Transcripts For SFGTV Public Utilities Commission 20240711

Way to go. Its not designed to handle all of the traffic. On weekends and commute hours theres a large backup there. Plus chain of lake intersects with mlk and jfk and i hate to say this, but not all people who use the roadway obey those stop signs. I had a scary incident, i was on jfk and chain of lake and i had the right of way according to the rule book and this lady on a bicycle just whizzed by, didnt look or stop. Scared the heck out of me. Lucky i stopped. You need to look at the big picture. Also, you need to look at 19th avenue. 19th avenue cannot handle any increase in traffic. Clerk 30 seconds. Caller you need to look at the big picture when you make the decision. Maybe there was an alternative that sounded good, maybe dividing the road into half. Thank you. Bye. Clerk next speaker please. You have five questions remaining. Caller this is barry toronto. I first wanted to say that roberta boomer did this more than christina, announce you have to hit 10 to participate in Public Comment on any item because a number of my colleagues did not have a chance to make Public Comment last week because of the confusion about the instructions. So it would be great if several times during the meeting you repeat the issue of when youre on the phone line. Regarding the directors report, you talk about the sanitizing of the vehicles at least once per shift. I have to say that it was very thankful that the mta provided some ppe and cleaning supplies earlier in the pandemic. It is months and months later and we could use some more. Im having to shell out my own money for it and working the city, theres not enough business for me to go home with money after paying for cleaning supplies when theyre available at stores. It would be great to provide some more especially to the ram drivers. They could use more, they put themselves most at risk because they have to deal directly with the customers but we also have to deal with the issue of passengers not always Wearing Masks or keeping them on while riding in the vehicle. The other part is do we know how many cab drivers have gotten been infected with the virus. It would be great if there was a study done to determine that and whether to try to help limit exposure to it. And to maybe help remind passengers to keep the mask on or put it on when in the vehicle. I myself have had to reject rides due to people not Wearing Masks properly or not Wearing Masks in the vehicle. Thank you. Clerk next caller, please. You have four questions remaining. Caller hello director tumlin. Im a transit officer and local 258 union representative. I would like to support director tumlin on the fare collection. As far as operators, theyre exposed to a virus all day long and theres an opening by the fare box, if someone sneezes, you know, cough, theyre exposed. Not collecting fares on how to get a better idea how to handle it is a good idea. And i would like to mention that other men and women operating, they are exposed every day. They come to work and do their job and i missed the first part of the meeting about the budget i would like to say that these men and women, none of them should be laid off thats going to come up later. Caller thank you very much. Ill get back to you later then. Chair borden yes, item 13. Thank you very much. You have three questions remaining. Clerk next speaker. Caller can you hear me now . Hello. I think you meant item 11 and not 13 for the prior speaker. On item 7, first to caroline, please send me the director talking points for today. I heard a reference to the great highway. Good Public Comments from Richard Rothman. I did not hear if there was any comment made about the 19th avenue project and impact on transit and driving on 19th and likelihood of traffic diversion on 19th to alternate routes including 7th avenue, sunset boulevard and in particular sunset boulevard and what impact that has on the great highway closing or reopening discussion. And then just wanted to say outside of the Budget Discussion thats coming up later, i think theres a real question now about the purpose of the mta Going Forward as an organization, if you shrink the Transit System and rest of the organization which now seems increasingly likely, i think raising new revenue becomes harder and i guess well get into that on item 11. And i would wonder what about prior commitments to transit that have been made based on approved Development Projects clerk 30 seconds. Caller whether it is Hunters Point shipyard or other things. Perhaps one of the directors could ask for a list and some understanding of how those prior commitments and triggers are affected if that service is not provided now and may not come back. Just a thought. Ill have more on item 11. Thanks. Clerk next speaker please. You have two questions remaining. Caller yes, with regards to the state your name. Caller im concerned about the need for physical distancing and so i just dont know i understand that theres a need for revenue but i dont know how much sense it makes to be putting fare inspectors on buses when were trying to make sure that buses dont have too many riders it seems there have to be better ways of generating revenue than having fare inspectors go on and theyre going bus to bus. Thats a way for them to become disease factors doesnt seem like it makes a lot of sense. I forgot the other thing i was going to talk about. Thank you. Clerk did you want to state your name . Caller no thank you. Clerk next speaker please. You have one question remaining. Caller hello. Hayden miller. Just wanted to say a few things on the directors report. Great highway, hopefully you can implement traffic calming around there and keep the great walkway open. Also on safety on the buses, over 100 cases throughout the agency, 100 families that are now having to suffer because they went to work to serve the city. The capacity limits are too high and theres no mask enforcement and thats where a lot of this starts. If the capacity limits were lower like every other agency in the country, this wouldnt be so much of an issue. They didnt pull these numbers out of the air, the other agencies, unlike muni, they actually measured. How are you going to fit even the capacity right now 20 people at a four foot distance on a bus, it doesnt fit. The buses are so full, people are not Wearing Masks, i was with a guy on the nine, the nine is always packed by the way, it needs to go back to the 60 foot buses and this guy is spitting all over the place, no mask on. Everybodys scared to do anything and no enforcement and rides riders are suffering. And people are getting sick. And its really terrible. Over 100 workers, over 100 families are suffering. And then lastly on Fare Enforcement. I think part of the issue stems from the fact that during the period where they were supposed to handout the warning cards, i have one here, need help paying your fare. They were on their phones a lot of the time instead of handing these out on the buses. They were just standing at the bus stops so not a lot of people got the warning cards and information. It is hard for anyone to be informed they were resuming. Clerk thank you for the comments. Your time is up. Well have our staff look into that distribution process. Next caller please. You have one question remaining. Caller what happened for transit, they all installed barriers for the operators and once that was done about september, they changed the head sign that said board front, pay fare and wear a mask. It took eight months to put a mask required on our head signs. I think you need to consider implementing the head sign to change what the destination that says fares are required because people are still boarding in the rear and thinking that they dont have to pay. I have seen that occur several times and with Fare Enforcement there and people were surprised that they were quote unquote supposed to pay the fare. I think there needs to be advertising on the head signs. Thank you. Chair borden thank you. Any additional callers on the line, moderator . You have zero questions remaining. Chair borden with that, well close Public Comment and move on to the next item. Clerk item 8 is the Citizens Advisory Council report. But the director is not present so there will be no report. Item 9 is Public Comment and this is for members of the public to address the board on matters within the boards jurisdiction but not on todays calendar. Chair borden moderator do we have people on the line for items not on the calendar today. Later well be talking about parking modifications and contract on item 11 and talk about our budget, item 12, talking about the rail and bus terminal projects improvements and item 13 rounding out the transit update no, thats the let me make sure. Thats the rail stuff as well and item 14 is were going to go into closed section. So thats just the highlight. If you have a comment on general Public Comment, please speak now. Moderator . You have four questions remaining. Chair borden first caller, please. Caller hi, Hayden Miller again. I want to talk about Parking Enforcement. The m. P. A theres so much revenue lost but most parking violations are not being enforced. I walk down the street and the meters are unpaid and no one is enforcing it. The buses dont use the transit lane on Mission Street because its filled with double parking and nobody enforces it. Most people have given up reporting because they know the mca doesnt do anything about it. The safety hazards need to be enforced and it will help fill the budget gaps. Calls to 311 right now get ignored. Even when you talk to pcos in person, im using my discretion and its not enough of an inconvenience to you. What if there was somebody in the wheelchair or has to swerve out in traffic because someone cuts them off. Meanwhile, theres three to four pcos every day supposedly helping to direct traffic at the hospital. Theres no need for three or four of them and same thing on street cleaning. Theres seven driving down the block but some of them could be enforcing red zones, transit lanes, double parking, sidewalk parking. The Parking Enforcement assignments need to be looked at to look at high violation areas that are causing safety hazards instead of just street cleaning. Street cleaning is all that is enforced right now, meanwhile people are suffering on our streets. Our transit slowed down by illegally parked cars. We need to look at the Parking Enforcement and the way it is assigned. Thank you. Chair borden thank you for the comment. Next speaker please. You have six questions remaining. Caller i will repeat comments i made yesterday at the Committee Meeting and will make tomorrow on the oversight committee. At the march 2nd 2020 Capital Planning committee in person meeting, agenda items 4, 5 and 6 were presentations on the mta two year Capital Improvement plan, current budget and 2014 transportation bond. During Public Comment for the items, i stated my belief the fundamental problem is the culture. The mta executive director seemed less than interested and yet, when they call the board of supervisors at its november 17th meeting, agenda item 9, question on issues with the twins peak tunnel. The executive director pointed to a culture of fear at the agency as a significant reason why Capital Projects have constantly not gone according to plan. Later that same day, at the november 17th meeting of the board, agenda items 11 and 12. Affinity groups testified about how the mtas legacy of racism, sexism and even though muni operators were considered front line worker, the agency has penalized them rather than rewarding them. It has done this by getting rid of the Drivers Program that has made a contribution for 19 years. I would urge the agency to reinstate that immediately. Thank you. Chair borden thank you. Next speaker please. You have five questions remaining. Caller hello, Richard Rothman again and this time im calling about fulton street. I know the money was sent to mta but nothing has happened. The worse part, nobody will talk to me. I email people, phone people, even send tweets and nothing happens. Why cant i find out when the project is going to happen and theres more accidents, at least one or two accidents on fulton, cars just speed along there and tom mcguire says the way to reduce traffic is through engineering and you need to do something to reduce the traffic speed on fulton street by reengineering the street. I dont know why fulton street is left out and why this work hasnt started and maybe you can tell me who i need to talk to to get a decent answer of when the work is going to start. Its just i dont know, when i put in requests for information, i dont get the right information anymore. I dont know what is happening to the department there. Its just getting very hard to deal with. And you know, they work for the citizens of San Francisco and they should be responsible at least to answer emails or telephone calls. Can the board please make sure staff answers emails and telephone calls, even if they say i dont want to talk to you anymore. At least they have the common courtesy to talk to the public, after all we pay their salaries. Thank you. Chair borden thank you. Next speaker please. You have five questions remaining. Caller myself and my neighbors were informed that the topic of the muni 30 extension would be on the agenda today. You would have received an email regarding our dpragrave concerns about the extension. Our strong recommendation is that you move the 30 to Marina Middle School at chestnut and fillmore that has significant ability to accommodate multi 60 foot buses, in front of Public Restrooms and green space. We are suggesting that you keep the route existing as it is just as you need it to park the buses there and eliminate the extension. In the documents we sent to you today, we note our frustrations and that the sfmta has misled the public about it. You have posted Public Notices but you refer to it as permanent and signed a five year contract. That is absolutely lying to the public. You are misusing Public Resources at a time that the sfmta is in a transit death spiral. Theres clear lapse of appropriate process. You pay no attention to the grave danger of the sea wall and sewer lines here. Those need to be addressed to ensure it is actually safe for 60 foot buses to be running on them 150 times a day. The latest reports we have from 1991 suggest theyre not safe. We have reviewed those. There is no demand. The average rider for safety is zero. Zero. Theres no one supporting this. You are spending 4,500 a month just to pay for restrooms there in a time theres no way chair borden thank you so much caller and you lied about removing a parking space. We demand that you respond. Chair borden thank you. Next speaker please. You have five questions remaining. Caller hi, i want to discuss the ban on certain taxis at the airport. The transportation code section 1109e2 is explicit, restrictions on the types of taxi cab trip coming from the San Francisco International Airport to alleviate congestion. Has anybody been out there lately . Its a ghost town like the rest of San Francisco, a ghost town. However, the director of taxis in her notice to the board, to you guys, that was dated october 23rd, 2020, she states the reason is in order to provide Additional Support to purchase madallian holders. Only purchase and ram taxis pick up passengers. So is this this seems to me to be illegal. We have just been through four years of a president ignoring laws to further objectives. Do we want to do that again . Do we want to do that here . Im asking that you all schedule a hearing regarding the taxi directors new policy. Thank you. Chair borden next speaker please. You have six questions remaining. Chair borden yes, hi, this is barry toronto, ill following my colleague here and want to say that today is giving tuesday. Well, the mta and their staff are taking away, theyre not giving anybody any money. And i cant afford to even participate in giving tuesday because im not making any money. So i want to say that you are practicing the opposite by barring a certain class from the airport. I asked some of them at the airport on sunday what they were going to do and they said they were going to just switch to a p cab if they were available and join in line with the others working the airport. So you would think youre going to reduce the amount of time working the airport, no. Its still going to be increased. Sunday was the busiest sunday of the year at the airport normally, still busier sunday but still a way at the airport because at times there were over 30 in line at the airport and it doesnt seem like a lot but during this time it is a lot. I want to say that this idea you think this is going to help by barring the k, theres only about up to maximum of about 10 that regularly work the airport. Then what youre doing is just making the line longer and keeping the wait time long. Its not going to help. If youre in a giving mood, i ask you to actually help provide loan and debt relief, theres been at least minimum of six foreclosures since the 49 were previously announced. I want to let you know, this is not going to help the situation and in fact, its going to possibly create a shortage at the airport during those peak times when the demand is high. Its only during the evening hours between like 8 30 to 10 30. Chair borden thank you. Caller thank you. Chair borden next speaker please. You have five questions remaining. Chair borden next speaker. Caller hello im a colead with urban environmentalist and im calling to ask for sfmta to please look into the residential parking permit program. A parking permit costs 144 per year but represents thousands of dollars a year in public and society costs. The program doesnt cover the whole city and not strictly enforced either. Given our budget woes, i think this would be poor use and happening just because its status quo. Charging market rate would discourage car use and have environmental and air quality benefits that we particularly need given covid. We could use it for bike parking or bike lanes, public space and even commercial space. We recently had an event, you can find the video if you google the true cost of residential street parking. And we had a lawyer from Uc Davis School of law who says there are no legal hurdles to doing this under prop 226 or prop 218. Theres nothing stopping us. And finally i wanted to mention on a different note that i know the region is conducting a fair immigration study and i encourage you to support this. Thank you. Chair borden thank you. Next speaker please. You have four questions remaining. Caller yes, im calling regarding the extension on Marina Boulevard and weve submitted all the documents and we plead with the board to review all of the documents as we have three ton weight limit signs all over Marina Boulevard after the last earthquake because of our very old sea wall and all the fragile that run along the boulevard. And these 20 ton buses running every five minutes shaking the homes and ground we can feel in our homes. Oscillation, they say is the worst thing for this area and theres no riders. We have to sit there and watch empty buses chair borden excuse me. This item is on the agenda later. This time period is for matters not on the agenda. Caller weve been postponed and postponed and postponed. Chair borden the item caller they dont let us know its postponed. Were very frustrated. Please review the documents. Its very, very serious. Thank you. Chair borden moderator you have two questions remaining. Caller good afternoon im a volunteer lead with San Francisco id like to encourage the board today to support regional fare integration as options come forward. As you know the region will do a fare integration study and bring forward policy options this winter. I think this would be a really important i support this because i want to see increase transit used to combat Climate Emissions and i think that we have to look at the situation moving forward. Everybody is excited that a vaccine is surfacing and we have to have some faith and optimism that the Biden Administration will move quickly to get this going and you know hopefully we can see some economic recovery really soon. We should be forward thinking and thinking about ways that transit is going to be critical to rebuilding the bay areas economy, not just San Francisco but theres the chances are likely people will need to commute all over the bay area to find new jobs, to use transit once again to go to their jobs from wherever theyre living and i think regionally integrated fares are the solution here. I dont know what the future holds but there could be a time i have to commute to another part of the bay area from San Francisco where i live car free. I would like to see that a fare integration has been implemented to make life easier for folks. I know that we can work through this together. I know you guys can come up with really Exciting Solutions and you have a great team there. If you could please support regional fare integration as options come forward, i think the majority of the bay area will appreciate your commitment. Thank you. Chair borden thank you. Next speaker, please. You have one question remaining. Caller im calling to also encourage the sfmta to engage in and support the regional fare integration study. I think it would be really valuable for the mta and San Francisco riders in general. I think fare integration would be good for ridership to rebound quicker post pandemic. I used to live next to a bart station and the fastest way to get to them by transit is to take the bart and transfer on to muni. And doing that transfer doubles the cost of the trip. So it was quite often that when i was traveling in a group or with friends or occasionally by myself, i would take an uber or lyft to get somewhere because the transfer made the trip so expensive. So i think fare integration would really help with the problem and encourage ridership to rebound. And second, i know we want to ensure that a regional solution supports the commitment that sfmta has, by far the most committed to equity in the region as a Transit System. And id like to see that any regional solution reflects that as well. So i think commitment by the mt a to engaging in this would be valuable there. Thats all i have. Thank you. Chair borden thank you for your comments. Next speaker please. You have zero questions remaining. Chair borden okay. With that well close Public Comment and move on to the next item. Secretary silva the consent calendar, all items are considered to be routine by the board and acted on by a single vote. Theres no separate discussion unless a member of the public or board requests to do so. In that event, the item will be removed from the consent calendar and considered separate. Ill go through and highlight the items. Item 1, approving targeted modifications. 10. 2 authorizes the director to execute modification number 12 to contract number 1289 van ness corridor transit improvement for additional costs related to pedestrian Monitoring Services in the amount of 2,589,381 to not to exceed big numbers here. 220,507,216. So thats the consent calendar. Chair borden at this point i will open up to Public Comment because we are taking Public Comment on items on the consent calendar before having the board consider them. Modera moderator are there comments online for 10. 1 and 10. 2 in the agenda . You have one question remaining. Chair borden caller . Caller can you hear me now . Chair borden yes, we can. Caller im speaking on 10. 1, c, d, e and f only. On c and d, they were changed from the public hearing to in particular, the segment that is now item d that would be parttime from 6 00 a. M. To 7 00 p. M. I believe. That changed from the public hearing, perhaps in response to Public Comment. Thats good. I dont know if theres a way to further highlight in the report in the future where theres a change from the hearing to Public Comment and sort of closes the loop and suggests that comments are actually considered. On items e and f. Staff report claims they are administer and not subject, i disagree. I believe all parking traffic modifications within the mta are discretionary approvals. Im not familiar with how a project approved that has related parking traffic modifications works. This is the first time i have seen Something Like that. Im concerned about what that means for the future and how many other projects are in the pipeline under that legislation. I think its a slippery slope to say that some are discretionary. I am not with that program. I think all approvals here are discretionary under the charter and transportation code. Im neither in support nor opposition to the proposed changes, the approval process is my concern. Chair borden thank you. Any additional Public Commenters . You have two questions remaining. Chair borden next speaker please. Caller yes, can you hear me . Chair borden yes. Are you calling about 10. 1 or 10. 2 . Caller yes, maam. C and d. I live on fitzgerald avenue known as the new 29 bus stop. In one month it will be 20 years ive struggled to survive in this city. The last six weeks have been the worst, ive tried time and again to get through the board the devastating effects that the bus zone extension is going to have on my business, my employees, my clients and me. Im going to assume the board has not read my numerous emails or seen the dozens of photos of damage to my property and dangerous conditions i face trying to enter and exit my building. Its been left to staff to manage my expectations and pacify me. Im told the drivers will be trained to park in their designated zones while in fact they park into my driveway, almost took off my right fender as one peeled away because i stopped to take a picture. This solution cannot be enforced and they know it and so does sfmta. As for parking, im told to reduce bus hours in this area. Shall i tell my employees and customers that our new Business Hours are 7 00 p. M. To 7 00 a. M. Is this how you help Small Business . I urge this board to read and view. You are relocating it to my property. All buses now parked first at my property so the others can pull in behind. The existing bus stop and passenger enclosure is no longer used. If you claim it is due to accidents for double parking, extend by one bus. Youre taking my property without due process. No amount of training, signage or lip service will do this. This is the city turning a blind eye to constituents. Today is giving tuesday, give me my property back. Chair borden thank you for your comments. Caller youre welcome. Chair borden next speaker please. You have one question remaining. Caller yes, hi. This is barry toronto. On the theme of giving tuesday, youre giving 10. 2, youre giving a contractor a lot more money to contract extension to perform extra items in the contract. How about giving the city of San Francisco, the citizens along van ness avenue a better idea of how much longer the project is going to be. I think its important to get an answer from the contractor as to how much longer they need and why its taking so long to complete this project. The only good thing is after 8 00 at night, the lights its my preferred route because of the light timing. So i appreciate that. But in the meantime, the damage to the roadway and to our vehicles as a result of this incomplete project is horrendous. Thank you. Chair borden next speaker please. Caller hi, just quickly on 10. 2, the contract just keeps getting longer and longer but my main concern is the bus stops, the contractor continues to not post adequate signage for when bus stops are relocated and often times when they are relocated, cars will park in front of the relocated bus zone and that needs to be addressed. Seniors, people with disabilities, even every day people, they dont want to squeeze between cars and construction vehicles and equipment. Through a dugup street to try to get on the bus. It needs to be better signage and no parking in front of the temporary bus zones along van ness. Chair borden thank you. Moderator, any additional callers on the line . You have zero questions remaining. Chair borden with that, were closing Public Comment. I want to start with the City Attorney about the approval issue that was raised. About the exemption. Yes, thank you chair borden. I believe on the line and can speak to the exemption. Chair borden great. Yes, sarah jones, this question did come up so just a brief bit of background, senate bill 35 established kind of made certain housing related certain projects involving housing. Basically i dont recall the details off the top of my head, although i can send followup information around it. Essentially, high density Affordable Housing in order to stream line its development was declared to be administrator. Then the City Attorneys that work with the Planning Department also determined that or have concluded that that applies to all of the other approvals that go on related to housing development, not just the site permit of conditional use or whatever. The Housing Needs but all of the other approvals that are tied to the project as well. Thats what has been applied to the parking and traffic changes that are associated with a Housing Project that is approved under sb35. That was the procedure we followed in terms of getting the review on the parking and traffic changes. Chair borden thats items e and f. For the public, what is the Housing Project address or do you know the Housing Project its associated with . I dont recall. I will go back into the records and just identify it. But really quickly for the public, what it means is its not a discretionary decision and therefore its not applicable. Thats kind of the relationship or connection around the issue here. Chair borden great. And mr. Mcguire did you have something to add to this or another item . Just point of fact for the question about what the project was director borden. Its Affordable Housing project to replace the one story bail bonds building with 146 Group Housing units on the south side of bryant street directly across from the hall of justice. Chair borden okay. I think maybe in the future when we have a situation that is specific like that, if we can indicate that, it is confusing for the public. Theres no mention of the Housing Project so it wouldnt be obvious that thats the association. Directors, i see a number of you had questions on various items. Director lai or eaken, both of you have questions. Whoever wants to go first. Vice chair eaken just to comment on 10. 2 in the context of the overall financial situation, our agency faces that well discuss later today, the 2. 5 million number stood out to me for pedestrian monitoring activity. As a particularly high number. Just thinking about all of the Pedestrian Safety improvements and intersections that could be day lit with these funds, just felt it was our Due Diligence to ask more about the justification for the relatively high number. I tried to look through the materials but didnt find breakdowns for number of hours or rates that would justify that high of a dollar figure and want to understand if theres any other way to achieve the desired outcome. It sounded like preventing pedestrians from walking into construction areas, then this contract amendment looks like this was a little over 1 of the entire project budget for this pedestrian monitoring activity. That struck me as particularly high. Director lai do you want to go ahead with your question . Commissioner lai sure. Actually very similar thought process here. I think given the state of our budget, im just sharing this, moving forward i do intend to scrutinize all contracts a little closer. I think that is necessary. I asked staff similar questions but i do have follow up on i think my understanding is that a significant portion of this money has actually been expended because it is backfilling essentially. First question, why did that occur, why didnt it come to us at that point. Its like a Million Dollars or 1. 5 that has been expended and the forward looking budget were asked to allocate is about a Million Dollars through the rest of the construction. Again, what is this money really going towards. I think in the report description it sounds like additional flaggers. I do want Additional Information about what exactly theyre doing. Is this additional actual staff bodies on top of the existing construction crew or is this overtime. One of the comments or questions i sent to staff, given we have fewer pedestrians than we historically have in the plant due to the pandemic, are we anticipating really needing that additional Million Dollars to do the work. And another question i asked, are there any other funds we have allocated out there on Pedestrian Safety related to vision zero that could address this scope as opposed to dipping into the contingency portion of the project. Thats a clarification when i asked what is the trade off, where is the money coming from and the staffs response was its coming from the Contingency Fund which makes me a little uncomfortable. This is not what i expected it to be for. So maybe ill just end there. Chair borden maybe we could talk about the distinction between the Capital Program and how this expenditure is separate or the same as other vision zero and how the money is allocated in the way it is so we can know if theres a direct trade off in the way were thinking of. Can you hear me . I can see you. Youre kind of frozen but we can see you. Okay. Im the project manager open the van ness Improvement Project. I want to start by making a distinction between the vision zero improvements and funds being spent on the van ness Improvement Project and pedestrian monitoring. Were making a number of improvements along the corridor, improving the lighting, countdown signals and day lighting along the length of van ness avenue to improve Pedestrian Safety. These funds are specifically for Safety Measures during construction. And to explain what they consist of, they are primarily body flaggers that stand on corners of intersections when we are specifically trenching or doing other construction in the crosswalks at those intersections to keep pedestrians away from the construction site. The project theres a number of flaggers baked into the specifications for that sort of work. And it was thought when we started the construction they would be sufficient to keep people from wandering into the construction site but once we got into construction, in spite of barriers and people we had in the field to redirect pedestrian traffic, the contractor started reporting problems of flow of pedestrians and people ignoring the signs and walking into the construction site. That started happening a couple years ago. In february of 2018 was the first time the contractor began using refer to as pedestrian monitors to control access to the construction site. City staff worked with the contractor. We had to walk a fine line between being guardians of public trust and not expending money that is better used in other ways and maintaining Public Safety during construction. We had a problem verifying they were putting in the effort they were supposed to be putting in. The number the funds that are expended represent the hours that we have been able to verify and agreed to that are necessary to provide safe passage of pedestrians around our construction sites over the last two years. The funds looking forward are our best estimate based on what will be expended during the remaining part of the construction. The question about reduced pedestrians due to covid, the funds that are set up moving forward are what we call allowance item, it means the contractor must formally request ahead of time before putting the pedestrian monitors in place. When they get ready to work in an intersection, they explain the work theyre going to do and crews theyre going to use. And as part of that, theyre supposed to submit the number of pedestrian monitors they feel they will need and then the City Engineer will evaluate if they agree with them or not and arrive at a number that is agreed to. Putting forth effort that is not needed. I hope that answers the questions that were asked, if not, im happy to try to make things clearer. Chair borden directors . Commissioner lai thats helpful. I wonder thinking about other large Capital Projects. Is it typical to spend as much as 1 of the entire budget on this . I can contextualize it within this project. The original request by the contractor came in at 9 million when we realized we needed the monitors. They were overreaching to some extent and we have come down to this amount. This is part of the Traffic Control for the project as a whole to keep traffic moving around the construction site safely. These extra bodies supplement signage, barriers and striping on the street and temporary signals and that sort of thing, that number is in the tens of millions overall. This is a fraction of what were spending on Traffic Control for the entire project. Is it typical for a project of this type . It varies greatly from project to project depending on where youre building in the city and what type of work youre doing when trenching across an intersection for a sewer line, you need more pedestrian monitors. Chair borden do people feel like the questions were answered adequately about whats normal . Director heminger . Commissioner heminger yeah, let me pile on here. When is the project going to be done . If we dont run into anymore anymore unexpected challenges by this Time Next Year it will be all over except watching the paint dry. Well have construction substantially complete and well be beginning our Driver Training and only doing touchup work along the corridor. About 12 more months and were done. Commissioner heminger can i follow up . I was trying to get at director eakens question about is this a reasonable cost or not . We paid according to the staff report we would be paying 800 grand for about a years worth of work. Why is it over a million for the year were in . It will likely not be over a million but we wanted to set up allowance item that we felt comfortable could cover the work and we wouldnt be back here. The contractor has to request the use of the pedestrian monitors and we have to approve it for the fund moving forward commissioner heminger so whats the cushion . Sometimes you not wanting to come back is a powerful motivation to get it done for the original amount. It would be i would have to dig back in the records and see what our estimate was. Commissioner heminger i mean one way to look at it, we could just agree to the cost that is paying for a year from 19 19 to 20 20. The Million Dollars remaining allows for an additional six months of work. Really its less than 800,000 for the year. The reason we cant go based on past work, as i mentioned before, it varies greatly on the type of work being done. The work in the past was mostly utility work, this is going to be mostly paving work and the work the numbers we have come up with are based on what kind of impacts we think were going to have to the intersections during the commissioner heminger thank you. Chair borden thank you and maybe you can for the publics understanding, talk about what has caused this project to be so delayed and what are the other anticipated challenges that could delay it further. Sure. The things that caused the greatest delays on this project have been unknown and unidentified utilities in the corridor. We put in essentially because we put in a parallel system for water and sewer, over four miles of sewer line and over four miles of power line and power and communications. All this was buried. Van ness avenue has been heavily populated for over 100 years, closer to 150 years. When we started doing the utility trenching, we kept hitting unidentified structures or unidentified utilities. The worst of these are when youre digging and you suddenly hit a steel or iron line running across your trench and you have to maneuver the sewer line around it or cut the line out of the way. Nine times out of 10, the lines we hit were abandoned primarily gas lines from the 1800s from gas services that fed the houses and public buildings along the corridor. And we could go in and we could just cut them out of the way, the challenge is making sure they are actually abandoned and safe to cut. It slowed down the construction a great deal. Chair borden that was for the puc project. The bulk was puc but its not all of it. Sfmta had a power conduct bank. One was ours and the other four were pucs. That was the biggest challenge is the not knowing what was underground. Chair borden do we foresee are we doing less shallow digging at this point . At this point we are primarily removing existing pavement, were not anticipating hitting any unknown objects buried in the ground because were not really doing digging. Just taking out existing concrete. Chair borden are there potential hazards that could be a delay that are not digging related . Weve had minor challenges with supply chain issues related to covid. Concrete has been difficult to challenging to acquire and bring in in recent months because of covid. It hasnt actually impacted our construction but it has been a thing, its not as easy as during normal times we can call up the supplier and have them ship in the concrete. Its a matter of how soon can you get it to us and order it well enough ahead of time. Something like that not related to utilities or unknowns in the field might become a problem, but we have been able to dodge that bullet and hopefully as things normalize into the new year, we can avoid that problem all together. Chair borden are we talking three month delay, six month delay, if youre saying one more year, if its one month delay its not that big of a deal. If its three months delay, thats a bigger deal. I really cant say. I mean this type of supply chain problem is outside of my realm of experience. Like i said, it hasnt actually impacted the schedule, its just something proving more difficult than it would be in normal times. My construction manager feels very confident we can make the one year mark and finish all of the platform construction and planting and roadway and i have no reason to doubt him. Were essentially out of the really dangerous areas with all of the unknowns that are involved in digging 15 foot deep trench trenches. If something hangs us up it will be outside the normal control of the city. Chair borden director lai you had another question. Commissioner lai just to follow up, i understand that because the majority of the prior work had been for the utility work underground it was a cost sharing, and so just getting back to the flaggers that have already or the pedestrian monitoring work that has been billed in the past, is that a shared cost as well yes. Commissioner lai the money allocated is just our portion . It is shared between the two. Commissioner lai but your ask is for 2. 6 from mta, 1. 5 for retroactive not exactly. Were asking modification of 2. 5 roughly to the contract. Since sfmta administers the contract, were coming to you for permission to do that. The funding for the dollars is going to be a mix of local sfpc funds and sfmta and local funds. Commissioner lai thank you for that clarification. I think with that, i want to again maybe pick up on director hemingers point about the buffer that has been assumed here. It sounds like its about 340,000. I think i heard you say that you had built in a third of the forward looking million as a buffer, is that correct . So it sounds like the real estimated request is perhaps 2. 25 million . As opposed to the 2. 6 million being presented. The request is to modify the contract to allow us to expand up to that additional but what we expect to use is closer to 2. 2 commissioner lai thank you. Chair borden directors, additional questions at this time before we take a vote on the item . Items actually. Okay seeing none. Is there a motion to approve our consent calendar . Commissioner lai i would like to i would like to move to split out 10. 2 to modify and reduce the contract approval by the 340,000, the corrected number should be chair borden so why dont we we need to do two separate motions then. Someone was making a motion, were you making a motion for both or 10. 1 exclusively . Willing to make a motion for 10. 1. Second. Chair borden secretary silva can you please call the roll . roll call chair borden maybe you have something to share with us. I have one item on 10. 2. I would like to make clear to the board that the amount of the contract increased is within the current budget of the project so by taking this action, we are not allocating any additional dollars to the project itself. Every project at the mta has a set amount of budget within the project itself. Van ness is funded through the sales tax and other grant funded sources. Were not adding expenditures as part of the action, were using a portion of the existing budget to modify the contract. The board understands its not additional dollars at this point in time. That was clear from the staff report but a follow up question there. If we were to save this Million Dollars and not allocate it, mta would be able to take that money and apply it to a different project, correct . With particular strings attached. We would be able to reallocate the funds. Thank you. Chair borden so director lai you had a motion you wanted to make. Perhaps you would like to give the amended motion with the reduced amount . Commissioner lai yes, but i believe director heminger may have a comment. Is that im not sure commissioner heminger i think you have all chimed in. Were about to deal with a budget item thats probably going to involve shifting capital money to operating program. Wherever we can scare up capital money, well find plenty of places to use it. Commissioner lai with that, ill make a motion to amend 10. 2 to reduce the contract modification from as drafted from the figure down to 2,249,381. Did i do the math correctly . Chair borden is there a commissioner heminger second. Chair borden okay. Great. The only question i have for staff is, if for some reason the amount was 20 over or 1,000 over, what amount overdose it have to come back to the board if that is not correct . Is it any amount or at a certain amount . My understanding is if we go over amount not to exceed number we have to come back to the board. Thats one of the reasons we put the contingency into the amount, so if we do end up using more money within the year or you fall behind schedule for a month, we dont have to come back for a 5,000 increase or 10,000 increase. That it we have authorization to spend up to that amount and this allowance item covers to that level. Chair borden is that the realistic number of where you thought or is there room, more money you feel you need or something. I want to make sure we took out the right amount. The number we have in there, the 1 million for the next 18 months is the number that city staff and contractor working together have determined is what were likely to use if the project goes another 18 months. So, yeah. It was a mutually agreed to number between the contractor and city staff, Construction Management people and traffic engineers. If as we say, we fully expect to finish construction in less time than that, but we dont want to have to come back to the board for just a few dollars. Commissioner lai right but commissioner brinkman thank you. If we do decrease this amount and have you to come back to board, is it going to cause a delay in the construction schedule or does it just add another level of work on to the agenda and crowd up the agenda again . This shouldnt cause any delay to the construction schedule. Its more a matter of put this as nicely as possible, are we spending 2,000 of staff time to justify an extra 1,000 of expenditure. Chair borden thats a good way to put it. Im not generally a big fan of going to this level of detail on these contract items if it is the feeling of the majority of the Board Members we want to do this, ill go along with it sort of deferring to the greater wisdom but i feel we have already spent a bit of time on this that probably could have better been spent on other things and i dont want to waste staff time coming back again. I will support it but im not a big fan of doing this. Maybe you can answer this question. If in making this decision, how soon theoreticalicly this money were quote unquote freeing up, we couldnt reallocate the money until the completion of the project anyway, is that correct . Theres two aspects. One is the funding plan of the project specifically. Van ness is a little complicated on the majority of the budget from the federal government, from the fta, specific to van ness. So our ability to move that type of money or those dollars on to Something Else is a little difficult minus if we come in less than anticipated on the total project. Since the project budget is complete and this project is not past the contingency, we recommend that the budget contingency remain in place, hopefully until the project is done. If other contract modifications or additional staff time is required during the delivery of the project, we have in the past borrowed money or reallocated it. We will talk about this as director heminger said later today based on the cash flow needs of the project of the mta. We would wait until the end of the project. I have to correct something i said earlier. The 18 months goes back to june of this Previous Year of 2020. So this is just enough funding to get through december of next year. Chair borden are you saying theres not extra money theres not a cushion as you thought previously . No, im sorry. Chair borden director lai . Commissioner lai now im confused. I think earlier i heard you mention 800 thousand back billing based on that estimation. You are considering the forward and last year of construction would be less than the 800,000 we have paid or expended. I dont want to go ahead and like propose making cuts that we cant really execute projects on. The Million Dollars for work yet to be billed. But it covers an 18 month period starting in june of 2020 and going through december of 2021. Part of that money is for work that has been performed with the contractor that they havent billed us for. please stand by. for essentially negotiating delaying with this contractor on the pedestrian monitoring as both a lumpsum payment as well a time and material basis. Yes, why were doing that, is that the question . Yes. Were doing that because it gets back to, gain, the cost of staff time. If the contractor proposes a price for that work, and our Construction Management staff reviews it and checks against their own, and it seems reasonable, we can approve a lump sum. And then when the work is completed, the inspectors signs off that the work is done and the contractor can bill for that lump sum. If the contractor proposal work and the price that theyre asking for seems too high and we cant reach an agreement with city staff, we can propose to do time and materials, you know, which the contractor has to submit all of their all of their timesheets and they have to be compared to the inspectors logs of who was on the construction site and what work was done and what hours of work. And its a more detailed process, but also takes a lot of staff time to do all of that cross checking. So this simply gives the field staff an opportunity that if they reach an agreement with a contractor on a price, they dont have to do all of that additional paperwork to confirm the amount. Its like the contractor said theyll take, you know, four bodies eight hours to do this work and for a price of this amount and the field staff or the Construction Management crew agrees that is a reasonable cost, they can move forward with that. And then when the work is completed the contractor can be paid. Otherwise the contractor has to provide a lot of paperwork and we have to review and crossreference all of that paperwork before we can pay them. So its in everybodys interest to avoid having to do that extra work, but at the same time, we dont always get to that agreement and we have to go a forced account approach. Yes, and, thank you, i do really very much appreciate the additional step where we are asking the contractor to submit their needs for the pedestrian monitoring ahead of time. I think that will help with the priority and the setting of the necessary scope. But this really still doesnt quite help me to understand why we dont know how much we have been billed for the last six months. Because is the agreement that the contractor would submit a request for the additional flaggers, will that only happen after we approve this amendment . So they have been informing us for a while now of what they expect to need. And so, for example, we have an idea of it, thats why we have the amount for the past six months, and plus the 12 months moving forward, so the staff has an idea of what that is going to be, but until we actually get the contractors billing in our hands and can review and approve it, you know, i cant say for certain that this is what the bill is going to be. Okay, and its normal that we wouldnt get the bill for six months . Its not normal. Its much nicer if we get it faster than that, but on this project, it is not unknown for charges to come in considerably later. In some cases it is disputed and it takes weeks or months for a final amount to be agreed to. Essentially the work, the 1. 5 million of backwork has been approved and approved but the work was done two years ago and the contractor will only start seeing their money now for it. But so there are items there are items that flow very smoothly and we pay for them when we arrive because everyones agreement on what work was done and how much is owed for it, and then there are items like this that start out as disputed and can take months to resolve. So i would have to go back and confirm but it is at least in the few months the contractor probably hasnt billed us yet for this work. I dont know what the protocol here is, chair borden. It seems like we dont have sufficient accurate information. At least for me to to really understand what the cost is because we dont know how much we have spent in the last six months from june to now. And so it seems like my prior motion needs to be rescinded. And then the amount . Chair borden yeah, it sounds to me that is probably what we need to do procedureally, we can withdraw the motion, i guess, and maybe i dont know if anyone on the staff want to talk about just how this billing process works so that people understand the public understands why we dont know the cost today and how common this is in terms of the project just so people have a degree of confidence that we are minding our ps and qs as they say. If someone wants to speak to the way that the billing on these projects work and the lag time in terms of us understanding the costs . Sorry, the budget manager. There is usually a lag and so a contractor comes in place and a contractor sends us an invoice, i think probably quarterly. Usually our turnaround time is 60 days, maybe 90 days and leo might be able to speak to this a little bit more. And then well pay the invoice. So thats a typical project, usually how that cycle works. I would say that this gets back to a conversation on how we manage the project with cash flow when we have low amounts of money available in the agency. So thats critical, pretty standard on how we would manage Something Like this. And i like i say, i want to make clear that we havent been able to pay the contractor for any of this work because its not in the contract. Thats what were trying to do with this credit. And so the contractor stard submitting invoices and they turned into a claim because we couldnt reach an agreement on a price. And this is the resolution to that claim. Mr. Young, i think that you have your hand was raised. Were you going to speak . Good afternoon to the board. Im with Capital Program and construction. I think that i might be able to give some answers to the question that was raised. As far as the billing, the project team is tracking every billing on pedestrian monitoring. The difficulty about pedestrian monitoring is unlike any contract work, it is difficult for the project to project when at which intersection that we have the high level of pedestrians. The purpose of the pedestrian monitoring is to provide safety for the pedestrian to make sure that the pedestrian doesnt accidentally walk into the construction zone. So at times on days that they are doing construction activity, where we suddenly have high pedestrians, the contractor would call the resident engineer, and the resident engineer would agree or disagree to dispatch a p pedestrian monitoring. Thats why youre seeing how come the cost is incurring in the past and we are coming to the board for approval on change order that happened in the past. This is not something that we can project successfully. It depends on the certain intersection on a certain day. Moving forward though, we did use the data that we had collected in the past and the one Million Dollar is covering for 18 months, which our past data showed that a year of expenditure is roughly about 800,000 so far. 18 months if we do a straight projection and with the 1. 2 million. But based on the work that we are projecting forward to complete the work, like peter was saying the majority of the utility work had been completed and we are now working on above ground, where the likelihood of hitting unforeseen conditions or underground utility would be less and thats how we projected that the remaining amount would be a Million Dollar. As far as how much we have spent to date, the project team is very careful and reviewing and approving charges, especially on asneeded basis, like a pedestrian monitor situation. So the project team had been tracking the number of pedestrian monitor dispatch and the hours they had worked out there. However, it is still up to the contractor to send the backup documents necessary to justify the dollar amount to pay for those pedestrian monitoring. Generally, we could file with the contractor every quarter to make sure that we catch up on all of the billing. The ar team do track those hours that it has already expended. If the board is interested, then we can provide those spreadsheets that we have been tracking for the past six months of the project. Great, thank you for that. So, director, do you have any additional questions on this topic . I think that i mean, i think that in general when it comes to our Capital Program its probably going to be a little hard for us to easily shave things off in the way that we would like to, especially given that even if we wanted to were still looking at the end of the project life cycle before we could reasonably consider doing anything with that money. And hopefully things will be in a different financial situation, at least in congress, giving us some money. So i dont know that its worth, you know, chopping off the 300,000 at this point, given the new information that we have received, the clarified information that we have received. And the fact that we couldnt reallocate it anytime in the near future, anyway. So with that, directors, this is before you to decide whether you want to institute a new motion or not. I make a motion to approve as originally presented. Do we need to rescind our motion or is verbally rescinding it how do we rescind this . Miss knowles, we have to rescind, is that adequate because we didnt vote on the motion. So is there anything further that we need to do . Yes, so maybe the secretary could help me out. But normally the maker of the motion can rescind with the agreement of a second. So director lai, if you would like to rescind your motion and then i believe that it was commissioner heminger seconded and you would need to rescind that motion. And then if you think that we didnt vote on the motion. Exactly. Great. She rescinded it verbally so i think that no mother action is needed. I think we can just move forward with the initial resolution. Great. Then i know that drict director brinkman made a proposal. Did anyone second, so a second to her motion . Im sorry, is there no second to director brinkmans motion . So if theres no second to that motion, what what is the alternative here, colleagues . Someone needs to make an alternative motion. Or the item gets continued, i guess. Okay. Maybe the question that i would like to ask, what is it that people feel like they need to make a decision about how this should proceed . And then i will i see director heminger has his hand and up and i know that director lai was about to speak. Director heminger you can go, and miss lai was willing to rescind the motion so maybe you could tell us what youre thinking. Commissioner hamasaki i agree with director brinkman that were spending far too much time on this item. And, frankly, part of the reason is that it was confusingly presented to us. I think we need better work to proceed through these items in a more rapid matter. With every question, we got more questions. Look, the worst thing that happens, no matter what the number is, they might have to come back and get approval. I dont think that is the worst thing to happen, number one. And, number two, maybe it will instill some discipline in this project at long last. So im happy to support a motion on either number but i certainly hope that we can get better presentations in the future. Well, one potential path forward is to just approve the dollar amount for the current costs to date, i think that its about 1. 5. I seem to be missing and it seems confusing to me that were already in december 2020, but we down know how much we have spent from june to december 2020. And that seems a key piece of information in the staff report to then know that amount and to predict with accuracy what we will incur in 2021. So i could make a motion to just approve the incurred costs and that we will have a second conversation once we know what our 2020 costs and what our 2021 costs are going to be. Or just move this to another meeting when we have more information to discuss. What id like to say is that i think that we need to think about how we if this is the strategy, i mean, we obviously want to save money and look at how we do that. Are we prepared to do this on every single project and, if so, theres a way to take a look at the Capital Projects that we have the reconfirmed contracts on, in order to give the directors and staff the information they need to provide to us. And in order for to us feel like there would be something for us to recapture. Because i feel like we are we are spending a lot of time and activity on this and i think we need to be very clear on what we need and whether or not like, in the grand scheme of where we might save money, is this the biggest and the greatest . Will we do this on every project . If we want to do Something Like this, what do we need to give staff so they could adequately provide us with what we need and we can anticipate where there are savings opportunities. I think that you have something that yes, i would like to apologize for the confusion on the presentation. May i suggest to continue this item to the next Board Meeting where we can come back with the data that the board has requested and to give some clarity off the question that had been raised today in the next Board Meeting. Do you anticipate any more meetings coming like this this year . I dont anticipate having a change order coming to the board for the remainder of the year. Great. Okay, perfect. All right, so with that to continue the item, do we need to do we need to make a motion to continue it formally. Yes, do that. Motion to continue. A second . Second. All right. Could you please call the roll . Clerk sure [roll call] the item is continued to the next meeting. Chair borden so that moves on to item 11, which is our regular calendar. Clerk regarding the sfmtas budget and ti fiscal status. Chair borden and hes coming back to talk more. Im sure that you cant wait for all of our we have kept the public and our workforce safe by completely reinventing most of our health and safety rules and by getting strong compliance with those rules. Including 98 mask compliance. We have worked with other departments to invest in the shared spaces program. We have completely reinvented our entire approach to security and enforcement and the ways in which we deal with transit fares and taxi discount programs and citations in order to emphasize equity and fairness in our work. All of our things across all of our divisions are conducting new analyses and reinventing the approaches to government and how we how we deal with everything from Parking Management to Parking Enforcement, to the development of one of the most far reaching Racial Equity plans in our industry. Our business teams are reinventing their services. Big chunk of our workers have been serving across a whole variety of city departments as Disaster Service workers and basically our people have shown up in this crisis and worked harder than i have seen at any Public Agency in my entire career. And i much am so grateful to all of them. Its why it is painful to deliver this budget report. It is also why im competely outraged that in this country, in a wealthy country and a wealthy state, that were backed into a corner to consider laying off the very workers who have shown up every day on the frontline in order to get essential workers to work who have added their creativity and strength and wisdom and Emotional Intelligence to rethinking everything that this agency does in order to be more equitable, to engage on complex issues of race and fairness and justice. I just cant even believe that in this country we can be in a situation where because of shortterm budget collapse as a result of covid, that we could be forced into a position of putting the burden of that on our very workforce. Im horrified. I think that it is important as we start going into the dry numbers of this presentation that we appreciate the human impact of the situation that were in. So before john begins ill point out some good news, because there are some. As i reported in my directors report, im proud of the work that our entire team has done to prepare for this. We have been preparing and we knew that this was coming. That was back in early march. And we have been prepared. And that preparedness has been recognized by all people, Standard Poor who have given us an astonishingly high bond rating. That is as good of an endorsement as i could possibly imagine. And we have received care funding and that saved 1,200 jobs over the last nine months but the bad news is that care funding runs out this month. And so we need to be very prepared. We need to understand that even though today that the Senate Republicans have joined in the bipartisan fashion to offer some additional relief to transit agencies, that that relief amount is actually slightly below the worst Case Scenario of what jonathan is actually proposing. That our best course of action or really our hope at this point is what happens in georgia on january 5th. Beyond that we are in were in a complete catastrophe, looking at 600 million in losses over the this twoyear period. So with that introduction, i simply want to promise to all of you, but particularly to our workforce and to the public that we will be completely transparent and honest through this entire process. I want to remind you that not only is this presentation available online, in our budget packet, but that were pushing out all of our budget actuals online at ffmta. Com budgetdashboard. That is in addition to the transportation Recovery Plan dashboard which is also available easily findable on google. And our regular covid19 dashboard as well. All of that is basically all of the data that we have and everything that were doing in order to survive this catastrophe to prepare for whats coming next and to minimize negative impacts on the heroes who have been working to get this agency through the last nine months. So with that, jonathan, give us the detailed numbers, please. And, jonathan, maybe when you give the presentation you can talk about how the cares money that we got before was spent through this process. To clarify. Because i think that people are confused about that too. My commitment to the board is to be comprehensive as usual. Great. So i will make sure to cover that in the presentation. Great. And to remind the Board Members to go off camera so your presentation is the only focus on the screen. Thank you. It should be on the screen now. Good afternoon, directors, jonathan ruers, the senior budget manager with m. T. A. Quick update, so as you know that we have been giving monthly updates on our financials. Today were going to cover a series of issues. To kind of prepare you for the conversation that we will have at your annual board workshops, currently scheduled for february. We have enough data now to give you a better sense of what the financial picture is. We are facing an absolute deficit in the current fiscal year now, 68 million. Because the revenues have not been growing at the pace that we anticipated that will result in a deficit of 168 million next year. Ill get into details on that. With deficits at that level, we also looked at other potential risks to the agency. Ill cover risk analysis that we did. We essentially did a stress test financially of the agency to prepare. But the bottom line is that at the rate our revenues are growing beyond the plan that we had already set in place, when you adopted the budget in april and june, were at our last step and thats to have a serious decision about the workforce reduction. What we can do and the actions that we will be recommending over the next weeks and months is that we take actions and consider policies that buy us the maximum amount of time possible. While our revenues are not growing at the pace that we would have hoped, they are growing, just very, very, very slowly. So every month that we are recovering a little more revenue when things are recovering a little bit better. So what we really need is time. That said, we have covered this before. We do look at both mobility and Financial Data to understand how people are behaving in San Francisco and how the revenues and the expenditures are looking internally within the agency. You will see that it was pointed out earlier transit has been climbing slowly. Julie is going to continue to show you that information later today. But its at a slow pace. And you will see generally its flattening. So, again, that growth or that restoration to normal service has not been at the pace that we would have anticipated. Youll see here in comparison to our other colleagues around the globe and around the nation, you will see that essential flattening. So restoration of service, kind of a growth in use of transit, but then just kind of a tapering off. You will also see kind of on that back end more currently, you will see the impacts of the current virus resurgence and this kind of next wave. You will see that in almost every agency that youre looking at globally and here in San Francisco that you will see that is going down just a bit. As were looking at modes so, remember, that it is important we have talked about modes here in San Francisco, but were continuing to see even driving is slowing down and to some extent that can impact our parking revenues. You will see walking is slowing down. And you will see, again, transit, this is a different data set that we use and its Still Holding that kind of line with a little bit of growth. You will see the impact of the fires in september and then kind of tapering down. That said, we are showing now that revenues are down 12. 7 this year. You will recall that as part of the adoption of the budget, again, in april and then the revise in june, that we used a number of onetime Funding Sources to close the budget in fiscal year 2021, to hope to recover in fiscal year 2022 to cover the use of those onetime sources and one of those being the cares act. We used impact fees and other sources available for the agency to close our operating gap in fiscal year 2021. We did have a structural deficit before the pandemic. I want to mike sure that is very clear to you, the board, and the public. This situation has only exacerbated that situation. So we did have a preexisting condition and it has only gotten worse. In fact, its only set up our unfortunate situation. So, again, as a reminder, our best strategy now is to look and to use the remaining tools that we have financially and through policy to buy ourselves time. Overall, to cover where we were, in fiscal year 2020, we saw an economic shock and revenue loss that resulted in 234 million loss to the agency. We were able in that last quarter to realize savings of 37 million. We did close the year in balance and i will talk later about why that was important. In that fiscal year to close that gap, we used 197 million of the cares act funding that we received. So we went through at least two months, two to three months, where we were making zero nothing. And that 197 million allowed us to keep our workforce in place and gave us time that we needed to restructure the service. In the current fiscal year, our revenue losses and the reason that we can tell you this now is that we have been waiting to get data. So we have seen enough months of parking rev news and w new newst months we got an update on the citys general plan in which we anticipate receiving less. So that is now all accounted for. We have also implemented the budget plan that you adopted in april. We continued the same policies in june that will result in 118 million in savings. But that still leaves us in the current fiscal year of a net deficit of 68 million. Now i want to be clear that in the current fiscal year, while we are showing 186 million of revenue loss, that is inclusive of the 177 million that cares were using this year. So we used 197 million last year. Were using 177 million this year. That means that in fiscal year 2021, we are losing well over 360 million. So in fiscal year 2022, our revenues will recover but, again, not at the pace that we would have hoped. So that results in a revenue loss off of budget of about 187 million. We do think that we can carry some of those expenditure savings forward. I will talk about that. So we have a projected net deficit of 168 million next year. Again, because we have used a lot of our onetime sources to get through fiscal year 2021. When looking at those savings specifically, i want to note for the board a lot of people consider, you know, labor versus nonlabor expenditures and we do the same. The largest portion of the budget at the m. T. A. Is our labor budget, 64 . But we have been focusing on nonlabor savings as a way to save costs within the agency, so as of right now we have been able to achieve 68 million in projected savings by Holding Things back. But i do want to stress that is about 15 of that total budget. If you look at the little note below, were at about 23 of our specific materials and supply budget. That starts having impacts on our ability to provide service. So, you know, we can use the existing inventories and slow down the purchase orders, we can use purchase orders that we carried forward from prior fiscal years, but, again, those tools start to run out. On the labor side the 50 million and ill get into this both through overtime reductions and our hiring freeze. So just to remind the public, the m. T. A. Board i mean, we were prepared for this as director tumlin has noted. So we did provide the board with a number of options that we would execute if we saw our revenues were coming in at a pace not matching expenditures. So we do look at that monthly. That data is available on sfmta. Com for the public. The first is it eliminate the board reserve, if the revenues came in higher than we anticipated. So that was an easy move, unallocated expenditures that we immediately reduced. We impelemented overtime controls so thats about 37 million in savings, almost 50 less than the prior fiscal year. We have a hiring freeze for all positions except Mission Critical positions. A lot of people ask us what that is. You know, those are specific trade positions, position positt have a long lead time to hire. And some specific classifications around overheadlines or stationary engineers that could take us two years to fill a position of that type, based on the list and the number of candidates available. So those are the positions that we are moving forward to make sure that we have staff in those key trades and those key positions. So those are moving forward. But we have realized 13 million in savings. And through reviewing our contracts, our supplies, our interdepartmental work orders, we have been able to realize about 51 million of savings through contract expenditure controls. The tools that we have yet to fully utilize are looking to capitalize on some operating costs. So that is looking to our Capital Budget to cover some of our operating costs, maybe around preventative maintenance. M. T. C. Is going to give us some flexibility on the use of our federal funds in the upcoming year. However, i do want to stress that the majority of those dollars are designated for the l. R. V. 4 project and the replacement of the braida cars. So while we think that it is easy to make this shift, as i have made clear to both the board and to the public, we do have a number of construction highdollar Construction Projects thought right now, the central subway, the l. R. V. Replacement, the braida car replacement. Those are all committed to contracts. So we will do our best to look at cash flows and to look to available dollars. I also want to remind the board that we made a permanent shift to 30 million of Capital Funds to the operating budget. That was one of our closure strategies as part of the budget process. So at some point you start doing risk to your infrastructure and your preventative maintenance program. We have our use of our rainy day reserve, and we will have that discussion, a recommendation still that we not use more than 30 of that in the current fiscal year, anticipating that theres further risk. And then the last option is to look at service and workforce reduction. The bottom line here are we did have a budget management plan. And we have implemented it, so we did have we anticipated that the revenues could come in less than we have budgeted. We are starting to get to the line on how much savings we could actually realize from the existing budget, especially on the nonlabor side of the budget. We did use 177 million in cares, but this does not exist next year. So we have to assume that source will not be there. And our revenues will not grow in time to make up for the cares act funds and other onetime Funding Sources that we used to balance the budget in fiscal year 2021. So as i said before, we on top of that situation, we did a stress test of the agency. And looked to see what additional risks would be out there. Because we dont want the board to not have all of the information and not understand, you know, what could potentially still be out there as we consider different options on how to close our budget gap. So on the left, you will see fiscal year 2021, the existing 68 million deficit, assuming the use of reserves and there is a possibility that we could identify maybe another 30. 5 Million Dollars of savings. We will be coming to the board in the next couple weeks and months with different actions that will hopefully to help us to achieve that, but they are not yet guaranteed. There is another 80 million of revenue risk that is still out there. If i needed to put a bet on it today, i would say that were in the 50 million to 60 million range that our revenues could still decline. Part of the reason is that the general fund is declining and we saw it decline in the first quarter. So its very likely that we will see further declines in future quarters, but we just need to wait and see what happens. We need to see what happens postvaccine. The parking revenues specifically are just not growing at the pace that we would have anticipated, even with the amount of driving going on in the city. So we just have to take that into account that we might not hit the levels that we have anticipated in future months of the budget. So that risk does remain, meaning that the deficit could be more than 68 million, and today i would say that its probably better than 50 , it will be higher than 68 million. In fiscal year 2022, the same situation, we start off with 168 million deficit and we can offset part with the 44 million rainy day reserve. We may we think that some of the labor savings that if we continue to hold certain positions frozen and freeze additional positions, plus continue to manage overtime, we think that we could get up to expenditure savings up to 32. 5 million. There is some additional revenue risk, again, if you track Revenue Growth from fiscal year 2021 into fiscal year 2022. Our worstCase Scenario show that we could lose 222 million. I think that is less likely but that additional risk exists today. But, again, theres just no way to know. So we will continue to monitor this, but we wanted to make sure to let you know that even though were showing numbers today that theres additional risks that still exist out there. When you take that into account, were going to work backwards from fiscal year 2022. So the current estimate of revenue loss is 187 million. Part of that is offset by that expenditure savings, the 19 million that we discussed before. The use of up to 35 of our reserves next year, 44 million. Perhaps some savings. But that 168 million deficit equals 1,200 employees. Which is almost 20 of our current workforce. The additional rest identity there is another 300 to 400 positions. The minimum, again, if we can make everything work and we use the reserve and we find the Additional Savings is about 989. But you can see that theres just very few paths to close the gap this large outside of service and workforce reductions. Looking at fiscal year 2022, again, we can count that 118 million in expenditure savings in the current fiscal year. Again, considering the 37. 5 million in reserve, use that would be 30 this year and perhaps finding Additional Savings, in bodies and again, if that is one full fiscal year of salary, that deficit is 504 f. T. E. , but, again, theres definitely additional risk out there. You include that risk, youre at 600 just with that amount of deficit and that would be something that would be very difficult for us to close in the current fiscal year. What we wanted to do is to kind of give you a sense of the different scenarios. There were 16 scenarios that we evaluated, the 10 here are the ones that we thought that were the most likely and its different uses of reserves, you know, considering different amounts of revenue losses and the use of reserves between the different years but the bar at the top is the most important. Those reflect the different deficit amounts and losses and how many positions were f. T. E. That equals in salary. In all of the scenarios that we looked at, you were in the essentially 1,000 to 1,200 positions. Like, no matter what savings or how the reserve was used or if the revenues grew as we plugged in with reserves, you were likely somewhere in that area. It does not mean that it is not possible to drive down that amount and to have a reduced deficit and reduced amount of workforce reductions or layoffs, but you can see that there was no scenario that we saw where there werent any layoffs. The risk, which is that outstanding revenue risk, gets you up to a potential of 1,620 positions. I will say that happens when we use more of our reserves in year one because there are greater gaps and costs in year two. So, again, using the reserve to buy ourselves time actually reduces the amount of layoffs or positions that we would have to reduce. And it is clear that this will have Service Impacts to the public. And so what we want to do in really considering the director ekeins statement the last time that we made an update to the board, we kind of paced this out over the next couple Board Meetings to have a discussion at your board workshop what our paths are. In february, what choices we have, and hopefully having a little more information, but being as director tum lip said, absolutely transparent about the impact to the public and how we will go about making those decisions, and what the service will look like, especially trying to get towards the june 2022 ballot. So revenue losses, unfortunately, at this point based on our review, makes it impossible to not consider Service Reductions or layoffs at this point. Again, it is in the thousand to 1,200 positions. There are still numerous scenarios, and we have done our very best to give the board our professional opinion about the situation and the path forward. Again, our current recommendation, again, is to use every tool to buy ourselves more time. Federal relief is still unknown. It was talked about today and i heard leader mcconnell shut that 900 billion bill down pretty quick. So we will see. But we still need to start having that conversation about service and about our workforce and about our priorities. But i do want to stress that the cares act bought us a significant amount of time. We ran a simulation to show people and to demonstrate where we would have been had we not received that cares act money. So, again, buying that time allowed some of our revenues to start coming back, allowing us to put some things in place. But over this period, the result of the pandemic would have caused the m. T. A. To lose 900 million, nearly 1 billion lost to the agency. And were still providing the best service that we can to the public with the resources that we have. In the first year, we closed that gap as i said 234 million with 197 million of the cares act. Had we not had that, we would have had no choice but to use our fund balance and our reserves to close the fiscal year. The result of that would have been having zero dollars available for the marking meter replacement project. And having zero dollars to make heat and other improvements to our facilities. We would have had to absolutely cancel those projects. In the second year we would have used the remaining amount, 48 million in cares funds that we would not have had. And we would have had unclosable deficit and laying up to 1,400 people anyway. Had we not had the cares act, we would have been having a very different discussion in april and june this past summer. So this has bought us a significant amount of time. In my professional opinion, it really blunted the impact. And, again, our recommendation is that we use the tools that we have available to us to continue to buy ourselves time. With regard to the future we did ranges and estimates for what we could get in the form of federal relief. The high end 478 million, reflects what could come to the m. T. A. If the formulas and the distribution relatively stay the same, based on the heroes act proposed in the house of representatives with the transit industry receiving about 32 billion. The 239 million reflects the lower level of the band. That would have been something more around where the senate and the current secretary of the treasury had been negotiating with the house, maybe something around 1 trillion available. So proportioning that out that would have been about 239 million. And the 900 billion proposed today was part of that bipartisan work done in the United States senate and would have gotten us below that, about 224 million. The median is more around the cares act, just a little bit less than that, kind of based on proportion and what could happen in the negotiation. But you will see our losses over the two years. Only at the highest level. At the heroes act do we have a chance of closing the deficits that were projecting over the next two years. With that said we are continuing to work to try to stabilize the service and to create stability for the public. So jeff just discussed us moving forward with transit fare compliance and moving towards that in the next couple months. We do need to start having the conversation about how we get our ridership back and how we create confidence in the Transit System as we are able to do that in a postvaccine period. And, lastly, the sustainable Streets Division continues to work with the merchants and the Faith Community on implementing the policies that the board approved on allowing for extended parking meter hours in the evenings and doing targeted sunday Parking Enforcements on commercial corridors. So we will continue to advance those programs in the coming weeks and hopefully that will help to some extent. In the long term, we are working on a very structured program to put funding measures on the ballot in june of 2022 before the voters to help to close not only the gaps that we have now but to start and hopefully to significantly close the structural deficit that we already have, and now its exacerbated. We did include as part of the presentation that the specific financials, we did an update of the fiveyear plan and we are looking at 100 million deficits in the next five years. So there has to be an outside source. Our costs are just growing faster than our rev news. And our revenues need at least two years to recover to the 2019 levels. The three initiatives are a 350 million general Obligation Bond. It is scheduled to be on the ballot in june 2022. This was approved as part of the city and the county of San Franciscos 10year capital plan this past summer. The proposal is to use 250 million of that for facilities which, again, we have two that are over a hundred years old and absolutely need to be repaired and fixed. Continuing to make investments in our Transit System to increase reliability. Working around those recommendations that we received from the Muni Reliability Working Group and then, of course, setting aside funds to make our streets safer and advancing our goals towards vision zero. The general Obligation Bond is only used for Capital Projects. It cannot be used for quick build so it has to be civil longterm projects because theres a period because of the financing that the asset has to last. I want to say that its a minimum of 15 years. It might be as long as 30 years. In the middle were working on a community stability, and the office has been great to figure out the legal structures on doing that. We thought that we needed state legislation but its likely that we dont. We would like to focus those dollars which would involve a tax structure within the district itself with the funds dedicated to transportation here in San Francisco to the core maintenance and the system vulnerabilities that we have been talking about. The areas of just capital maintenance and i mean the operating costs related to those things around the track, overheadlines, our Traffic Signals and our facilities, have just not been growing with the pace of the age and the technology around those specific assets. We also want to invest a significant amount of funding from the c. F. D. In core service. And moving towards equity around service and implementing the muni equity strategy. That budget cycle after budget cycle we tell you that we cannot fully fund. We would like to have a Revenue Bond Program where were not doing it as dollars become available, but we have a regular program that we can plan around Going Forward. Lastly, were working with the county Transportation Authority on the reauthorization of the current sales tax, so its nontax increases. The current sales tax brings in 90 million to 100 million per year. We are past the period that we can finance in many of the categories in the current tax program which is bookended at 2034, so we need a new expenditure plan that takes this out for another 30 years. One is paired transit that is dependent on the sales tax and we are two to three years from running out of funds completely for that effort. Were also working with the congestion pricing in future years that would focus on, again, the Muni Reliability Working Group and working towards service equity. And then theres always been discussion about a v. L. F. , were certainly going to take a look to see what is possible, but you can see the key things here that were working on. So were looking at short and longterm solutions. But it will be a continuing conversation with the board over the next few meetings and up to the workshop. So today we have our update, we will be bringing in an item regarding refinancing of our Revenue Bond Program on the 15th that hopefully will realize some of those savings that i have been talking about. We doll an extensive review. And a lot of todays information was around the operating budget and were doing the same on our c. I. P. And twoyear Capital Budget. At that point we can give you more answers on what we might be able to free up and what our priorities are. I will say that we are looking at severe reductions in our capital costs. And we have a loot of committed projects that we need to make sure that we fully fund to the end. So theyre going to be significant tradeoffs what we have that conversation. But we will be sure to give the board the information that it needs to make some good decisions. On the 19th, i know that the board has asked a number of questions about our facilities and development program. We do want to give you an update. We took director hellingers recommendation hemingers recommendation to date to look at our parking garages and opportunity there is and well provide an update on what were looking at and what we want to try to pursue long term to bring in more revenues to the agency and that will set you up for the board workshop in early february where we will dive deep into a lot of choices that well have to make in the spring. So with that, im happy to take any questions. Chair borden thank you for that really indepth presentation. Directors, do you have any questions at this time before i open it up to the public . Obviously, we are going to have a big deep dive on these numbers and have a lot of time to spend on it. Today is not an action item, but, please, if you have any questions at this time, please, go ahead. Any questions . No . Great. Director eaken. Vicechair eaken thank you, and we may get into this again after Public Comment. But i do wonder about other potential sources of revenue as we have to consider, you know, the very painful prospect of any potential layoffs and Service Reductions. One thing that i wanted to flag, maybe it was last year in 2019, there was a direct that all of the states transportation dollars be aligned with the states worldleading climate goals. I think theres a process underway to look at how we spend the infrastructure dollars aligned with our goals. I know that is sort of underway, but i do wonder if you took a look at the states transportation infrastructure expenditure. I dont believe that theyre aligned with our climate or equity goals and i believe that investing in transit operations would be, you know, a Firm Alignment with Climate Equity goals. So you may not have the answer now, but i am curious as we speak about potential federal relief and, of course, well do everything that we can there and i wonder if we should also look at californias very robust transportation infrastructure. I think that its about 5 billion a year and whether any of those funds could be freed up in this emergency moment to rescue our agency. So, you know, a quick answer is the team are actively monitoring everything going on at the state and we pursue all channels. We had a rumor of maybe a transportation bond or something coming up and we were, you know, project list, what would we need, how to make it work. My quick answer on how we will deal with that, especially if state resources do show up, very often its towards infrastructure projects. And the strategy will likely be i will be transparent and honest with the board is that if we get additional state transportation dollars that we will attempt to put it on existing projects that we have to free up the flexible dollars that we have control over and to shift that over to the operating budget. I want to be absolutely transparent that that will be our strategy. So so, unfortunately, this is not the best time for new ideas. And the goal is to buy ourselves more months and time to get to the ballot and to see our revenues recover. Vicechair eaken i guess a followup to amandas question. The last time when they aligned the transportation dollars spent to the climate priorities, did that net us like any state funds . It would be nice to have a sens so this is an item that we can definitely bring back to you at the board workshop or maybe do a quick item at one of the upcoming meetings between now and then. Our state transit assistance did go up during that period, especially postft1. And the state did not change the formula based on the amount that a Transit Agency puts into its service because everyones revenues went down, and in theory it would have redistributed theory all over the state and everyone would have had less and they kept it at fiscal year 2019 levels. We have an active group of staff that litter apply for every state grant that is available to the agency. We have been successful bringing in i want to guess in the past month, 15 million to 18 million. Again, on the existing projects where we dont have to cover the costs and we dont have to use our flexibility dollars. But were happy to give you more information on that. I know that kate will be happy to push that message up to sacramento. Chair borden great, director eaken, you have another . Vicechair eaken the other is just what other local sources of revenue might we be able to consider. I think that you had a note at the end of your presentation about sunday parking metering. Are there any other parking sources or scenarios that you have considered that are locally generated . Thats a great question. So we looked at what the agency did and i think that the only one left on the board is director brinkman. What we did back in 2009 and 2010 when the agency faced proportionately almost an equally devastating period that was 128 million deficit, there were large fare increases that occurred in that period. There were surcharges put on to parking for periods of time. Since then, you know, this board through its wisdom has managed our parking infrastructure and our resources, again, to create availability for san franciscans. But we have used a lot of the tools that we have had, and i like to say, you know, the pedal is to the floor on that stuff, which is why its really time to talk about how the agency is financed. And if we want to advance the policy as we have, we have to rethink of how the agency is funded. Let me give you another example of the obstacles in our way. As an agency we have about 275,000 onstreet Parking Spaces and correct plea if im wrong, i believe that about 10 are metered. Another chunk that are in residential parking permit districts where we charge 40 cents a day to rent, you know, an 8by20 foot rectangle of San Francisco. If we took the deeply discounted and free onstreet Parking Spaces in San Francisco and charged 2 a day, the gross on that equals our annual losses. Vicechair eaken for the f. Y. 2022 losses it would be 180 million a year. Vicechair eaken thank you. Of course by state law it is illegal for us to net any money off our residential parking permit program. And for many san franciscans, like in the suburbs, theres territoriality, that makes us believe that the public rightofway in front of our homes is ours. At least that piece right in front is not in public ownership. And, therefore, should be free. So the politics of charging charging rent on public land for storage of private property, the politics are very complex. Even in a city like San Francisco. You know, these issues have come up before. We tried to have a rational approach for managing parking. Our residential parking permit program, of course, in most neighborhoods completely failed at providing any any assurance of parking availability. In most neighborhoods we sell far more permits than we have spaces available. And so the permits merely become the hunting license rather than any assurance of reasonable availability. Rethinking that is possible, but rethinking that requires changes to state law and a lot of complex politics in San Francisco. Chair borden any additional comments, director brinkman. Director brinkman . Commissioner brinkman thank you. The other time that you talk about the residential parking permit program, it just makes my blood boil that we can only charge what it costs to cover that program. If we do need to look at layoffs in the future, and if we do need to look where we can cut costs, will we take a look at that program and see what it does to our bottom line if we completely get rid of the r. P. P. Program and just say, great, go wild, try it. See what happens. And we save money in a lot of ways on that. We save money on enforcing, we save money on running the program. Or maybe we get rid of it in some areas to cut costs. It seems like if were going to be looking at cutting costs, then the pain sort of needs to be shared equally. And although i know that getting rid of r. D. P. Causes way more pain for the drivers, maybe we throw it out and we come up with something new something that that doesnt that isnt covered by state law. Maybe we have license plate recognition where every curb space is considered metered though theres not a meter and we just charge, you know, for the time that people are parked there. Something like that. I just feel like its become enshrined in San Francisco, even though it doesnt really help and it doesnt really work that well. Yes, so the factor that makes it illegal for us to make net revenue off of residential parking permits is the residential restrictive component of that. So if we remove the residential restriction, we can follow the same process that f. R. Park does, which is to charge the lowest price for parking that ensures one or two Parking Spaces are available on every block. So in the more urban neighborhoods, parking on a residential street would be more expensive. In our more suburban neighborhoods, parking would continue to be free where theres still abundant parking availability. But that would mean