Support that employee needs, whether its emotional support, whether they need attention in the Emergency Department or any kind of physical or behavioral support they need. So its quite a lot that we do to respond. Supervisor stefani i just want to make sure, too, because if a violent incident is occurring, like say someone is under meth induced psychosis and in that moment a nurses life is threatened, how quickly i know there is the deputy sheriff. I just want to make sure the Response Time is quick and thats what im trying to get at. Its not just verbal assault from what i heard, especially with p. S. And what were experiencing on the street with methamphetamine and what that can do to people and what that can do to the nurses. I didnt mention the sheriffs department. We have a multimillion dollar contract with the sheriffs department. We have posted positions. We have roefg positions. Our Security Director oversees that contract. We have a captain and many others throughout the health department. I meet with basil and the captain every single week. We hear the data about what happened the week before, what things were concerned about in the weeks upcoming and what were trying to do to prevent violent episodes on campus. Thank you. Before we open actually were going to go to were going to ask the union to come up and speak. Before we do that, just going back to the question while youre up here, doctor, of the emergency situation that were in. And emergency situation that we have been in. When i add up all just from the presentation itself, when i add up the shortfalls that you have and the way youre saying modified duty, when i add that up, it comes out to over 100 positions that are not filled. So that that has to be a cause for concern when you have a fulltime staff of 877 when i add it up, it comes up to 158. 7 based on what youve presented here today. Your ftes are 877ful thats just nurses. Supervisor safai thats just nurses . So going back to that question, that has to be a cause for concern in terms of where we are, in terms of the overtime, overuse, morale, all the things youre going to hear today. Even without the coronavirus, it seems like this is a crisis for our frontline Trauma Center. What are we going to do i understand r. H. Wants to audit and come up with a hiring plan, but shouldnt we be moving aggressively as possible . I couldnt agree more. This has been an issue that is very challenging for us. We have the same goals as you do, as our nurses do, as other staff do. We want to fill the positions as quickly as possible supervisor safai is there anything we havent asked. I want to hear from the nurses themselves, but is there anything we havent asked for . What is it that we can do to remove the bottle neck so you can get well qualified trained staff in the positions and not rely on contract and per diem nurses . I think the best thing we can do is partner with the h. R. Team to understand what the most important bottlenecks, getting lists for example and taking those off the table. We want to hire permanent nurses. There is no doubt about that. And we stand ready to work with h. R. And to get them hired as quickly as possible. Supervisor safai one of the things ive heard from the nurses after working with them, they just dont feel as though theyre listened to. When theyre in the Labor Management meetings and they bring the issues up thats why they ended up coming to Public Comment and why theyre crying out for help. How can you as a leader of the department, at that hospital, help to push and encourage a more conducive environment for Labor Management relations . Thats a great question. And there is nothing more deeply concerning to me than to believe that our staff doesnt feel that i personally, or management teams dont care about our workers and dont want to take care of them and dont want to hire folks when we have vacancies. Im in the areas myself. We have our labor monitoring meetings. We have various groups of all types, Workplace Violence, to try to hear. Today i was in the Emergency Department this morning talking to staff about the covid19 situation. We had a town hall this morning, we had 100 people packing the auditorium to listen to staff, to listen to concerns so we can address them, so were trying. Supervisor safai do you attend the Labor Management meetings . Do you ever go to them . And if you havent, i think it would be a good idea to check in going forward. Its one of the things we heard. The Labor Management sometimes, if they dont see the top leader, then theyre feeling as though sometimes theyre not listened to in general and kind of the suggestions are going out into the universe. So if havent attended those, i would strongly suggest it would be helpful to the environment. Absolutely. Supervisor safai for you to attend. Thank you for the suggestion. Supervisor safai do you have any other questions i think were going to move on to the other part before we get to Public Comment. Thank you for your support. Supervisor safai one last thing, i want to underscore, the know the director h. R. And d. P. H. Along with you have the power and authority to adjust this situation in terms of hiring. I would say lets move aggressively to do that. Thats what the purpose of the hearings are, to work with you, help you. If you feel youre receiving pushback in city government, its our role to help you in that process. Thank you, i appreciate that. Supervisor safai next is Vice President of local 1021. Good afternoon, supervisors. And good afternoon guests in the audience. And my fellow coworkers and union members. My name is teresa rutherford. Im a nurse assistant at laguna honda hospital and dedicated member of employee of the city and county of San Francisco. Ive worked for the city for 17 years. Im also the regional Vice President for sciu1021, the San Francisco region and i represent over 17,000 workers, including nurses, including nurse assistants, including janitors. We all form the team that takes care of the city and county of San Francisco. Today were here to focus specifically on our rns who give Superlative Service every time, but the issues were dealing with are systemic as has been already raised by several speakers from the board of supervisors. We also want to point out the fact that the issues that were raising were raised in 2018 at bargaining. They were raised in 2016. They have always been raised. And so this is not new. And its a shame that we have to come all this way in front of the board of supervisors to talk about an issue that should have been addressed years before. It should not take 17 years to have a job analysis. When weve been talking about this problem, when patients have been harmed because of the short staffing. We should not have to come here to talk about staff being harmed, staff having to work overtime, multiple times, putting their family at risk and themselves because of short staffing. The managers and people who run the city of San Francisco know better and should have done better. Were taking no more excuses so were here today for solution. No more studies. No more trying to figure it out. You know what the problem is. Fix it. Were thankful to supervisor safai for calling for this resolution and hearing to help bring to light the issues our members, the Health Care Workers at the department of Public Health are facing every day on the front lines. In order to have this conversation in a thoughtful and honest way we must acknowledge we are here to serve the patient. All of us became Health Care Workers to take care of people and put patients first. We love this city and we are committed to take care of this community. As nurses and Health Care Workers, we are also we also have an obligation to call out concerns of Patient Safety and the lack of readiness for disasters. For years the San Francisco department of Public Health has mismanaged San Francisco general and created unsafe conditions for hospital patients and staff. This has gone on for too long. Nurses and Health Care Workers are standing up for our patients and each other and are demanding accountability from the department of health so we can take care of our patients in a safe working environment. As you can take a look at the slide and you will see some of the problems were facing, the neglect, the mismanage am, the lack of accountability. The result on safe conditions for patients, staff, lack of preparedness for disaster, systemic failure to serve the public. Today were highlighting the issues at s. F. General, but we could have easily spent more days raising concerns about staffing and preparedness at laguna honda hospital, the Community Clinic, Public Health, Mental Health. I will share for you at laguna honda, for example, they are so woefully understaffed that it has now become a safety risk for both patient and staff. The problem also is that when a staff member is hurt by a patient or hurt in the facility, it is treated with scant regard and there is no outcome no good outbreaking for that staff member. In fact, usually the blame is placed on the employee as opposed to the employer. D. P. H. Management has known for years about inadequate staffing and its effect on patient care and workplace safety, yet the problem continues. We will now pass ask sasha, one of our d. P. H. Nurses to speak. Thank you, supervisors. Im a registered nurse and i was at San Francisco General Hospital until i was i was my position was eliminated because they werent happy with me speaking about some of the issues were talking about right here. Im now working at the call center that is located up at laguna honda and ive also volunteered for being a field Public Health nurse for the coronavirus so im jumping in the queue because ive been called to go out and test some of these terrified people who are being tested to see if they also are infected with the coronavirus. And the thing that i need to get up and tell you is that we heard from dr. Octor about the public safety. What is in department of Public Health is a culture of silence and fear. That is what is going on. Its very courageous from everybody to be speaking out about this. I want you to know that during negotiations we asked for there to be nurses in the emergency room to help with to help with the problem of severe sepsis, which is killing many of our patients. We have to and we were told, oh, no, we cant do that, that is not possible. Mr. Cutler, i need you to wrap up. Im going to be stepping out, but what i wanted to tell you, this Public Health nurses recommendation is that you address the fact that there is toxic bullying that takes place from administration and they dont listen to the nurses and that is something that has to stop because silence equals death. We have this epidemic going on now and there is only a few of us that are trained and have the proper equipment. We want to be partners with the department of Public Health because weve done it before, why cant we do it again . And the mayor calling for budget cuts at the beginning of a pandemic is madness. So im going to be on my way into the field now, so i encourage you keep going, keep asking. Supervisor safai thank you so much. The next speakers were going to call up are stewards heather and martha. Its part of the presentation. Good afternoon. I would like to thank the supervisors for giving us an opportunity today. I think that the staff at San Francisco general has been working so hard on this issue. Many of us for as long as 10 years trying to advocate for our patients. So to see you in your elected positions being willing to advocate for us, makes a big difference. So id like to thank you for the opportunity. My name is heather bollinger. Im one of the e. R. Staff nurses and been there for 12 years. For many years i was a night shift charge nurse. I want to start by saying, i feel your pain. I understand how confusing and frustrating it can be to ask questions and be presented with the answer of, i dont have that information for you, or im going to have to get back to you, or im not sure who handles that, or i forgot, could you remind me in an email . Youre feeling our pain and im sorry. Its been a very frustrating situation. The presentation im going to speed talk through is edie heavy because thats where i work, but this be considered d. P. H. Wide in terms of the extension. First, i want to point out this is not the first time weve been here. We were here in 2014, 2016. Weve signed petitions in 2018. I provided the supervisors with a detailed list of the number of things that we have done trying to draw attention to this issue. I want to make it very clear, its very nice for administration to say they care and theyve heard us and theyre here and with us. This is why theyre here. This is why theyre with us, because weve spent 10 years trying to get them here. These the assignment objection forms that supervisor walton was speaking about. I just have a few examples here. I was hoping to give him an idea of how often that occurs. Becauses its pretty often. That is just the stack i was able to obtain in the last week. So that is not something that is new. These have been submitted to management for well over 10 years and each one of them dictates an unsafe patient care situation for the nurse. This slide indicates the progress weve made in staffing since 2016. This was data taken in 2016 indicating that the Emergency Department was understaffed 53 of the time, oddly enough november 2019, were understaffed 52 of the time. One would think the sick calls at that point could be predicted. I want to give you a snapshot of what it looks like to be in the Emergency Department at night, not a theoretical, but actual. One of the things that is very frustrating, is our new facility was advertised to the public as a 58bed Emergency Department. Thats what the city taxpayers thought they were getting. Now you subtract the 16 beds closed because of the staffing deficit, subtract the 17 beds with admissions, now youve got a functionsal 25bed Emergency Department which is smaller than your last one. Add to the 28 active patients that are in the 25 beds, and youre at full capacity. Now add the 20 patients that are sitting in the waiting room. That is the picture almost every day. And its untenable. And what youre doing is putting nurses in the situation where they know theyre going to fail these people every day. Im not going to go too much into this. We know the budget doesnt meet the current census and it doesnt staff to the current census. If you look at the green line this isnt our data, this is their data. The green line is what were budgeted for. The blue line is the patient load. This is the gap. Were not seen staffing to budget because all of the vacancies. That gap between the red line and the blue line, the bigger it gets, the more negative the patient outcomes. That is a discrepancy in care. The hiring process clearly we dont need to talk about that anymore. But what i would like the supervisors to be aware of, all of those days, 30, 60, 90 days from offer letter to hire, application to hire, you need to add six12 weeks of training. It takes 12 weeks to train a nurse to work in the stable areas of the Emergency Department. Just those areas. So you have to add three months, 90 days becomes 180 days. So from the time they post that, 180 days later, maybe you get a pair of boots on the ground. So where does this leave us . Reactionary staffing has been the only source. Theyre using travelers for three plus years. Thats not a temporary employee, thats just an employee with no protection, no retirement and no contract covering their work. That is what that employee is. We have 25 of them since 2020 at the ede. They dont get disaster training, violence prevention training and dont get employee protection. Overtime. Mysteriously overtime stopped getting paid at time and a half. That 12 hour shift, if you leave and go home, there is not going to be anybody to care for the patients, you stay the extra four hours, thats what you signed up for and your paycheck doesnt show time and a half. They created a new designation called straight overtime. We cant figure it out either. Been going on a year. Theyre mandating overtime in 2019. How do you how do you work how do you not be completely distracted by the fact that you dont know if youre going to be allowed to go home to your family until the last couple hours of your shift . Reactionary programs are installed. They change patients billing categories, but they dont improve care. Our care Start Program ran out of the waiting room for two years. Staff objected to it daily, meeting. There is traffic, emails. So many concerns. No policies. No ratios. They didnt listen to us. The state was called in to evaluate it and immediately shut it down. We know what were talking about and we know our jobs and apparently we know the law better than the people that run our institutions. You can see that all these reactionary programs have not helped our diversion status at all. So what are they for . P. E. S. , yeah, theyre seeing less people because theyre on condition 58 of the time. So their census numbers are going down because those patients are in the Emergency Department. They dont have anywhere else to go. Thats the preparation. Like what disaster preparation . I would draw your attention. I provided you with the disaster and mass Casualty Program stipulated by title 22. This is state law. This is not a union contract, a request, something we would like. This is a law. It clearly states, disaster plans should be rehearsed at least with twice a year. There should be a written report and evaluation of all drills. Ive been in that institution for 12 years. Ive participated in one disaster drill in the old hospital. I havent put on the ppe that is supposed to protect me in a decon situation in three years. I havent been trained on how to manage what the chain of command was. I was a night shift charge nurse for many years. I alerted my management multiple times that we were concerned about what would happen on a saturday night at 2 00 in the morning when the earthquake hits. Because the staff are frightened. So thats where we are. And my colleague martha bear is going to let you know what this means for our patients. Thank you can, heather. I hope that was as powerful to the supervisors as it was me listening to it. The struggle so many nurses have been in so long to get an ear is very moving to me. Its also moving to me that our patients suffer from all the things that youre hearing. Were very dedicated people. Nurses are good people, were short on ego, were long on competence, we do our jobs because we care about people and we dont like suffering. What we see because of these problems is more suffering that could be fixed. So Patient Experience, im not going to spend time on this. Heather really gave you the story, but the Patient Experience due to these problems with staffing is obviously negative. I work in primary care. The worst the worst day of my week is when i have a patient who is decompensating, running out of breath, turning blue, sweating and i have to say, we got to get you to the emergency room. And the patient says, no way. [please stand by] [please stand by] to make my point, i would just suggest going on to yelp, and look at some of the reviews of the San Francisco general emergency room. So that brings us to where does that leave our employees . Youve heard a loft data about this already. 23 assaults in the emergency room in one month. Okay. We know these are not all being reported to the state. We have we have suddenly a new violence workforce, taskforce. There are 14 people on that taskforce to address violence problems. There is one nurse. I just want to mention this is another slide about mandated overtime. I just want to clarify. So what this means is, if im a nurse and i have planned out my eighthour shift coming up, and i know i have my child care set up for 10 hours later, and ive organized with my family that were going to do x, y, and z, and i go to work in the psych emergency room, which is probably one of the more highstress jobs in the city of San Francisco, when i get to hour searching they can say to me, you need to stay another seven hours. The employee has no choice. The city likes to go to very expensive consultant fees to get help when there are a lot of us here who would like to help. They Consultant Group do a survey of Employee Satisfaction at San Francisco general. Im not going to read through the whole slide. [buzzer] it took us a year to get the data from that. I would argue if youre struggling getting information from a group of people and they keep deliberately obfuscating with run around, there is something that is not right. I dont know where the money is going to the m. T. S that are empty year after year. I hope theyre not going to car repair. [laughter] and last, i just want to point out that as youve heard, a number of attempts are being made. I find that to be convincing that, there are attempts being made now to fix some of these problems. But whats wrong with that is that there are 10 years, at least, before any of those things starter. And these people are angry. Nurses are very angry. And now im going to hand it over to jennifer. Before jennifer jennifer, before you speak, supervisor stefani needs to make a comment. I want to thank you for your presentation. And let everyone know i do have to go. Supervisor haney asked me to fil fill in for him, and i could only do so until 3 30. I look forward to watching the hearing and hearing all of your comments. It is very important to me. I have called previously a hearing, in terms of the rate at which were filling vacancies on for responders and nurses it is a hearing i will have again to discuss this issue. I wanted to let you know im only leaving because i have to, and i will be watching the rest of this hearing. There are a few of you that have come to Public Comment and i wanted to speak to you further. Thank you very much for being here today. It its a tough crowd today. Mrs. Secretary, is it possible to indescernable . So what weve talked about a bit has certain origins, and it may not be car repairs, but that are mayoral priorities. The mayor has stated very clearly in her budget plan she wants to reprioritize funding. She says she wants to be responsive to residents and support city workers who are out there trying to make a difference. And yet 3. 5 budget cuts have been suggested. 3. 5 budget cuts across the war board in every City Department. Even though right now we have this eraf. For eraf, in 2019, there was an additional 250 million. The city is projecting a budget shortfall of 420 million, but if we use eraf funds, that completely covers the shortfall. You guys have heard all about the dereliction of duty coming from the city of San Francisco, the department of Public Health. Can we switch to the slide. Im sorry, guys. I dont have the ability to go back and forth. So we have a lack of accountability. We have a lack of transparency, and we have a lack of resources. All of this is unacceptable. The steps to a solution are that we request an immediate formal, independent budget audit and performance audit of the department of Public Health. We demand that the budget be immediately revised so that people can be hired, so that this budget cut that the mayor is proposing goes away. Because the reason that were focused on temporary staff, registry nurses, is mainly because the mayor continues to say that eraf funds have to be yufused for untime onetime spending. Can you switch back to this one for me . You kind of have to. The mayor says onetime spending. Can we go back to the slide show . We want to fix the hiring process immediately and expedite frontline staff vacancies right now. We want to make employment rational so we can support executive leadership staff that have failed to address these issues by having a rational process. It is no longer dependent on leadership. We want to have comprehensive training for disaster preparedness, pursuant to state law. We want protection for every employee in the hospitals, not just nurses, but everyone. We want to keep the department of Public Health management accountable believers and we want t. We want frontline care represented on the Health Commission and the joint commission, so that we can be hui sure that executive leadership is held accountable, and we can be sure that people who provide care on a daily basis to our community are the ones who give the feedback and the input to the mayor, not just special appointees. Can we switch back to this one now . So. I just want to share with everyone the mission of the San Francisco department of Public Health. I dont know if this is big enough for everyone to read. Basically to quote directly the mission of the San Francisco department of Public Health is to protect and promote the health of all san franciscans. San franciscans. Not san franciscans with money, no some, but all. The ultimate goal is to ensure that san franciscans have optimum health and wellness at every stage of life. Thats hard to do with 3. 5 budget quotes. One last quote comes from the Health Commissioner executive secretary. In 1983, and in 1984, General Hospitals accreditation by the joint commission was in jeopardy. The hospital did not have an affective governing body and had antiquated Management Systems and staffing shortages. We heard from Hillary Ronen today, and she called it bizantine, antiquated, it sounds the same. Weve heard about staffing shortages. Weve asked questions of our management that they are unable to answer. It seems similar. In addition to these accreditation issues, there were issues with ambulance Response Times. Thats First Responder issues. Were talking to e. R. Staff who are on diversion 60 of the time. Even then, many people in the Community Felt that the City Mental Health is not responsive to the needs. Remember Mental Health s. F. . Sounds similar. So the joint commission was created so that the city could make budget and policy decisions more transparent because the business would be conducted i in Public Meetings. When the joint commission was created, after this 1983 and 84 crisis, the aids epidemic was under way. And it was the frontline staff then that brought ideas, that created 5b and 5a, which became our aids ward in San Francisco General Hospital. The nurses themselves physically erected the ward. It had previously been sleeping quarters, and instead became a lifesaving unit. Right now today we have nurses and frontline staff speaking out and bringing forward the problems in the department of Public Health. Were very appreciative of having this moment so we can bring these issues to the forefront again. We hope just like then, right now we can also help to lead the creation of something new and better. Thank you very much. Thank you. I think were at the end of the presentations. Right, jason . I think were going to open it up for Public Comment. Each person you can do it by the speaker cards . Would you like to do it that way . Okay. So ill call your name, and you can line up on the side there. If i havent called your name and you would like to speak,please also line up. Sonya reyes, derrick richardson, diane no yenez. Debra i cant read it waniski. Amelia aire. Naomi shonfield. Each people will have two minutes. If you would like to state your name, please do so. The first speaker, please. Good afternoon, my name is wendy. Im a member of the public. I came here because i saw you guys on tv talking about this, and i was going to be at city hall anyway. I have been a family caregiver. Caregiver of three of my family members. And im about to be a caregiver again, an unpaid caregiver, for someone who has throat cancer, and will be at San Francisco general. I am appalled to here what has been transpiring. I know firsthand, as a family caregiver, that nurses do everything. And, um. And as a former retail worker, being the face of any organization, restaurant, or whatever, we had always been required to, you know, smile and be nice and so on and so forth, while taking care of peoples needs. And i cannot imagine a bigger disconnect between nurses, who have always been great to me, my family, and my community, while hiding behind the things that i have heard today. So, um. Another part that i want to speak to [buzzer] is the fact that, um, the city of San Francisco spends 7 million per Police Academy class, with graduates of about 35. And people come out and they make 100,000 with no student loan debt. I dont think it is the equivalent of nursing. Thank you. Next speaker. [buzzer] hello. Im derrick richardson. Ive been an emergency room doctor at the general since 20 is 13. 2013. And im here to support and advocate for my nursing colleagues. I would like to share a video from one of my nursing colleagues who couldnt be here today about her experience in e. R. Make sure we keep it in the timeframe. Can we just pause the time for a bit . Okay. So hang on one moment while i get your audio. [applause] it should work for you now. I was violently. [no audio] by a patient on october 3, 2. We see these types of patients that are often dangerous and agitated often. The patient punched me, pulled me down by my hair, slammed my head against the floor and clawed at my face. And there was difficulty getting the patient off of me. This assault was handled poorly by the hospital administration. Some saw me shortly after the assault and asked what they could do. I knew this violence in the workplace was a very serious event, so i made a point to return to the e. R. Four days later and talk to the e. R. Staff and management about my safety concerns and the concern that this will happen again and someone might get killed one day. [buzzer] i even spoke to this at the Management Meeting in person at the e. R. , and was heard by e. R. Management, the e. R. Director and physicians, and they assured me they would follow up. I have not heard anything back from anyone at the hospital since then. I asked in writing to know if this had been reported to cal osha, and to clarify safety issues in the e. R. , and no one has returned my emails or phone calls. I was not even paid for the shift after that. [buzzer] i think your time has concluded. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. Im debra wineki, and im a registered nurse at San Francisco General Hospital. And ive been working there for almost 35 years. And i have heard the same responses from management for decades. And i feel like it is just paying lip service to the labor force that works at the hospital. I work in the o. B. Department, and youll see one of my coworkers back there with a stack of requests for staffing over the last year. We had over 350 requests for extra staff in one year, and many of those requests were for two or three nurses. I feel that o. B. , labor and delivery, gets staffed better than many other units because were a very high liability we work in a highlie detectorliability setting. So, you know, trying to find out how to fix this and i think that over the years the mantra has been Human Resources, Human Resources, Human Resources. [buzzer] so i think maybe there is something to that, and Human Resources needs to be, you know Human Resources needs to be focused on. We have a very high turnover rate. I dont think that the recruitment of nurses is nationwide. I think it is very small. The recruitment and retention [buzzer] thank you, maam. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi, good afternoon. My name is diana anis, and i work at the birth center at San Francisco General Hospital. We often dont hear about the birth center because were supposed to be the happy place. But were not very nursefriendly. These are the 359 emails that debbie was talking about, asking for nurses, and they say things like, it is 2 00 in the morning, if you cant sleep, please come to work. If you dont come to work, your coworkers cant go home. If you dont come to work, no one is going to get a meal break. The nurses last year missed a thousand plus meal breaks. Thats a thousand times a patient had to have a nurse that didnt rest, that didnt eat, and it is possibly even mandatory overtime. We know that Maternal Death is real. Babies are born that need resuscitation. It used to be an exciting experience to be at a moms birth, and now it is a scary experience because we decent know if were dont io get that second nurse to help with that newborn resuscitation. Ive been here for more than 30 years, and the story doesnt seem to change. Were going to hire. Dont worry. Its going to be better. It hasnt gotten better for 30 years. And working at the birth center, the babyfriendly hospital is not nursefriendly, and it is getting tiresome, and the nurses are burned out. [buzzer] thank you. You still have 30 seconds, but thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon. Thank you for listening to all of us. My name is suzanna kylie, and im a registered nurse. I would first like to start by emphasizing that as a nurse, and all of us as nurses, were accountable for our actions or nonactions. And im expected to show up every day at work prepared. I cannot ignore or otherwise not answer questions and get back to you later. I dont think it is an unreasonable expectation that others perform their jobs with that same level of accountability. I currently work in behavioral health. And in three weeks i will begin working with the whole persons integrated health, also known as street medicine. I began my nursing career 36 years ago here at d. P. H. I worked on 5a in the 80s and continued working in h. I. V. Care in the 90s. All of my career choices have been informed by my commitment for caring for underserved communities. I believe this kind of commitment is what drives all of the nurses in d. P. H. To continue working, shortstaffed. S. F. D. P. H. Has been propped up for too long by these hardworking, committed nurses. And the chronic understaffing has tested the resolve of great nurses and broken the resolve of many who have left. With currently chronically understaffed system, the ability to care for our clients has fallen short, which is unacceptable. [buzzer] it puts in the question of this gasping systems ability to affectively respond to the coronavirus. The time for corrective action is long overdue, and this is certainly no time for budget cuts. I thank you for your time. [please stand by] my name is herbert weiner. With Patient Safety this resembles the schoolyard and the bully victim and bystander. Were faced with the coro coronavirus and its an a question of one disaster preparing for another. I have a masters degree in social work and ph. D. In clinic psychology. I applied for medical and psychiatric social workers countless of times and turned down based on the one of three rule. I hope this doesnt happen to other people. But basically the hiring had to be streamlined and we need it now more than of. This is a National Emergency and even a question of homeland security. Thank you, next speaker. Im a nurse at San Francisco general. I have a lot to say but going to tell you what happened sunday morning when i was the team lead and we have six rooms and that day we were short one recessed nurse and got to the point where we had 12 critical patients in the resuscitation. I dont know how you can wrap that around your head but the reason why we couldnt move any of the patients is because we couldnt staff the rooms in pod a. There ways cpr in progress that came early in the morning. My coworker was working on it. The patient passed away and after she walked out i did not have time to let her decompress or think about it. I said i need you to hop in because theres another cpr in progress. Cpr in progress means you need at least three nurses in the room depending on the cause. And we only had four trauma nurses assigned. This is not isolated either. I was put into a position where christen went into the room and had a patient with a bone stick out of his leg broken obviously. And she said chris tan can you come in and help me with medications. I said i cant because yefr every one of my trauma rooms is full and i needed help and she said im sorry i dont have anybody to send you. Triage called me and said they needed to give me another patient. This patient was ill as well and i said all right put a gurney next to the storage unit and well try to figure it out. Thank you, next speaker. Hi, ive been at the general 15 years in the Emergency Department for three. Ive stoken at these things spoken at these things quite a bit and my generalized statement si dont want you to fix the problems alone i want to film them with you. After the incident with corina you saw in the video i joined the emergency room violence protecti Protection Task force and never missed a meeting and will be there march 30th to try to fix the problem in the Emergency Department. Unfortunately many requests have been made for the Workplace Violence Prevention Task force for me to attend and be a part of that and every time we heard no. So if you dont mind im going to take this opportunity to say dr. Urlich do you mind if you join the hospitalwide Prevention Task force. Id like to stand by you with you and help this problem. I really would like to help and put my name. Put me in. Please direct your comments to the panel here. The committee. Thank you very much. Thank you, next speaker. So folks understand theres rules of decorum in the chamber. You have to address Public Comment to the members of the board of supervisors. Im Rebecca Grant a Nurse Practitioner in the Emergency Department. Ive worked as an rn and Nurse Practitioner. Most of my job is performing in the triage area after the illegal care program was dismantled. What that means is i greet each and every patient who comes into the doors as much as i can. Sometimes theres 25 an hour and i analyze them and screen them and see if i can refer them to their primary care to the urgent care clinic to p. E. S. And the urge urgent care is closed and the patients are telling me it takes months to get appointment to their clinics. If the refer them to a primary care provider it takes at least six months to get a call because the list is over 1300 patients long. Thats terrible. Basically weve all been working very hard to get our leadership in the department in the hospital level and now were here and we appreciate you guys listening to us to hopefully urge the department of Public Health and the h. R. Department to hire more nurses and staff and the Community Clinic and micky callahan i was told is responsible for blanket firing and all dual rec questions for the requisitions for the temporary exempt positions and were waiting on nurses and i was let know via email anyway i think wed like to know how many people are affected because the patient loads were immediately dismantled and its a big deal. Im bob ivory a retired nurse and ive been on the Bargaining Team for 25 years so i want to give you historical background. Everything these young nurses say has been going on for 25 years. Its not the hospital is under staffed but under budgeted. The union was in bargaining and we asked how many new positions are you going to put in. The answer is we dont know because we dont know the right size until a study and we dont know. Its not hard no figure out how many nurses it takes to run the department. I wish all the temporary nurses under the charter were doing relief work. However, in violation of the charter, they have opened whole new floors, departments with no budget for registered nurses. Theyve had to rely on creative staffing through ftes for travellers and did i per diem. If you look at the budget youll look at 500ftes a year. Ill address this to you maybe mr. Brown when he comes back next continue how many nurses are participating on his task force. What their names are and have they actually been released to got to the meetings. Thank you very much. Thank you, next speaker. I work in the Emergency Department. Thank you guys for having this hearing and many more that might follow. Im reading comments from a colleague of mine and the poor resources on the guaranteed coronavirus outbreak and we have a lack of preparation for managing the patients in other hospital the patients are going to other units and often bypassing the e. D. Were losing quickly without replacement and have no one in our disaster position. They have one person persist . I worked the past two shifts but theres no space. One without the other is useful in either direction. The lack of leadership and transparency by the nursing director is a big problem and the engage. The survey after a year or more. I find it insulting the only i time we see the ceo is when regulatory supervisor visits is happening. And sarcastically im glad theyre working on violence in the e. D. The whole hospital went to [bleep] when they went to the lean model even when they identified the needs they dont act on it. Why even do it then . Its a waste of time, resources and money. We need a strong leader that can identify the problems and have the inside experience to make the changes needed to accomplish this not another work group. Thats what i have for now. Nothing was changed. Thank you, next speaker. Hello. Im also one Emergency Department nurses and also a steward. I have a portion of our petition that we submitted to the Health Commission back in october. The one thing i do want to talk about in administration is administration including chief Officers Ceos and chief nursing officer failed to provide consistent experience and Ethical Leadership for our department. As a level 1 Trauma Center it serves over 1 Million People and consistent organization has been overlooked since e. D. Has been functioning since a Revolving Panel in the last 10 years. The current nursing director was hired in february of 2018. Since may of to 19, 50 of our managers or people in our leadership positions have resigned. Theyre reasons include but no not limited to the development of new programs that affect be patient care, implementations of new programs against the objections of nursing staff and leadership and intimidation by management to remain silent on issues that affect safety and exclusion of the frontline nurses in programs and procedures and intimidation in regards to procedures of policies and the leadership style at San Francisco General Hospital has created a culture of intimidation and fear the employees fear advocating for their patients and avoid interactions with management whenever hospital. The hostile Work Environment is having detrimental effects on the Mental Health of staff and theres no chance for the members of the Health Care Team to collaborate in a way that must be to provide comprehensive and Compassionate Care to our most vulnerable patient populations. I did submit something for the record for you guys to see. Thank you. Next speaker. My names and ive been an e. D. Nurse three decade and i hung up my scrubs and retired but the subjects still dear to my heart and one thing i think of is the culture of austerity that seems to take root in Public Services in general and you get used to doing work arounds or figuring out how to glue things together. And i think the publics starting to wake up so this theres no excuse in a city as wealthy as this there should be no reason to not bring in enough people you can staff adequately. One thing i look at is the culture of wishful filaments and wills never have babies or go on leave or get sick. Thats never going to happen. I think 20 with us cited. Thats always going to be there and if we had per diems co cover that youre covered but instead theyre covering all the wrecks and all the positions that are unfilled so theres nobody around when you need a Training Program youre cutting down to muscle. Nobodys left. Were not getting to a world where everything goes away. Its always there and you need toan toance to anticipate that. Thank you for hearing this. Thank you, next speaker. Good afternoon. Id like to thank the board and everyone here for their time and attention for listening to this important issue. My name is cheryl randolph. Ive been a registered nurse at San Francisco general for the past 22 years. I take care of the Overdose Patients and make sure they continue to breathe. I take care of the trauma patient who thought this was just another day and now clinging to life. I take care of you, your friends and your family. Ive always been proud of our dedicated and professional e. D. Staff but im not proud now. Now im afraid on a daily basis. Im afraid this is going to be the shift when a patients going to assault me more severely than every other time this has happened. Im afraid this is the shift when i make a fatal mistake because im trying to do more work than a single nurse can safely accomplish. Im afraid this is the shift my nursing license is in jeopardy and not conforming to the required standing of care and when my experience and training dont matter because people have needlessly died. E. D. Nurses have always been willing to suck it up and go without breaks because its always short staffed and take care of more patients and we try to do right by fellow nurses. Here in california nursing is protected by ratios. Meaning a particular number of patients to nurse. While that protects us both it limits how many patients may be treated in a timely manner. On a daily basis my e. D. Is impacted by patients taking 50 to 75 of the available beds and wait hours and sometimes days. That means the e. D. Nurse takes care of floor patients in the waiting room swells with patients who wait for hours and hours. We need to refocus on Patient Safety by ensuring safe nursing staffing. I respectfully ask the board to approve funding or any other measures to help staff. Thank you, next speaker. Im a registered nurse. For nearly 10 years i worked at San Francisco Hospital Trauma Department as an e. R. Nurse while i left sfgh after my first child the mafg amazing nurses and doctors are still near to my heart id like to ride a statement for someone who wants to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. The staff has been one of the more poorly run hospitals ive worked in but has gotten so much worse. This administration is known to offer false promises to anyone who comes to them for assistance only to appease them and then do nothing. I find it extremely upsetting now that our strong union folks have called the administrations out those same administrators come running to our department when board of supervisors visit to buffer and present a misleading view to you of our department. In all my years at sfgh and when ive seen my chief nursing officer in our department. What are they trying to hide . When nurse were threatened they shut the door. The budget sin surplus yet administrations have not been paying staff nurses and clerks for overtime. Im going skip the letter and when came from new york as a trauma nurse from the time i was interviewed and on to the floor it only took three weeks sow i know so i know the problem can be fixed. Thank you, next speaker. I work in Emergency Department as a nurse r. N. And been there 28 years. Ive been there a while and its been good to me and ive seen a lot of changes and different situations but i feel were not properly equipped to manage and take care of the behavior and psychiatric patients which is ef departmentally increasing because of the homelessness and meth use and were in the Emergency Department and we have four rooms for them which are monitored but the rooms are doubled. This is not right. Its very difficult to look the highly difficult stressful patients and unfair to the other patients and unsafe for the staff and ive seen many situations, violence has escalated. Im one of the nurses recently violated against and was there the day the other nurse who reported was assaulted. So i just feel its difficult. I know theyre having a hard time and on red alert. Since we moved to the hospital i feel theyve not been great because of the geographical distance. The psychiatrists rarely come to the Emergency Department and we become the p. D. S. Thank you. I retired in 2018 from 12 years on the lift team or safe patient handling service and its not just nurses in solidarity but cnas also have the same problems. I was on the lift team and the team should have two. If either of anyone called in sick or was on vacation you worked by your several and thats the way they rolled. I submitted to my superiors some ideas for creating a safe patient handling department including an educational component for bedside safety for the nurses but basically ignored. I love the people and love the work but i couldnt stand it and bailed, i have to say. There is a moralee morale problem there and it would be a great morale shift if you staffed sufficiently and its come to my attention it takes four supervisor to put a motion on the ballot asking the people if they would like to return the name of the hospital to San Francisco General Hospital. I think that would do wonders for morale. Next speaker. Im mike hill a nurse in the e. R. Since 20134. 2014. Thank you for letting us speak. I was going to raise doubts in your mind in handling disasters and preparedness and i think its abundantly clear and we have two confirmed cases. We cant even staff for a regular patient load. We joke how many people are in the waiting room, 40, 46. How many people are we holding that cant go upstairs . 20, 30 . How many hours have they been here, 26 hours . 36 hours . This is day to day. How are we going to ever handle a crisis like were going to be faced with pandemically . S i havent had disaster training since 2017 and we have a facilitator that retired six months ago. Unfilled position. Its crazy, right . Were in the midst of crisis and we dont fill the positions. Its attrition. Shes gone. I have nothing more to say but its historic to feel this closeness with my coworkers and respect and admire all of you so much. Thank you, next speaker. Im megan green a nurse in the oncology and Palliative Care unit and also the same floor 58 is on. Its unbudgeted and has been the default overflow for the e. D. The e. D. Has been bombarded with patients as mike said. If theres admitted patients downstairs and no bed upstairs theres nowhere for them to. Before the most recent contract negotiations we were frequently being asked to come in for overtime and still havent been paid and later we were told we were never under staffed. After public pressure we were told wed get a float pool and dont have one and theres 50 beds in 58 accounting for 38 bedside nurses not including a chart and break nurse and were pulling nurses from other units. I worked last friday, saturday and sunday and for two of the 12hour shifts i got one 30minute break and one 15minute break for a 12hour shift. This happens quite a bit. Im not sure you want to be taken care of by a nurse with a 15minute and 30minute break. My coworker was covered one nurse per break the other had a decompensating patient that needed to be brought down to cat scan when she left to go to cat scan she had seven patients. We wish we could say its infrequent but it happens all the time. Nurses who are burnt out call out sick. Theres been multiple studies and were told not to come in sick when were sick and then blamed for short staffing when sick. Next speaker. Im a registered nurse in the med surge unit and in supervisor heaneys district 6. Mike dingal brought up about not just being a registered nurse understaffing but very much to do with our support staff not being at the bedside to help us. Registered nurses have a defined scope of practice and have things we have to address and many things that fall outside of that. However, at San Francisco general in the med surge floors if youre a danger to others or of falling you dont have the attention of a nurses aid to make sure youre safe to address the issues a registered nurse doesnt have time to address because were fulfilling our legal duties. It has led to patients who are already angry feeling as though theyre being avoided. Theyve become more agitated. This becomes a direct danger to the nurse. We know in hospitals all over the country assault is a big deal and many nurses every year are hurt and taken out of work for that reason. Just a quick example i had a patient who was quickly running out of steam and unable to breathe on her own and addressing her and called for assist. My work phone kept blowing up. It was going and going and nobody could help address it until finally i was able to go to the other room and see what it was. A patient spilled their urine and the floor and needed help cleaning it up. Its not a reason to leave an unstable persons bedside. We need help and to be addressed. I appreciate your taking the time and i yield the Small Business of my time back. Thank you, next speaker. Good afternoon, supervisors. Im aaron kramer a registered nurse at San Francisco General Hospital 12 years and work in the cardiac lab. I would like again to thank you and all my colleagues that came with me today to speak and share a taste of the reality of what he Public Health care is today as we speak. Its shortstaffed and stressful and dangerous. These are peoples lives we deal with. We came here today because we need someone to listen to us. Its the feeling of the nurses at General Hospital that we as the frontline staff we try and voice our concerns. We try and speak out and speak up and were met with this wall and many nurses speak to me as their union delegate they dont want to get involved or want to do anything more at General Hospital because they feel a feeling of fear and intimidation and a culture of that and its the scope of Public Health for San Francisco general. I want to speak quickly on behalf of some of my colleagues. The meat and potatoes of the hospital as reported last week to the Health Commission 25 vacancies. Again, my other colleagues spoke to a contractual obligation negotiated last year to help support med surge with a lift team. Still unable to hire and staff that. I have petitions that are trauma med surge unit. The whole staff submitted asking for help. Really quickly for the record, for labor monitoring who i serve as a delegate for we had to file a grievance last year. Next speaker. Good afternoon supervisors safai and supervisor mar thank you for having this hearing. Im with local 87. We represent the janitors and private sector and you may be asking what does the Janitors Union have to do with this. We had 86 janitors here this afternoon. We had to pull them off their job today because of the fear of coronavirus. All those janitors were here because they wanted to be able to have somebody speak to them. These shortages in the department are affecting everybody and nurses are the First Responders when theyre in a situation and nurses hold us literally physically up when were at our most vulnerable. Supervisor ronin and walter and supervisor heaney, theyve all spoken but i wish they would have stayed for the remainder to hear the stories and witness tm of testimony. You cant give us the big words and then leave. Im here because i understand the department has had its setbacks but this has been going on a while now and last year i happen to hear terry anne speak and how successful being able to fly in nurses and contract out nursing was working for the city. I find shame in that because these are workers being replaced and nurses deserve to have anything knit on the job. Dignity on the job. Janitors are here because we want to make sure were heard and an understand dr. Brown you started three months ago but youre inheriting a ses pool of problems we hope you can guide and lead us to what needs to be fixed. I understand decorum but what you dont understand and everybody else in the back is my family and everybodys families [bell] thank you. Next speaker. Supervisors, its incredible you did this. Its what should happen but it doesnt happen and it hasnt happened and so its a profound thing that has happened. I say this as a nurse whos worked for the dph32 years and i cant imagine life without janitors. Nurses and janitors are working most closely with body substances. Lets put it that way. I want to tell you how i got introduced to the culture of silence. There was a budget cut slated to cut our interpreters three years in a row until chris daily said if this happens one more time i knew the nurse manager of the interpreters office had important statistics and i was at a hearing the Health Commission or here and had the naivete to slide over to the chief nursing over and say why are nay not up here they not up here giving the data and she looked at me like i had four heads. She said he cant talk. Hes the boss of all of us. I learned we can go to our head nurses and manager and go to the cno and theyll put a whole different spin on it for the people above them. For a whole host of reasons. The whole culture of silence. Culture of safety. We go in the loop weve been going to the Health Commission for months and months. Finally, we speak nothing back. We have to listen to the presentations that really if theyre not live they put a nice bow on things and so we chanted a meeting down. What happened . They called the sheriff. They come marching in and came from the e. R. Walked away from the e. R. Thank you. Next speaker. Supervisors, my name is josie mooney im a proud member for many many years here on behalf of Joseph Bryant who couldnt be here today because hes on strike with Health Care Workers in san joaquin county. This is an emergency. It is not a time for focus groups or more studies or reviewing whats already been done or taking a look at the Civil Service rules. Its an emergency. What that requires is people act together. So i want to say on behalf of our union that we are prepared to sit down and confront this emergency with all of our beautiful amazing fierce warriors and their colleagues who are back at the hospital now. We have to treat this like its an emergency and that means emergency measures which you on your own cant do and they on their own better not do. So its up to all of us. So i pledge we will be at a meeting tomorrow, tonight, the day after tomorrow, on the weekend, this cannot stand as is. We so appreciate so very much appreciate the hearing and the opportunity for you to hear from the frontline workers what they face every day and were looking forward to being at a meeting this week to resolve the crisis. Thank you. Thank you, next speaker. Thank you. I want to followup with what she stated. I want to add first we want to thank you for holding the hearing. We would not be here today if it was working. We would not be here today if the Labor Management Committee Meetings were working or if the Health Commission was listening to the r. N. S wen they go and speak and other Health Care Workers and told the same stories you heard today. These stories represent a small fraction of all the stories across d. P. H. Whether theyre workers at s. F. General in the Community Clinics or laguna honda. The staffing needs to be fixed and fixed now and we do need oversight and we do need accountability and thats why we are hear in front of the board of supervisors and asking, yes, more hearings, more oversight, more accountability. Please stay on this process and please stay on d. P. H. Until we get this solved and we thank you for raising these issues and having us all here today. Thank you. Thank you, any other members of the public wish to comment on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Dr. Urlich can you have can i have you back up and it may be for your team but i want to direct them to you. One thing i heard about and i know you rushed through your presentation and others did swell as well but the thing not budgeting to your census. When we moved in the new hospital there was uncertainty to what the level of volume would be and quickly starting seeing the number of beds, medical, surgical beds was too low. We have a budget for 164 med surge beds and i think i mentioned to you in my presentation its typically running well beyond that. So for the past two years weve had what has been called a project budget that has given us Budget Authority but not physician to staff that unit and thats what some nurses were talking about. We filled the beds with temporary staff. The good news is as i also mentioned this year the Budget Proposal to the mayor includes per permanent staffing about 30r. N. S sto to staff over the course of the year as well as a 24 7 practice nurse to give us provider capacity as well. We feel very fortunate to have that in our Budget Proposal and hope it addresses some of the issues weve talked about today. So my next question would be in terms of the list and theres a list and people that have gone through and interviewed and once theyre on the list, are there 1,000 people . Are there hundreds if not 1,000 people on the list ready to be hired and were not hiring them and im sure she list is not up to date but is there an active list youre working from in terms of hiring nurse. We have an active list and theres a list based on nursing specialty. I dont know the number right offhand. Wed be happy to get that for you. As i said before, were devoted to hiring nurses and other team members as quickly as we can so we can best take care of our patients. The other thing that disturbed me that i heard in the presentation is this idea of straight overtime and time and a half and can you talk about that, please . I would have to defer to my h. R. Colleagues about that. Okay. Mr. Brown. You have a ph. D. By one of the presenters. I have an advanced degree today. So it depends on the contract and looking at the hours the person is working. If theyre working because nurses are exempt employees if theyre working less than 40 or 80 hours or working overhours its overtime straight until the meet the threshold. Youre talking too fast. Explain slowly. You spoke about overtime and i understand the concept much time and a half. They have the ability to earn time and a half under certain conditions. If theres a parttime nurse not working full times the extra hours would be overtime straight and theres forced overtime under the contract. Theres different provisions under the contract where payroll is looking to see when the time and a half kicks in. One of the things i heard in the e. R. Listening directly to the nurses and i could be conveying this incorrectly, one thing they tried to do and ends up happening from management is the nurses are asked to stay. Will you stay late, were understaffed. Its a way to get them to say yes voluntarily without having to pay them the extra time. Can you talk about that . In light of the conversation . No, it seems to be a practice outside of the contract and seems to be one that should not be encouraged and in fact discouraged because if youre putting someone on the spot in that moment when theyre short staffed from things we heard youre asking them to voluntarily stay extra and then you dont compensate them additional time and a half that seems to be a couple of different bad management practices. There may be and i cant speak to what actually has been said in those cases. I do believe in the nursing contract there if there was forced mandatory overtime theyd be paid time and a half versus volunteer. I dont know what the conversation is going on at this point and i dont know if theres anything they can add because use have to be in the trenches to know. I get it. I want to put it out there. I dont think well revolve it today. I want it on the record as an area of concern. I think theres areas that are longer term that need to best adjusted and the immediate need with the crisis at hand in terms of hiring in an expedited man perp and the last thing as the head of h. R. Because it sounds like a lot of people we heard and its one i asked for in the resolution was the disaster training. Are people getting the appropriate training, if not, whats the plan to ensure theyre getting that training. For me its the first time ive heard about the disaster training and im sure its been brought up at the hospital where the training is provided. Im not sure if susan has information on when or how thats being administered and i can come back and report if were not able to today. The last thing id like to say to close out one of the things i want to highlight si appreciate all the time and effort and energy the nurses put into this today. I know this took away from a lot of the different things. This is their time off and their free time. Sounds like theyre already over worked and stressed as it is so i appreciate that and appreciate the union coming out and giving their input and thank management and h. R. I know youre new on the job whether you lift or left or came back at least you came back with the perspective you understand where the problems are in the process. Im glad the Deputy Director of Human Resources is here as well. I think that this situation n s necessitates a working group and need dph in the room and maybe the mayors budget office. Im going reach out personally to the mayor and her staff on this because we have to make this a number one priority. We just grot got an announcement today that a high school was shut down and they clerd the school. These things may be happening more. People were asked to leave to deal with people that have been exposed. These are our first line responders and we can get ourselves in a serious crisis more than it is now. I think we need to commit to putting together an aggressive plan to hire people in an expedited manner. I know we can do it. If we create the bureaucracy and i understand and respect the Civil Service process and i know the unions have been involved in that as well in ensuring its fair and equitable but at the same time we have to put our Heads Together and figure out how to get people hired in 30 days or less into these positions. And this is years in the making. This is years in the making and sometimes it takes a crisis and a more exacerbated crisis like the one were facing now to force us to put our Heads Together and get a solution. Id like the commitment from dr. Urlich and ill talk to dr. Koufax and followup with the mayor and her team and put together a plan to Work Together to come up with an immediate action plan to staff up in an appropriate way. I see her nodding her head. Ill note that for the record. Also, i left out the union and the union should act the table as well. So much, supervisor issafai r calling the hearing and thank you to the nurses and frontline workers who shared their stories, organized and demanded action by the city to really address the chronic understaffing and related workplace issues at the e. R. Or Emergency Department at sf general and throughout our city and Public Health care system. Clearly this is a crisis that is undermining the welfare of our frontline Health Care Workers as well as the welfare of our patients. And as many have spoken to today, these are issues that have existed for years or even decades. Youve certainly got the attention and support as supervisor safai and myself and our colleagues on the board and i think we appreciate the leadership from d. P. H. And s. F. General and h. R. Updating us to fix the hiring process as soon as possible. Well continue to work with you and to push you on that to make sure that gets addressed as soon as possible. I also wanted to thank the leadership for sharing the Broader Solutions with us and address the broader budgetary and transparency and accountability issues that plague our s. F. General hospital and Public Health care system. Have you our commitment to follow through on the proposals and to address these underlying issues that have led to this crisis in the hiring and for the frontline staff at General Hospital. Thanks again, everyone. Thank you, supervisor is a fa supervisor safai. Can we send the motion. Clerk both items are called right now. I wanted to make a motion to excuse supervisor hany without objection. Can we have a roll call on that . Just kidding. That was a joke. No objection. So can we make id like to make a motion to send item 3 to the full board for positive recommendation and added as a cosponsor as well, correct . And take that without objection. Yeah. And then for item 2 id like to continue this hearing to the call of the chair. Im going to confirm when the appropriate time frame is. Im thinking 90 days to come back and check and the leadership of the hospital and h. R. And others were beginning to work on because i had reached out to them and asked them and highlighted to them the things i needed them to work on. Given the crisis at hand, i am going to ask to put together this working group in the interim and well work to get that to that aggressively. So maybe what well do though well continue this item to the call of the chair we might come back sooner than 90 days but well let everyone know in plenty of time to get back in touch. The leadership of the union has been in constant communication with me and working with shop stewards and the frontline nurse. Theyve been in touch with me. Well be in constant communication with the findings of the working group and how to aggressively begin to staff up the hospital and ill make a motion to continue item 2 to the call of the care. Without objection. Thanks again, everyone. Mr. Clerk, is there any further business . There is no further business. We are adjourned. It had been rain for several days. At 12 30 there was a notice of large amount of input into the reservoir. We opened up the incident command and started working the incident to make sure employees and the public were kept were safe there is what we call Diversion Dam upstream of moccasin. The water floods the Drinking Water reservoir. We couldnt leave work. If the dam fails what is going to happen. We had three objectives. Evacuate and keep the community and employees safe. Second was to monitor the dam. Third objective was to activate Emergency Action plan and call the agencies that needed contacted. The time was implement failure of the dam. We needed to set up for an extended incident. We got people evacuated downstream. They came back to say it is clear downstream, start issuing problems and create work orders as problems come in. Powerhouse was flooded. Water was so high it came through the basement floor plate, mud and debris were there. It was a survey where are we . What are we going to do to get the Drinking Water back in. We have had several emergencies. With each incident we all ways operate withins dent command open. Process works without headache. When we do it right it makes it easier for the next one. We may experience working as a team in the different format. Always the team comes together. They Work Together. Our staff i feel does take a lot of pride of ownership of the projects that they work on for the city. We are a Small Organization that helps to service the water for 2. 7 Million People. The diversity of the group makes us successful. The best description we are a big family. It is an honor to have my team recognized. I consider my team as a small part of what we do here, but it makes you proud to see people come together in a disaster. Safety is number one through the whole city of San Francisco. We want people to go home at the end of the day to see their loved ones. We dont want them hurt. We want them back the next day to do their work. There is a lot of responsibility the team members take on. They word very they work hard. They are proud of what they do. I am proud they are recognized. [chain saw whirring] [growling] listen, you are extremely terrifying just the scariest undead thing on tv, and i really mean that. I am worried that you could give my kids nightmares if they see you, so im gonna have to block you. [sighs] so, thats it. Oh, and tell the zombies theyre blocked, too. Id to call to or the meeting of the Public Utilities commission. Today is tuesday, march 10. If we could have the roll call. President Ann Moller Caen is expected shortly. The vietor here. Moran here. Maxwell here. Paulson here. The next item is the approval of the minutes. Any Public Comments on the minutes . Hearing none, all those in favor . Opposed . Motion carried. Next item. Item 4 is general Public Comment, members of the public may address the commission on matters that are within the commissioners jurisdiction and are not on todays agenda. I have three speaker cards here. The first is eileen. Good afternoon. Eileen, coalition for San Francisco neighborhoods on my own behalf. I live two blocks from sunset reservoir. I attended the Community Meetings before the retro fit of north basin. When asked why south basin was not being receipt retrofitt d retrofitted, it made no reference to north basin. In the puc report from 2018, the report states that both basins have been retrofitted. In the current 10year capital plan, the plan does refer to south basin. Currently there is an 8 million allocation in fiscal years 2830. The line item is line 109 in the water enterprise spreadsheet. The item description is to update the 1996 Risk Assessment report, the project justification states, i quote, sun set south basin is critical to the water supply distribution and will be need to be repaired. If not made, the longterm repairs will be significantly more costly and the collapse of the roof could result in a major interruption of water service. The project plan fails to mention the loss of life or property in the surrounding neighborhood. Yesterday i was at the Capital Planning Committee Asking that the puc item be continued and the puc plan amended. Im circling back to the chronicle article. Its on the side of the hill, naturally, and as such is classified as a dam. The main concern for the reservoir in the case of a large quake is the roof. Without seismic improvements, the roof could sway laterally with the movement of the earth. It could collapse and possibly damage the pipe that brings clean water from hetch hetchy. In that case, the supply of Drinking Water to much of the city could be cut off. Even if the roof stays intact [bell ringing] enough damage could be done so contaminants on top of the roof, mostly bird droppings could get into the water supply and cause health concerns. Thank you. Did you say there was information . Okay, good, thank you. Francis is next. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. So, commissioners, when the advocates for our citizens come here and talk to you all about something, its because theyre concerned about what is happening in the community. And i think we got to take make note of it and give some feedback. What is happening is the corruption in the city has reached saturation point. So much so that in the marina times you can read all of it. Not only that, this information goes all over the world and many of them send me an email asking me whether its right, wrong or whatever. And this is a shame that has been brought to our city. I mention to you, commissioners, that you allow brought to the fore, either by the mayor or the board of supervisors, and its a very difficult job to represent the taxpayers and the citizens. But it is not right for us, the taxpayers, those who are doing due diligence, to read that thousands and millions of dollars are wasted. I mean its shocking. And some of the commissioners i wont say everybody but some of them think its okay. Its not okay to waste taxpayers money. Now, we are trying if you look at the sfpuc and all the projects, there is a lot of improvement to be made. Why are we trying to buy things from pg e . Why . Why . On one hand, people are saying i dont have money, on the other hand theyre ready to spend billions of dollars to play [bell ringing] to dance the tango with pg e. There are san franciscans who are monitoring all this thing. There are many san franciscans who are interested in ethics, in morals, standards. So im just bringing to your attention that this city needs a lot to do and move in the right direction. Thank you very much. Thank you. Im going to hand the chair back to the chair. Thank you. Ann clark. My name is ann clark, i wanted to let you know we had a wonderful womens meeting at the club and the two people we were honoring is ann and francesca. It was a tremendously interesting program. This is our third and now were beginning to have younger women, middleaged women, older women all together talking about what we see and think is important. But ann and francesca really came forward and talked to us and let us know we also had gloria duffy, the president of the Commonwealth Club. You can see there were a lot of women there. There were men. I want the men to come to. We will invite you, tell you come in. But once again, we want to thank you from the Commonwealth Club for ann and francesca and for the lunch and the fact that we all got together and had talking at our tables, and talking to each other. And bringing forward a lot of wonderful cooperative information. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And i will give these to donna. They have their names on them. And well plan again for next year. There certainly will be a next year. Ann, thank you very much. I hope you like the cup. I found it by accident. President caen well, first of all, i have to tell you about the cup. The cup is a herb king cup that i use every morning with my tea. My morning tea. And i think about you. And im certain that francesca would like to speak, too, but the two of us were so honored to be recognized by the Commonwealth Club. And we had a great time. In fact, i think were a great horse and pony show [laughter]. In terms of talking about the Public Utilities commission. And also, you know, our life and what has happened. So again, thank you so much. Well always remember this honor that youve bestowed upon us. You all were wonderful and it was wonderful to have that kind of conversation going back and forth. And, ann, the interesting thing is, i found that cup by accident and i decided that we had three people who were talking and i couldnt give it to just one person, so francesca got the cup. I did and ive been using mine for Morning Coffee as well. Thank you so much. It really was a lovely luncheon. What a great setting with the bridge as the backdrop and the ferry building. I think everybody enjoyed themselves and learned a lot. I want to thank you. Well do something again and oh, you had your silver dollars. Absolutely. Waiting for the gold rush. Waiting for my daughters tooth to fall out for that. Your daughter doesnt have a tooth that has fallen out yet . Theyve all fallen out. You never know. Silver dollar, im going to shine it up and its going to my granddaughters christmas stocking this year. Shell be thrilled. So, back to business here. Communications. I should ask, any more Public Comment . All right, moving on. Communications. Commissioners . Any comments . Seeing none mr. Kelly. Report of the general manager. So the first item is a bay delta water control plan, Steve Ritchie with update. Assistant general manager for water. There is very little to update on this. The main activity has been continues to be the state of california suing the department of interior about the biological opinion that was released on february 19 in the state suit on february 20. Weve been at least tracking who is suing whom and who is joining in the suits. The most recent information was that several environmental groups sued the department of interior and the state water contractors have joined that suit on the side of the bureau of reclamation. So there are reportedly conversations going on between the state and federal government that were not a party to at this point, so we dont know where this will end up. If it will end up in a potential settlement or just be pursued in litigation. Were all all the parties of the voluntary agreements are watching with interest at this point, because that effort is on hold until there is resolution or direction given on behalf of the state and federal water projects. Thats it. President caen we talked about a couple of resolutions in support of the lawsuit, so that is still in progress, right . Yeah, and i believe also we looked to scheduling this matter for consideration potentially in closed session at the next meeting involving our litigation. President caen thank you. Any other comments . Any Public Comment . Seeing none, kelly. The next item is update on pg e bankruptcy and city acquisition offer. Barbara hill. Good afternoon. Assistant general manager for power. Im here to provide a brief update on the pg e bankruptcy and the city acquisition offer. Ill provide an update on three topics today. The bankruptcy case in federal court, the california puc bankruptcy activities and our education efforts. First off, the case in the federal Bankruptcy Court. Yesterday, pg e filed additional revisions to its plan of reorganization and the disclosure statement. The hearings in the federal case on the disclosure statement are under way and projected to conclude march 16. Its unclear how the filing of revisions will affect the plan and the overall schedule. We call that pg e settled with many parties and capped the wildfirerelated claims, however, the state and federal governments were not a party to the settlement and they have outstanding claims. The federal Emergency Management agency and california state agencies participating together have filed objections to the treatment of their claims. The Bankruptcy Court has ordered mediation to address these state and federal government claims. One of the parties that is a key participant in the settlement of claims is the tort claimants committee. They represent many wildfire victims. They have filed a motion expressing concerns that the pg es plan is too leveraged to support pg e stock prices. Under the plan, wildfire Victims Compensation will be funded in part from the sale of pg e stock managed by the fire victims trust. Those sales would occur over time after pg e emerges from bankruptcy. So they will have a vested interest in the Financial Health of pg e. The city also expressed concern about how leveraged pg e will be under its plan. And that kind of brings us to the second item i wanted to talk about, the california puc bankruptcy plan. Our testimony at the california pub puc made it clear that pg es plan increases by 65 the utilities borrowing. That it creates an unwieldy level of indebtedness that will hamper pg es ability to operate as a viable entity and that will substantive substanti s increase the costs. It will raise the likelihood of default. The likelihood of failure to fund capital needs. It will force pg e to raise rates. Rates that are already among the highest in the nation. The evidencery hearing is being conducted by the california puc on the bankruptcy plan have concluded. The briefs in the case are due friday, also due friday are responses to ruling from the commission president. That ruling asked parties to address a number of issues that pg e did not adequately address in its direct testimony. Things like safety and organizational structure. So there is a lot going on at the california puc and the federal case and well continue to brief you on that as we appear every two weeks. Finally, our education efforts, weve enhanced our education efforts through the website ive been telling you about, public power s. F. Org. Its where residents and stakeholders can go to help themselves to information about the acquisition efforts. We can report as of march 10th, weve had 2665 unique visitors to the website. Thats about a thousand more than i reported two weeks ago. About 175,000 people have been reached by our pushing that content out on social media. 77 unique individuals have signed up to receive emails and updates from us. We issued our first email this week that summarized the five things you should know about the bankruptcy case. And a majority of the traffic to the website has come from social media. And from people who are stopping and directly typing in the url to their computer. So we have active listeners and learners out there. Were working with neighborhood newspapers on print advertising. That was a question, you had asked, commissioner maxwell, so were working with the local neighborhood newspapers to increase the education. So the website will continue to educate people about our efforts and the benefits of our power work. Again, that is public power sf. Org. Encourage you to check it out. Happy to take questions. President caen commissioners . What is the nature of the response that youre getting . So to the Education Campaign . So were not getting information back in at this point. We havent really gotten many notes, but what were doing is pushing out the information and we can see that people are actively engaged with it. And so that is thats what im reporting today. We have not asked questions and solicited responses. That may be part of the future. Ill find out from the communication folks. President caen thats interesting to know. Thank you. President caen any Public Comment . All right, next item is the Sewer System Improvement Program Quarterly Report. Stephen robinson. Afternoon. Director of wastewater programs, to respect time, i have a slimmed down version of the quarterly update and then ill go over the wastewater Quarterly Report as well you have in your packet. Just a few slides to talk about ssip first. Used to seeing this chart. It looks different than last time. For the Program Status of the 70 projects in phase one of ssip representing 2. 9 billion, currently 37. 1 complete with 950 million expended at the close of december. Last quarter for reference we closed at 34. 7, so making progress. Specifically in this quarter, we were able to get the poje to a bid project to a bid and award phase. This chart looks very green. Representing construction compared to what it was in the last report. So we have 18 projects in preconstruction in the blue color. 16 projects in green. And 36 projects now in the gray colors. So just a few highlights of the projects. The baker beach green street was referred to as the richmond Green Infrastructure project. There are three specific locations in the project. During this quarter, the contractor opened the road to traffic during the nonworking hours in the work site. On slope stabilization on the south side commenced with the planning. The paving of the parking strip was installed, so the project is moving well ahead. Issues and challenges reflected in the Quarterly Report mention the shallow pg e lines. New delay to the substantial completion is forecasted. We can absorb that in the schedule. Specific one youve heard of, the new head works facility. Some of you had the ability to see this live. The construction photos you may not have seen demonstrating how complex and big an operation this is. We did cover the biosolid project in some detail two weeks ago. On head works, its facing similar challenges, same delivery method, working in the same constrained site. And there are currently five scopes of work in construction. That separates the two projects because head works is very much in construction. Clearing the completion on usage of the rerouted pipes on evans avenue, and scope 2, bruceman pump station upgrades and construction continues, is nearing completion, though. And completed installation of sump number one, knife gate on order control with new pumps and bar screens going in as well. Scope 2b is the influent sewer. Bid and award started with the contract of advertising. This work into three work packages. Scope 2c is the lift station, 100 design of that. And then scope 3 is the main head works. Around the 3rd, bidding for construction packages. 12 packages advertised this quarter. So heavily into construction, now moving forward with the project. Similar challenges with biosolid and the concern of the scope. And respect to the budget as well. Similar to the last, i highlighted a few other projects. Im noting with the red line reflecting the end of the quarter e down 2019 is delineating what is moving through planning and heavily into construction now. I wanted to point out that some projects are under way on the seismic improvement projects. We finished up the pump station. Were planning to issue the r. F. P. For the sewer project. 8 diameter tunnel to alleviate flooding. And the pump station project just began construction to rebuild the station to serve the mission bay area, including the new golden gate warriors arena. Construction for that will last a few years. Photo one in the left features the oceanside fixture replacement project. This is before and after. Its an enterprise arrangement to offset the purchase of l. E. D. Lighting. It shows the lighting before the replacements, remembering that the majority of this facility is underground. And the bottom is the improvement to the lighting. So simple project, but high impact in terms of creating that soft working environment for the team. The second photo in the middle is mariposa. The third photo is the bruce flynn upgrades. Just to draw attention to this photo and who highlight it, the photographer received an award from the engineering news record capturing a union welder in the access barricades welding a frame in the bruce flynn pump station. Celebrating that moment with an awardwinning photo. Next slide, program updates, nonproject related. But in november, we participated in the 6th annual expo. November 1, were being more engaged there. In december, we participated in the Winter Wonderland event in the bayview district. Concludes my ssip report. Any questions . President caen i have a question. Could we go back to slide 5 . So, what is this telling us about our timing . Are we on schedule . Yes, but of course, within the program there are a number of projects that have slipped and have concerns, similar to what we presented last meeting. On case by case basis, they identify the projects that have slipped from the baseline, either on cost or schedule. The majority of those projects on that slide are positive. President caen youre saying theyre positive, meaning what . I cant remember off the top of my head which ones there are variances on. Im going to highlight that now as i move into the next item to look at the Quarterly Report update. President caen okay. So well have the answer soon. Yes. President caen okay. Any Public Comment . Seeing none, could you please continue. Thank you. Just briefly, no slides, but to highlight some projects to help answer the question. Were going to review projects since last quarter are now forecasting schedules that extend beyond their approved schedule by 6 months or more. Or cost variances of more than 10 . Our standard process is reflected in the report you have. Ssip, the new head works project i mentioned is forecasting a cost variance. And that is reflected and already included in the 10year cip we projected back in january. This is presented and for the quarter ending december. Similar to the biosolid update. The project forecast costs reflects latest construction efforts and real understanding of what is happening at the facility. Scope 2a for the bruce flynn and scope 3 for the main head works facility itself. At the time of reporting, scopes were being considered to help mitigate. The present team is evaluating construction costs. And what is happening in reality now that the project is live and in construction and well explore the approaches to mitigate the impact. Finally, cost variance, compared to the original baseline, claim tracking and negotiates related to schedule delays and differing conditions continue between sfmta who is the project lead and Contracting Authority and the contractor. Final resolution of those claims will impact project budget and milestones and the cost variance is due to the anticipated contractor selfcosts for at the resolving claims. Similarly, Market Street improvements phase one is forecasting a schedule and cost variance. Theyre progressing toward the 99 milestone in a few months. The advertisement is still targeted for the summer of 2020, however, the full corridor has been deferred to pending design negotiations between public works and sfmta. Public works is the lead for the project and they need to resolve costsharing with partner departments. The cost variance is due to cost sharing amounts for construction litigation, Traffic Control rerouting, bus stations, et cetera. Bus substitutions, excuse me. And it was made to add a block in 5th street and 6th street and threeyear construction duration. Those are larger scope adjustments to the project. We just had a meeting with the supervisor haneys office and peskin and theyre very concerned about the impact to the merchants. So we may work with mta and public works to reevaluate the projects and work more with the merchants to see how we can minimize impact. That could mean that we phase it out of those maybe longer. The impact that we would have on the merchants wont be so severe where we just drive folks out of business. So were going to make, you know, based on what we experienced at van ness and central subway, were going to bring those experiences in and see how we can deliver the project in a way that we can minimize impact. Next project is the fifth north and Sixth Division streets. Forecasting delay. The completion delayed for structure al repair in the dry season. Just a couple more. Wastewater storm is in a planning only project and forecasting a variance of cost in this quarter. That is just about adding more work. The project Team Provided support for the 100year map, data sharing. Activities include working groups, development of flood elevations, and implementation options for partials with 100year storm flood risk map. Development of residential disconnect Grant Programs and the cost reflects higher than anticipated costs in the 10 year cip. The 10year cip already captures this. Large sewer Condition Assessment reports a cost variance and schedule variance. Initiated with a kickoff meeting in december of 2019. Projects entered into the design phase and the variance in the project and schedule is due to additions of scope of work as reflected also in the 10year capital plan already included presented in january. To help improve the longterm plan for how we tackle those. That includes the ssip part. But there is around the infrastructure, the ocean beach project is forecasting a cost variance. Some of the work is shortterm improvements, replacing sand, working with the army corpse of engineers and then longterm improvements. Like in the previous quarter, puc continues discussion with the San Francisco zoo regarding impacts to the parking lot, develop of the engineering phase resulted in increased forecast budget. Additionally refined site has resulted in higher cost and longer construction duration to stabilize site soil conditions. You can see a theme. The budget team will continue to evaluate during Design Development to mitigate those potential impacts to overall project costs and completion date. That concludes a summary of what you have in the quartly report. Could you give an update on the two alemany project which is a project that weve been working with the supervisor ronen because it impacts the farmers market, but also it helps with cayugaa. That is a project with a variance. Do you have an update where that is at . The alternative analysis for the project looking at alleviating the flooding conditions in that neighborhood, that area, has been completed, enough to release an r. F. P. Which helped to get a design team on board, to develop the conceptual engineering report. There are still a number of options on the table, like a tunnel and that avoids conflict with the community. Or open cut type construction that interfaces with cal tran in the future for the farmers market. So were still looking at a couple of options, but the project is advancing. I have a question about that project and would like to get a little more information. I understand there was an alternative that has more green it and this is gray. And the modelling that was done around the green option showed some additional benefits. So id like i dont know if its more appropriate offline but im curious why we couldnt or wouldnt issue an r. F. P. In addition to the gray that had more green because of the promising alternatives analysis . Well, first of all, we have folks public works that helps with the Green Infrastructure, but i think the volume of water that we have to move, you need a gray solution. And you actually this project, you have to bring it all the way out to where . Connecting to the large sewer for the down stream. We have to, there is so much water during flood. So we talked about the advantages of green, but when youre trying to move this much water from alemany, from cayuga all the way from the larger pipes and as you remember, alemany just floods. You have to move the water. I understand. So all the water comes from the watershed, so that is the challenge that we have with just moving that amount of water. I understand. I just want i dont think there is very many green components left at all as far as i can tell in the r. S. P. , right . Is there a design requested to help limit . I feel like, maybe i just need an offline update and id love to better understand what the alternatives were that were reviewed, what the benefits were, and if there is any opportunity before we move forward. So remember, we talked about we shift Green Infrastructure and had a strategy for Green Infrastructure which was different on dealing with projects as we relate to like central bayside. These projects where you have to move a large volume of water, we had Green Infrastructure on performancebased and we place it whenever we can where it works. Were trying to remove a billion gallons from the system, that is the goal. Were trying to reduce the amount of water going to the Treatment Plants in general, but when you talk about flooding, when you have intense rain events, that exceeds our level of service, those are the water that you need to move immediately. Typically Green Infrastructure, you know, wont really help because the ground is oversaturated quickly. It helps when you have a light rain for a long period of time. Thats when Green Infrastructure works well. I want to see the alternatives analysis on this one in particular, because my understanding is there is components that could help with the end goals. I understand the metrics of flooding, but i think there are additional metrics we can talk about. I looked up the hydraulic and the impact of what happens in the events. Its two different problems. But there may be overlap. I know we looked at local Green Infrastructure at that area, that local community, impacted and what happens when you apply Green Infrastructure across the whole watershed . How does that impact the flow . That is something we can talk about. That is great, id like to set up a separate meeting offline if we could and we can have it here if need be. Thank you. President caen comments, questions . To the public . Any questions, comments . Mr. Kelly, i would like to suggest that report such as these should be not only verbal, but written. There is a lot of information my mind was ticking away and trying to record what you were saying, which is very informational and very concise and i appreciate that, but i would like to be able to mull over the information youre giving us. So that im clear, we have the information in the report and the explanations are in the report, so he when he comes up, he sort of summarizing what is in the report. Are you suggesting we should do a sumization of what youre going to give . Right. If i go back and maybe its just me and my colleagues, i cant come back with all the facts in front of me. Its a good thing to think about. Things that may be of interest that may surface on the language around what the issues and challenges we face is effectively verbatim from what is in the report, but perhaps we can reformat. Right. I think the other factor weve got to keep in mind, that you live this day in and day out, so when you give your presentation, you kind of go through it at a cadence and its hard for the people to remember the projects because they may know it by another name, abbreviate it, or the official name, we call it biosolids. We need to think about how we present it, so once a quarter, they can remember, oh, thats what youre talking about. So well work on that. Constructive criticism. Welcome feedback, absolutely. Good. Lets move on. Can i ask a quick question about that . Are we saying its not hard for us to have the report despite the fact that you summarize it because its right there in your hands . Is that a Fair Assessment . I think so the whole premise if somebody wants it. All of it is Public Information so anyone can get it. Its part of the agenda item that is in there. But as part of Quarterly Report we give more of an insight of what is in there, opportunity to ask more questions about it. So i think ann wants to make sure that our presentation, we should make it available so that they can follow what were saying now versus just i would say the south the Sewer System Improvement Program with more slides talked about the project. You can follow the project. With this one, you just kind of went through a whole bunch of them quickly and it was probably hard to follow. Thats my take. President caen yes. And i personally would like the background. The information of the report. I like numbers. Yeah. Yep. If you will keep that and she will keep that document [laughter]. President caen okay. Thank you. Any Public Comment . So that is the sewer Enterprise Capital that was the wastewater. Im sorry, wastewater Quarterly Report. So Public Comment i guess. President caen i think i already called for Public Comment. The next item is an update on the mayors february 25 Emergency Declaration for covid19. I have justine to come up, our chief officer to give an update on sort of what the city is doing, which is changing rapidly, but what is the puc, what were working on as an agency to kind of roll out to our employees and give our folks advice on . Good afternoon. San francisco Public Utilities commission. And as general manager kelly mentioned, this is quickly evolving situation. We are the the puc is specifically in heavy coordination with the department of Human Resources, the City Department of Human Resources as well as the department of Emergency Management and the department of Public Health. All is coming together with a lot of guidance and cord nation that is changing coordination that is changing rapidly. The puc launched a Cross Functional Team in the end of february within our department comprised of Emergency Planning and security, health and safety, h. R. , specifically employee and labor relations, Information Technology and finance. So we started meeting regularly to basically tackle preparations, answer questions as the situation evolves. Some of the things im going to highlight today that weve been tackling, im not going over everything but these are the highlights. We launched a renewed analysis for continuity of operations plan. This is analysis that comes out of the Emergency Planning and its basically designed to analyze agencywide what our critical functions are and what our remote capabilities to perform those functions are and what are the capabilities to perform the functions if we have scenarios with lifting staffing, 25 , 50 staffing, so that way we can be better prepared after doing the analysis if we have an impact to staff or operations. So that is under way right now. Weve also drew guidance from the department of Public Health and in general the city. We have been implementing social distancing programs, which is essentially designed to limit situations where people are in tight quarters, where there is lots of people gathering, so for example, we are looking to limit inperson meetings within our own department. A lot can be done over the phone, video conferencing, alternate ways to conduct work. Weve cancelled nonessential trainings and looking to reschedule those. Similarly, were looking to if there is any nonessential travel or conferences, things like that, although a lot of the conferences themselves are kind of cancelling on their own throughout the country. So were analyzing those to see if its necessary right now or if it can be postponed and revisited later. Weve also launched a temporary emergency program, this is designed again to kind of limit the amount of people that need to be together in one confined space at one time. Not technically confined space, but a tight space. And so were specifically right now looking to have people who are in quote unquote vulnerable populations be kind of the first ones to be able to if their job permits and their job is allowing for this, to telecommute from the location. Vulnerable populations as defined by the city and specifically the department of Public Health are people over 60 and people with specific Underlying Health conditions. Weve also been coordinating through our i. T. And finance to obtain Additional Resources to increase these capacities. So things like do we have enough laptops . Do we need more laptops . Do we have enough band width to support the people at the same time accessing our servers from a remote location . These are all things that have to go into this analysis. Weve increased cleaning. Our cleaning is focused on hightouch points where people come in and go out. Were also looking to identify how and that is specifically to the 525 building where we have a lot of people, around a thousand people come to that building daily. Were also looking to identify additional cases or Additional Resources that we can employ at our other facilities. Were also doing scenario planning, although at this point its extremely in its infancy, of what if we have a positive case pop up in one of the facilities and what are the protocols going to be there . So were waiting for guidance from d. P. H. As well as the department of Human Resources. I. T. Is also engaging in increased cleaning of shared electronic equipment. Weve also increased tremendously our communication about these efforts. I will emphasize with you all the importance of personal hygiene, watching the hands washing the hands, making sure were vigilant. Even after im touching this podium, thank you, i was going to say pulpit, but thats not the right word the podium, i have my Hand Sanitizer im going to use after this, so its being vigilant about these things. We have all sorts of signage up in the rest rooms, in the work break rooms, throughout the facilities. We have launched a share point page which is within the puc internet that is going to have uptodate information that people can access. We have a news letter that is primary geared to target the field staff so theyre also getting uptodate information. Lastly, we just had a tremendous amount of coordination with the department of Human Resources and the department of Emergency Management for Disaster Service worker response. Weve had such great assistance from all corners of our organization to go in and assist with Public Outreach campaigns, with truck driving, with planning and scenario planning and analysis and tracking phone calls. I mean, there is just a tremendous amount of work that goes on with dealing with a declared emergency specific to this nature. So a big shoutout to the entire puc staff because people have really been coming together and its been a tremendous unifying experience. Any questions . Actually, two things i would add before questions. One is that the Southeast Community facility, that is one that the community uses, so weve been working with the commission to talk about maybe, you know, reducing the usage for large gatherings, so were working with that. And then the other thing which is good and bad is that since we are battletested as far as emergencies weve been having with the rim fire and other things, that mary ellen carole who used to be our Emergency Point person is now head of d. E. M. And now shes identifying folks who she feels can come right in and sit in. And a lot of those folks are our people. So were like, wait a minute, time out, we need these folks as well. So its sort of a good thing, but were opening up the doc and were going to Work Together on how we can better balance doing our services and making sure that we protect our workers as well. To that end, ill add were sending folks to training specific to refresh that Emergency Response as g. M. Kelly mentioned. The last time we went through Something Like this, it was the rim fire, so its been a little bit. We want to capture people who havent gone through that experience. That is going to be happening this week in preparation for activating our own doc. How about weve heard a lot about sick leave, how are we dealing with that . Sure. So were essentially expanding the use of sick leave as necessary and also relaxing certain procedural requirements that we normally have for this kind of situation. So if someone is experiencing flulike symptoms or triggers for the coronavirus, were not asking for them to fill out the form and do all that stuff, but we were asking for, theyre in communication with their own personal Health Care Provider and following the guidance according to that medical provider and were in constant communication with them so we can understand the situation as it evolves for them. How about School Closures . That is something were analyzing more in the continuity of operations because as those as schools close, that likely will impact a significant population of our staff. And we were informed yesterday that its possible for people to use sick leave in addition to all sorts of other accrued leave if schools start closing down. So there is basically a relaxation, if you will, to encourage these kind of social distancing things. How about for new employees that may not have may have limited sick leave and . They may have other kind of accrued leave. But the option is for them to always they cant always come into work obviously. If theyre able to telecommute that is something theyre able to do, but those situations we have to analyze on a case by case basis which were doing. Okay. I mean, case by case, we have a huge we have many employees, so casebycase doesnt sound workable. There is already a relaxing, if you will for the telecommute program that i mentioned earlier. So that will likely be something that can be used by brand new employees, but keep in mind, there are lots of jobs within our organization that may not lend itself to actually working from home. They may have to come in to perform duties. And maybe, because as we get more women in the workforce and in different kinds of jobs, and you live somewhere else and all of a sudden your Elementary School is closed, that could youre hampered. You may not be able to come in. So im wondering what are we doing about those issues because these are not the same kind of issues weve had . If we looked at country where we have more women . I think the first thing is that we are looking at alternative Work Schedules where you can come in later, or come in earlier, or you can work certain hours a day and take a day off. Then were looking at telecommuting. I understand that, but those are good for white collar jobs, but when youre in different kinds of jobs, that doesnt work and thats why im trying to find out, we need to put something in place for that. Im walking through, because we have a lot of folks and were grouping them in categories. As i go through the categories, then you will have a population who dont have a lot of accumulated leave. Therefore, that means that the city has to give something to those folks. And that is something we cant do as the puc, so were working with the Mayors Office and everyone and the mayor to, how do we treat these situations to get to your point . And that is something were definitely looking at as well. Well i appreciate that, because we have two tiered system, one for white collar and one for the other. As we get more and more women, again, into the workplace, doing nontraditional jobs, we have to think of things differently. It cannot be necessarily on a casebycase basis. They have to feel, oh, my god, ill be covered if something happens, not casebycase. And what about Something Like in our building as Hand Sanitizer. Do we have a lot more stations available to people . Do we have the packages . That is something that we have regularly weve been providing that regularly throughout our facilities. Part of Emergency Response is to understand to have people who can do purchasing quickly and understand that process. That is also being coordinated at the city level for these kinds of bulk purchases for example on sanitizer and cleaning solutions. Are we also since this coronavirus, i mean, ive never seen anything like that, even the way it spreads throughout the world, this is really something, but what are we doing for families that work for the puc . Because if they go they worked here and go somewhere else, there is no alcohol, there is no toilet paper, Hand Sanitizer, what are we doing for families that work for us . Is that something we can consider as far as since we order bulk with Hand Sanitizer, it only helps us if everybody is covered . Yeah, at this point, we havent looked at that. Were still focusing mainly on our employees as well as taking guidance from d. P. H. And d. H. R. And d. E. M. From a public perspective. But president caen thats something we can consider. I can look into that. What well do is bring it back, because its probably not only the puc, but as a city type of thing. And just received an email from the city administrator through purchasing about a list of stuff that theyre ordering and they didnt want the departments to order it as an emergency. They had a list of stuff because did you see that . I havent. This came today. But anyway, this changes. I do understand your suggestion that we should really look at how can we help folks because youre right, because i went to costco and everything was gone. Its gone. If you go home, you need to have the same things so you can get back the next day. Toilet paper. What is the thing about the toilet paper . I saw this guy with all this stuff, he said, i dont know, but i needed some. Got to be something about the toilet paper. Do you believe the toilet paper . I welcome your remarks, commissioner. We have to take a very active role in this. Im not going to get political here, but you have to be proactive. You must be you must stay on top of it. You must be we should do that. And by the way, madame secretary, if we could have Hand Sanitizer right up here at the next meeting, keep it in the locker. That would be great. I looked for some in the room and there is none in the room. We have to supply our own, perhaps. A loud voice gets results. And we have to do that. And all the trucks that our guys should have Hand Sanitizer, because we have to make it convenient for them to do the things we know are important for everybodys health. Yes, there are other things. For example, we have wastewater folks who receive the flows from sanitary flows after people who could be sick and so were very concerned about that. So were looking into a lot of touch points where it could definitely have a high risk to our staff population. President caen didnt even think about that. Its a dynamic situation. To say the least. Any other questions . Okay. Thank you. President caen thank you for the report. Any Public Comment . That concludes my report. Thank you. Next item, please. Item 7 is new commission business. President caen commissioners . New business. Okay. No, you want to go first . I dont have any. Im good. Commissioners maxwell . Commissioner maxwell im good. Ill turn to the male side of the commission. Next item, please. 8 is the consent calendar, all matters here under consent calendar are considered to be routine by the San Francisco Public Utilities commission, acted upon by a single vote of the commission. The matter will be removed from the calendar and considered as a separate item . I move that the Consent Agenda. President caen id like to remove something, okay . An item. A. Item a. Okay. So would you like to restate your motion. I thought that was the routine. But i will restate it and say, hopefully i only do it once now, but i will move the entire Consent Agenda minus discussion on measure number a. President caen good. Second. President caen any Public Comment, that anybody would like to remove items . Seeing none, im going to call for the issue with removal of item a. All those in favor . Opposed . Motion carries. So may we have a presentation on i dont need a whole presentation on item a. I just had a question about the Critical Path method scheduling. If someone could clarify what Critical Path method scheduling is. And maybe the cost control step augmentation services. President caen could you august us through this walk us through this . This item is for our program controls staff and its usually for staff augmentation. And so all the Quarterly Reports that you get and the red dots on the reports on whether projects are on schedule, off schedule, what the earned value is, that is what the Critical Path method scheduling is. So its especially important to usually we have so many different activities we need to figure out which activities we need six of them. Which activities will get us to the finish line or to complete the project in the most efficient manner. We do have inhouse staff, but its a small team. Its usually hard to find the Specialized Skill and so we generally have two contracts where we draw from consultants and they support us and they sit in our offices and do the work as well. And they work with the project managers. President caen on the cost control Staff Augmentation Services and the Critical Path method scheduling . Yes, they actually sit in the office yes, they do, they sit with our staff. Maybe another way to explain Critical Path, it is the list of activities that you have that you need to perform to get from the beginning of the project to the end of the project. And then what they do, they identify which ones you have to do before you do the other, so that you have that. And then they, through putting it in through these programs, they identify what is the most Critical Path, that if you delay that activity, it will delay the entire projects. There are some activities you can delay but wont impact the project delivery, so but the up withes that you impact but the ones that you impact, if youre a day late, it will delay the whole project. Thats the Critical Path. Thats great. We can use that in a lot of things. On how to make the blue collar and white collar equal, thats the Critical Path. I like that. Thank you. And on the augmentation services. All of our schedules are costloaded, meaning they have Staff Resources and consultant resources associated with the schedules. So we also check to make sure that staff are not charging more and were still behind schedule, so were trying to line it up so that we have the resources matching up with the schedule. Another great thing about a costloaded schedule, once you identify the schedule which has a Critical Path, each activity is cost loaded, so therefore you know how much you need to spend every month. You have a spenddown curve and it helps us because we can identify how much money we need to ask from the controller every year because we have an idea how much money were going to spend and when were going to spend it. So that really helps us i was going to say, so they know when to use commercial paper, when to sell bonds and when to use our loan dollars. President caen thank you. Great. Thank you. Okay, so now i move item a. Second. Any Public Comment on item a . All those in favor . Opposed . The motion carries. Next item, please. Item 9, approve the plans and specifications and award contract db129. 2 in the amount of 29 million and with the duration of 396 consecutive calendar days, bidder committing the lowest responsive bid, anvil builders. This item is the fourth of our design build contract to provide duct bank and associated facility to provide for transmission and distribution of electrical system for the power enterprise plan to build out and provide power. Commissioners . Questions . Comments . President caen to the general public, any questions, comments . Move to approve . Second. President caen all those in favor . Opposed . The motion carries. Next item. Item 10 i prove the selection of hdr engineering award Agreement Number pro0021, for amount not to exceed 9 million and with duration of eight years. Ill move the item. Second. President caen any comments, questions . Commissioners . To the general public, any questions, comments . All those in favor . Opposed . The motion carries. Thank you, i did just forward to the general manager a link to an article on why toilet paper does get a run during pandemics. President caen thank you. Would you forward that. [laughter] all my friends want to know. I mean, really, in my wildest dreams, thats the last thing i would think of. There are actually good reasons. Call my doctor, is there any kind of medicine i should stockpile in case there is a run on medicine, but toilet paper would not be my next item, too. Okay. President caen next item. Item 11, authorize the general manager forever the potrero station and monitoring and reporting program. Second. President caen any discussion, questions . To the general public . Any questions, discussions . I would like to say that this has been a long time coming, this project. So i think i was around in the days when we were trying to get that power plant shut down, right . And the committees we were putting together and the Community Engagement process, so i think its worth recognizing how far weve come. And now that the site is going to be developed for mixed use, its very exciting. President caen excellent point. I might add, mayor willie brown was very instrumental in that project so long ago. So long ago. Really proud of the work that the developers has done over the many years to reach out to the community and to make sure that the input came in as deep as it ended up being, as we get at this point. President caen good point. So, we have a motion . And a second. All those in favor . Did we call for Public Comment . I forgot to call for Public Comment. Seeing none, i would like to call the question, all those in favor . Opposed . The motion carries. Next item. Item 12 approve amendment number 5 to agreement cs911r, increasing the duration by nine months not to exceed 10 years and five months with no change to the agreement amount. President caen lets see. Ill move approval. President caen okay. Second . Second. President caen any questions, comments, commissioners . To the general public, any questions or comments on this item . Seeing none, all those in favor . Opposed . The motion carries. Next item. Item 13, adopt resolution affirming the San Francisco Public Utilities commissions support for acquiring pacific gas and Electric Company electric assets in San Francisco. President caen ms. Hale . Assistant general manager for power. Under this item, you would be identifying priorities for key priorities that need to be satisfied for the city to move forward on the proposed acquisition of pg es transmission and distribution of assets serving San Francisco. Those key priorities address financial stability, support for utility workforces, community and worker safety, Climate Change prevention and mitigation, affordability and equity, Operational Excellence and improved service to City Departments. Happy to take any questions you may have regarding the item. Its responsive to an interest i believe on behalf of the commissioners to express some Additional Guidance to staff and its also quite consistent with a public resolution heard at Land Use Committee yesterday of the board of supervisors, which addresses some of the same key priorities from the boards perspective. Happy to take any questions. President caen at that meeting, were there any comments or suggestions about changing it . Or no. The committee took up the item, discussed it among themselves primarily. The committee chair, supervisor peskin, introduced the item. And my recollection is comment was called for, but none was made. The item was referred out of committee with support. President caen okay. I have a question, also. You said in the same sentence, some of the and then you went to all of the yes, i corrected myself. Is that the content is the same. With respect to the key priorities. Id like to move the item. Second it. President caen further discussion . Any comment from our huge audience here . Seeing none, missi hale, my mem to you yesterday, so i should feel comfortable about that . Yes. If i recall correctly, you inquired how inspections were addressed . I took that to mean, be more of a general concern about president caen we condition assets. Yes, Condition Assessment is the term i was searching for. Yes. And given the emphasis on safety reliability, excellence and service, all of those key priorities go to the condition of the assets, both as we acquire them and as we plan for improving them over time. Assuming we have ownership responsibility, we care about that. The day of purchase and going forward, right . And making sure that we have considered asset condition and the investments well be required to provide safe and Reliable Service in our projections of the cost of operating the system. Which we have in the modelling weve done to date. And i think its very consistent with the concern you expressed in your note about inspections to see the key priorities listed as they are. President caen okay, so im comfortable with that. One other question. So, this is our resolution from the commission. What is is there going to be another resolution from the board of supervisors . Yes. So they considered a resolution in the Land Use Committee yesterday. And they made since ive been here, i dont know if theyve taken action on it at their Board Meeting today, they may have. President caen is it skirnt with ours . Consistent with ours . With respect to the key priorities. The preamble leading up to them is a little different there. Just because of the history that has gone into in the board item. A little more. President caen could you share that . Id be happy to provide you with a copy. President caen okay. Is it anything we should be concerned about . No just accurate recitation of the activities on this project. President caen well, they have the right to do whatever they want to do. Sure. Yes. And its just for the public, it is a publicly available document on the board of supervisors website. Sorry, did you say theyre considering the resolution . Its my understanding that the Public Meeting of the board of supervisors today had that they could act on that item yes, right now. And if not, they might act on it with us. Its available for them to act on today or any day after. President caen and its been noticed and everything. Yes, thats my understanding. Just to clarify they cant do it while were there because were in joint session, but right, joint closed session. Its not on the agenda. So there are two agendas. There is regular meeting agenda, its on that. Whether they will vote on that before our joint closed session, hard to say. It is not part of the joint closed session agenda. Thank you. I apologize if my presentment made that confused. At our joint closed session, we can talk about whatever we want. You can talk about the pending litigation that is listed on the agenda for that closed session. President caen we have counsel right here. I looked at her but then i had to defer to you, of course, madame chair. President caen okay, thank you. So, i will call for the question. All those in favor . Opposed . The motion carries. Well, my agenda tells me its time to adjourn this meeting. Is there any further business . I have a question. You know, i know the board of supervisors flops their schedule around quite often. Is there any flexibility i dont know if its through the secretary or to possibly since were done early to whip at all . No, because its been noticed for 4 00 p. M. , they cannot call the closed session before 4 00 p. M. And i recommend we adjourn, since we do not have any other agenda items. President caen this meeting it adjourned at 2 58. Can we have order . Wait a minute. I never used this. Are we set . Okay. Good afternoon or maybe good evening and welcome to the m