Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Public Safety Committee 20240713

Part of the file will be submitted today as to the clerk. Items acted upon today will appear on the march 21st, 2020, board of supervisors agenda, unless other stated. And related to the coronavirus disease, we are asking all attend decees of this meeting to maintain at least four feet between themselves and others, regularly wash your hands for 20 seconds at a time, and try to avoid touching highvolume services as much as possible. Thank you for that, mr. Clerk. For reasons related to the Current Public Health crisis, we are likely to continue items 3 and 4. So if anyone is here for those, you should be aware of that. So mr. Clerk, can you please call the first item. Item 1is a hearing to consider that the issuance of a type 57 special onsale beer and wine Liquor License to the owners association, doing business as the four seasons private residences, will serve the public convenience or necessity of the city and county. Thank you. Good morning members of the board. You have before you p. C. M. For 607 mission, Residence Owner association. They have applied for a type 57 license, and if approved, it should allow them to sell special onsale general. There are zero protests, zero items of support. Theyre located on plot 212, consider a highcrime area, and a high saturation area. The southern station has no opposition, and a. L. U. Recommendation is to approve the license without recommending any new conditions. Chairman great, thank you. Is the applicant here, or a representative . Yes. Good morning. Im beth hopalofia, representing the applicant. We understand that the Supervisors Office has requested a continuance of this item and would like to meet with the project sponsor. So were making plans to do that prior to the next meeting date. Chairman fantastic. Thank you. If there are no comments or questions, well open this up for Public Comment. Are there any members of the public who would like to testify on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is now closed. As the applicants representative said, supervisor haney has requested with continue this item to allow additional time for his office and the applicant to meet. We can continue this item to the march 26th regular meeting and still not go past our 90day period during which were trying to make action. I will move we continue this to the march 26th regular meeting. We can take that without objection. Mr. Clerk, please call the next item . Item 2 is the hearing to consider that the transfer of a type 48 onsale Liquor License to buzz works incorporated, at 365 11th street will serve the convenience and necessity of the city and county. You have before you p. C. M. For buzz works. If approved, this would allow them to operate an onsale. There are zero letters of protest. I understand there are letters of support. They are located on plot 242, considered a high crime area. On census track 1082, considered a high saturation. And a. L. U. Recommendation is to approve this license without any new conditions. Chairman great. Thank you. Is the applicant here . Members of the board, distinguished chair, im ladd coupe, and im the owner and operator of buzz works. Ive been in San Francisco and owning a variety of nightclubs and restaurants during the last 30 years. I own butter, a legacy venue, that has been there for quite a while. I opened up buzz works about four years ago. And weve had seamless integration and carefree operations. Weve been operating as a type 42, which is 21 and up, craft beer sports bar. The only thing that this new application will allow us to do is add a line of craft spirits, in addition to our craft beer offerings, which are the widest variety in the city of San Francisco. We look to complement our existing operations, which wont change because well still be a 21 and up drinking place. There is really no operational changes needed, other than having an additional line of product. Otherwise, you know, we appreciate your support. And we have a lot of support from our neighborhood, from all of the residents. And people who have been patronizing and supporting our operations and our venue for quite some time. And we look forward to moving forward and having a great relationship with San Francisco and the a. L. U. , and the Police Department and fire department, as we always have. Thank you. Chairman thank you. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is now closed. Colleagues, my understanding is that supervisor haney is supportive of this application. And i dont see any reason not to make a motion or not to therefore direct our clerk to prepare a resolution, finding that this transfer will meet public convenience and necessity, and i will move to forward that resolution to the full board with positive recommendation, and we can take that without objection. Great. Mr. Clerk, please call our next item. Item 3is an ordinance amending the health code to require the director of health to adopt minimum and healthy standards in adult sex venues, but prohibiting them from adopting or regulate doors or mandate unlocked doors in areas where Sexual Activity may occur. Chairman colleagues, as i indicated earlier, although i am eager to have this item acted on by the full board, as part of the citys response to covid19, president yee has requested that Board Members postpone hearings that have large turnouts. So im going to be moving to continue this item to a future meeting, on a date to be determined, by the call of the chair. We do need to take Public Comment on this. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is now closed. And so i will move that we continue this call of the chair. We can take that without objection. Thank you, colleagues. Mr. Clerk, please call our next item. Agenda item 4 is a hearing to discuss the affects of ondemand delivery and Delivery Companies on Small Businesses. Chairman similarly, this is an extremely important topic, but in light of the current crisis, and president yees direction to postpone nonessential legislation are hearings with large public turnout, im going to, after taking Public Comment, move to continue this to the call of the chair. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak on this item . So ill just rules in Public Comment are we allow you two minutes. Please state your first and last name. If you have prepared written statements, youre encouraged to leave a copy with the clerk. No applause ar or booing is allowed. I will ad lib a small part of Public Comment that i feel it is a wonderful topic for you guys to bring up as a member of Small Business, and seeing the impact of the Delivery Services have had on myself and neighboring businesses and throughout the city. I think it is time that the city does take some sort of steps to regulate the viral spread of this and its impact. I mean, its really killing small restaurants and bars and stuff. And its hurting our bottom lines. Theyve got no overhead the way we do, and most of them use tactics to take advantage of the businesses that they serve. And it really needs to be really addressed. Thank you. Chairman thank you. Are there any other members if there are members of the public that would like to speak on this item, if folks could line up on the far side of the chamber. Hi. I heard what you said about the reasons for postponing it, and i thought that might happen today, but i rearranged my whole week to be here today, and i called city hall to find out if this meeting was happening specifically for this item. Im trying to figure out how in the future to make sure i have to get coverage for people at home, so how do i know if an item and the agenda is actually going to be heard, or if it is not, before i come to city hall. Is there a way for me to check that before i get here . Chairman i answer that or try to attempt to answer that after Public Comment is over. Thank you very much. Chairman are there any other members of the public . You wanted to say the same thing . Im victor eskovito, and we own two restaurants and a food truck. Really, this is really affecting us, where location Means Nothing anymore. And so there is its a real problem. And it could work. We could make it work, and i think it should be something that we should really address because it is going to put people out of business, and it is really going to change. If you want to attract good chefs to San Francisco, they have to start out with a Small Business and then maybe get hired with bigger restaurants. The whole dynamic of the San Francisco culinary culture is going to suffer if this is not really just regulated, and it has to happen. So it would be great to have it really taken seriously. Chairman thank you. Are there any other members of the public who would like to speak on this item before i close Public Comment. Public comment is now closed. So this is an extraordinary circumstance that were in. I would say one way to check on whether a hearing is happening is to call the office of the principle sponsor. In the case of ondemand delivery, perhaps supervisor safai or peskin ts office wouldnt necessarily have known these were going to be continued. Mr. Chair, if we do know, we can pass on this information or we can provide more direct Contact Information of someone who works in the office of the sponsoring supervisor to provide the information. My phone number is also on the front of our agenda. 4155544445, and interested constituents can contact me directly from that phone number. Chairman thank you, mr. Clerk. And the other thing i would say is i would, now for the duration of however long this lasts, i think it is worth, particularly if the agenda item looks like it might be nonessential or something that could be deferred until later, its worth checking before coming down here because we are trying to significantly limit members of the public congregating in any of these rooms and potentially spreading covid19. And, yes, chair ste stephanie . Thank you, chair manhandlmandelman. If you cant come to the next hearing, you can email us and the clerk and let us know your story and it can be added to the file. I want you to know your voice will be heard no matter what, if you cant make the next hearing date. There are other ways to communicate. I feel this is such an important topic. I would like to be added as a cosponsor to the hearing, and just know your voice can still be heard if you cant make the next hearing. Thank you. And i would just like to apologize to the folks who did come down and your voice has been heard, but i hope youll be able to come to this when it does eventually happen, when we are on the other side of the curve. Mr. Clerk, are there any other items before us today . Youve made a motion to call the chair chairman i have made a motion. Well take that without objection. Thank you. There is no further business. Chairman there is no further business, so were adjourned. Thank you. San francisco, 911, whats the emergency . San francisco 911, police, fire and medical. The tenderloin. Suspect with a six inch knife. He was trying to get into his car and was hit by a car. San francisco 911 whats the exact location of your emergency . Welcome to the San Francisco department of Emergency Management. My name is shannon bond and im the lead instructor for our dispatch add academy. I want to tell you about what we do here. This is San Francisco 911. Do you need police, fire or medical . San francisco police, dispatcher 82, how can i help you . Youre helping people in their what may be their most vulnerable moment ever in life. So be able to provide them immediate help right then and there, its really rewarding. Our agency is a very combined agency. We answer emergency and nonemergency calls and we also do dispatching for fire, for medical and we also do dispatching for police. We staff multiple call taking positions. As well as positions for police and fire dispatch. We have a priority 221. I wanted to become a dispatcher so i could help people. I really like people. I enjoy talking to people. This is a way that i thought that i could be involved with people every day. As a 911 dispatcher i am the first first responder. Even though i never go on seen scene im the first one answering the phone call to calm the victim down and give them instruction. The information allows us to coordinate a response. Police officers, firefighters, ambulances or any other agency. It is a great feeling when everyone gets to go home safely at the end of the day knowing that youve also saved a citizens life. Our department operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This is shift work. That means we work nights, weekends and holidays and can involve over time and sometimes thats mandatory. This is a high stress career so its important to have a good balance between work and life. We have Resources Available like wellness and peer support groups. Our dispatchers of the month are recognized for their outstanding performance and unique and ever changing circumstances. I received an accommodation and then i received dispatcher of the month, which was really nice because i was just released from the phones. So for them to, you know, recognize me for that i appreciated it. I was surprised to even get it. At the end of the day i was just doing my job. A typical dispatch shift includes call taking and dispatching. It takes a large dedicated group of fifrst responders to make ths department run and in turn keep the city safe. When you work here you dont work alone, you work as part of a team. You may start off as initial phone call or contact but everyone around you participating in the whole process. I was born and raised in San Francisco so its really rewarding to me to be able to help the community and know that i have a part in you know, even if its behind the scenes kind of helping the city flow and helping people out that live here. The Training Program begins with our sevenweek academy followed by on the job training. This means youre actually taking calls or dispatching responders. You can walk in with a high school diploma, you dont need to have a college degree. We will train you and we will teach you how to do this job. We just need you to come with an open mind that we can train you and make you a good dispatcher. If its too dangerous to see and you think that you can get away and call us from somewhere safe. Good. Thats right. From the start of the academy to being released as a solo dispatcher can take nine months to a year. Training is a little over a year and may change in time. The training is intense. Very intense. Whats the number one thing that kills people in this country . So were going to assume that its a heart attack, right . Dont forget that. As a new hire we require you to be flexible. You will be required to work all shifts that include midnights, some call graveyard, days and swings. You have to be willing to work at different times, work during the holidays, you have to work during the weekends, midnight, 6 00 in the morning, 3 00 in the afternoon. Thats like the toughest part of this job. We need every person thats in here and when it comes down to it, we can come together and we make a really great team and do our best to keep the city flowing and safe. This is a big job and an honorable career. We appreciate your interest in joining our team. We hope you decide to join us here as the first First Responders to the city and county of San Francisco. For more information on the job and how to apply follow the links below. Is our United States constitution requires every ten years that america counts every human being in the United States, which is incredibly important for many reasons. Its important for preliminary representation because if Political Representation because if we under count california, we get less representatives in congress. Its important for San Francisco because if we dont have all of the people in our city, if we dont have all of the folks in california, california and San Francisco stand to lose billions of dollars in funding. Its really important to the city of San Francisco that the federal government gets the count right, so weve created count sf to motivate all sf count to motivate all citizens to participate in the census. For the immigrant community, a lot of people arent sure whether they should take part, whether this is something for u. S. Citizens or whether its something for anybody whos in the yUnited States, and it is something for everybody. Census counts the entire population. Weve given out 2 million to over 30 communitybased organizations to help people do the census in the communities where they live and work. Weve also partnered with the Public Libraries here in the city and also the Public Schools to make sure there are informational materials to make sure the folks do the census at those sites, as well, and weve initiated a campaign to motivate the citizens and make sure they participate in census 2020. Because of the language issues that many Chinese Community and families experience, there is a lot of mistrust in the federal government and whether their private information will be kept private and confidential. So its really important that communities like bayviewhunters point participate because in the past, theyve been under counted, so what that means is that funding that should have gone to these communities, it wasnt enough. Were going to help educate people in the tenderloin, the multicultural residents of the tenderloin. You know, any one of our given blocks, theres 35 different languages spoken, so we are the original u. N. Of San Francisco. So its our job is to educate people and be able to familiarize themselves on doing this census. You go online and do the census. Its available in 13 languages, and you dont need anything. Its based on household. You put in your address and answer nine simple questions. How many people are in your household, do you rent, and your information. Your name, your age, your race, your gender. Everybody is 2,000 in funding for our child care, housing, food stamps, and medical care. All of the residents in the city and county of San Francisco need to be counted in census 2020. If youre not counted, then your community is underrepresented and will be underserved. Know how hard you have worked to win a state championship. It is an absolutely incredible accomplishment. Dont correct my grammar because i went to galileo high school, and you went to lowell. You did it focused as a team, and it matters. You are going to look back on this time in your life, and you are going to think wow, this was the best time of my life. It may not seem that way right now, but a few years from now, youre going to look back, and youre going to really remember your teammates, youre going to remember the excitement when you played, and yes, the challenges, because we know it takes a lot of hard work, both physically and mentally to get to a place where you can win a state championship, and i wanted you all to know how proud we are in San Francisco that these incredible women that are sitting before me today achieved this incredible milestone. So i wanted to take the opportunity to honor you here at city hall because im really proud of each of you for what you were able to do. I want to ask your coach, coach sung, to come up, and say a few words. Is the coach here today . There you go. Come on up, coach. [applause] the hon. London breed wait a minute. You look like youre a student at Lowell High School. You know, not too long ago, i was at lincoln. The hon. London breed lincoln . Too nice. And not too long ago, you guys beat lincoln. Not when i was playing. Come on up, coach, and congratulations to everybody. [applause] good evening. My name is kelly sung, and i am the varsity coach at Lowell High School. First, id like to thank mayor london breed and her staff for inviting us here tonight. Its so amazing to be recognized for all our hard work. Growing up and attending lincoln high school, the aaa teams never made it far in the post season. In the beginning of this season, our goal was to win our section title and to get past the second round of norcal. We were able to accomplish that and so much more, but i will let marie go kind of speak to that. What i wanted to touch on is how proud i am of these girls. Before practice or tournaments, you could find them studying for their tests or getting ahead of homework. It is hard to balance academics and sports at such a prestigious school. Our team held the highest accumulative grade point average of any team at Lowell High School. Telling teams that they are your Favorite Team is sort of bad practice, but in my nine years of coaching, i have to admit this is one of my Favorite Teams to coach. Not only because of the success they had, but because of their love for volleyball and each other. I hope you all remember how much of an impact you have made on not only Lowell High School but in womens sports. You are the first team at lowell and the first team in aaa to win state titles. Continue to lastly, i want to thank the parents for your support this season. Having to leave work early or wake up at 5 00 a. M. For tournaments is not easy, but just know that we would not have accomplished this without your unwavering support, so thank you so much. And next, were going to have our team captain, mari mariko tanaka. Good evening, everyone. My name is mariko tanaka, and i am a senior at Lowell High School. This past Volleyball Season was one of the most amazing experiences ive ever had, and i am so thankful to be a part of this team and so proud to be able to accomplish something even beyond my imagination. At the beginning of this season, winning state was something i never thought my team would get an opportunity to achieve. Our main goal was to win aaa section championships and advance past the second round of c. I. A. Norcal playoffs. The team stayed focused on reaching this goal, and with the hard work came reward to go undefeated in league play and win our city championship. After this, keeping focus was extremely hard, but with the encouragement of our coaches, kelly and j. J. , we won the first and second and then third round against burlingame in an extremely close match, knocking off the number one seed on their home turf to win the championship is indescribable. We are under dogs again in the c. I. F. Playoffs, but we were able to bring back the first state championship in volleyball in San Francisco history. [applause] individually, everyone on this team is very different, but we managed to find a way to gel together in the most perfect way possible. On behalf of this team, i would like to thank mayor london breed for having us and would also like to thank all friends and family for all the support you showed for us this season. Thank you. [applause] the hon. London breed thank you. All right. Thank you. That was great. Whos the next speaker here . Oh, the principal, yes. And again, let me just say, i notice that theres some members of the press here. I hope you get the word out about the incredible students at our school that are achieving great things because we need to continue to shine a light on all the work that they do to accomplish such a great thing here in San Francisco. So with that, come on up. [applause] i would also like to thank london mayor breed mayor london breed. I know that she was a galileo lion, but now that she is the mayor of this great city, someday she has to be a mission bear or a washington great eagle, but today, i would like to have her as a lowell cardinal. [applause] this was an incredibly exciting season. Every week, we would advance a little bit. I would come back to the office, and they would say, they won again, they won again. And i was there at that burlingame game. That was a very exciting game. There were moments when the opposing team looked like they were set up to get some wonderful spike, and no, didnt happen. So what i could really see was our young women here had the most incredible focus, and they were looking at each other like this; you get it. And thats what won the Championship Team work. I couldnt be prouder of these young women who brought home a championship and on top of that maintained the highest g. P. A. , continued to do so well in their academics. We will say goodbye to the ones who graduate this here, but we have a great young team coming up, and i would love to come back here next year. Thank you so much for bringing lowell to city hall, and thank you to our mayor for having us. [applause] and now, i believe the mayor will give the certificates. The hon. London breed we have jennie lam, who is a teacher and an elected member of the school board. What she does, she makes sure, along with the school board, that you have the tools you need. So with that, ill turn it over to you. Thank you. First, were going to acknowledge our players and then the coaches. So first, id like to acknowledge kaly bucmongla, katey yee, heather wu, carly lu, kelsey mah, pearl vermilia, gabrie gabriela kwak, alexandra chow, eliana ellie brown, alina qi, aleti edmonds, mariko tanaka, kylonni wong, assistant coach joshua jong. Last, but not least, head coach kelly sung. Can we get a Group Picture with the mayor at the podium, and then last with players and coaches. [applause] the hon. London breed well, its that simple. That concludes our program, and again, i want to just thank all of you and congratulations to this incredible team. Thank you to the parents and the family members who are here today. We appreciate your support, and well, i would say continue to get good grades, but you guys go to lowell so i dont have to say that. Continue to just remember that you all as champions are leaders. People look up to you because of what youve been able to accomplish, and so continue to hold your heads up high, do all the great things that you are meant to do, and who knows what may end up happening in the future. You could end up mayor. So thanks for coming today, and congratulations. [applause] clerk good morning. The meeting will come to order. And wednesday to the march 4, special meeting of the government audit and oversight committee. And the chair of this committee is here and joined by aaron peskin and matt haney. Thank to the clerk john carroll and thank tom loftis from sfgovtv for staffing this meeting. Any announcements. Koirk silence your cellphones and Electronic Devices and your documents that have to be included as part of the file should be submitted to the clerk. And it appears on the march 10, 2020 agenda unless otherwise stated. Mr. Clerk, call item number 1. Clerk a motion directing the clerk of the board to initiate a request for proposals process for special Investigation Services. Thank you. Supervisor haney, as a sponsor of this measure, the floor is yours. Thank you, chair marr, and good morning, everyone. I think that this is, you know, obviously a very challenging time for our city right now with multiple departments who have been implicated in a larger investigation. Clearly, you know, charges that have been levied by the u. S. Attorney against individuals in government and outside. And it is critical that we do everything that we can to investigate fully, prevent any future fraud or corruption, and to do everything that we can to restore the public trust. This is not a time for business as usual and i think that the public is looking to us as the board of supervisors to investigate fully to make some serious changes around accountability and transparency and to do this in a way that the public fully understands what is happening and why. I know that there are a number of things that are happening and i want to acknowledge supervisor peskins work in really making sure that were using our full powers as a committee and yours as well, chair marr, in restoring and bringing some role for a subpoena power here to the committee. Theres, of course, also the federal investigation, the City Attorney, the controller doing full investigation. And theyre doing their part. And its critical that we do not hesitate in doing ours as the board of supervisors. The audits and the investigations that are occurring now are critical. But they are also not intentionally designed not to be comprehensive in identifying all of the areas of local government where corruption or fraud are occurring or are prone to happening. There are clearly gaps that we can complement as the board of supervisors with thirdparty Investigative Services, which allow the board of supervisors to play a much more active role. Our constituents are looking to us to help restore faith in local government and i think that theres a general concern that we are going to fail to bring in outside eyes and outside role in helping to restore the integrity and trust. I think that theres a role, a Critical Role for thirdparty independent oversight and investigation in that. San franciscoians want us to stand up for them and i think that it would behoove us to do more than as we have been doing it would behoove us to actually be proactive in how this is done. Our city charter grants the board of supervisors broad powers of hearing inquiries so we can carry out our duties as the legislative branch of the city and county of San Francisco. And were also empowered to seek support in our role. To provide Invaluable Services to the board analyzing budgets and legislation, conducts research and helping to inform our policy proposals. The nature of the charges that have been filed and the potential for as of yet discovered illegal or inappropriate and unethical behaviors, and the need to restore accountability and transparency and trust require us as the board of supervisors to urgently procure thirdparty Investigative Services. With a special investigator we can investigate allegations that are coming directly to us that the City Employees or members of the employee have not yet felt comfortable reporting through the whistleblower problem or the current hotline. We can work closely together to identify certain policies to prevent misbehavior or corruption and how they may be violated. And we can pursue leads with the power of subpoena. We have the power of the subpoena now in this committee well, we will and with that complemented by the Investigative Services, would allow us to identify what sort of subpoenas are needed and to followup on leads. We can also look at broader systemic issues related to policies or oversight as they relate to contracts or permitting and understand what legislative changes are needed. And the important thing here is that we dont know yet exactly what will be revealed and well need to follow certain leads. For last few weeks my office in partnership with the clerk of the board, the City Attorney, supervisor ronen and other colleagues have thoroughly vetted options to provide the flexible, independent Investigative Services necessary for the board to actively respond. Today i have a set of amendments to proceed with a procurement process that relies on a pool of firms prequalified by the Controllers Office, rather than to begin a new solicitation process. Section 21. 4 of the administrative code allows departments to issue prequalified pools of prospective contractors in accordance with open and fair procedures and may have lists of prequalified contractors for commodities and services for future contracts as needed by the city. And the city controller maintains such a list of prequalified audit firms including those qualified for forensic auditing and Investigative Services. To be clear, it is not the intent of this motion to duplicate any investigations already occurring. We owe it to the people of San Francisco to be prudent with our resources. Over the next few months well hear regularly from the controller on their audits and likely see subpoenas and potentially cases filed by the City Attorney. And to complement those efforts well have the support of a special investigator. We should proceed with urgency to begin this work without delay. I have another set of sort of more specifics of how this will work and what this process would look like, but i also want to ask the clerk of the boar Angela Calvillo to come up and to lay out a bit on how this process would work, what the timing of it would be, and then theres a couple other quick things that i want to share and then we can open up to discussion if thats okay with you, chair. Sure, thank you so much, supervisor haney. Madam clerk, if you could just pause, supervisor peskin, i believe, had im happy to defer until after the clerk has spoken. Great. Members of the committee, chair mar, Angela Calvillo. If the board approves this direction for the clerk, our office will work with member offices to create to understand and to create the scope of work that would be included. Areas to be investigated, timeframes. And the expected deliverables. The Controllers Office has as heard an upcoming list of prequalified auditing firms that have been established through a request for qualification process. And that we will utilize instead of going through the r. S. P. Process which would take longer to complete. Well send a letter of intent and solicit a proposal from the top two or three prekawstled prd firms. We would assemble a informal pan to rank and to prioritize the qualified firms based upon the preset criteria. Criteria that would include years of experience, available resources, estimated costs special Investigation Services with regard to potential deception, fraud and corruption within local government. The panel would recommend the most qualified firms. The clerk would then bring that to the committee or to the board for review and your approval. And once approved, we would begin to enter into negotiations with the firms and would request parallel funding at that point if necessary through a supplemental process. Thank you. Supervisor peskin. Thank you, chairman mar, and thank you, chairman, for having this special hearing today on both of these items that have to do with one of the most sorted chapters of corruption that ive encountered in the 20 years that i have been an on and off again member of the board of supervisors, on and off again member. I absolutely appreciate everything that the proposer of this motion said. Yes, this body has an obligation, a responsibility, the charter authority, and the unlimited ability to inquire and to get to the bottom of things and i also appreciate your comments about not otherwise interfering or impeding with ongoing civil and criminal investigations. And i think and i just quickly read the changes that this all really comes down to what is the scope of work. And i believe that we may indeed need thirdparty expert outside investigatory help. But i dont yet know the scope of what that should be. The controller is doing their work. We have the budget and legislative analyst who we can use for policy recommendations and the City Attorney is doing their work and the u. S. Attorney and the f. B. I. Is doing their work. And this body has a role to play and, of course, the next item that has not been called is the beginning of what i imagine would be a number of different hearings delving down into this. But the only question that i have is what is the scope of work. And i would like to pause it that we dont yet know what expert things that we need that we do not have within our existing resources, be it the controller, City Attorney, and budget and legislative analyst office, and, indeed, the members of the board of supervisors and our staff. So i can foresee a need for this. Im not exactly sure how we can authorize the letting of a contract with a prequalified pool of vendors until we know exactly what services were requesting of them. So i just want to put that out there. I realize this is an evolving and an ever worsening set of revelations, thats the only question that i have. Supervisor haney. Thank you. No, and i totally appreciate that. And i think that, you know, theres a sense that from my perspective that we are going to need Investigative Services and support. And that the actual scope of it theres some things that we might put in the scope of it now but as you said a lot of this is, you know, being unveiled in various ways and there will likely be times in which we want to be flexible. One of the things, for example, i know that and i know that the controller is here that the first report which i think is on somewhat narrow focus on contracting within p. D. W. , and that we would have that first report come to us. And there may be things that we want to followup on further, specific things that come out of that that we want to have to be investigated. One of the things madam clerk, if you might just clarify in a little more detail this particular question of the scope and when we would really have to define the scope, how what is the timeline for that. Because, you know, it seems to us that we have to start this process to even begin to have a conversation about the scope. And, you know, the scope could be broad and flexible is my understanding. That is true, through to the chair to the members. I just had a discussion with our controller who indicated that his upcoming list should not be available for another month at least. So we would not be able to obtain even the list for several weeks. In the meantime as perhaps the g. A. O. Is having hearings or perhaps as youre having briefings by the City Attorney or the Ethics Commission or the controller, there could be items that come to light that then could inform the ultimate scope of services that youre working towards. And then we could hone our process a little bit further and then modify the scope as soon as you get more information. And this committee would have, of course, another opportunity to both weigh in and directly approve the scope of the services before this were to the committee could, certainly. And there seems as though theres going to be some time to do so. All right. So in just in terms of supervisor peskins question, i agree that theres still some work to figure out the scope. For us this was the first step to even to be able to have a conversation really about scope. And to begin to get the prequalified contractors on this and really start a process of discussing and defining what it is that we might move forward here. And i and i agree with supervisor peskin that we want to be clear about the scope before actually moving this. And thats something that i think that should happen here and it will happen also in informal conversations and happen in looking at what comes out in the next few weeks from the controller and other sources. And even other hearings that were having, there may be things that come up and say, you know what, this is something that makes sense. This feels to me that this is something that were going to need, even based on what came out before. I could make a list of some of the things that i would put in that scope, but i do think that we want to, you know, obviously use resources in a way that helps us to do our job better and really represent the publics interest in terms of getting to the bottom of whats happening and also how to prevent it. But, at the same time, not to duplicate some of the things that are already happening. Supervisor peskin . I absolutely agree insofar as just the technical process of procurement will take a while. That would allow us to get prepared about what that scope of work should be. And in the same way that were preparing ourselves by potentially super majority of our colleagues on tuesday agreed to give this committee the power to issue subpoenas, which hopefully we wont need to do because we will ask each and every individual that we want to talk to to come here voluntarily. But this is another preparatory action. So, yeah, sounds good. Thank you. Maybe we can go to Public Comment on this. So i do have one speaker card. Eileen spoken. If there are other members of the public that would wish to speak on this item, please get in line on the righthand side of the word. Eileen voken, here on my own behalf in strong support of this item. On my way here today on the streetcar i overheard two teenagers talking about learning to drive and the rules of the road. One said to the other, its only illegal if you get caught. I thought that perspective was fascinating and relevant to this item. Thank you. Clerk thank you. Next speaker. Hello, San Francisco city by the bay. This is ace. You might want to hear what ive got to say. As we here going through these processes i just came back from baltimore. And like i said before, before i traveled there i thought that San Francisco was the most racist corrupt city in the United States until i went to baltimore. But i went there and theres corruption there. And then i came back and i seen corruption here. But id like to put a word out in the beginning of this process in light that im a black man, in light that queen bee i call queen bee, the mayor london breed, we as African American oh, scratch that as black americans here in San Francisco are dealing with the most racist situation thats going on here, dealing with the reparation, outmigration and all of these other studies here. The office of racial equity. The removal of Justin Hermans name. So i want you all to be aware as we go on with this investigation, let it be fair, no racial overtones. Because my name is ace, damn it, and im on this case. So i know yall going to be fair because we going to be watching. And you know that our population is very low and were building up resistance right now. And like i said before, its progressive and the moderates got to get together and solve it. What is that . The black population going down. So all these efforts, energy, and all of this money is going to be spent on this investigation, and when it comes back around with the investigation with a lot of the departments in this city by the bay i hope that you get the same. My name is ace and im on this case. Thank you, next speaker, please. Well, lets say for the sake of argument that any District Supervisor who at some time in the distant unforeseeable future, would assist a Small Business owner by acquiring a monetariy subsidy for tens of thousands of dollars annually through the legacy fund program, imagine a proprietor then gets a Mercedes Benz for his or her daughters 18th birthday. And weighing Household Expenses against profit loss, and expenditure and income imagined in that the same proprietor places Campaign Flyers in the windows of their home or holds a fundraiser. And either or both of these places or donates funds towards the incumbents reelection or towards her political party. Can you tell me this would not appear to constitute an impropriety . Do you honestly not say that its an essential problem inherent with the dynamic of the program. Taking on the argument further, say the proprietor holds the premise under l. L. C. And runs under a separate corporate entity and the former raises the rent on the latter. And to assure that the enterprise succeeds on paper. And also most of small Property Owners hold their property under corporate l. L. C. Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. So i just would like to thank supervisor haney for bringing this motion forward. You know, im happy to have been a cosponsor and to see this as an important step that we could take as a board of supervisors in our role as a legislative body. But also as the directly elected representative of the residents in 11 districts in our city to provide oversight and potential policy or legislative changes that will result from the multiple investigations into corruption in our city right now. And i share their concerns thatt supervisor peskin raised about needing to clarify the scope of the contract or the services, the special Investigation Services, but it does seem that with the amendment that supervisor haney brought forward today that that is that is included or addressed in the amendments. So i think that, you know, i am supportive of the, you know, this motion as amended moving forward. Supervisor haney . Thank you, chair mar, and thank you for your support from the beginning on this. One question two quick things one is the controller when will the list be available . And what is sort of the why will it take why is it not available . Good morning, supervisor. So as has been referenced here earlier our office develops prequalified lists of different kinds of expertise that we use in performing our work and then we make those pools available to the department c. E. U. S to procure related services. The pool that were talking about here is one for as supervisor haney has noted for auditing, Forensic Accounting and Investigative Services and the rest. Our former pool has expired and were in the midst of refreshing that pool. And we have been working on that in last couple months. We are near the end of that process and we have proposals in for the prequalified pool. The panel will evaluate and awarding and creating the pool within the next several weeks. And i envision the final pool will be certified likely the last week of march. One could envision a couple pick ups in how these processes work to carry it to the first week of april. But it will be available within several weeks at the latest. Got it. And then one thing about the and so, obviously, this would even to get to point of sending a letter of intent and soliciting proposals we need that prequalified. So at the very least were talking about a few weeks from now or a month from now at the earliest. I want to say one thing about the scope which is that i think that one opportunity that we will have to help really define what sort of services we need actually can come with some support from the firms themselves. If we put out a letter of intent and solicit proposals, there may be some things that these firms identify as being things that we should be looking at closely. And that will also help us to really define the scope as well. You know, in the process of the letter of intent and the proposals that come to us. So i also just want to point that out. But, again, with all of that, for any of that to happen, this is the first step and well have some time to better define what it is and what proposals that were getting and, obviously, we could make a decision at some point not to move forward. But i do think that because of the likelihood that we will need these services, that its important to move forward with this part of the process now. Supervisor peskin. Thank you, chair mar. So through the chair to supervisor haney, the remaining question i have is what will the role of this committee or the board or the clerk be relative to the development of that scope of work . What i think that i just heard you say is that the pool of prequalified vendors could actually make suggestions as to what the scope of work should be. Im trying to figure out how we advise and consent to that ever evolving scope of work and what role the board or this committee plays. Sure. So if i could ask the clerk to come back up sorry. And as we think about this kind of process once we get the prequalified list of firms, as we develop the letter of intent, is that something that even at that stage that we might have this this committee involved with in terms of informing . And then i know that theres also some sort of more informal process where this committee may sort of give its feedback and input and then have some smaller set of either supervisors or with your support to better define that in a smaller group. Can you what might be a process in your view that would make sense in terms of the role of the board in this process . Chair, thank you. Or this committee in the process. Through the chair to the members. Obviously, supervisor haney, as were moving through this process and we received a list and working with the members who are most interested in this, being very cautious not to break the brown act, of course. Happy to bring drafts forward. Happy to have this committee then guide us with the details in the scope as your information evolves. We can certainly add it to the scope. And then you can finally bless the scope. And then we can move forward with the l. O. I. And through the chair to deputy City Attorney pearson, insofar as the next set among this agenda that has not been called is potentially an ongoing vehicle to continue to have these hearings, would it be acceptable if our clerk under that item or a similar type of item yet to be introduced would report back about the scope . Or would we need to have an ongoing hearing item because i assume that once we dispose of this item it leaves the jurisdiction of this committee. Deputy City Attorney ann pearson. The next item is a scheduled hearing concerning the essential scope of public works. I dont think that description would encompass a consideration of the scope because it might still be on the scope of that department. So i would think that you would separately notice any discussion on the scope of work thats brought back to this. This come committee. I suggest that we have an ongoing hearing item with prequalified vendors that we can call and schedule from time to time between now and april and thereafter to get reports and publicly advise the clerk as to the scope of work. Perfect. Perfect. We can assist you in drafting that, supervisor haney. Thank you. Does that make sense, chair mar . I think that does. Especially, you know, i know that the controller is working on several different specific investigations right now and it will be preparing sort of white pairs on those issues that we intend to hear in this committee and in the coming weeks. For example, i think that the first one is on the contracting practices and procedures with the department of public works. So i think that these so i think that so given that there will be more you know, theres ongoing investigations by multiple entities and theres going to be more information, particularly presented publicly by the Controllers Office, that could help to inform the scope of work. I think that it makes sense, yes, to continue this. Perfect. So is there a motion supervisor haney . Yes. So i want to move the amendments and then move this forward as amended. And can we take that without objection . And then ill introduce the hearing so we can have that separately. Great. Thank you. Please call agenda item 2. Clerk agenda item be 2 is a hearing on the public works Core Functions as they relate to Capital Infrastructure project delivery, operations and contracting, as well as an overview of the departments administrative decisionmaking policies and process. Thank you mr. Clerk. Supervisor peskin, the floor is yours. Thank you, chair mar, and thank you for having this special meeting today. And as i said during the last item this is one of the most sorted chapters of corruption that ive seen. Maybe i was in denial, but i thought that the paytoplay underbelly in San Francisco government had gone away or receded and turns out to be abundantly untrue. I want to start out by saying words to the leadership and the rank and file employees of our Public Works Department which is that i know many, if not all of you, worked very, very hard every day and this is as tragic and disappointing to you personally and professionally as it is to every member of this board of supervisors and the Senior Leadership of the city and the people in the county of San Francisco. So i want you to know that i feel that. And while we do have an obligation to inquire and to get to the bottom of it and to figure out how these infirmities came to pass and why the checks and balances failed repeatedly, and to understand the scope, i dont want this to be seen by you as a salacious political attempt by elected officials. What i want this to be although some of it may indeed be pretty prevehicletive, depending what rolls out through the investigations not being done by the board of supervisors, i want this to be a exercise where we figure out how to prevent these things from happening quite frankly. If they could happen in the Public Works Department, they could probably happen in other departments. This is about the control environment and this is about how contracts are procured, this is about the limits that we have, this is about what were now calling the tone at the top, the culture of a department and of the workforce. And so those are all of the things that i would like to focus on and i really wanted to start at a high level. We do this once a year in a very compressed fashion at the budget committee. Where 50 plus departments come through this chamber and are asked questions about what you do and what your performance metrics are and how many new f. T. You want and whatever and that gets compressed into a few minutes. I think that it would be very, very helpful and this is not salacious. It is boring as heck to do some public works 101. Just so we know that what all of those different functions are and then start to drill down on what went wrong, how to fix it and what happened in the interim between the revelations that happened in late january and now to make sure that that controlled environment has been temporarily been fixed and, obviously, this conversation should and hopefully will lead to some structural reforms. Whether they are things that change our charter and have to go before the electorate of San Francisco. Or whether they are changes to the administrative code, in chapter 6 and 21. And whether the Broad Authority that the board of supervisors unanimously granted in around streamlining as it relates to the provision of homeless facilities, needs to be taken back. This is the conversation that i would like to have. I think that its very important to understand not only the size of the departments operating budget, but on the capital side to understand the billions of dollars of projects that flow through there that are directly under public works or are contracted services. I think that its important for this board to be reminded and the public to be reminded that this is a department that provides services to the airport, to rec and park and to the Public Utilities commission. And lets drill down on that and see where that goes. Ive had none of this is gotcha stuff. All of the questions that i intended to ask i have shared with the acting director, and im sorry if i mess this up, but soon well be on a firstname basis, as well as the city administrator and staff to the department. So with that, colleagues, if you dont have any questions i thought that we would start by asking the acting director to start with a high level briefing to this committee about the organizational structure, about the budget, and then i would like to drill down into the contracting process, how contracts are let. Im not asking about any particular contract, at least not yet today. Although and i do want to say to supervisor haney that i very much appreciated your timely hearing on the topic of garbage cans. So i would i know that sounds rather pedestrian but it is actually one of the things that binds every corner of this city and all of our populous and visitors together. And you held i thought a hearing that really shed light on that particular function. And, yes, there are some contracts in and around that issue of procurement of trash cans that are in the public realm that we all know about, but i think that is a good example of how we can understand at least some of the contracting procedures as it relates to obtaining and procuring commodities. And insofar as the acting director is the former director of purchasing, i know that you will be very well positioned to explain all of those procurement processes to this body. And with that i will turn it over to mr. Degraff and reid. Good morning, supervisors. My name is alex degraff and im the acting director of the Public Works Department. First i want to just say thank you for the opportunity to be here today and thank you supervisor peskin for the kind words and the rank and file of the staff at the Public Works Department. I think youre absolutely right. We have over 1,600 individuals that do an amazing job every day every day. So im honored to be here today to provide you as an overview in the work that we do. And then in the latter half of this mornings presentation i will be discussing some of the contracting processes here. I guess that the one thing that hasnt changed here at public works, is that we care about building and the city assets forward and for the people of San Francisco. We have a vision, we have a forward thinking vision that honors the public trust. And the core values that we have are with respect and integrity and responsiveness is something that we try to drive down into every individual within the organization. We do that and we have developed a Strategic Plan which is focused around three goals. The first goal is that we want to be the best in a place to work. And thats not just the best as the City Department to work, we want to be the best place to work in the bay area. So whether it be the private sector or the public sector, we want to be the best place to work. And that really comes down to, you know, having and honoring the work that we do and knowing that the work that we do touches the lives of everyone in San Francisco every day. In the second goal it is to drive innovation as Exceptional Service. As was mentioned before, were actually one of the few departments across the city that operates every 24 7 and i would say arguably touches every person that lives and visits or otherwise comes to San Francisco every day. And so were doing that through very innovative things, whether it be the way that we come up with our routing with the street cleaning and in designing buildings, and the public infrastructure. And for the last and but not least the third goal is to improve and inspire the stewardship of the public spaces. That includes everything from in the public as rightofways and medians and things like that. And we also have a commitment to trying to find ways to get the public to join us in some of these things. Whether it be as a team event or things like that. This is truly as a partnership that we have with as a community that we serve. This is just a quick chart showing i dont want to spend too much time on this, but these seem to be aspirational goals and not necessarily a Strategic Plan per se. But heres my question because some of these things i can actually in my own experience translate into real things. Like what you said around goal number three, which was the improvement and inspiring of the stewardship of public spaces. And it was actually a real performance metric, which is that there are gatherings all over the city on an annual basis where people, nonpublic works employees, come out and participate in graffiti abatement and a host of Different Things. But are there any metrics that go along with goal one, be the best place to work . Is there something that assesses Employee Satisfaction relative to driving and innovating Exceptional Service . Are these just three aspirational goals . Or is this a plan . No. It means that there is a plan behind it. So behind each of those goals there are two key objectives and to give you an example about being or being as the best place to work. Im aware of a survey that was conducted in this past spring and the survey went out to the public works and employees and over the last several months we have been working with our Performance Team within public works to try to evaluate in those comments the feedback that we got back as City Employees. And were in the process of trying to i guess to develop initiatives to address those concerns. But i would defer to my colleague julia dawson if you want with more information about the things that we have done in the past several months. But i can say that these arent just pie in the sky concepts. We are trying to develop defined goals to meet each of these im sorry to try to define key objectives to allow us to meet the goals. Why dont we circle back to that. I dont want to impede your presentation. Thank you. Excuse me. Supervisor haney, did you have a question . I can wait. It was very similar. Whether those actually any sort of ways of measuring each of these goals metrics yeah, same very similar question. Okay, thank you. Please proceed. As far as the organizational structure, i as acting director, report directly to the city had miadministrator, and under me there are four divisions, the infrastructure building and the Operation Division and the Financial Management and the administration division. Each which i have my deputies here today to answer more questions if they do ever come up into any one of those specific areas. But then if further broken down yes, sir . Mr. Atkin i realize that you have only been there a few weeks so i dont expect you to be steeped in all of this. I mean, it takes years to figure out all of the intricacies of a Major Department with over a thousand people and its structure and what have you. But i just had a few questions. Which is, in your city experience, so bigger than your brief public works experience, when i looked at this organizational structure, it seemed very flat to me. I mean, it looks like you have three people, four people, but if you look at the lines its seven people flat who all report to the former director. Is that a common structure that you would have such a flat organizational structure at the top . As i was saying on this chart here, i guess it gives it has the illusion of being flat. But when i first began in the department about a month ago now they have this massive chart. So i can assure you that theres many more layers under this, but in order to have it to be more viewable, you dont see underneath this, in the wings if you will, that it does provide. But i can tell you that the chart that i have seen more recently in our offices, it really covers as a better part of a wall. So i guess that the Broader Organization of this. But to compare that to, for example, my experience at the p. U. C. , i would say it has a similar structure. For example, if harlen kelly and the a. G. M. S there and the assistant and the june wror junr managers and just off the top of my head for external affairs and infrastructure division, waste water, and finance. Then Michael Carlin is the deputy. So its a very its a similar structure there as well. As i cant speak to all of the other departments in the city, but this infrastructure is not for that form. You just put your finger on what i was looking for, which is that i dont see a chief of staff or a deputy in this organizational structure. I dont see an assistant chief. I see a whole bunch of deputy chiefs, if you will, in the parlance of the Police Department organizational structure. But i dont see anything in between the Department Head i dont see an assistant chief, a chief of staff, a deputy chief. Is that missing in this organizational structure . This is, again, not a gotcha question. Im just trying to figure out would this structure be better if there were deputy chiefs under the general manager or director i guess that we call it here . As i cant say it would be better, as im not aware of the assistant chief or deputy and director, the role that youre referring to. However, i can discuss that one of the things that we have been thinking about is right now in light of some of the things that happened, obviously, in the last several months. This is something that were thinking about. But i cant say if you were to add a role here or a role there that it would be better. Thats something they think that were going to be open to and discussing whether it be in the Mayors Office and the board. But in the future. So in this structure not this structure but in this org chart, the one thing that jumped off the page to me was the huge percentage of individuals, other than you the fact that youre acting makes perfect sense to me but the huge number of individuals on this page and this is the top commandandcontrol structure of this organization that have acting in front of their position. I mean, one, two, three im not including you we know why youre there one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight of about 20 positions are acting. Does that make sense . Or why is that . I think its its a mix of things, ill say, which is like as most things in life. But i think that and the h. R. Process here in the city isnt always the easiest thing to get through. I can tell you though as i cant speak to why the department had so many acting positions, and as my colleagues can probably answer that more. But the things that i can tell you though, supervisors, is this is something that i have been actively trying to address. We just today is wednesday and yesterday i met with the h. R. Department within the City Administrators Office to identify some of these key positions that we need to fill. Because i think that will go a long way to addressing the morale issues and things like that within the organization. So i would hope in the next several months we would be able to have several of these positions filled. Do you know why and i say this in the age of love and the vscoronavirus, why the Emergency Management position is vacant and how long its been vacant . I believe that position has been vacant for the past few months but, unfortunately, that individual passed away. And then there are some functions here that we are all aware of because on the board of supervisors anytime that a subdivision map is done, we have to approve it, so we see them on a weekly or a monthly basis. But the position of the city variesurveyor is missing from h. Why is that . My eyes are getting worse than they used to be. I believe that its at the street use mapping. So, unfortunately, i just cant i cant see it. But i believe that position is there. That person reports up under currently my colleague. Bruce stores. We all know his name and know his staff because they appear here regularly. The other name that was missing and im not picking on any individual person, but hes known to all 11 of us is larry stringer. I dont see him on here . Larry stringer is was the Deputy Director of operations. That person is now carla short. And larry stringer in the past several months has been supporting another group. So we asked him and reassigned to support asok, and given the housing crisis and the issues that were having, addressing homelessness, we have signed him to support that team that was seen as a very as an urgent need. So we assigned him there. Thank you for that explanation. I dont know if my colleagues have any yes but if they dont, keep going. I have one question following on the line of questioning that supervisor peskin was working on. And looking at that organizational chart, beside yourself as the acting director of public works, it looks like three out of the four Deputy Directors are also acting Deputy Directors. So you mentioned mr. Stringer who was assigned to a different priority project. Thats why carla short is now the acting director. Can you explain why the other two the other two are now acting Deputy Directors . Sure. So as a similar issue, as the homelessness issue but we have an issue regarding the housing crisis as well. So the previous and the City Engineer and john thomas was assigned to support the task force to address that. So thats when we shifted suzanne afersuscan to be the a acting Deputy Director in charge of infrastructure division. Likewise, with regard to the city architect, as an employee who im sure that you all know who retired recently. So when edgar left we asked ron alameta to step up. And so edgar retired. If im not in mistaken within the last several months or so. Got it, thank you. Just want to correct one thing because i was not doing the next level down. So i just wanted to state corrected numbers. Which is excluding director of public works on this organizational chart of the 24 remaining top level positions, 12 of them are acting. So its exactly half. And it would be interesting to know miss campbell or controller whether or not that similar other departments. And let me be frank with what my concern is. It is a lot easier to manipulate acting people than it is permanent people. So the reason this makes me nervous is and im not talking about the things that have happened in the last month, but if structurally i dont know the answer to this you have a whole bunch of people who by the way this used to happen on commissions, with no disrespect to Willie Lewis Brown he would not reappoint commissioners and he would allow them to stay and they would stay on a daytoday basis and he could get rid of them because they were held over after the end of their term. The board of supervisors fixed that by going to the voters and asking for the charter to be amended. And the voters embraced that. But i just want to understand if this has been a longterm ongoing issue. I understand Human Resources is a long, complicated thing. Although less true with high level positions than with normal Civil Service positions. So im a little dubious about that statement. But i would like to understand in future hearings whether or not this has been a structural longterm problem, whether its common in other departments. And whether it was done with any intention. Right. And id be happy to come back and to report on that. I think that in large part it has a domino effect, when someone leaves we move that person up and that person moves up. But id be happy to come back on that. And the controller may have some comments. please stand by in the bureau, provides engineering and construction. Its Management Services to new infrastructure and things in the public and rightofway. And the street use and the Mapping Division ensures that we have safe, accessible, as public right of ways. Theyre the bureau that is responsible for granting permits to use in the city and the rightofways. And the building and repair bureau provides and construction repair. And remodelling services to the cityowned facilities. They also provide as emergency and repair services across the city. And the urban forestry bureau, they are responsible for providing landscaping and maintenance in the medians and the treeplanting. Theyre responsible for keeping the cities and streets and sidewalks and the public spaces clean which is done as mechanical, manual sweeping. Graffiti abatement and Power Washing as well. And the street and sewer and repair bureau is responsible for paving, street work. They do, as patch paving, they fix potholes and things like that. Lastly, the General Administration bureau provides the finance, accounting, and the budget, the planning and the h. R. Function to as public works. This is a chart. Ill be brief here. It just kinds of shows what are some of the key processes that each of the bureaus performs. For example, and the building and Design Bureau provides Architectural Design and Landscape Design services. They also go about ensuring those projects are built properly, pursuant to the and the specifications that we have laid out. Likewise in the infrastructure division, designs roadways and things like that. They also provide in the building or they oversee in the building of those projects. Operations division likewise oversees the building repair, the street repear and the services repair and the services associated with things that are in the public rightofway. I think supervisor haney had a question. Supervisor haney yeah. So it seems to me when looking at the structure that sort of a pretty Clear Division between sort of the architectureengineering side of the department, which i guess would be building, design and construction, infrastructure, design and construction and then operations . Can you speak to what interaction there is between those . And the situations in which theyre actually working together . I have a number of questions which relate to conversations that ive had with many employees at public works over the last few weeks. And this is one of them, which is, its on both sides, its been their general impression that there is very little interaction. Am i getting that wrong from your perspective . Or in what ways do operations particularly street environmental services, urban forestry, intersect with things in infrastructure, design and construction and building, design and construction, if at all. Thank you, supervisor. I would imagine in the conversation with the employees of public works, that it seems that way, there is not a lot of involvement. I would say on a daytoday basis, theyre probably not involved that much, but i think behind the scenes, if you will, both myself and as my deputy and directors, there is a lot of involvement. And the reason being, for example, is enron alameda and his team is developing a design of a park or a building that is going to have to later maintained by and the Operations Team run, we are involved in making sure theyre having conversations with each other, so ron and suzanne and their teams arent designing something that is not going to be something that is going to be able to be maintained on the operation side. So i can see if you were on the operation side and youre working in the yard, or in the field, you may not think there is a lot of involvement, but a lot of communication between the two groups, but i would say there is a fair amount. That is one thing we try to do is make sure that we, as a department, and i say it more broadly as the city, were not designing things that we cant maintain. Supervisor haney so the main thing there is that if there is design going on that they would then have some advice given about how to keep it clean or repairs . Well, for example, we just want to make sure that when were designing a building or designing as a rightofway, that we are taking into consideration and the operational issues that are going to take place post construction, as relates to maintenance and upkeep of those assets. Supervisor haney got it. I did oh, supervisor, one thing to add, jeremie spitz. The street environmental services, all the Operations Bureau are also just a really theyre on 247 to say an engineer sees something in the field that looks unsafe, they can call them to block off the area. Its an accessible workforce that is available 247 to respond to emergencies and things of that nature. Like a sewer collapse or if a sinkhole is developing or any other emergency situation. I did want to ask, i had a number of questions about hiring and it sort of relates to this conversation about the acting managers. Under what circumstances does the department hire exempt employees, or p. X. Employees instead of the traditional fulltime employees . And do you track that . And do you have a sense of the percentage at public works versus other departments . Certainly the perception from a lot of employees is that is something that is happening a lot at public works. In some cases excessively or inappropriately in their view. And how are you tracking that and under what circumstances are you hiring people for those positions . And in a related thing, what is the directors role in hiring n in hiring . Ill refer to my colleague, but i guess to answer that to start, i mean there are several considerations that are made for hiring as a p. C. S. Or as a permanent Civil Servants versus hiring a temporary person. I mean this is all in large part comes down from the ordinance, but it really depends on the needs of the department. So it would be great to hire everyone as a fulltime, permanent Civil Servant and all the benefits that come with that, but frankly, some of it is based on need. So you and some of the considerations that will be made will be if we need assistants if someone calls in sick and we need additional staff and those individuals that cover for the people that are out sick, we may only hire them as a parttime basis, or they may be under a different type of as a classification. For example, if there is more seasonal work. If were doing trying to hire as paving crews, we may only hire some paving crews that can work year round, however, we know that during in the rainy season were not going to be as much paving, so we dont hire those individuals in the same type of role. With that kind of work, it just depends. I also know regarding urban forestry crews were trying to hire, for the last several years, weve been having contract didnt work out because we didnt have the availability of individuals to hire. So there is a mix of things. But again, ill defer to julia regarding some of the reporting that is done, but in my understanding, if we do want to hire someone whether it be permanent or exempt positions, that those as approvals go through approval process that includes m. D. H. R. And the Mayors Office as well. I was going to add to the citywide rules if it helps, supervisor haney . Broadly defined, the charter requires that City Employees are Civil Service position. And the charter has very specific allowances for the use of exempt positions in very specific circumstances. Theyre outlined in the charter. If memory serves, there are 18 different categories. Attorneys, doctors. Yeah, broadly speaking, you have certain departments that are at will. The board of supervisors, the Mayors Office are defined as exempt. You have certain roles in leadership that are largely exempt. Department heads, Deputy Directors are exempt under the charter. There is a set of other rule, other allowances for the use of exempt hiring. He mentioned some of the projectrelated work where the process of bringing on a Civil Servant only to have to let them go. So there is seasonal, temporary and others. Those are requested by departments, but ultimately reviewed and approved by the department of Human Resources. Those are appealable. There is an avenue they can be challenged by other parties. I dont have information today how public works compares to other departments, but thats information we do have available and can provide. Through the chair, we should put that in the same bucket as actings. I want to be clear why i think this is important because it has come up in a number of conversations with employees at public works and it relates to, obviously, questions of accountability and transparency. If you have employees who dont have those Civil Service protections and can be removed more easily, or hired quicker and sort of the role the director in particular of making these decisions, at least the perception was that these folks were being put in for reasons of favoritism, sometimes inappropriately. And that heavy reliance on these types of exempt positions was an issue at public works. So if you think its not an issue, i would love to have some really clearer data and demonstration or protections. I know there is going to be a hearing at the board around this particular issue, that these were relied on more heavily at public works. And that actually it was directly related to some of the inappropriate or even unethical behavior of the former director. Mr. Chairman, it just occurred to me, there is one thing on organizational structure that i had noted. Where is john thomas . You mean supervisor peskin what was his position and why is he not one of these 24 people . John thomas is currently representing public works on the Housing Task Force. Thats why hes not currently showing up on the org chart, but he is still with public works and then acting in his role. Supervisor peskin so, he used to be the City Engineer and Deputy Director for infrastructure, not acting. Yes, sir. Supervisor peskin and me he went to what . He is supporting and Housing Task Force. Supervisor peskin what is the Housing Task Force . Justin drew is im sorry supervisor peskin so he was on loan to the Mayors Office . What does this mean . And when did this happen . I did not know we had a new City Engineer. Supervisors, this happened in october. John thomas is currently on appointed project manager 4. And the acting Deputy Director and City Engineer is ann. Supervisor peskin thank you. Supervisor haney any other questions . Please continue. Ill be brief on the next slide. This is just some and the key support roles that public works receives and also provides to various departments. We get assistance regarding our fleet, operations provides free trade Management Services. And the admin Team Provides the accounting and budget management. And the other related services. This next slide really just provides numbers for you. Im not going to go over each of these, but i just want it say, behind these numbers are people. And these individuals that work for them day to day do amazing things. For example, as our street cleaners, you know, they respond to more than 350 requests a day to pick up piles of trash and to steam clean our sidewalks, to clear rubbish off medians. We have individuals that come in on the swing shifts and they do predawn cleanings of encampments and things like that. The arborist crews are out there in the heavy rains and wind storms, cleaning branches from fallen trees. And the carpenters, the glazers, the plumber, they work around the clock to sustain the city buildings. Theyre also there on emergency calls. If a toilet is out at the jails, if we have a broken step somewhere in the public rightofway, if there is a sinkhole, we have street inspectors there, with the paving crews that try to solve the problem as fast as we can. We have architects, Landscape Architects and teams that are in developing new parks and playgrounds, firehouses, police stations and health centers. These are things that make sure the city can survive as emergency. We have our engineers and masons that go around the city to improve curb ramps, to make the streets and sidewalks more accessible. We also partner with our nonprofit partners to provide and to staff and for public toilets to wash them down, keep them clean. This is a great opportunity for us as a city where we provide as a Workforce Development programs for individuals that may not be able to find employment elsewhere. So again, this is something that i am very proud to say, this is a department that touches the residents of San Francisco every day. And this is something that we do. We have to balance the various relationships here within the city because were often times working in the rightofway. And public works is responsible for the streets, the sidewalks and the medians and the street trees and the curb ramps, however, we have to work with partners in utilities as pg e and at t, comcast, mta, muni tracks and then finally we also work with partners at the puc regarding and the streetlights and the water system and the sewer system as well. The other thing we provide support to City Departments. Whether it be the public library, rec and park. We provide architectural and Design Services to these various departments. We also manage those projects to completion. Were also involved on mission zero, initiatives working with our partners at mta and the public works. And then we also do a number of work orders to maintain the public buildings here in the city. And this next chart goes to, i think, what supervisor peskin was asking for regarding the overall budget. We have our actuals for last year the expenditures around 730 million and the largest portion of those are for personnel services, those relate to the addneeded asneeded contracts that we need to provide assistance to street cleaning, street maintenance and things like that. And the second largest piece in the budget relates to labor. These are the 1600 or so employees that as we employ the bulk of which are within our infrastructure division, followed by industry environmental services. The last side, please. A few questions. The mayors the budget book shows for the fiscal year 201819, 1057 total fte as compared to the 1625fte youre showing. Every newspaper article i read said this is tragedy for the 1600 honest men and women of the department. I keep seeing the number 1600, but the budget said you had, in 201819, 1057. Where are the other 600 from . I can help with that. The difference is between fund and positions as opposed to other appropriations for positions that are funded through offbudget cycle, appropriations for capital, as you know, the annual city budget appropriates money for thesy and you as the you as the board of supervisors capital bonds and the rest. That is the difference between the numbers you see here and the positions you see here. In the budget, the board is doing two things. Youre authorizing money and youre authorizing position authority. A certain amount of those positions are paid for in the budget. That is the number youre seeing on that page. But additionally when youre acting on the annual salary ordinance, youre authorizing the department to hire a larger number. I suspect the 1600 corresponds to approximately the authority you granted to public works to fill positions. Supervisor peskin just the value of all of that capital, as compared to what were seeing here, is what . Ms. Dawson can probably speak to that better than i can. Supervisor peskin its got to be in the billions. 3, 4 . So were showing here, supervisors, the actual for the year, the nonpersonal services, a lot of that is construction. What i was trying to get at what the question you had. When you look at us as far as operating budget, it understates the activities that are under management of public works. A large portion of which is capital. So the bulk of that blue swath in nonpersonal services is really construction payments. And then many of our positions in infrastructure design and construction, in building repair and in Building Design and construction are offbudget positions because they rely on bonds, grants, other peoples bonds. It was a little overwhelming if we showed all the Funding Sources. Supervisor peskin the lefthand side that blue portion of the pie includes other departments for Services Rendered to the puc, airport, rec and park. It shows if we indeed have their Funding Sources on our contract, it will show that contract is ours, but the funds being theirs. So i was just showing you the funds under management which would point to other departmental Funding Sources. Supervisor peskin got it. The 374 million in the 201819 budget for total expenditures would be the pie in essence on the right. Those are the positions minus some number out of the infrastructure design, Building Design and also street use and mapping, and some in operations, because we dont want to doublecount other peoples funds and that would also going to work orders. We receive a lot of work orders from other City Departments to do maintenance and repair, so a lot of our building repairs are offbudget. Supervisor peskin got it. Thank you. Supervisor haney so just for example, the prop b just passed, the earthquake safety and Emergency Response bond. I think its 628 million. D. P. W. Kind of the lead yes, as public works will be the agency to deliver on the projects that are associated with that bond fund. Supervisor haney so for example, that funds a number of different important earthquake safety and Emergency Response priorities, seismic upgrades of the neighborhood fire stations . Right. Ill be discussing it later, but there are only six what we call there are only six chapter departments, six departments that can actually build things. Public works, puc, airport, mta, rec and park and port. And so all of the other departments, whether it be the Police Department, fire department, if they want to build and construct a building, those departments would have to come to public works. Supervisor haney thank you. This next slide is a bit of an eye chart and the next one is worse. But i wanted to talk briefly about contracting methods. The city has more or less broken up the contracting. If youre buying goods and services, that was governed in large part by chapter 21 of the admin code. If a department is looking to develop as a public work, building a building, that would be governed by chapter 6. Im going to start this discussion with some of the different contracting methods for the procurement of goods and services as it relates to chapter 21. So in large part, if you are seeking to do a professional Services Contract under chapter 21, the admin code defers the authority for that in the Contracting Department to develop the scope, to oversee in the bidding process themselves and then that contract then comes to the office of administration for review and approval. So this would include contracts for things like, if you were hiring an accountant or hiring a consultant to provide Outreach Services and things like that, this is what those provisions are for. As discussed earlier, for the procurement of commodities, all those go through the office of Contract Administration and ill do my best to use the trash cans as an example. So if a department wanted to buy trash cans, they would approach the office of Contract Administration or o. C. A. If this was going to be a onetime purchase, o. C. A. Would basically put it out to bid and we would award to the lowest bidder. If, though, for example, it was going to be something we didnt know the exact quantity in the trash cans over a period of time, we put out what you can see here, a term contract. Its undefined term, undefined as a quantity of contracts. If o. C. A. Relies on the department to provide them with specifications, if they package those and they put that out to bid, o. C. A. Oversees the bidding process and o. C. A. Awards the contract and then they would basically open it up in the client departments to issue as a purchase order citywide as a term contract. There are as a few other contracting provisions. Prop q, thats a proposition that passed in the 80s that basically delegates the purchasing authority from o. C. A. To the various City Departments to oversee their Procurement Center under a certain amount. That amount was originally 5,000. It was omitted years ago. Up to 10,000 and its been at that same level ever since. O. C. A. In partnership with the City Departments reviews those transactions to make sure that the departments are following the rules as relate to delegated authority which is often times referred to here in the city as prop q. But beyond that, the only other types of contracting which arent really contracting is the vouchers when you dont have a contract and it does happen from time to time when a department obligates the city without a contract. That is something that is a collaboration between the department, o. C. A. And the Controllers Office, but that is really how the and the chapter 21 contracts are overseen in the city. The contract methods chapter 6, there are various i think were on the wrong slide chapter 6, there are several different admin codes that govern different times of contracting as relates to chapter 6. The bulk of the City Contracting when dealing with chapter 6 are low bid contracts. On the next slide ill go over the amount of contracting that the public works has in the buckets, but just to give you an idea of what the methods are under chapter 6. As a formal bidding process, when you advertise a bid, typically every 10 Business Days we have informal bids where you can essentially reach out to a handful of contractors receive quotes. We have what i refer to as job order contracts which are essentially you have you award the contracts based as a fixed profit and there is a catalog, if you will, that the contractor and the department walks the job. They itemize the Different Things that are needed for the job. And all the prices are spelled out as a price book. And so really youre paying its a profit marchen that margin that has been bid out in advance. As i can certainly walk you through all of these various methods, but i dont know if you want me to do that. Okay. So before as i mentioned, there are sorry. Supervisor haney its about the slide. So ill let you talk about this and then jump in. About this slide . Yeah. As i was saying before there are six chapter six departments. Public works departments. Were one of the few departments in the city other than the airport that does not only construction but we have a team that handles architecture as well. With that said, ill answer the questions. Supervisor haney so, of these chapter 6 departments, the public works is the only one here that doesnt have a commission . Its also one of the only large departments that doesnt have a commission . I know youre an expert in contracting across the city. Does that, at all, change the way the contracting is done in public works as compared to other departments where a commission may play some role . No. I mean, i would say i dont think it really the process of the the contracting process is the exact same. The departments whether it be public works or the other five chapter 6 departments, were all following the same rules. The way that you advertise, the contracts, the bond requirements, the contract itself and the terms and conditions are in large part the same. The only thing there is a difference is on the back end of it where public works, unlike one of the other chapter 6 departments, those contracts go through a commission for approval at the end of the process, but in the Public Works Department the Department Head, now me, has approval of the contracts. But the process itself is the exact same. Supervisor haney the process of the folks who are bidding, et cetera, is the same except in public works the Department Head approves and in the other departments, there is an approval both from the Department Head and the commission . Yes. But yes. Supervisor haney there is one more layer in these departments that doesnt exist in public works . If i may. Four departments that we work on their behalf, they actually receive Commission Approval for the work in their commissions. So a lot of the work that were doing is actually approved by a commission body. Supervisor haney by the other commission. Because were essentially professionals for hire. Supervisor peskin with exception of the slides solely under the jurisdiction of public works. Right. Predominantly the programs were responsible for. But even the appropriations review of budgets, things like that, are going through commissions. Supervisor haney you may be doing the work for another department that doesnt have a commission, like the department of homelessness thats rare. Supervisor haney but all of the things that are specifically for you, these would not have Commission Approval. But the last thing, if you could address kind of more specifically and directly the role of the director or the Department Head in contracts, obviously, thats really one of the reasons why were here, because of concern about that. And their ability to manipulate the process in any way. Can you speak to that . Yeah, i mean, for the overwhelming majority of the contract processes, i dont think the Department Head has that much opportunity to manipulate the process. In large part because this is a very public and transparent process. So we put the contract opportunity out to bid, whether its to buy trash cans or build a building. Its not much opportunity to manipulate the end result, because youd be and the highest rank official, the lowest bid knows that i submit the bid for a million dollars, the next firm bids million two, in order to change that the first firm would have to have no interest in their own protesters. We see protests routinely on the bids just when the firms have an opportunity to challenge the decisions that are being made. And oftentimes those decision are not being made at the level of Department Head. There are other procedural reasons why theyll try and knock out one firm versus another. However, as relates to public works, some of the questions i think supervisor peskin referred to it earlier there were certain provisions that were given to address housing and the homelessness issue where there were broad authorities granted to public works and other departments to address those issues. That basically waived the competitive and bidding processes all together for those areas. So thats one area where if were going to try and put some guardrails, if you will, i would certainly advise that. Like i said, ive been here about a month now in this role and thats one of the things i did the first week of being here. Even though the admin code says when we were addressing those issues, whether were buying shelters or beds or clothes or kwhafr whatever it is to support those facilities, the admin code allows me to pick whoever i want. And to move forward, ive said even though we can do that, we arent. We have put in a process which were now going to require at least three quotes from firms that can provide bedding, housing, those kinds of things and were going to assess those quotes and award based on a low bid. If there is an urgent issue we need to address, then well reassess that, but then we even have processes in place now by which even if there is a pressing need to buy something to address the Navigation Centers were trying to support, we have a review process in place for that. So the days of so one person being able to make all these decisions is no longer the case here as of public works. Supervisor peskin not as a matter of law, but as a matter of internal process since the revelations with mr. Neuro am look, all the processes were put in place over many decades. 100 years since the days of the railroads running roughshod on the California State Legislature and government to the days of hiring johnson and the days of adolph sutro, where all of these mechanisms got put into law so the government didnt cheat, wouldnt give contracts to friends and donors and thats why we have all this complicated stuff. And thats why we choose as a matter of legislating to cut through the red tape that is there to protect us from cheating or colluding because there is emergency as there is in and around homelessness. It depresses me that a truck got driven through that dealing with unsheltered human beings, but that notwithstanding, the notions around the code are laud tory notions that the government would pick the lowest bid, that it is done pursuant to a process, the parties have the right to process. I think what supervisor haney is getting at and you commented on, is that it is regulated by any contractor who thinks that they were done wrong in the process. Its not regulated by an elected official or by an oversight body that actually has the ability to do this. From time to time, and ms. Campbell or budget and legislative analyst knows that every once in a while a contract that comes to this board thats a contract pursuant to section 9118 of the city charter in excess of 10 million or in ten years of duration, and occasionally, we will get an email or a telephone call alleging impropriety in the underlying chapter 6 processes, at which point we make ms. Campbell and her staff go and pulling the scoring and try to figure out whether there was any Insider Trading or collusion. And in the 20 years ive been here on and off, weve found it a couple of times and theyve led to litigation and what have you. The reason im asking you this is, look, i think every system is not perfect. And every system has ways to cheat. And every system, if its good, has internal checks and balances to prevent that. A commission may be that. A board of supervisors may be that. Transparency usually is that. But the reason im asking is, one of the best ways to cheat is to have an extremely truncated or compressed advertising period. So where is and there may not be an aggrieved party because if you have a very compressed advertising period and only one person who got tipped off bids on it, which may be the instant case here that we will get to probably at a future hearing, what oversight is there to say, nope, this is should be on the street for 60 days, 90 days, to that the entire pool of potential commodity providers will have a chance to bid . Have we looked at that relative to the scope of contracts . And then just in the next breath im sorry, you dont have to answer all of these things because some are going to take time to research. How many contracts are there . How many fall into the chapter 6 bucket . How many fall into the chapter 21 bucket . How many fall into the emergency bucket . How many fall into the bucket of where we waived all of the requirements, where i have to tell you i just assumed and shame on me that there was an internal informal process where, of course, you got on the phone or the email and solicited three informal bids and then had a faster compressed process because weve got a slowmoving homeless emergency, but it seems like that didnt happen at all. So where were the checks and balances as to that . You dont have to answer all these things today. But the first one about, is there internally within the organization, was there any chief of staff or Deputy Director who said, gee, mr. Director, you cant put this out on the street for 10 days because thats just not long enough to expose it and lo and behold your friend may be the only bidder on it . I think this is something that i will come back and report on, but the admin code and corresponding rules and regulations, typically, if its a formal bid you have 10 Business Days. Thats usually the minimum in requirement. So weve concluded over the years that is a reasonable amount of time. But again, i think to your point, the outreach is the big thing because you can have it on the website and unless the bidders know to come to the website, it could be on there six months, because if youre selling something that is not a good service that the city buys very often, you have to rely on your outreach. I cant speak to what happened in the past with some of our projects in public works. I can speak to the ones we did for example o. C. A. That is something we have been trying to do and better as a city, just do more outreach. I can tell you its unfortunate we do have a large number of bids and we unfortunately only get one bidder and its the bidder that is incumbent. I think we as city could do a better job as outreach, but thats not limited to public works, thats a broader issue we as a city need to do more of. And hard part with that is, as a city, were not necessarily the easiest customer to do business with. And right now we have ordinances that have basically made it impossible for us to do business with almost half the states in the country, which and for good reason. Those are very good reasons why. So there are a lot of reasons why. Sometimes we only get one bid. Thats some of the things we need to juggle. Supervisor peskin but in the case of the garbage contract i understand what you said, possession is nine tenths, if youre the incumbent provider, you are likely the future provider and once you get your nose under the tent, i understand that. But in the case of the procurement of the commodity that are these universally reviled trash cans of which supervisor haneys hearing showed we had procured over 2000 of them, that was not the case. That was a new provider. And you would think something as commonplace as rubbish cans would have dozens, if not hundreds, of providers that one could procure from all over this country, including in the half of the states that are nonencumbered by parts of chapter 12, but for what its worth. Just an observation. Please continue. The next slide will address in part some of the questions that supervisor peskin had. The next slide summarizes of our contracts now, these are the number of contracts broken down by some of the various buckets, if you will. We have 71 Construction Contracts with an awarded value of 334 million. We have 27 professional Services Contracts that are active. These are all active contracts that we have. With an award value of 21 million. We have 14 professional Services Contracts with value of 6. 6. To clarify again, the difference between the professional services on the third line and the professional services on the second line is the professional services on the second line are the ones that are governed by chapter 6, versus the third line which is governed by chapter 21. Grants, we have 17, and then lastly we have 4,000 active commodities transactions and thats everything from tools to supplies. Those are just a lot of small transactions. Supervisor peskin what does grants mean . If you go to the next slide it gives you a breakdown of the grants. These are grants for partners we have to provide litter reduction. We hire ambassador as it relates to the pit stop program. We have grantees and nonprofit partners to assist with the Landscape Maintenance and plantings. And then finally partners that assist us with our youth as employment programs. Supervisor peskin when you say grants, theyre not subject to 6 or 21. The grants in the city are not governed by chapter 6 or chapter 21. There is a guidance memo that was issued from a group of departments here in the city, the Controllers Office, o. C. A. , d. H. R. , and the City Attorneys office provided guidance on grants. Its a fourstep process that a Department Must do if its going to award a grant. Im sorry i dont know all the act steps but the main things are that the grant must go to a nonprofit entity. The services being performed must be a service that would not be otherwise performed by that department, so for example, public works cant grant out to a nonprofit to do construction wo work. That is really our core work. The biggest thing we tried to address more recently as a city in regards to grant in recent years, there must be a process for grants. So we cant just award a grant just because we want to give it to one firm versus another. You must have some type of a process that you follow to award that as a grant. Supervisor peskin why are they characterized as grants . All these things, and im not speaking to whether theyre good or bad, theyre all for the provision of services to somebody for something. Why dont we call them contracts . Supervisor, i dont have a good answer to that other than there is no exact provision in the admin code awarding contracts to nonprofits. Over the years, theyve just evolved into their own special type of thing. We have contracts governed by 6 and 21. But then we also have the bucket of money governed by the citys policies and procedures through grants. Supervisor peskin through the chair, pursuant to our Unlimited Power of inquiry, id love to know what the 17 are, how long theyve existed, how they evolved . Just one note, 300,000 may be a drop in the bucket to a 12 million budget, but there is a 300,000 discrepancy from the previous page to this. 12. 8 on the previous page. 12. 5 on this page. Im sorry, again . Supervisor peskin if you look at the previous page where you break down the contracts. You indicate there are 17 grants in the amount of 12. 8 million. On the next page, you set out the four categories, they total 12. 5 million. Thats correct, supervisor. Ill go back with staff and get that resolved. Supervisor haney just picking up a little bit on the questions that supervisor peskin was going to around the grants. It would seem that litter reduction, Landscape Maintenance and planting, these are pretty core what i would view as Core Functions of the department, why arent these done by d. P. W. Staff . What sort of leads to a decision to say this is something that needs to be granted or contracted out . And how do you assess that decision . Is it related to sort of specific responsibilities that are in your charter or these are outside of them in some ways . Two things that im particularly interested in are the sidewalk cleaning services, that seem to be largely granted out. At least as far as i can tell. And the bathroom maintenance. And also all of the monitoring and ambassador. Im kind of interested in why monitoring and ambassador work is im guessing maybe thats the bathroom work, but why that is something that is a big part of d. P. W. s role in general . That is something ill need to go back and ask staff to get a clarification. I would assume that the operations of the pit stops isnt necessarily something that falls into the core mission of the Public Works Department. It is a need certainly here in the city to provide rest rooms to people that dont otherwise have access to them. I think its just something that over the last several years if you had to pick a department to pick up that gauntlet if you will thats not the right term, the gauntlet i think we slowed down the gauntlet [laughter] good afternoon, acting director of operations. Specific examples, some of those grantees perform things like sidewalk sweeping which is actually not the departments core responsibility, but recognizing that there are challenges in the city and there is a need for that, those are granted out. In terms of Landscape Maintenance, a lot of these are Workforce Development grants. And those are opportunities for nonprofits to develop a green workforce we need in the city. So that is a primary function of public works, but a small amount of Landscape Maintenance. Usually just after Capital Improvements are built is granted out to nonprofit organizations. And same with bathrooms. Bathrooms and sidewalk litter removal are not viewed as primary responsibilities of the department. And how do you determine what is a primary responsibility of the department or not . Why isnt bathrooms a primary responsibility considering how critical they are. Theyre nobody elses primary responsibility. Or one of the responsibilities, it seems at this point, they seem to be a big part of part of your responsibility, not just a side temporary thing. Right. Well, they are limited term funding. We havent had a dedicated funding stream for the pit stop program. We cant always hire Civil Service employees when there is a limited term funding. So i think bathrooms has not historically been the departments responsibility, but we stepped up to address that, but we have not had a fully funded program at this point. Good it, thank you. Supervisor peskin while were doing our due diligence, i also wanted to ask that the grant advice memo that you referred to also be provided to the committee, so we can understand what it says and how it works. Then i apologize because i got a couple of calls because living in the age of covid19, but i dont think you touched on solesource procedures unless i missed it . I did not. The sole source procedures under chapter 21, the Contracting Department submits a request to o. C. A. That is reviewed and scrutinized by o. C. A. So you can have sole sources based on this is the only manufacturer that can do it provide a good and service. Within the last, i want to say, in the five, seven years, there was a similar provision put into the chapter 6 contracting regarding the sole source procedures. The sole source procedures under chapter 6, its very similar. Under chapter 21, it could be things like, for example, we began to pave a certain street but then we realized there was one extra section we needed to complete that was not under the original contract, it would not be impracticable to bid out that one extra, so those are the justifications. Whether it be chapter 6 or chapter 21 sole source, the department is obligated to report those to the board of supervisors each year. Thank you. Please continue. My last slide is the reforms that weve put in place in the last month or so that ive been on board. The first one were in the process of trying to roll out right now, were providing a level of ethics training to all of the public works employees. Its required that under law director, Deputy Director and all of the individuals that touch contracts do online training, but this is something i believe is important to provide as a baseline training everyone. Because again its a good as a government. We put in roles i was talking about before, as relates to the contracting processes when it relates to providing services to support the Navigation Centers. And finally weve put in some entitle processes into grants. Ill be providing the board a copy of that as well. Supervisor peskin together with the tightened solicitation rules. Yes, sir. Supervisor peskin isnt there also a fourth thing, which as i understand it now, virtually all contracting are also being reviewed all contracts are now being reviewed by the City Attorney office in ways they have not done before and the Controllers Office, anything you want to add to that . Yes. Those are the controls that were put in place by public works, but there is also a review process put in place in the Controllers Office and the City Attorneys office that basically says that anytime that a department is going to use chapter 6. 76 or section 21 of the admin code, those contracts must be reviewed separately and apart through the Controllers Office and the City Attorneys office. Which public works fully supports that. If you dont have any more questions, i really want to thank our acting director and his staff for coming. I know there are members of the public and i know that i actually have to go meet and confer over the subpoena matter with the affected unit of labor that started seven minutes ago. Supervisor haney one other thing that would be good to have a sense of as youre looking at reforms. Again, having spoken to a number of employees as well as their labor representatives, another thing that came up was the sense that there were some situations where work could have been done inhouse by d. P. W. Employees and there was expertise there to do that work, but that it was being contracted out unnecessarily. And so one of the things, in terms of really, as youre looking at the other things we mentioned here, i would love to see data around the exempt employees and the rates there and the policies around there. I would love to see that something added to your list of reforms. Maybe you come back and say actually, were doing great and there is nothing to see here, but i would appreciate if that is something you looked at because it is something that came up repeatedly when talking to folks. I also, similarly to that, this question of how you decide whether something needs to be contracted or and whether there is im sure there are policies extended to protect against this, but if that is something you would look at because the perception was among some folks there were contracts that were going out that didnt need to be contracted out and it was somehow connected to favoritism, political relationships or that sort of thing. And again, im sure youre on expert on this in thames of the pro terms of the process and how we protect against that, but from the people in the department, there was a lot of feeling that was going on. I can certainly come back and report on that. I can say also that there is a Civil Service and review process, so if any contract regarding professional services, General Services that those contracts must go through the Civil Service commission and they also get embedded through the impacted union. So there is a whole process for that, but id be happy to come back and report on the number of the public works contracts that went through that process and what that amounted to for the last several years. I do have just one other question. There was one supervisor peskin there was one agency which actually is technically not a city agency. Its a creature of state law. That was not mentioned in this. I was looking back at slide 13, which totals almost half a billion dollars in awarded contracts and 12. 5 million worth of grants. Does that number include the Transbay Joint Powers Authority work . No. It does not. Supervisor peskin got it. So is that offbudget . I know that d. P. W. Went in there to help them, but thats not reflected in anything reported today as to ongoing construction, professional services for construction . No, they let their own agreements and they would reimburse us, so we have had billings to that project, but they would not be shown as expenditures coming out of the city, because theyre their own authority. Does that make sense . We have recovery from them. Supervisor peskin so we loan them our professional staff and they reimburse us . Correct. Supervisor peskin thank you. Supervisor haney just two other last things i want to make sure to touch on. I appreciate the training around ethics. Obviously, i want to be clear and supervisor peskin said this, i dont think that the frontline workers that there has been any allegations that theyve done anything wrong, so i dont want them to i hope that its being communicated in a way that they understand that. That this isnt theyre not all being under some level of scrutiny when i dont think there has been any sense that theyve been behaving unethically with regards to contracts or anything else. One other thing i wanted to ask you to look at, i did get feedback there were maybe Health Training for frontline workers, that they felt like they were not receiving and particularly coronavirus and everything else, but just in general in terms of the Health Hazards that they may be coming across. If you would make sure that you have an eye towards what their needs are there. 100 , supervisor, i can tell you that within the last few weeks we had an opportunity to meet with local 261, thats the union that oversees laborers. And they did express concerns, so weve already started to provide more training as relates to picking up sharp those are needles and things like that because were most concerned with those as employees and their safety. Supervisor haney thank you. Last thing, what is friends of d. P. W. And what role do they play . I dont believe there is a friends of a d. P. W. Account. Those are typically accounts, but say the friends of x, those are usually accounts as a Nonprofit Group associated with the department that collects funds to support the morale of the department and things that arent paid through city coffers. But i dont believe there is a friends of the d. P. W. Group. Supervisor haney thank you. Supervisor peskin subject to Public Comment, i would like to make a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair where we can receive answers to our inquiries and ask additional questions. Thank you, supervisor peskin. Supervisor peskin it might be helpful just to hear from our controller as to what work product you are undertaking and when we can expect it, and how it will help inform this committee, not only about our investigations, but ultimately about what changes to the a administrative code or other codes, Charter Amendments are covered by the body, but if you could elucidate on those questions . Certainly, the City Attorney office is under way with investigation and the indictments against former direct director nuru. As part of that and related to that, were conducting reviews of a number of policies, practices and procedures in the city to determine whether theyre adequately controlling against waste and abuse. We envision delivering these in quick sprints as opposed to longer audit projects. We have three reviews under way. Each of these will be publicly released and publicly available. I think the goal of them is to make recommendations to departments, to the mayor and board and others on ways that the city could avoid these sorts of risks to the extent possible. Currently were working on three reviews. We envision this will change over time as your work here, our City Attorney work progresses. We have review of the contracting processes in department of pushing, thats the product public works, thats the product were furthest along with. They have a review under way citywide regarding appropriate practices, procedures and rules regarding friends of organizations and the use of other city accounts to support department operations. And then lastly, were in the midst of a review of standards and practices for ethical behavior. Each of those three products, the first with public works, we hope to have publicly released in 23 weeks i would hope. With the other two products following shortly thereafter. We would welcome the opportunity to touch or present those products and discuss them with you as theyre released. You have asked questions similar to the ones were working through. And director talked about some of the procedures hes put in place at public works and those are topics were looking at as well. Thank you, City Attorney. And, colleagues, i just wanted to say that the next Board Meeting im going to introduce a standing hearing request for the different review white paper reports that are coming out of the Controllers Office so we can hear them in a timely way for the committee and the public. Why dont we go to Public Comment. I know there is a few speaker cards. I just have one. Eileen. If there are others that want to speak on this item, step up to the mic. Coalition for San Francisco neighborhoods here on my own behalf. Here in strong support for the review of public works Core Functions and internal administrative policies. I would like to echo supervisor haney that this is the only Major Department without a board or commission. And as a side note, its my understanding that contracting is for best value rather than lowest cost. I would urge the committee to review d. P. W. Feeforservice structure. For example, a consultation can cost 450 for two hours consultation. It should be noted that the Easter Program comes under d. P. W. As the bond known as prop b, appears headed for approval, this would give d. P. W. Easter Program Additional 628. 5 million in new funding. I would urge the board to assure that the funds for the emergency firefighting water system are used to expand on the west side, starting with dedicated awas on taraville. Its consistent with the dig once policy as water and sewer lines are replaced. Awas on everything street was upgraded so it should be implemented on terreville. Dedicated awas basically is a concern on the expanding of the west side based on the civil grand jury report, act now before its too late, aggressively expand our water firefighting system. And awas has been endorsed by speak, the coalition, terreville missions and the greater west neighborhood. Mr. Washington . You can call me ace, im here on the case here. In city hall. Reporters dig, you missed the best part of what is going on, thats okay. None of them was black so probably didnt make no difference to them. Im ace, im on the case. Respectfully request from this department here, which in my opinion been doing a good job and i knew mohammed well and supported him and even do it today, because youre not guilty until youre found guilty. But your department, ive been having big problems. Let me say this, your Ambassador Program, which i want that to be investigated real quick, because in my community which happen to be a black africanamerican however you want to call it, the western edition, the fill no more, im the ambassador and have been. But you treat us in the fillmore like were nonexistent. Everybody community has ambassadorship program, Everybody Community has c. A. C. , all you got in the fillmore is me, a. C. E. And im sick and tired of that. I would like to talk to who is in charge of the Ambassador Program because you aint spent a damn dime in the fillmore. But thats not your problem. Weve been having problems for years since willie brown been gone. They feel the fillmore, the redevelopment has gone and taken everything along. You dont clean up there. I want to sit down with you all to talk about the program and insert that. Find out why there is no money spent in the western edition. My name is ace, and im surely on the case. I supported mohammed, but right now i want to find out where the money is going, coming and we want that done right away. My name is ace, dammit, im on the case. Ace, you left your phone. Just wanted to note one of three private enterprise closures in general is set to examine about as a result of employee embezzlement, theft and fraud. This may occur at the morninger level alex. Where nonprofits are concerned, theyre second to the Financial Service industry when it comes to corruption in terms of dollar volumes lost and at the time of ongoing theft and the concealment and the number of individuals involved. And i believe that marks once covered this territory in his famous 18th premiere which is similar to critical novel humorous accounts of englands long running administration regarding the notorious organized corruption of those times. The masses comment marked famz from the marquis. Any other members of the public that wish to speak . Seeing none, Public Comment is now closed. Thank you so much to acting director and d. P. W. Staff for the presentation and engaging in discussion with the committee today. Supervisor peskin has made a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair. Can we take that without objection . Mr. Clerk, any other business items . There is no further business. Thank you. We are adjourned. Okay, great. Supervisor fewer good afternoon, everyone. This is the march 11, 2020 meeting of the budget and appropriations committee. I am sandra fewer. Our clerk is ms. Linda wong. I would like to thank sfgovtv for broadcasting this tv. Any announcements . Please make sure to silence all cell phones and Electronic Devices, complete speaker cards should be submitted to the clerk. Supervisor fewer item number 1. Hearing to review the report on the Controllers Office on the current years expenditure and revenue information and projections as of december 31, 2019, sixmonth budget status report and the mayors budget instructions for 2021 and 2122. Supervisor fewer we have a presentation from city controller on the sixmonth budget status report for the city and county of San Francisco, which was released last month. Ive asked mr. Rosenfield to share early assessment of the impacts of covid19 in the city, although we may not have yet definitive numbers, this committee should be informed in realtime about the financial picture of the city. Thank you for sharing what you can today. Finally, ive asked mr. Rosenfield to give us a brief overview of the new city website that is created since the passage of the budget transparency. Thanks again for all the colleagues that signed on. Im so proud our access during the budget process is being realized. Since our legislation was passed in december, we have seen City Departments, not just check off a box, but truly take on the challenge of Holding Public meetings to gain meaningful input. Thanks to departments like the office of economic and Workforce Development, recreation and parks, and Child Support services for implementing new practices, inviting me to participate in your community presentations. These steps toward the goal of Greater Transparency for allocation of tax dollars are building on years of best Budget Practices from departments like Public Health and will make the budget process stronger. This website is a powerful tool to help San Francisco residents navigate the complex process, so i appreciate the effort from the contr Controllers Office to finalize it. With that, Ben Rosenfield from the Controllers Office. Thank you. Good morning, thank you for having us here today. This is certainly timely and so we look forward to not only talking through briefly some of the highlights from the sixmonth report which we published almost exactly a month ago. Ill talk through some of those updates and well provide you with updates were seeing regarding events in the local economy here today and we can Start Talking here and elsewhere about what the financial implications are to the city. Weve got a couple of updates coming just to let folks know what is coming after this. Our office is working on tax revenue ranging and updates related to covid in the current fiscal year. We hope to have that complete next week. At least for initial range. And then all three financial offices, our office, the boards budget and legislative office and the mayors Budget Office are updating our projections of the next four years. That will be complete tend of the month. Flu on the sixmonth report we publicish each year, we do see good news in the sixmonth report. I know we briefed many of you individually on this, about 98. 1 million improvement in ending fund balance. Ill talk about how that applies to next years fall forecast. The majority of this good news is really being driven by two departments. So we have significant good news over 60 million in the department of Public Health as of sixmonth. And our Human Service agency 20 million. Ill talk about each of the departments in a membership and what is going on in a minute and what is going on there. Ill talk about taxes overall, but the big news is the continued strength we saw in the first half of the fiscal year related to transfer tax. We saw a number of Large Properties trade hands in the year, with payments in excess of 20 million for a single transaction, so we had a lot of strength there. Under the way the citys reserves work, that volatile revenue, a significant portion, ends up deposited into a onetime reserve. And like i talked about most ill talk about in a second, most other taxes are trending toward budget. At least as of sixmonth. And there is some weakness in hotel and some in admissions tax as of the sixmonth mark. This is showing a picture of all the major tax revenues that we feel in the general fund. And you can kind of see on the far right chart column, how the 6month projection various from varies from the 3month projection. Theyre trending toward budget. You see that for property, for sales, for utility user tax, parking tax. And also how significant the real transfer tax news is. That is 71 million. But were we werent seeing a lot of change versus our other previous projections of major taxes. In terms of department, this gives you a summarized view of everything going on with all of the departments and the report itself contains much more information, but overall, departments net improvement of approximately 90 million. You can see where that is falling across the departments, but Public Health and Human Services are the vast majority. Ill talk in a second about them and juvenile probation which i know is of interest to the committee and we do see issues halfway through the fiscal year. So, briefly, for the department of Public Health, this is summarizing that good news in health. Halfway through the year. Its almost entirely on the revenue side and the majority of the good news at Public Health is driven at zuckerberg General Hospital. So patient revenue continues to outpace expectations. And we did have some settlements of prior year claims resulted in onetime revenue at the General Hospital. Another thing for us to keep an eye on here, as you may know, the waiver that the state has with the federal government for many different kinds of Health Services expires at the end of this calendar year. There is a lot of work going on in Public Health departments throughout the country to organize for the renegotiation of that waiver next year. But one important fact is that the state is in the process of completing many years of audits of prior year claims. We have money set aside to guard against adverse findings in the audits and weve been waiting years for the audits to be completed. Were hopeful that with the speedup of the state completing the audit processes, will not only have certainty on these sometime before the waiver expires, but were hoping to have good news. So we dont have certainty on that, but its one were keeping our eyes on, health is tracking and well continue to update as we get news on that. Within the Human Service agency, 20 million net surplus. You can see here that the single biggest change here relates to the way the i. H. S. S. Works, that requirement with the state and there were final changes at the end of the state budget process that are favorable to us for about 13 million and 7 million of other savings largely related under spending in a few programs. In terms of juvenile probation, the big issue we see here stems at the end of last fiscal year and its largely, i think, an administrative capacity issue. I think we have remedied now as a city, but as of 6month mark, the department was operating without a number of key positions in their finance shop. And as a result, the department wasnt claiming federal and state revenue in the way they should have been. Since that time, there is a new finance director appointed at juvenile probation. Weve assigned accountness and there is a budget manager on loan to them. So were feeling more hopeful about the stabilization of the function in juvenile and i would hope to see the number come down by the time we get to the 9month mark. As always, we note in the report where departments are projected to live within their budget, but within that budget overspend their overtime line item. As you know to the extent the department wants to do that, they have to come back to the board of supervisors for reappropriations. These are the departments at the 6month mark we expect will need to come back to the board for approximate for permission or change behavior in the coming months. A quick summary as of the 6month mark, how does this fit in with the story regarding the budget deficit . As you know, the three offices publish projections in the early winter of 419 million projected shortfall over two years. The citys general practice for many years has been to take savings that occur in one year and apply it to the shortfall for next year. If that is the choice that is made i would expect it would be you would have to take the 98 million from the 6month report, apply to the previous projection and that brings us down to 321 million. Obviously, well continue to update a lot of this as we go. This is changed obviously given just this week. But the official next update to the projection itself is the joint report which our three offices will publish at the end of march. So im happy to take questions on 6month mark, or i can move into covid. Supervisor fewer i see supervisor ronen, but do we need a report from the b. L. A. , anything to report at all . No. Thank you very much. Supervisor ronen. Supervisor ronen yes, thank you. Thank you for this. For the department of Public Health higher than anticipated budget, does any of that have to do with salary savings . I believe actually no i believe were projecting that the department is spending at the general to budgeted levels. So, at the 6month mark and well update this at nine months but at the 6month mark laguna was spending we were expecting them to spend to the budget. The General Hospital is actually because they have a higher census than assumed, theyre actually overspending their Salary Budget by 5. 8 million which is more than offset by 50 million in revenue improvement. Then they do have expenditures savings in the other parts of the department. So not the general, not laguna, but population health, mental health, et cetera. Supervisor ronen do we know how much salary savings . Its about 5 million in total uses savings. I dont have at my finger tips how much of that is salary, but we could follow up and get that to you. Supervisor ronen okay. And then in for h. S. A. , why are we underspending in cal works and medical. This is savings. Supervisor ronen do we have a sense of why that is happening, because we clearly have the need . I dont, but could follow up with. Generally speaking, these different aid programs have defined criteria as to who is eligible to participate. And to the extent that you project how much participation theyll see, to the extent that participation is higher or lower than that, you see that in our reports. Supervisor ronen id like to know why, because it could be that everyone who is eligible signed up for it could be that we have a problem recruiting and making people feel safe to sign up for the benefits. So it would be great we would be happy to follow up and get more information for you. Supervisor ronen okay. Then do we know why juvenile probation was operating without two key finance positions that were delayed 6 million in federal and state funding . Was that an h. R. Problem . Was that a departmentwide problem . Or the delays from central h. R. Which is happening in practically every department. My impression is this almost entirely driven by issues internal the department. It was kind of an extraordinary moment. Its kind of what has led us to take actions with the new chief to assign temporary help there to help with these things. I personally attribute it to management personnel and operational issues within the department this last summer. Supervisor ronen what was the time period these positions were open and we were failing to fill federal and state bill federal and State Government . The period were seeing the delayed claims was the very end of last fiscal year through this fall. This is not lost money to the city. Its just we will now have a endeavor to reach back and claim for those prior periods and we have with the new chief and with our team and other assistants, we have a group that is working this issue as we speak. Does that help . If there arent other questions, ill move into what were seeing this week. This is an extremely dynamic situation and evolving both from a Public Health perspective and then our monitoring of what the implications might mean for the local economy, revenues and the rest. In our work, we rely on a host of official data points that are often lagged from when the event occurs. Unemployment claims, actual tax filings, reporting from the fed. We wont see some of that data for weeks and months. So in moments like this, we really look to a number of different proxies quickly to get a feel for what is going on. Weve been doing an extraordinary amount of that last weekend and through this week. So im sharing with you, the early data points. We can talk about the things were looking at and working on and ill have more information regarding the tax revenue implications of a lot of this again within the next week. A few issues of great concern. So, prior to the emergency in San Francisco, we had already begun to see declines in landings at the airport, predominantly impacted by china and asia. Youd already seen notable dropoff in landings last winter and into the spring. We commented on these in the 6month report, but you started to see a slowing of tourism into San Francisco and the u. S. From china, but that has changed dramatically in the last week. Landings at the general at s. F. O. This week are down 20 . Thus far this week for international flights. And were seeing it in Domestic Travel as well. So domestic landings at the airport are down 12 this week. That is landings. Thats the number of planes landing. Were endeavoring to get better information from the airlines and we expect to have it soon to the number of people on those planes, but its being reported that those planes arriving are arriving with fewer people as well than a week ago. The actual number of visitors coming to San Francisco or others coming to San Francisco is likely higher than this. The most Immediate Impact of this here within the borders of San Francisco and i think we felt this profoundly already this week, relates to Convention Business. And then spilling over from there into other parts of the hospitality sector. At this point Event Sponsors have cancelled all conventions at the moscone through the middle of may. The cancelled conventions account for 235,000 room nights which is a very large number. We have been spending time this week talking to Hotels Downtown to understand what is going on with their businesses this week. Theyve seen spikes in cancellations, monday, tuesday and even this morning this week. The rate of those cancellations is accelerating. And it is reported information to us, but many Hotels Downtown, if not most hotels are reporting this week theyre now operating at occupancy rates of 2030 . Thats versus the standard that weve grown used to for many years in the city of 8085 . So even this quickly our hotels are emptying out quickly. This kind of level of occupancy is actually worse than what we felt immediately after september 11 to put it into context. Weve been talking to other industries that support hotels and wraparound hotels, catering, other services, special events and the rest. And they have almost uniformly thus far reported to us a mass cancellation of almost all of their business. This is obviously a large part of our local economy. Hotels, hospitality and supporting services and employs a large number of people. Hotels directly employ 25,000 people in San Francisco. And these associated industries that wraparound, depending on how you count them, are tens of thousands of employees beyond that. So very significant and very Immediate Impacts. And the lack of any Convention Business for several months means that we should expect that these kinds of impacts maybe not at these levels but significant, will linger for sometime. Weve also seen this week things beginning to spill over beyond hospitality into other parts of the economy. A couple of indicators we look to for kind of people coming to San Francisco and shopping, not from airports, not from the airport but within the region, bart ridership was down 9 last week. Exits at downtown bart stations over the weekend, which is where were comparing last weekend versus the weekend before, were down more than 9 . So in the low double digits. And then this week, on monday, bart exits downtown were down 24 , versus the monday. Very significant slowdowns. Happening again quickly. This is somewhat related to very large decisions being made by some of our employers in the San Francisco consistent with Public Health advice to encourage telecommuting. So you see large offices downtown and large employers encouraging their employees to work remotely and that means less traffic into downtown and the city from the rest of the region. Over the weekend, you know, one thing we can look at realtime information about what is going on in some of the districts in terms of activity is sampling parking garage occupancy rates. Last weekend, it varies significantly garage by garage, but vacancies rates in the garages were up 2040 from the weekend before. So very significant changes. And its really most pronounced in a few neighborhoods. Downtown, civic center garage, given the cancellations in the civic center and chinatown, chinatown north beach. At least in terms of the weekend work. We have been spending time this week talking to a number of restaurants and restaurant associations to understand kind of what theyre reporting and seeing in the first few days of the week. And there is a broad number of restaurants reporting very significant declines in the sales thus far this week. It appears to be a bit of a different picture. Again, downtown, chinatown, kind of places the tourists go, places that Office Workers eat, are reporting some are reporting losses in excess of 50 or more in terms of this weeks sales. As we get out into neighborhoods where people are potentially staying because theyre telecommuting or otherwise, the losses feel less pronounced. And with some reporting some businesses reporting no loss and no losses so far, bar service, out of the neighborhoods. And then the other thing to note, of course, that restaurants, this is not just spilling into restaurant, but other small retailers, other retail activity. Kind of feeling in that same shape. A very bad week, but worse for those located in the core or in certain downtown neighborhoods. We will know much more about these things in days and weeks ahead, both in terms of the data we have access to, but we also expect more news regarding what the shape of this might be looking ahead. Obviously, there is questions here about two key questions are and i think theyre both predominantly related to how the Health Emergency plays out, theyre ones of duration. And then how spillover works out of these industries into the rest of the local economy and potentially into the National Economy . That would then potentially impact other parts of the economy that were not seeing losses this week, office work, professional services, a whole host of other industries that this week are doing okay. And continue to operate. We will come back next week with some updated ranges of current year tax revenue losses, but just to give you a sense of what were expecting to see, and again, here were focusing on the coming quarter. The last four months of the year, three months of the year. And i think the losses were likely to feel are going to be concentrated in these places. So hotel tax declines are obviously going to be very significant given the occupancy rates i mentioned earlier. And probably in the current year is going to be the Significant Impact the city feels, but we would expect to see losses in sales tax, maybe parking tax and others in this coming quarter. Interest earnings. The money that the city earns on our treasury is expected to decline significantly as well because the federal government has now cut the fed Interest Rate in an effort to stimulate investment. That means that we earn less money on our earned cash, so were quantifying that. And you may see additional federal Interest Rate cuts in weeks ahead which will further erode that. The airport transfer we received from the airport will be down in the current fiscal year and we expect to see others. Well have more on this and we will not have a hard number, but we think its important to present a range of numbers to the board of supervisors, mayors and others can begin planning how to manage this. We will see other impacts that will be deferred to next year, given the way taxes are paid and how this plays out. So business tax, for example, is almost predominantly paid activity now, the tax paid on it will be paid next spring. So that will be a deferred impact. It wont hit the current year, it will hit next year. And well have other implications well include in the later update. I think the loss in the coming quarter will be in the tens of millions, the question is how many . And i hope to have some sense of that next week. Supervisor fewer any members of the public . Hello. The supervisors, i represent the first people of San Francisco, and right here on this podium the chair person rosemary addressed all the supervisors and gave you all some counsel. Weve reached a stage in this city and county of San Francisco where corruption has reached more than saturation point. So when the controller is saying something about this pandemic, if you go to the General Hospital, the turnover of our nurses is over 80 . And if we have the need to have beds for 500 people, thats a minimum because of my training in the military with logistics and all we have like 80 beds. And we have a middle class living on the streets of San Francisco. And we have our supervisors listening, saying something, but it Means Nothing because we cannot say [bell ringing] that we represent the people when we dont do anything for them. Obviously there is a pool of money there that General Hospital has saved and the Human Resources has saved and that is fine, because you know, if you bring ten cpas each one will give is own accounting. If you want, you can say yes or say no. But the bottom line here, supervisors, is you must represent [bell ringing] the people. Supervisor fewer thank you. Any more Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. President yee . President yee thank you, chair fewer. Thanks for the presentation. And its good that we had a good projection for the sixmonth report. Hopefully that offsets some of the bad news coming, moving forward. The question that i mean, all that stuff is really hard to predict and the problem is we dont know how long its going to last. In regards to working with the convention center, for instance, theyve there has been a lot of conventions that have cancelled. Im curious, how far into the future are people starting to cancel . Just to give us a sense of what were looking at. You know, if theyre cancelling things three or four months out, i would say were really in trouble. Yes. And we can report back more, but all sponsors not the city have now cancelled all conventions at the muss coney through may 15th. There are cancellations beyond that. I dont know the count. There are some. And i think there is some hope, depending on how this works that some of the conventions cancelled can be slotted into other slots next fiscal year, but that depends entirely on how our Health Emergency plays out over the coming weeks and months. President yee okay. Thank you. Supervisor ronen yes, assuming that is San Francisco if San Francisco decided to go the route of milan and shut down the entire city, would you give us a sense, in addition to what youve already described, what additional Economic Impacts there would be . I know its enormous, but just get our wheels turning. Yeah, and this is certainly i dont want to speculate too quickly here in the moment, but these are kind of questions were asking ourselves related to projections looking ahead, whether the arc of different possible outcomes from a Health Perspective . What are likely interventions in these scenarios . And in protecting Public Health, by design almost, it avoids interactions and causes other damage, right. So were talking through that. I dont want to speculate. It would be profound though. Already i believe in the sectors were talking about, there is going to be quickly discussions of closures. Youre going to have cash crunches in many of the businesses that are affected. Businesses are very quickly going to phase decisions related to their estimate of what they think the duration of this is and whether it would be in the businesss financial best interests to simply close for a month. I would not be surprised if hotels are having that conversation. I think restaurants in the city are likely already having that conversation. And the broader the kind of Public Health response needs to be, the more profound those kinds of choices spread to every part of the economy. Every part of our business base. And all of their workers. So i dont want to speculate, but it would be profound. Supervisor ronen have you been studying what is happening in italy and wuhan . Some. I know the Health Experts have been working on that more feverishly than we have been in the last few days. Supervisor ronen definitely, theyre studying the Public Health impacts, but the Economic Impacts, kind of what are the measures that those economies are taking . Theyre extreme and they have profound impacts. I have not been to this point this week reviewing the specific economics, but more considering what the Public Health interventions would and then thinking through with our team and others what would the application of that kind of a rule mean in San Francisco . In top level results, you can see impacts to top line, bottom line, indicators in china. China has had a negative quarter for last year in terms of their g. D. P. Growth. I believe that was the first negative quarter in over 20 years. And i think thats entirely driven off of their Public Health response. If that gives us some sense. Supervisor fewer seeing no more comments. Thank you very much. Is there another presentation . No, i think were done. I can very quickly show this new tool off if that is helpful, madame chair. Supervisor fewer one good news thing. Yes, a better topic to end with today, or a little more cheerful anyway. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to do this. As youre aware, chair fewer, the supervisor mar, the sful full board adopted legislation for transparency and required our office to create a website where people interested in the budget process would have access to some of the time lines, tools, meetings and reporting in a centralized way. So thank you very much to the Digital Services team and the City Administrators Office, reesa sandler and others in the budget group. We got that site up and live on march 1. Its on the top level of the sf gov website. Weve tried to keep it very simple to make it publicly accessible as possible. Its a single landing page. Plain language, descriptions of the budget process, a calendar and then Department Budgets. Drilling into this a little bit, for example, for the timeline, the process used to develop the budget, which i think is one of your goals, chair fewer, has been increased understanding of how that process works and participation in it. There is a simple timeline that shows the different steps of the budget production process. And in each of these cases, there are links to the key documents that official documents that are considered. For example, the mayors budget instructions here. Budget and legislative Analyst Reports at a later time. The budget book. The proposed budget. The last thing and there are host of other documents archived here for ease of people to find them from the public. And then lastly im sorry lastly, because i know its important to the board and to the members, all Department Budget submissions that have come into our office and the Mayors Office are available on the site for review. Supervisor fewer i just want to say i think this is fabulous. Weve had people go on to this website and theyre just fascinated by the city budget now. Like i think it was such a huge thing that most people, lay persons, myself included, didnt understand. And i think this really makes it accessible to every taxpayer in San Francisco. Which is our goal. Thank you. And any other comments from my colleagues . None . Okay. Id like to make a motion then to file this item. Second . President yee, take that without objection. Thank you very much. Any other business before us today . No further business. Supervisor fewer thank you very much, were adjourned. 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 marcl meeting between the San Francisco board of supervisors and the Public Utilities commission. Welcome, commissioners and welcome president caen. So madame clerk, will you please call the role for the board of supervisors . Thank you, mr. President. [roll call] thank you, madame clerk. I will now hand this over to president caen of the Public Utilities commission. Madame secretary, could you please im sorry what . Nothing could you call roll call . [roll call] we have a quorum. Good of my i yield the floor back to you. Thank you. Madame clerk, thank you madame president. On behalf of the board, i would like to acknowledge the staff at sf gov tv who record the meetings and make the transcripts available online. Thank you for joining us today on this very important topic. Before we proceed, president caen, would you like to make any opening remarks . I will defer any opening remarks because i would like to get to the basics of why were here. And i know that we are moving in concert together. And lets proceed. Okay. Madame clerk, are there any communications . I have none to report, mr. President okay. Lets go to the Public Comment. Yes. At this time the publish may address the entire board of supervisors and the p. U. C. Commissioners for two minutes on items within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board. And mr. President , i will state that members of the public, if you would like to have hand sanitizer, there is some right outside the chamber door. Okay. Thank you, madame clerk. I will hand this over to president caen of the p. U. C. For the Public Comment. Yes. To madame secretary, could you call for Public Comment . P. U. C. Calls for any Public Comment on maries to be addressed during closed session matters to be addressed during closed session seeing none sorry. So this is a special meeting, and i am supposed to somehow comment on what you all are going to be discussing. And what you are all going to be discussing will be shared by the City Attorney who is going to talk to you about pg e. So as one who participants in most of your meetings at sfpuc, i strongly feel at this juncture that sfpuc hasnt maintained a standard when it comes to your sewer and your water and also the hetch hetchy hydroelectricity that you all produce. And i find it very difficult that the city has no money. Earlier on the mayor stated so. But somehow now sfpuc has the audacity to now buy whatever pg e wants to give up, which i know from following everything that pg e doesnt want to give up anything that it possesses. Its beholden to those who invest in its stocks and shares. And they have clients that have been investing for over 100 years. And you all know that well. So i want to know if an assessment can be done, if sfpuc really has the capacity, the ability to buy pg e, whether its a small part or a large part of my thats all im going to say. Because i cannot say what you all are going to be discussing. Somebody may have the power to hoodwink you all. Thank you. Tom gilberti. Im not a fan of pg e. It should have been taken over ten years ago. They kept saying that if the city cant run the city, why would they how could they run pg e. Well, i dont think pg e can run pg e. But at the same time, i dont want to take a piece of the city, the pg e part of the city, because when we have forest fires, and they are caused by pg e, the smoke comes down here. I think its a regional matter. And it should be solved regionally. Its like a taylor. You get we can tell something for San Francisco and what needs to be tailored out in the suburbs and woodlands. And i agree, where is the money coming from to buy this . And good luck to all of you. I think this meeting should be open. Im against these private, closed sessions. Thank you. Thank you. Any other speakers . Seeing none, yield the floor back to you, president. I believe that that would be concludes our Public Comment. I understand the p. U. C. Must take action before they go into closed session, before we go into closed session. So i will hand it over again to president caen. Okay. We are struggling here with our script. So what do we have to do here . Lets see. Oh, yes. I need a motion to assert privilege. I most of to assert. Second. Any Public Comment on that . Seeing none, all those in favor. Aye. Opposed . The motion carryies. So now i yield back to you, president. Now that the p. U. C. Has approved their item, madame clerk, please call the closed session item. Scheduled pursuant to a motion number m200200 approved on february 11, 2020, board of supervisors and the p. U. C. Are scheduled to enter into a joint closed session for the Public Utilities Commission Regarding existing litigation regarding pacific gas and Electric Company today, march 10, 2020. Okay. Members of the public, we now ask that you exit the chamber and the sheriffs to lock the doors behind them, and we will reopen the doors, the chamber once we finish with the joint closed session, and the public will be allowed okay. Are we ready . Do i need to do this . No. We are now back in open session. May i have a motion for the board what . That the board finds that it is in our best interest of the public that the board elect not to disclose this closed session deliberations . A motion made by supervisor peskin, seconded by supervisor safai. For the record we will show that supervisor haney is not in the chamber okay. Then without objection, we will not disclose our closed session deliberations. I will hand this over to you for p. U. C. s action. Commissioners, can i have a motion on whether to disclose. A motion by commissioner maxwell not to disclose seconded by commissioner paulson. Without objection, that is the order. Mr. President , i would like to note for the record that the p. U. C. Commissioners caen and vietor are not in chamber okay. Colleagues that brings us to the end of our joint special meeting agenda. Madame clerk, is there any further business before us today . That concludes our business for today, mr. President thank you. We are adjourned. [please stand by] supervisor walton thank you so much for being here. We are here uniting communities together. We are going to start this conversation off this afternoon with a prayer from reverend birch and from reverend norman fong. Let us bow our heads in word of prayer. Thank you for allowing us to be in this day. Father god, we would ask that you strengthen us, and give us strength. You know whats going on in the midst of our communities, and we ask that you give us the strength to endure. We cant do it without you. We ask that you touch every one, every one that was damaged by violence. Touch them, oh, god, in a mighty special way. We ask that in jesus name, amen. It you to turn to the person to your left and right and say youre beautiful. All of you are beautiful because were here to stand in solidarity. Life is ugly, and sometime bad stuff happens. But im blessed to be here. Just say a few words, repeat after me. Peace. Pause. Shalom. We are gathered here to stand firm on peace, beauty, and solidarity