[horns honking] [siren wails] announcer: big dreams and goodrades aren't enough to get into college. there are actual steps you need to take. finding someone who can help is the first and most important. for the next steps, go to knowhow2go.org. >> good morning. today is wednesday, january 19, 2011. this is the regular meeting of the building inspection commission, i would like to remind everybody to please turn off electronic devices. president murphy. >> present. >> vice-president hechanova. >> here. >> commissioner lee. >> here. >> commissioner romero. >> here. >> next item on the agenda is president's announcements. >> i do not have the announcements. i would like to welcome supervisor and congratulate him. mark, would you like to say a few words to the commission? >> thank you, president murphy, for having me today. commissioners, it's a pleasure to be here. i simply want to say that is an honor to be serving our city. i very lookemuch look forward to working with you. i had a chance to meet director day and president murphy and a number of you on the commission. i know what an important role you play in our city government. more importantly, i'm extremely impressed by your leadership. i look forward to working together. thank you for all that you do. i look forward to seeing you soon. thank you very much. >> next item on the agenda. >> public comment on that item. >> seen none, can move on to item three, the directors' report. an update on dbi finances. >> pamela 1levin. we are at the same level that we were last month. in terms of revenue, we've seen an uptick in december. a lot of that was due to some big projects. we are also projecting that we will have some projects like the transbay terminal, which we have been getting slowly through the last year or so. in expenses, things are projected at the same level. we have no good information to be able to say we would have any savings in work orders for materials and supplies. salary, as you know, we're trying to hire back some of the people that were laid off in may 2009. that is why there is no change projected in that. thank you. >> do we have to hire back people? >> yes, that is the rules. you have to do it in the order they were laid off. [inaudible] >> about 10. one of the issues, frankly, that we're having, getting our requisitions through a committee that consist of the mayor's office, dhr, and the comptroller's office. we have been pretty successful in doing that. although, that could take two or three tries free of the second is more significant. that is, we now have to do tasks for 90% or 95% of our positions. there are engineers that have to be tested with the city. the tests are throughout all levels of the organization. that is the difficulty in getting those written and working with dhr to get those done. i think that is a big stumbling block. >> could you just quickly -- on three items, on the increase or increases -- $1.8 million for a higher level expenditures, under real-estate billion. -- real-estate building. >> when it was done in november, last year, it was done in january. until we get to the point of here today, it looked abnormal. i do not want to say people are grabbing their money early, but there's always the -- it is an annual payment and they are making the payment and there's not any real services that are provided, they will bill early. that's just normal. >> ok, and also for non personal services, is that associated with bpr or any other categories that come into play? >> the $30,000? >> yes. >> we have the co-training needed to occur this year. there is some computer supplies. what we have done over the last several years -- in order to save money, we have delayed purchasing computer supplies and we have found anything that is coming off of warranty, that's going to come on to various types of maintenance agreements. it is our on going work to keep the department operating. for instance, humanic will not hit us in terms of the actual maintenance agreement for roughly one year. selectron, our ivr, when you call into the scheduling, that will not come until july in terms of maintenance. >> yes. >> anything that we do will eventually make its way into the operating fund. >> does the city get a break on this training cost? >> as the training, we negotiated with them that every seventh person was free. you know, a lot of the organizations are also nonprofits, or they try to provide the training at the lowest cost possible. some of them, you just cannot negotiate. we do have a trainer. for instance, and plumbing, -- in plumbing, he's coming to our location and we got a set price. it's not dependent on the number of people. those sorts of things, we can save money rather than sending people out to various types of training across the state. in this case, plumbing -- i think they had to go out of state to get it. we are trying everything we can to save. >> the last one, do we get a break on the code books? >> yes, we negotiated a certain cost. the code books we had to go for bid, we ended up with the vendor who is across the bay. he was able to get some discounts and able to provide things to us at a lower cost. >> thank you. >> 10 we interrupt you for maybe two minutes? i want to introduce supervisor wiener, class of 2011. welcome, supervisor. >> thank you, president murphy. good morning, commissioners. thank you for having me down today. i just wanted to say hello. after one week in office, just trying to move forward quickly. i look forward to working with the commission and with dbi on the very important issues facing our city, making sure that the department is really working as effectively as possible with the end-users, the people who are doing the work, making sure that are permitting process and our construction process is as efficient and as user-friendly as possible. and working with small businesses on some of the ada issues they are confronting. a lot of merchants in my district have been targeted recently with ada complaint and lawsuits. that's happening across the city. i think it is incumbent upon the city family, including dbi, to work with our small business community to make sure they are complying and not getting in trouble. i look forward to working with you on these and other issues. thank you. >> thank you. we look forward to working with you also. back to the. >> i just wanted to point out one other thing. when i do the comparison year over year, if we do not have code training in one year because every three years we have a significant code training for significant changes in expenditures, and we budget for those. when you see the comparison year to year, you will not see those last year. you will see them this year. the comparisons are to point out what we have done. it is meaningful to the point that you have the same budget each year to be able to say there's more expenditures. that's part of the meaning of this. part of the meetinmeeting is tot out things that have not occurred. >> commissioner walker. >> thank you, commissioner murphy. i see there's a $10,000 lower level of payment to learn nonprofit outreach program. what is that reflective of? that is just timing. they have not submitted their invoices. if it is necessary because you still have outstanding invoices, which we do every year, we carry forward that money. we do not reprogram that. >> thank you. >> do you have any objections to the change of the name of dbi? >> i think the main areas that will be expensive -- remember, in the old days, you had to send out your change in your stationery and have people reprint it. now you just change whoever the person is or whatever the department is. that is relatively no cost. most of our sign it is through reproduction. that is probably fairly minimal. i have not done a costing out. our envelopes are one thing because we do buy them preprinted. those still are not a significant value. when it comes time for -- if it does make it on the ballot and the comptroller's office does their analysis of what the cost is to the city, i suspect it will be very low. >> ok. any further questions, commissioners? thank you. public comment on the budgets. seeing noon. >> item three b. >> speaking of budget, we are paying city attorneys. we do not want them sitting around. maybe we can go into closed session in get that over with? >> ok, can someone make a motion that we move item number 11? >> may i make a comment? we have an agenda. the public is here for meetings. i would suggest we stick to the agenda. >> i have one commissioner that does not mind spending money. >> is that a motion? >> no. are you moving to change the agenda? >> yes. >> i'm speaking against it. >> it is up to the president if he wants to move the item. >> motion. >> we don't need a motion. it is up to you, president murphy. >> motion to go into closed session. >> no one is listening. >> we do not need a motion. >> we are going into closed session. >> we have to make a motion to go to a closed session. we are moving item 11 forward. >> sorry about that, public. >> item 11 is discussion and possible action regarding ongoing litigation. item 11 a is public comment on matters pertaining to the closed session. seeing no public comment, we will go to item 11 d, which is vote on a rather to hold a closed session with legal counsel to now i need a motion. >> a motion to go into closed session. >> second. >> all those in favor. those opposed. >> the item carries. we're now in closed session. i apologize to the public, but we are going into closed session. we have any idea how long the closed session might be? i'm told >> we are now on item 11d, reconvene in open session to vote on any or all items -- vote on whether to disclose any or all items discussed in closed session. commissioner walker: move to not disclose. >> okay, the vote was not to disclose. all those in favor? those opposed? we are not going to disclose what went on in closed session. are we going back to item 34 -- commissioner murphy: [inaudible] >> we also have -- okay. we want to move to item 8, is what president murphy is asking, so we are going out of order once again. discussion and possible action regarding dbi's response and coordination with the health department regarding complaints received about bedbugs. we do have a doctor from the health department. >> can i -- since this was my -- commissioner murphy: commissioner walker. commissioner walker: thank you. this item was placed on the agenda at my request. i see that a lot of folks from the community are here. it has become crystal clear over the last few months and year that we have some work to do on the issue of bedbugs, and i think the goal of this meeting is to get a clearer idea of what our policies and procedures are and see how the department and our staff and programs can actually help to facilitate some more successful resolution to this issue, so i really thank you for coming very much and thank all the public for coming. >> good morning, commissioners. i represent the department of public health. i want to first thank all of you for inviting me to come, first about with dbi and dph jointly are doing. i really do not know how much time you plan to devote to this -- commissioner walker: what ever you need. >> thank you. i quickly got some slides together this morning. to first of all provide some feedback on issues with bedbugs and how we have been responding to the problem. first, i'm going to be giving you a little bit of history and perspective on what's dph has done to date -- what dph has done to date. bedbugs are not actually new to our generation. they have been around for centuries. they were said to have vanished from the united states in the early 1940's or 1950's, and this clearly was due to the fact that we were using some very effective pesticide, ddt, which was able to suppress -- i will not say eradicate the problem, but was able to suppress the bud. we knew for sure that even though it was suppressed in the united states, they were still very prevalent in some of the country's such as asia, africa, and some parts of europe. the resurgence is blamed on the band of -- ban of ddt, but i will say that the increase is probably due to the fact that there has been increase in travel. when people move from place to place, they are more likely to transport them with them to wherever they go. recently, you heard about the issues about new york with victoria's secret. it is not that the client's drug them there. they actually came in the packages that were shipped from overseas. bedbugs are not known to transmit any disease to man, but the inject their saliva that aids in shockingly human blood itself -- some people are known to be allergic to them. the saliva may cause some swelling, may result in swelling, especially on the site where the individual has been scratching, and they form some welts. i will also theorized that it could cause secondary infections, especially when your skin is broken -- i will also theorize that it could cause secondary infections. it is currently being reported in of the 50 united states. that is a typical well like i was just describing that you can see on the screen. also, the bite on the young lady to your right. you can see they are kind of linear in fashion. the issue as we started seeing them. in fact, the cases that were reported in san francisco over in the homeless shelter, or low- income hotels, but today, you see them in apartments and also private homes. we developed a bit but management protocol, and today, i would say we have seen a 90% drop in the number of shelter complaints -- we developed a bedbug management protocol. we still have bedbugs on planes coming from the shelters, but the numbers have drastically reduced. we provided a training workshop. for example, in 2008, dph assembled a team of experts in health management and provided training to hotel managers, shelter directors, aps, ihss, dbi, and tenants. the housing chief invited us to provide training to all the housing inspectors. in 2006, as a result of a call from the board of supervisors, we developed directors rules or regulations, and this was instituted after hour public hearing. it is very comprehensive, and i want to say that it is the first in the united states and san francisco. you will be proud to know that san francisco is the first to develop specific rules and regulations just to address bedbugs. usually, we have lost that regulate just control problems, but not particularly bedbugs. the state of california adopted the san francisco will some regulations, and we received a lot of calls to our united states about what we are doing today. new york, they are putting something together. missouri is putting something together. hawaii have had theirs for quite a while. chicago is doing the same, so it is catching on. we still have ongoing community outreach, providing training upon request to anyone that may ask for it. we are working with community- based organizations, some of which are attending this hearing today. what is the outcome of all that we have done? we now have a well-educated community on bedbugs, and that led to an increase in the number of complaints. it would be good to know that dph versus people who cannot afford to prepare their rooms for bedbugs. that money is under the control of the community-based organization. enforcement protocol -- we respond to all complaints, regardless of whether or not the person complaining has identified themselves. we document all the violations, and we issue notices of violation. we may issue citations, and i would say that the above protocol applies to all regulated facilities. what we do when an individual calls in to the health department -- we received the complaints, collect the important information, and log the complaint into our database.