignificant improvement there. and as we go forward in time, that trend continues. so this year the budget year -- the budget to budget comparison of ihss m.o.e. costs goes up $3 million, which is much less than we thought it had been in the past. that is one of the things this keeps the growth in this budget relatively small. so what i've been talking about to this point is really the base budget. this is money that has been coming into the department for uses that have been in the responsibility of the department. certainly shireen mcspadden and managers of d.a.s. have made changes over time, but within the larger framework of what we're doing. at this point in time, we also offer for consideration by the mayor various concepts that we think would make sense to include within the budget, but we're aware that these proposals are being made against the context of a city-wide bridge process, which i -- budget process, which i mentioned before has a gap in it to start with. and then, of course, we need to reflect the priorities of the administration. so these are at this point just proposals. if the mayor wants to pick them up, they can certainly be funded, but they are not part of our base budget. they're requests for extra money. so what we've got on this first page is the proposal for adding rcfe beds for use by the public guardian program. and this meets a need that is a need for the clients of the public guardian program, and also for our partners at public health who very often have folks who are in that program caught at zuckerberg general hospital, because there is not an adequate placement resource. these are folks who have been conserved, but there is not an adequate placement resource and so this is the proposal to get money to allow us to pay for placements for clients in rcfes. what is contemplated in the proposal is that we would make 20 placements, 20 ongoing placements, in the first year and second year to get us up to a program that had 40 people in placements at any given time. obviously, this helps with homelessness. this helps people avoid homelessness. this helps people who are otherwise homeless. it helps people who can't go home because they can't manage themselves at home. so that is one proposal. we've linked to this a proposal for two additional beds for use by the adult protective services program. the adult protective services program currently has two funded beds it uses for short-term placement for clients. it is often in need of another two. and we have used one-time money to fund some additional placements, but this is going back and saying, let's fund four full-time placements, which we'll use with a rotating set of clients. the second concept comes off of the work of the work group, a group that ran under the auspices of the long-term care coordinating council. and looked at assisted living in the city and determined that the city was continuing to lose assisted-living beds, mainly small board and care beds. there has been a lot of press about that recently. i think the work was done by the work group a little bit before a lot of that press started hitting. but you know, but it was addressing the same phenomenon. and it is the smaller board and care facilities that have tended to be the places that serve lower income clients. and losing that resource makes it less and less likely that someone who needs rcfe care who is low-income client will not get it into the city. this was around the notion that the city should buy or repurpose and refit a building that could be made available to a community-based organization or other nonprofit provider who could then come in and operate an rcfe for low-income residents at revenue levels that would be roughly consistent with what the department of public health is currently paying for patches. and/or what d.a.s. is paying for patches. most of the patches paid for by the city today are paid for by the department of public health, but d.a.s. does have a relative handful of placements that it pays for as well. and then as we were speaking about just a minute ago, we are proposing more actions as well. so, this is a concept. if this was going to go forward, this would be a partnership between a number of city agencies. and so we would be working it through with the department of public health, with the real estate department, probably with the mayor's office of housing, with the general services administration. so this is another concept that we've brought forward. and then the last element of this, which is really part of our base budget, is something i mentioned before. and it's referred to here as substitutions. that's also more budget speak by us. but this is the repurposing of positions from one use to another. i won't go through these, but these are the ones that we've put forward for d.a.s. the last slide is just timing. i mentioned this a little bit at the beginning. we are looking for your support today and we will be making a proposal to the mayor's office on the 21st. roughly two weeks. and then the process will move to the next stage. >> president serina: thank you very much. dan, that was quite comprehensive. any comments or questions from commissioners? >> i have one. >> president serina: thank you, commissioner spears. >> commissioner spears: first, i have to admit being on the finance committee gave me a little upper hand in seeing this and this phase is extremely helpful and it's very clear now, more clear than it was a couple of weeks ago. so thank you for that. i just have a couple of questions and one goes from the sources to uses. and specifically around the dignity fund. if we refer to page 3, where we talk about the source of the dignity fund, it's at $50 million and then when up mentioned the cbo grants, significantly, on page 5, significantly funded by the dignity fund, where does the other $18 million come from for the cbo grants? >> well, a little bit of it is federal money. some of it is other local general funds that have come in to the department. any other sources? and then -- thank you, emily just reminded me, the last one is clf, the community living fund represents a little shy of $8 million. >> president serina: thank you. any other -- i have a couple, just a general observation and specific questions. because the set-asides are not part of the cuts, if the set-asides had been included, then the cuts obviously would have been spread more equitably among all other departments, but because it's only limited to the general fund, we will have, for example, the police might be bearing a greater potential for more cuts than they otherwise would have had because the general fund keeps shrinking. that is a philosophical question. >> that is a true statement. and you know, one of the things that -- this is a challenge. and every time there is a new voter approved set aside, people always say this. the set-asides are all for purposes that people believe in. the dignity fund being one maybe the most recent one. they're important. the constituents get behind them. and i would say that we would think most of them are important for the services in the city entirely. they reduce flexibility in budgeting. and so folks who spend time worry being how do we keep a budget balanced look at them and say, wow, this is an additional challenge. when revenue goes up, some of the set-asides get a chunk of that revenue automatically. dignity fund has a progression, a $3 million a year progression. not everyone is like that. some are percentages. so as revenues go up, more money gets pulled into them. so i think it's, you know, set-asides from a mixed blessing. >> president serina: thank you for confirming the philosophical aspect of it. on page 3, there is a reduction of about $4.2 million in federal funds. and what was that about? >> so the main difference there is actually a swap among federal and state funds. and this gets -- we like to act as if this work is incredibly precise. and we try and be as precise as we can be, but the fact is, as reimbursement changes occur, we are always attempting to estimate what the impact on various revenues are. and so most of this switch -- and you can see state revenues go up a little bit and federal revenues come down a little bit -- is around sort of rebalancing the revenue picture within the ihss program. >> president serina: okay. thank you. and then on page 4, if we look at the fiscal year, 19-20, original budget by program, the office of community partnerships had $77.6 million and the community of living fund had $8.7 million. so together, that was almost -- 85 -- $86.3 million. they've been lumped together in the fiscal year, 21-22 and the result appears to be that the overall funding, the combined funding is down by $2.2 million. >> why is that? >> president serina: yes. >> okay. so there are a number of things that are going on here. the first is that we added $3 million of dignity fund money to that bucket. then we subtracted $5 million of eraf money. eraf money is money that we had in this budget year and that we used to support subsidies that are administered by the mayor's office of housing and community development. that was one-time money. and it does not reappear in the 20-21 budget. we also had about a million dollars of one-time only addbacks. add-back is another bit of budget speak that means that in the board phase of the budget process, the board members identify specific uses of money and those specific uses go into specific departmental or agency budgets. there is about $1 million of one-time use that was identified in last year's budget process that does not reappear on this side. now the board will, of course, do a budget process again and may add more money, but since it was one-time money, we haven't counted it here. and then there is about a million dollars of cost of doing business and mco money added in. and then there is about $8 million of clf added in. if you put all those together, we do come up to the change that is represented here. >> president serina: thank you. it might be a little clearer if the two pie charts were presented on a comparable basis so we can see the community living fund the way it was presented in 19-20 and again 20-21, rather than combining it in one year and having it separate in another year. it would be a little easier -- >> again, we're always dancing around how do we reflect the current realities, so this does reflect the current organization. >> president serina: right, i get that. >> but to that point, i'm sure we can come up with an exhibit that shows the puts and takes. >> president serina: page 5, refresh my memory what work services are and why they are down $5 million? >> the biggest piece is what i mentioned, that one-time eraf. work order serviceses are something we buy from someone else and that's the lion's share of the difference. >> president serina: finally, my last question is regarding -- it's on page 6 -- regarding the increase in provider wages for ihss. have we any idea from ihss about their projected client growth? what we can anticipate or they're anticipating? >> so we do have a forecast on growth and the program is growing. so emily is looking at her backup. from the point of view of a budget proposal, oddly enough, it doesn't have a fiscal impact. and that's why we haven't called it out here especially. the concept of the maintenance effort payment was it was set based on the local share of the costs of the program back in 2012. and growth has been based on two things. one is various inflation factors, which have gone up and down over time. and the other is increase in costs and wages. so when the county determines that it will increase its wages, there is a whole computation that we go through and a little bit of a discussion we go through typically with the state to calculate the impact that will have on the m.o.e. but growth in case load does not affect the m.o.e. >> president serina: right. but it's important i think -- >> hi, emily. so in the -- in your packet there is a section of aid detail that goes very well into a number of these things. we do have an hours projection in there. we're currently projecting a small kind of incremental growth in hours but still in the range of 26.6 million hours a year across i.p. and contract mode. there is a graph representing the number of clients. it's around 21,000 in ip mode. and a little bit shy of 900 in contract mode right now. and we're not projecting huge growth there. in recent months we've seen a pretty steady case load with some small growth in hours per client. and so that's what we're reflecting in terms of trend. >> president serina: thank you. i understand the budget issue, dan, the reason i'm asking the question, though, one of the purposes of increasing the wages is to ensure we can attract workers to address the existing and future case load. i think it has to be seen in the context of that expectation as well. >> agreed. i should note, just because we count cases in slightly different ways at slightly different times. so those who participated in the finance committee process several weeks ago would have seen a chart that counted cases a little bit differently than the numbers emily gave you. those are point in time counts. so they're meant to be the average number of cases being served at any given day of the year. the numbers we presented to the finance committee were unduplicated cases for the year. that would be a higher number. >> president serina: thank you. the final observation, it's terrific that the state surplus is being used to mitigate some of the shortfalls that the city is encountering. and we can just hope that continues. because without it -- >> normally, it's the other way around. >> president serina: exactly. i've been on the commission long enough to where we made significant cuts to programs. i don't want to think about that. let's hope the economy of the state and the philosophy of the state continues its current approach to helping cities and counties. >> i'm new, so it was little overwhelming to think we were going to start with budgets. i want to thank you very much for making it clear and understandable. i served over 30 years on and off on commissions and this was a great presentation. >> thank you. >> user friendly. thank you very much. >> president serina: i can only echo that. >> one more question? >> certainly. this is in reference to the proposed mayoral initiatives. when will those -- i just missed this -- when will -- there is a couple of initiatives toward the back end of the presentation, when will those get approved in the process? is that when it goes on february 21 and then we know that's how -- or how does that work? >> on timing, we'll make these proposals as part of our budget submission on february 21st. the distinction we make is that the budget that gets submitted is a pretty highly technical document with, you know, hundreds of program areas and accounts within programs. and emily's team does that detailed presentation. in addition to that, we will submit a memo that says, okay, here are half a dozen concepts. these two in d.a.s. and several in d.h.s. and oece, that we feel should be considered by the mayor in building her budget. and so between february 21st and the time she releases her budget, she will make decisions about those. >> thank you. >> president serina: thank you. any other comments or questions from the commission? >> i want to echo, having worked in a city department before and worked on budgets, i want to say how much we appreciate the work that goes into this. it was excellent presentation, which is why we don't have so many questions. you know, it's very, very clear. but know that we all studied it before the commission meeting. and gained a lot from it that really helps us make decisions throughout the year. and i just want to say thank you for the work that goes into that. >> thank you. and i would like re-say, this is an effort that the budget team coordinates and works on full-time. many people in d.a.s. also work on, so there has been a lot of thought. >> i know it's a cast of thousands having been part of a department, so, yeah. >> okay. >> president serina: may have a motion to approve for discussion purposes? >> so moved. >> president serina: thank you. any comments or questions from the public? welcome, jessica. >> hello, commissioners. senior and disability action. well done, new commissioner sklar and thank you for your service commissioner loo. so i want to just echo the sentiment about the budget presentation being very clear. and the focus on services as always. so thank you, to dan kaplan and his team and shireen mcspadden and the entire d.a.s. team for that. i'm glad to see more rcfe and als beds, because there has been a lot of talk about that, but i'm wondering about putting dollars into permanent housing and looking at flow. that part of the challenge of not having enough beds is that people in rcfes are not moving out because there is nowhere to go. and i think it's so important anytime we're looking at beds in some kind of group or institutional home, we're also looking at what kind of permanent independent housing is available. and i think it's an ongoing issue for d.a.s. to consider that housing is one of the major issu issues, if not the major issue talked about among people with disabilities and seniors in the city. and to figure out our role in that. i had a couple of questions that i hope you can consider at some point. one is the board of supervisors working with the budget justice coalition came up with new budget transparency rules. which i think is really exciting for increasing community engagement in the city budget process. and requiring departments to include information about which initiatives have been added or reduced and where are the cuts and where are changes in services. while i think this is incredibly clear, i feel like it would be helpful to have a little more information on where are the cuts. and some of the commissioners asked some of those questions, it was helpful, but i would love to see that in writing. and then i was going to ask the question, that serina asked. i had similar questions about dental. health costs never seem to go down and ihss that staying the same. i was surprised by that because of continual cost increases. and that's all, thank you. >> president serina: thank you, jessica. >> president serina: any other public comment at this time? thank you. call the question, may have a motion to approve? >> so moved. >> second. >> president serina: all in favor? >> aye. >> president serina: any opposed? thank you, the motion carries. thank you, again, dan, and the staff. we are now up to general public comment. is there any general public comment? welcome back, jessica. [laughter] >> thank you. long time no see. so again, jessica layman, senior and disability action. i just wanted to make a comment about the census. so we are delighted to be working with valerie coleman at d.a.s. in the city, on working on how do we do really effective broad outreach to seniors and people with disabilities? people with disabilities are definitely one of the considered hard to count and undercounted populations and low-income people, immigrants, people of color, right, all of these groups that are also included in seniors and people with disabilities. so there is a couple of things happening that i wanted to make sure folks hear about and hopefully can get involved in. next friday, february 14th, we're doing -- what are we calling it -- event, workshop, for organizations and individuals who are interested in learning about and working on senior and disability outreach. so it's friday, february 14th, valentine's day, from 2-4 p.m. at born auditorium. i apologize for not bringing flyers today. but if you haven't gotten them already, i'm sure folks at d.a.s. will be passing them around. i hope you can attend that. and senior and disability we're hiring peer outreach. we're looking for people bilingual in cantonese, russian, english, who can do a few hours a week, go knock on doors, health clinics, talk to seniors and people with disabilities who may not otherwise hear about the census. and the last thing i want to encourage everyone to keep talking about. it was partly being at a d.a.s. commission meeting where i realized that there is really a lot of work to be done. it was, i think, commissioner pappas who raised the question of how are we doing outreach to senior and disability communities. so we're glad to be working on this, but i think the more of us that talk about it everywhere we go, the better. so that people know it's happening. it will be out mid march, but we want to talk about it before then and make sure people are talking to family and friends and neighbors so that everybody participates. thank you very much. >> president serina: thank you. any other general comments? now we come to announcements. commissioner loo. >> commissioner loo: do i have the whole hour? [laughter] this is my last meeting. and -- i'm just going to say that i have been here for eight years. first of all, i want to give thanks to the mayor, board of supervisors, shireen, and president for allowing me to serve eight years. and i want to let you know this is the longest job i've ever had [laughter]. so there must be something about this job that keeps me here. okay? and i have to say, i learned a lot. i started at 25 in community programs working with elderly. i thought i knew a lot. but surprise, surprise. i've learned a lot. and i have to say, when i first came, we only had two women on the board and now we have more. watch out. [laughter] and the budget at that time, i was looking back, is $165.1 million. and now it has grown to $379.3 million. it's 2.3 times, correct me if i'm wrong, dan [laughter]. and we really need to be very proud of ourselves in the city of san francisco that we are able to provide so many programs with 16 providers, 240+ programs. it's incredible. and this is the result of the staff of d.a.s., which includes the budget people. i give you the thanks now than before. and i want to thank the community partnership, the community program, because if it's not for you folks, there will never be that many programs in the city. so we really want to thank you all. and the work is not finished yet. and i'm pretty sure there is much more to be continued. and i just wish the new commissioners continue with your work. okay is this -- okay? and the others march on and do your best for the elderly population of san francisco. thank you. >> president serina: thank you, commissioner. and thank you for your service. you have been an exemplary colleague for these eight years. i can't believe it's eight years. it has flown by. you have set a high standard for professionalism and preparedness at each single meeting and throughout your involvement in service. so we owe you a great deal of thank you. [applause] >> commissioner loo: thank you. >> president serina: with that, a motion to adjourn. >> commissioner loo: so adjourned. >> president serina: motion carries. thank you. >> we will call this meeting to order. i will call the role. (role call). >> the second item on the agenda are the minutes of january 21st, 2020. >> once the commissioners had an opportunity to review the minutes, is there a motion to approve? >> so moved. >> second.

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