Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Government Audits And Oversight Committee 20240708

We are creating the candidate pool doing selections from the candidate pool and bringing those staff in and selecting who we are going to offer employment to. Final category being staff that has been on boarded. That number is 84. That includes people and this number is much larger than it was two weeks ago. That including people who have either been offered a job and accepted and we have at least tentative start work date for people who have already started work. These are positions that have been onboarded from december 2022 to the present. Those 84 positions have started or will start work scheduled in january or february. We are pleased with that progress that we are seeing some movement in getting selections made and staff on boarded. As you can see from that middle column we have a large amount of work to do over the next 60 days to make those selections and get people onboarded in the system. I will pause and turn this over to dr. Cummings to answer specifically your questions around Case Management as component. Thank you. Supervisors, supervisor ronan, like you, we see amplifying capacity to do Case Management as really central to our overall approach and to the success of our approach. I wanted to highlight our levels of Case Management which i believe is familiar to you and the extent to which the coordination and some of it is. [indiscernable] clinical services. Some is new and some we are building on current programming. In the first case we have Critical Care Case Management. This is located within the office of care coordination and really intended to support entry and really engagement in care. The first team has been incorporated as followup Care Coordination Team to street Crisis Response. It is operational since april of 2021 with early evidence showing increasing ability. [indiscernable] [ inaudible ] we lost connection. We have reached the 15 minute timer. Also, the last two or three sentences of your presentation may have been cut off by your connection. Take a few more minutes and see if we are getting a solid feed. You may want to turn off your video so we can mary you more clearly hear you more clearly. Apologies. I will be offcamera then. Briefly, and we are close to time. That is the first kind of care Case Management. The next office of coordinated care team will be highered before april 1st as part of the hiring push with early staff just recently started. The second level of Case Management. I can see i am not coming in. Second level is expanding our intensive Case Management services. You can see the different phases on the slide there planned. Finally, we are starting up a new Service Expanding Case Management in our Outpatient Clinics with Civil Service staff in Mental Health clinics incorporating into the Disorder Treatment program. Under that and i think that the connection is terrible. [indiscernable] we are over time. You had requested this, supervisor ronan. This is summary of the types of positions that are in the process by job class so you can see the types of positions that are coming on board. Behavioral health clinicians, health workers, rns, psychiatrists, and down the line there. Are additional positions that are smaller, fewer than four. That should give you a sense of the types of positions in the process. You can see where we have been successful in on boarding people in the larger groups through these mass recruitments. Last slide. I am not sure if there is another one. I will close by saying how grateful dph is for the support from the Mayors Office, the board of supervisors, department of Human Resources in really getting us and helping us with the resources for this program. Also the support in this push because it has been a challenge. It is key to moving the program forward. We freel a great sense of urgency in doing so. Thank you, mr. Wagner. First of all, thank you so much for the clear information. I have to say when i had this marying request. I was hearing request. I was feeling frustrated ready to raise hell, as i sometimes do. I feel like this is just such great news. I feel optimistic. I feel excited and i feel like you have all worked so hard to come such a long way. I want to start off by thanking you for your work and for really problem solving in a way to get this hiring substantially underway. Other than the nurses during the pandemic, it is the first time i have seen a concerted effort in the city to hire a large amount of workers to address a crisis that has been a long time in we have been doing this a long time. I want to start out with appreciation. Thank you so much for your work. A question for you. What is right now the average wait time for a case manager . Whether it is regular case manager, intensive or critical . Two of those Case Management programs are new. The Critical Care Case Management program, which is operating as an existing followup team for clients seen by street Crisis Response. There is no wait time for that service. That team is working with folks seen by the team. The other service is getting built now. It will be open in the next two months. There isnt a service that exists so we have not been yet tracking wait times. Similarly, for the outpatient case managers will be a new service. No wait time because the service doesnt yet exist. As we stand that up we will track demand and access to care. Intensive Care Management services has await list. It has been more than 100 folks waiting. We believe that we have a plan to resolve that with this hiring plan both by filling vacancies within our intensive Care Management team, by adding some Case Management there and by adding outpatient Case Management so that we can successfully transition some folks for whom it is appropriate to a lower level of care there by freeing up those additional spots. Those wait times are concerning to me and to us. We will be tracking them closely. I share your optimism it can be resolved with this hiring push we are undertaking. Can you give us the caseload for all three level of Case Management . I have to get back to you on the specifics. There will be some variations. Obviously, the Critical Care Case Management will have intense eye Care Management we intensive care we hope to lower. Outpatient Case Management we will look at closely. I will let you know the specifics. I will say that we are flexible to see how it is going. We want people to get optim mum care and think about adjusting for correct caseloads as we move forward. I am on the Budget Committee. I am concerned about proper staffing. Not only am i concerned about just the number of vacant positions but i i am concerned about whether or not we are striving for the correct number of positions. Case management has been the one where i think we are underestimating the amount of work. Those case managers the amount of work and we are overloading especially when it comes to intensive and critical case managers. We are overloading them. They are not able to do their jobs correctly. When i have been on the street in ride alongs and we run into intensive case managers. They are running around like crazy and cant respond to calls right away if their client is found in the street. I was with the ems trying to get hold of the intensive case manager for the follow up and engagement with the same person be in crisis, she was running around the five other different clients. It is getting that right workload is essential to this, not just filling the vacant positions. I am looking forward to hearing more about this as you hire more and get the positions filled we can accurately analyze that. Hopefully into the time of the budget process you will report back to us so we can add just if we need to hire more. I didnt notice on your list of people that are hard to recruit and hire case managers. Is that not is that the worry of mine. When we were writing this we were worried about the ability to hire enough case managers. Has that not been a problem . We have not engaged in the level of hiring that has been needed or budgeted for. I think this is something we will have to report back to you on. We know in some programs it is a problem. We know that particularly some language specificity is difficult. We are closely tracking it. If we cannot hire we will come up with alternatives. I will add. I think we will see as we get through some of those big groups in the selection process, we will find out how able we are t recruit. Then i know another component is on the cbo side. Our partners and i expect that is going to be one of the focuses of the Controllers Office on that area in particular as we go through that process. I know we will do more analysis here. We have done this enough to know enough what is the salary differential between case manager working through nonprofit versus case manager working for the city . Approximately, not exact. I dont have the data. Do you know, hillary . I dont have the data offhand. We can look at it. I know it is significant, it is substantial. We have been making some adjustments with some of our contractors to try to work on that. That is an area that is targeted. That is in talking to heather middleton, i know that the plan. Hi, heather. The plan to get that staffing and wage analysis to us is currently planned to come to us after the full Mental Health sf implementation report. I continue to think that makes no sense whatsoever. Because the personnel are the heart and soul of Mental Health sf and without knowing the proper amount of people that we need to hire to make the system work, without knowing who is hard to hire and where we have a labor shortage or real salary differential issue that we need to get over, i dont know how we can have a complete implementation plan. Heather and i are going back and forth for a long time the other day. I want to state on the record because i honestly would want this to happen as soon as possible. I would rather wait an extra month and get the staffing and wage Plan Incorporated within the final Mental Health sf implementation report. With the delivery of final implementation for the fall of this year. Just for contacts the Controller Office in the legislation is called to analyze there are staffing shortages in the city and Mental Health providers if so salary and working conditions. We prioritized this staffing and wage analysis to commence next month. Starting next month and through this quarter we will work with you, dph, dhr and stakeholders to appropriately scope this analysis with the Data Available and provide appropriate timeline this quarter. We will work closely with iwg to align that scope, analysis and findings, recommendations with the item. That we are coordinating together appropriately and that should be in the fall of this year, depending on the appropriate timeline for this analysis. There are multiple rarial variables to the delivery. I will be project manager supporting the working group. You know a note, too, the tenderloin Emergency Declaration this is benefit to this analysis around and after the wave of hiring to understand the impact to fill the city vacancies. What impact on cbo Service Providers. Looking at the cbos there is some advantage to looking at this in the spring as well. Hopefully that answers your question. I am available for more questions. Absolutely. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your flexibility there. I know how busy your office is. That is really exciting. So much good news. I am not used to this. It is wonderful. Thank you very much. A couple other questions that i have. On tuesday i am introducing a legislative Analyst Research request to look at all of the bnc calls for services in the city through 911, police, and when and if police are accompanying any one of the 10 street teams that go out to answer these calls. The reason for that is because every time i talk to sfpd, they say that their calls for service have not gone down. Even though we have invested a large amount of money and energy to create 10 Response Teams that are meant to deal with homelessness, Mental Illness and addiction on the streets instead of the police. That is extremely concerning to me because we as the city have very clearly stated a policy that we want Health Professionals, community paramedics, advocates with lived experience to be responding to calls for service. We do not want sfpd doing this work. These people are not criminals for being sick. They should be receiving health treatment, not be further agitated by the police. Fyi. That is coming. That analysis is happening. I would like to hear early on. I have never thought that we properly staffed the street Crisis Response team. It is a team to operate seven days a week and 24 hours a day. It is a small team. I want to get a sense from you in the context that police are not seeing a significant drop in calls for service. How that is going and what your thoughts are about that issue. Well, thanks for the question, supervisor. We share the need to have Adequate Health or peerled responses to folks in Behavioral Health needs on the street. I think that most recently during the omicron surge i am aware there have been some staffing challenges. The reason months or weeks have been more challenging than they have been before this current surge we obviously hope for the surge to decrease and that staffing will return to normal. That said, i think i appreciate understanding the teams on pd and other calls for services. I am aware another contributor for the Response Team which are more narrowly responding to open opioid overdoses and working with people in the moment and linking people to care following that. With those two teams, i think looking at as you suggest the data to understand the extent to which we have an additional opportunity to ship to a Health Oriented response is most welcome. We can certainly share the data of our teams. I guess you have those and the numbers of calls they are responding to. Yes. We will get into this digging deep le. I wanted to also preview today what we are going to want be to analyze during the budget process and start letting you know these are the questions we are going to have as we look at funding for Mental Health sf in the budget and what we expect. If the 10 street teams are not significantly reducing workload process pd, i think we have to look at this. Why is that . Why is sfpd going on these calls together with Health Professionals . It is something i want to preview for you. It is of great concern for me. My last question and i will turn over to my colleagues. We talk all of the time about Mental Health. The biggest impediment other than the pandemic has been hiring which we are moving very quickly in the right direction which is wonderful. What are there, if any other major challenges to the full implementation of Mental Health sf . I think hiring has been a large component of the challenge. I am also really very, very enthusiastic about this opportunity to really fill those gaps in. I think other challenges which are finding new spaces or programming and going through the process of acquiring, identifying and acquiring, renovating and procuring services in those new spaces. Those are the source of procedures which have been another challenge perhaps not pandemic specific. I dont know if mr. Wagner would like to add anything there. I definitely agree with that. The Space Acquisition has been one of the issues that have been challenging on the timelines. The other piece which we are workings through is on the contracted service side. Similarly it takes resources and infrastructure to get an expansion of the contracted services up and running. Hiring and contracting are challenging processes in the city. That is the other aspect of it. The timeline is Space Acquisition, renovation to bring those beds online has been one of our great areas of effort. Before i turn it over to my colleagues, i for one, i know dr. Cummings and i am pretty excited about the new Linkage Center a seven floor building, middle of the city. I got a virtual tour of the first floor. I cant wait to get out of quarantine to see all seven floors. I am really looking forward to looking at that site as the permanent site of Mental Health sf service center. I want it into the world as i do my best to make it happen. Thank you again so much. Honestly, i feel as dr. Cummings said extremely optimistic. I wasnt expecting do feel that way for this hearing. Then the Emergency Declaration for the tenderloin really turned things around. I think it is about time we treat this as the emergency that it is. That we move at warp speed. We are doing that. Thank you so much. We turn it back to you, chair preston. Thank you, supervisor ronan. I did want be to ask [indiscernable] thank you supervisor ronan for focusing on the hr challenges. A couple points in response to supervisor ronans comments, not disagreeing. Differences of emphasis. We have this opportunity to chat in this public forum to raise it. These are not disagreements. They are different points of emphasis. One is on the idea that Mental Health sf needs to be there to catch folks who need additional help, get folks in crisis on the streets, bring them from. Connect to the services, help through the programs. Then give support they need to go back out to the world. I just want to emphasize and i know supervisor ronan that where i think San Francisco really failed is and i think california fails is that set of folks who actually even after being brought in, connected to services, put through 90 day program, offered permanent housing and wrap around support are still not where they need to be. They are likely to go back to the street. They need a higher level of care. I think it is that chunk of our Behavioral Health population that needs something more than intervention, connection to services and where we need to put in additionally what we need to do. That is where we are truly failing in the city and state. I want to put that out in the conversation. I dont want be to lose sight of that. I do think the beginning of the conversation about the teams. We have been asking them to do we have been looking at them for many different things. We talked about Something Like the skirt teams in the Methamphetamine Task force before we had really launched into the alternatives in the conversation. That is going on in the city for years and decades. I think would we were talking about it from that context it was the idea that there are people who arent getting the support they need regardless of whether or not there is a Police Officer there. Conceivably we could be delivering more service and connecting with people who need connected to and actually the workload would increase because we are reaching people we were not reaching before. I know there is a set book we want to shift away from Police Response where appropriate. We want to reach more people. I am all for more resources for the skirt team. Not because i need to eliminate the need for police but i think it is a better way to engage with people where we can and reach folks we would not reach even though we are not reaching a bunch of people we should be reaching. Having the Mental Health services and behavior Health Services is going to be an expensive endeavor. I think that it is not the fact the Police Service calls have not gone done, you are not saying skirt is not delivering. Supervisor ronan was positive. I may be a little i am in a f un k where we are on Behavioral Health and meeting the needs of most seriously challenged folks on the street. I want to go back to the second challenge raised around real estate. Last week the bla released a report we requested an update on conservatorship and we are calling for a hearing on tuesday. We talked about this with the department of Public Health. We do not have in my view the placements for people especially for people lieu are going to need care for longer than 90 days or a year, a now years, decade, rest of their lives. Not a new observation. This is an observation that the board of supervisors is aware of for years, Mayors Office has been aware of for years, successes, budget efforts to increase Resources Available for acquisition. There was actually the insight in the report on the topic a couple years ago that really what would be ideal would actually be the facilities not in riverside or Santa Barbara or somewhere in east bay but in San Francisco or if not in San Francisco at least facilities owned and controlled buy San Francisco. That is a much bigger project than acquiring the building. That requires sort of planning and might require longterm capital money. If you think about the scale which we need to do this where we talk not about tens, dozens of beds. We need to talk about hundreds of beds. That is the big project. We cant even move the little project before us. We have been unable to for a couple of years at a pace that allows us to do what i think is civilized and we ought to do. My question is and we will talk more in the hearing. I am requesting. Acquisition is a challenge is true. That is an hr challenge. We do not have the team designated to go out and build, buy, borrow, steal whatever facilities you need to take care of san franciscans in trouble and need that care for a month or a year or a decade or the rest of their lives. I am wondering how dph is thinking about addressing that need. If i am right in my intuition on how you think about if it is something that needs to get fixed. In your point about this being hr issue. There are staff included in the plan that we just talked about that we do need for the additional bandwidth to get the programs up and running. There is another piece that is indirectly related but which is really just the timeline for purchase and renovation of the buildings. We have been doing interim measures where we can where we are temporarily buying beds in other locations. Sometimes outofcounty while we try to bring those on. At the core there is staffing, infrastructure band width constraint within dph that affects our ability to take on some of these new projects. I think the hiring piece of this is part of it to get our team built to bring these new programs online and then there is the additional piece that the timeline for the physical preparation of the building space. Generally that is correct. Thank you, mr. Wagner. Further questions . Followup. I think the point about the hiring and coordinated care. I remain unclear what the team looks like, what you are trying to hire for. The team that would be doing this, whether it is Capital Planning or acquisition and rehabilitation or what are you using these positions to try to put together . Supervisor, to clarify around the facility acquisition and bringing it. We have a need for hundreds of beds for people in state institutions or in jail, folks who cycle between the streets, sidewalks, emergency room, never get the care they need and go on a cycle around and around. Is there a way that san franciscans are fundamentally embarrassed about. We are looking to you and your department to put together the team of people to solve that problem. I think it is about identifying land, facilities, thinking about how many beds you need and in what way. I am wondering if the positions you are proposing to hire coordinated care to do that or if they are not part of the plan right now and we still need to figure out how to do that. Positions to do a lot of that work would not be directly in the bucket of the office of coordinated care. We are hiring Program Staff for the implementation of the new beds and Facilities Program and add enough staff, pms, analysts. What that Program Looks Like and we can highlight now. We can give you more information about where we are. We have multiple sites we are actively have acquired or are acquiring. We have a site that is finalizing acquisition for a crisis program. They think we are currently then we are currently negotiating for purchase of two large sites that would be residential programs including either. [indiscernable] programs. We are working with real estate to acquire those. The other component be is that we are working with cbo partners on mostly smaller but important programs where dph will provide financing for cbo acquisition of properties for the purpose of both stabilization of programs that are subject to rental market fluctuations. Including coop housing and boarding care and expansion of Services Including residential care. Those are the components of it. Is we are not as far along as we would like to be. Our target program and we can send you the program on it has 400 bed expansion to bring online in various types of services. Thank you, mr. Wagner. Nothing further on that. Director mandelman, we will go to vice chair chan. Commissioner chan thank you, chair preston. I was mr. Wagneriansed my question. The follow up was the dph is working with real estate to identify sites. I think that supervisor mandelman is right. It is a coordinated effort about facility acquisition. That is something that we are at least our team is working on with the city administrator to look at public land and as set management of more comprehensive manner. Housing, application for Mental Health facilities. It is the city to Work Together in a coordinated manner to identify sites we could free up to use or interchange with different departments or public land standing is an idea we can expand and grow to manage our assets and adopt the means at the right time in the event that we may have a facility that is suitable. That is all i wanted to say was to make sure you are working with real estate to move things forward. That is all i have got. Thank you, chair preston. Supervisor ronan. Supervisor ronen i wanted to tag team with supervisor mandelman. Thank you, supervisor peskin for moving his seat on the legislative chamber. Now we it is next to each other every tuesday we talk about Mental Health. What needs done and the beds. We it is next to each other. That is what i miss for being in person for work to connect without a meeting scheduled and touch base. I didnt start off or focus on beds because i knew supervisor mandelman would focus heavily on that. We make a good team we have different be obsessions and compliment each other quite well. I appreciate your line of questions, supervisor mandelman. Also clarify my optimism is not based on the today. My excitement and optimism is based on the fact that we are taking a huge leap ahead with this program. Mental health sf is in building stages, not full complete operation. It is a massive vision for a massive system of care that hopefully when it is complete will be a model for how you provide Mental Health and addiction care to adults in an urban setting in a very effective way. I want to make that clear. What i am excited about and optimistic about is we finally have a talented director of Mental Health sf who already she came here has moved us in the right direction. We werent going in the right direction prior to her arrival. Number one. Number two, given what a challenge hiring has been to hire 200 people in 90tays another days. It has done more for implementation than anything in the past two years. I want to clarify the situation today in the streets is abysmal. The situation today with treatment for Mental Illness and addiction is unacceptable. That is why we are doing this work and treating it as an an emergency. What does the office of coordinated care do . What does it look like . I can tell you what we wrote it to look like. It is almost the heart of the system. It makes all of the other organs and body work because it coordinates the care. We have phenomenal services for people with Mental Illness and addiction in the city. The problem is they are separate. They dont coordinate, communicate, they dont know if the patient is using other services. We have what i call a hamster wheel problem of people going from the street to jailhouse services to Emergency Services back to the street maybe in the program for i a minute, back on the streets. Office of coordinated care is driven by case managers. I am obsessed with case managers. You have to have a case manager assigned to someone to know where they are in the system, pull them in when they have fallen out, pick them up when they get out of jail and say what has gone wrong . Why did you go back to jail . That level of proactive work with individuals is what is going to change the status quo. Not all case managers are going to it is win or have direct supervision we contract out that service. You know what . We will have someone looking at our case managers and, you know, throughout the city where they it is and ensure there is an overall quality, cord nation, overall functioning system. We have nobody needing psych Emergency Services without someone holding their hand to connect them immediately to services. This department will have a realtime handle on the data. All questions we asked for years to the department of Public Health, what is the waiting list . Where do we need the resources that they could never answer . We are now going to have data experts and a realtime inventory of services that are going to be able to answer our questions at the board and most importantly in the Budget Committee when we figure out where to invest services to make then be tire system function better. I hope that gives you an idea, a description of how the office of coordinated care works. It also works with the street teams right now. When there is someone in the street the case manager is called to the street. That cord nation is happening. I hope that someone answers your question and completes the circle there. Thank you. Supervisor preston thank you. Supervisor mandelman. Supervisor mandelman thank you for that. I completely agree with supervisor ronan about the need for this coordinated function. It is more important when we are trying to keep folks in least restrictive environment and they need to move up and down across more and less supervision and someone needs to be conservatorship and they need support other ways. I understands that is there office of community care. That is important when you try to manage a complicated system which is more human than mass institutional ligation and very complicated. My concern is and i am not when we look at the hiring of the office of coordinated care. I think it is important to envision the bad, following up on the analysis every year, engaging in the Capital Planning exercises about acquiring vacant land, acquiring former hospitals, thinking about whether the Juvenile Justice Center facility might be converted to something that would be usable over time for people who need to be in longer term placement. Whatever the thing is, it is not best done by the board of supervisors. It is youtube done by greg wagner in cannot be done by greg wagner. I think there is a job and function that we are through years and years of trying to solve this. We need a team of folks. Maybe it is happening and i dont know about it. If we envision people being coordinated being someone with a roof over their head to figure out what the roofs look like and how they get built and whether they are in riverside alameda or San Francisco, you know, and how that is going to happen and if it is going to be publicly owned and operated and nonprofit operated or privately owned. Whatever the status is putting in a box that is not like as i said one of about 50 different tasks greg wagner has to get done and 200 tasks. They both have insane numbers of tasks. They are dealing with a lot. I dont think that we are focusing that anyone has been tasked with thinking about this problem that is acute. It should be done by the state of california. Until they do it is on us. That is all i have to say. Thank you, supervisor mandelman. Supervisor preston i had a question around supervisor ronan dug into the issues around hiring on the case manager front. I was hoping you collaborate around the labor supply issue, the people issue. The psychiatrists and clinicians with these goals of hiring 200 people in 90 days, how many of those are clinicians . I somewhere not tried to personally do it or been close to this in the city. I will say my late sister was responsible for hiring clinicians. The number of hours in which she would share with me the experience and try to find Spanish Speaking psychiatrists. The numbers of one, two, three people. Those nonprofits clinics may not have paid as well. I would be interested what the strategies are, what the challenges are, and just the realistic path to the numbers that we are trying to hire in a three month period . We did thank you for that question, supervisor preston. Thank you for the conversation, supervisors ronen and mandelman. We do have one of our slides that describes different classifications that we are trying to hire. Fortunately, i think psychiatrists as we mentioned and psychologists are in short supply. This is not just in San Francisco but a National Work force issue. I think that at present psychiatrist salaries are competitive. I know our teams have been able to hire psychiatrists for that reason. I think that we know that we will have special recruitment, purchase and pph, hr team has air recruiter assigned and this is one of the things we speak about. My team and gregs team, mr. Wagners team and the hr team to think about recruitment efforts. We are amenable to exploring staffing. Practicers or advanced care practicers to fulfill the clinical needs. I think that we are staffed right now and organized to be nimble in this big push to adjust strategies to be creative about problem solving and hope that we will be able to resolve most of the hiring challenges. Where we cannot, i feel open to reconsidering classifications where we can and where it will result in good quality of care without compromising the services. To follow up, are most of these clinicians likely to come from other clinical positions outside the city . Are we competing with private providers . Or are we trying to attract people to San Francisco . I imagine there is a element of hope. Are due we expect to staff up to these level . Do we have to go outside the market or are we able to attract people from private providers . To mention we have an extensive hearing on ngao and kaiser and under staffing. This committee has dove in deep with one provider. It is a strategy of new people to the market or are we in competition with the other providers . I think the strategy has got to be all. We need to reach outside the immediate area. Reach out to the bay area and reach out beyond as well as minimize competition with ourselves. I think i am an example of the department reaching broadly and looking nationally. I think there are some positions amenable. Most positions are amenable to regional such as again with hr team and specifically dedicated recruiters. We want to think broadly and knowing that as you point out some of the things we are up against. Thank you. There was some discussion both director mandelman and supervisor ronan around interactions between street response and skirt teams versus police. I want to comment briefly. I am looking forward to data that you are requesting. I will say anecdotally from what i hear from the new folks commuting back and those in district 5 and citywide. If they have tried to get the skirt teams because of very slow response time. Police end up showing up first. I want to add that, you know, that may well be part of the problem. Someone needs to come f. The skirt teams there arent enough of them or because of covid. I am interested in seeing that angiographic in other parts of the city looking forward to data on that. On the roster right now lets open up Public Comment on this item. If you are watching on sfgovtv if you wish to speak call in now. Following instructions on the screen. Dial 4156550001. Meeting id24928385397 to connect to the meeting. Then press pound twice and star followed by 3 if you wish to enter the queue to speak. I understand we have five callers listening to the meeting presently. Any callers on the line to speak on agenda item 1 . There are no callers in the queue. [please stand by] to really, really intensive intervention is so large. And its a struggle in the entire country. I am proud of San Francisco for being at the beginning of really, really trying to fix this issue and create a model that works not only for our city but hopefully can be replicated in other cities in california. Again doctor, thank youso much. Thank you for moving across the country to take on this challenge and leading us in San Francisco. Greg wagner, director wagner, thank you. Youve been in this for coming on decades right now and especially more recently. Its such a pleasure to have you at the department of Public Health because you are so reliable and sogood at your job and so brilliant. Again, perhaps its isolation madness thats setin but i just feelexcited. Optimistic , i guess and hopeful that we are going to crack this difficult challenge so thanks so muchand colleagues, thank you for the time and hearing. Thank you supervisor ronen and thank youfor your leadership. I remember sitting with you with big pieces of people paper sketching out ideas and its very exciting to see progress has beenmade. Thank you for your leadership on this. And is your preference that we continue this item to the chair or file this hearing . I think we can file it. The majority of this conversation Going Forward starting soon is going to be in theBudget Committee as we figure out the next steps so thank you so much and please file the hearing. Chairman thank you and if you could call the role and a motion to file the hearing. Thank you for my clarity, are yougoing to move around on this one . On the motion offered by chair preston that thishearing be filed ,vice chair can. [roll call vote] mister chair, there are 3 ayes. Chairman motion passes, thank you supervisor ronen and mister clark please call the next item. Agenda item number 2 is to authorize the public defenders Magic Program in the bayview and fillmore Western Addition neighborhoods and expressing the board of supervisors continued support for these programs. Members of thepublic who wish to provide Public Comment for this resolution should call the Public Comment number which is still 4156550001. Todays meeting id is 2492 838 5397. Press the pound symbol twice and press star followed by three if you wish to be inserted into the queue to speak. The system prompt will indicate you have raised your hand. Until the system indicates you have been unmuted. We were previously joined by a quorum of the board of supervisors and i want to real quick. The public a recap of who it i we have present. The three members of gao. We are still joined by supervisor Catherine Mar and we also have supervisor gordon mar but i see also supervisor Hillary Ronen and supervisor peskin are no longer present so we are no longer convened as a special session ofthe board of supervisors. Chairman thank you for keeping track of the comings and goings of each itemthat is going a lot of interest from our colleagues. Thank you for the welcome participation of the supervisors and as you pointed out procedurally we need to note that for the record. Thank you for giving that clea for us. This item 1st, i want to thank president walton for his leadership on this and being the lead sponsor and i am proud to becausesponsoring this item. And also understand that supervisor chan is a cosponsor as well so thank you vice chair chanfor your cosponsorship and i wanted to speak briefly before we hear of our presenters on thisitem. This resolution will , it really formalizes the board of supervisors support for mo magic and the magic, to Community Centered programs that are really unique programs of the Public Defenders Office and i know we will be hearing from the public defender in a minute. These programs have been critical to supporting and empowering communities in the fillmore Western Addition and Hunters Point for years now. The Public Defenders Office under the leadership of the lake just about she recognize the need to focus on youth and Community Building to prevent young people from ending up in the Public Defenders Office so magic was cofounded in 2004 Public Defenders Office and by leaders of bayview Hunters Point communitybased organization to really address and improve the quality of life in the community for children and youth and families and then in 2006, magic expanded to serve the fillmore and Western Addition for me mold magic so i really just want to applaud the hard work of everyone involved and also to the Public Defenders Office who have made these programs possible. You know, its a little unusual to have a resolution of this type and i do want to point out that the charter doesnt explicitly rest in the public defender the right to create and run a Community Partnership program like the Magic Program so this resolution goes ahead and formally authorizes Public Defenders Office to continue to operate these Excellent Community drivenprograms. So the programs they partner with ceos to work to reduce juvenile contact with the criminal Justice System and facilitate and connect Community Members and Service Providers and bayview Hunters Point and the Western Addition. The goal is really to and i know the public defender will talk about this but i think its important that the goals here are to address the impact of trauma and poverty and violence on children, on youth, on families and to decrease violence in the community and really disrupt this school to prison pipeline that has existed for far too long. The program, the Magic Program works collaboratively with over 90 communitybased organizations and schools and city departments at this point and ive seen firsthand in the community irepresent how important this work is. How gratefulfolks are to this program. How it works to bring folks together and else to provide young folks withthe support they need to thrive. I look forward to these programs continuing and will, with thanks to the public defender turn the floor over to our public defender and i understand we have other folks from his office are available with his team. He can introduce them and we also have the effective director of magic and ricky ford, executive director of momagic all available today the floor is yours, welcome. Thank you so much supervisor preston for that wonderful introduction. It warms my heart to see your deep understanding of the program and how valuable it is both to our office and the city as a whole. Supervisor preston and supervisor mandelman, thank you for the opportunity to present and share with you the work of our Magic Program. Supervisor preston and chan, thank you for cosponsoring this resolution brought forward like president walton which formally authorizes magic and expresses theboard of supervisors continued support for these programs. Because the board of supervisors again has nor never formally recognized these programs which are outside of traditional public defenders duties the city advises us to move forward this resolution which is why we are here today. Im going to take you through some slides very quickly and after that if you have any questions i have the manager of the Magic Program who is also the director of our juvenile unit here as well as the magic director and momagic director britney ford and carolyn, our local policy director here today who will be assisting life. Lets go to the next slide. My predecessor founded the magic in 2004 together with leaders of the bayview Hunters Point community, communitybased organization to address and improve the quality of life of bayview children youth and families. In 2006, it was expanded to the fillmore district and Western Addition communities when we formed momagic. These Magic Programs are about preventing people from entering the critical legal system in the first place and helpingthem thrive. I work strategically with impacted communities to address systematicchallenges that affect children, youth and their families. One of the reasons i came to this office which also had a reputation of having an aggressive practice was in addition to defending in the courtroom San Francisco Public Defenders Office as a vibrant Community Connection via our Magic Programs and in many ways the goal of these programs is to work ourselves out of a job. And its unique that we have this as part of the Public Defenders Office and were so excited to see whatthe next chapters are going to be Going Forward. As supervisor preston noted in his initial comments, there is a lot of intergenerational trauma in some of these communities so these programs recognize that it is s is intergenerational trauma. Theres a tremendous amount of intergenerational resilience and leadership and one of the goals of these programs is to capitalize on that to really make progress. The Magic Program follows the best practices of the collective impact model to achieve social change. This Program Works with existing cbos in the Bayview Fillmore as the backbone support organization to ensure that collectively these organizations are achieving maximum impact. As someone who has a Large Organization i can tell you its challenging tomanage these projects with current staff that we supervise. That can get it done. But theability to run magic leaders to coordinate among different organizations is truly spectacular. And as part of this work magic does a number of things. It provides comprehensive resource guides for the neighborhoods they serve. Featuring cbosthat serve children, youth and their families. Next slide. Magic also engages and brings together a vast network of Service Providers by hosting Monthly Committee meetings, these provide opportunity for Community Building of cbos to work on collective programs and introduction. Next slide please. During covid this support role became vital and i think its important in these times that we are aware of how the Public Defenders Office really is, Public Safety is a Community Organization and magic is a key part of it. Weve been demonstrating that during covid by being able to provide support and network to communities. By coordinating people power to distribute muchneededresources and supplies. Next slide please. Many of you have been to our phenomenal backpack giveaways and magic supports Community Buildings such as this giveaway and others. We distribute 3000 to 4000 backpacks and School Supplies for children and youth k12 every summer before the start of the new schoolyear. Some of you i know have been to these giveaways and their truly spectacular events. You see the smiles on these children and theres no feeling like showing up with a fresh gear and our program is able to do that. Theres communities coming together and its really i think one of the best events in the city and i encourage all of you to come to those events because it really is an uplifting event and we remain committed to andwill continue to generate Going Forward. Nextslide please. Magic also uplifts educational events focusing on literacy for children throughout the year and providing diverse looks for all ages and again you see in these slides just the smiles on our youths face. Its really a validation of th work that we do. Finally, magic provides and informs communities about ongoing opportunities assisted through their weekly calendars information includes housing, job opportunities, Community Events and funding opportunities. And in our next slide highlights partners serving children and young people all the way up to the age of 24 because as we know theres increasing understanding of in the developingbrain that hasnt stopped developing a developing at 18 months. Even further the goal of the Magic Program is to uplift support and empower youth. It takes a village and i think the Magic Programs are really leaders in that village. We look forward to progressing forward and making magic even bigger and stronger. Iq so much. We have our staff here that are available to answer any questions. Thank you so much vice chair chan. Vice chair thank you chair. I want to thank you and thank the public defendersoffice and your entire team. I saw from the beginning where it was a simple idea and this idea of just a backpack giveaway. Knowing kids especially those in low income families that wouldnt be able to go back to school and with that one simple idea that our public defender had to the way that it is toda , its more than a backpack giveaway and is becoming a Community Bonding event and just where communities come together there is a hobbit there. Theres so much love and resources provided to spread around our kids and our families. Its amazing and the reason why i am privileged to be a cosponsor of this. That actually speaks volumes and i think this is something we all should cometogether and support , not just for the district supervisors along with the Public Defenders Office and know that is a worthwhile caus. I want to thank president walton and supervisor preston as well as the publicdefenders office for their leadership. We look forward to supporting this andseeing how , where does it take us . I always believe that Something Likethis that truly serve the community , that really is what brings them together to make sure that you know, some of the things that we talk about in terms of Preventative Care and service that we have really i think this is actually one of thoseinitiatives. It should prevent some of the trauma and some of the challenges that a lot of kids and their families will face. So thank you. Chairman thank you so much supervisor chan. Supervisormandelman. Thank you chair preston and thanksto the Public Defenders Office. Please add me as a cosponsor. Chairman thank you supervisor mandelman. That makes it unanimously cosponsored by the gao committee andhopefully others at the board. I didwant to offer , i know that miss ford are both available for questions. I dont know if they had anything that they wanted to add to the comments that had been made so far and i wanted to personally thank both of them for all their incredible work on really i think the public generally doesnt really. I dont know if they know how much work and how broad the outreach is by the Magic Programs. Im glad to have this opportunity for them, for the public to learn more and i want to provide you the opportunity if you wanted to make any additional comments or maybe we can start with. Well, go ahead either of you if you have additional comments. Can you hear me . Chairman yes wecan. Thank you supervisors. I am the director for the b map program. Its just an honor and a pleasure to be apart of a program like this. My background is in justice and im an attorney by education and a program like this that centers on young people and working with those who care about young people and wanting to keep them and this work has been a pleasureand i cant speak , i dont have the words about how important this work is. We meet so many people and the children and families thatwe serve. We do serve a broad category in San Francisco. And by doing so it gives you a betterunderstanding of how great the city is. And were just happy to be a part of this effort to really support our young people so thank you so much. Chairman thank you. Can you all hear me . Chairman we can, welcome. Appreciate the support of ourMagic Program. Its been such an honor and a pleasure taking on this legacy. It started way before me while i was in high school but its just been such an honor and a pleasure to work with public defender raju and patty lee. As a mentor shes been running the Magic Program for over 10 years nowso its just been awesome. I just appreciate the support, the workthat we do. Its challenging but its so rewarding. Just since covid hit, we shift gears a lot. And since covid hit, the communities we serve, we did a lot of shifting but we got it together. One of my proudest moments and most humbling moments is working with the Magic Programs is that we get to work so many different cbos. Community organizations that really need support. And we bridge the gap that is definitely needed between the city and also communitybased organizations and i want to say were always here to bridge the gap and provide Services Weather coming from the city and connecting folks without communitybased organizations so thank you all again. Chairman i think its an important thing for everyone to realize in what you all do and for the public is that none of this work was interrupted or reduced. If anything its been more intense through the pandemic and i know im obviously more familiar with the d5 work and with support. But im sure the bayview just in terms of the growing need but also options of working from home and zoom meetings were not in the cards. So that works really throughout the pandemic thank you for all your efforts. A couple of you have referenced having this work and i do want to recognize her for carrying so much of the work ofthis program forward. And before we open it up for Public Comment i just do want to make one other comment or observation our public defender touched on this in his remarks i do think that people tend to look at a Public Defenders Office as a place to provide representation to keep people out of jail or to provide criminal defense to the cases. And it is you know, i think our public defender was a visionary in dealing with the Public Defenders Office. Its much more comprehensive than that. Its really part of Public Safety strategy andits a part of supporting families and part of prevention. Just dealing with the Public Defenders Office is an integral part of prevention efforts to prevent harm to communities that are so regularly and intensely by the criminal Justice System is an important thing. I think our city should be proud of it and i want to recognize our public defenders role in doing i think what everyone recognizes is being possible. Nobody can fill jeffs shoes but in his next chapter jeff adachi in seeing the Public Defenders Office as an integral part of Public Safety as well as representation so thank you to the public defenders and his team for all that work. And seeing no one else on the roster lets go ahead and open up Public Comment for anyone that wants to comment on that item. Were checking now with michael fromthe department of technology to see if we have callers in the queue. For those watching our meeting on San Francisco cable channel 26 or elsewhere, if you wish to speak at this time in regards to agenda item numbertwo , please call in by following th instructions on your screen. Dial 4156550001. Enter the meeting id of 2492 838 5397. Press the pound symbol twice and star followed by 3 if you wish to speak. For those on hold continue to wait until you hear a prompt indicating your line has been unmuted and that will give you an opportunity to provide your comments. Couldyou guide us to our first color . C8 this is cheryl davis. I am grateful for the opportunity to call in and support the Magic Program. Some of you may know i used magic for 10years i guess britney and patty. They did some amazing work with community partners. I will forever be grateful to patty who was on the hiring committee and for the opportunity to work with patty and with jeff adachi. Jeff provided so much space for us to really censor Community Voices and at the time no one was doing work with our game injunctions and helping folks through that process. Patty was instrumental in us doing a lot of work around getting kids back in school so the idea that im glad to hear the idea to make sure that we are putting juvenile public defenders out of a job is still the aim and goal of the Magic Program. So again, cannot support it enough. I want to thank brooklyn and brittany for the work theyve done to continue the work and i appreciate the board of supervisors elevating this to make sure the legacy and work of jeff adachi continues to make an impact in the system so thank you for introducing this legislation thank you for catching that and bringing this to the attention so it does not go away. Chairman thank you director davis. Could we havethe next caller please . This is marshall walters, ceo at Community Services and i am delighted to be able to make some comments in support of this item on the hearing. I was really fortunate to be able to work with the magic. We had three centers in the bayview Hunters Point and it was through their leadership in doing a landscape of what we have in the bay that it came to our realization that wehave enough services for children here to survive. As a result of her leadership with other organizations and cbos like the wonderful bayview ymca and other groups that we are able to open up those streets as a learning hub in the heart of the bayview to support young parents and really most importantly to give our little ones 0 to 5 particularly infants what they need to really come out of the trauma of this pandemic and their parents having to put up with so much and give them the support that they need so that were not missing on the most important years of Brain Development and getting them ready to thrive as well in our community. Thank you so much to list and her group and also to the magic because we also have a Center Recommendation and i know how much your work in bringing together the cbo set so that we can talk together and collaborate is really the lifeline for our community and again, thank you and its an honor to be part of this. Its a Wonderful Group of both the magic and momagic. Thank you for sharing your comments with the committee. Could we have the next caller please . C8 how are you doing, my names is james and i executive director down at Impact Community center and a note to me twominutes but i dont need two minutes because this is a nobrainer. Thankyou supervisor preston. Thank you britney. Thank you patty. But for me, i was born and raised in the fillmore distric. I was here when they were doing food programs and this is the conduit and the convener of how our communitiescommunicate. So im looking at some of these numbers in the slide. Its like theres no way in the world you can even think about what we do when you serve that many families. Were not just talking kids, weretalking families. Youre talking at least 100,000 families and i think because of the Magic Program that i am still doing this work andi always say i didnt choose this work, this work shows me. You all asked your question two, if not you then who . If not you then who does the work . I look at it and im working with director core and when the pandemic hit we teamed up and we knew from the beginning about shelter in place i said cant shelter in place. My community is going to be left behindso what are we going to do . We kept on listening. We made sure we were reaching out to debate, everywhere. The mission in the tenderloin so magicis just not a communitybased organization. Its a citywide organization and it reaches everywhere. Thank you again supervisor prestonfor bringing this to the forefront and like i said, this is a nobrainer. I always say if not you then who . Thank you. Thank you for sharing your comments, could we get the next caller . Caller my name is joy and im executive directorat third street. Im calling on behalf of to support thisresolution. The magic has been a staple in the community and that bayview Hunters Point native, i look at bmagic as the nexus. This morning someone was trying to get connected and we directed them straight to bmagic. Bmagic is the place where the magic literally happens. So many opportunities, so many connections, cbos and other city departments and opportunities. Connect has been to the meetings. If you didnt get there on time when were meeting in person you might have to stand up and everybodys always trying to rush and make it to the meeting on time because they know it was important to be there. Anyone who ever comes to work in bayview Hunters Point i always point tothem so they can get tapped in to find out what sort of resources we already have and where they can fill in some of these gaps. I know that ricky is continuing the legacy as well with the moMagic Program but i want to let britneys leadership and even if that and director davis. We started this mission and i always say theres honor in building on something. So i think britney for continuing jeffs vision. Thank you. Thank you for sharing yourcomments, could we have the next caller please . My name is Margaret Doug gray and im calling on behalf of partners in early learning, where working at the intersection of social justice and Early Childhood education and im calling like the previous caller to speak in support of the Magic Programs and specifically bmagic. Our organization serves thousands of families and work alongside parents, caregivers, educators and nonprofit professionals in the city and a significant portion of our work is in the Hunters Point community and its because of the efforts of bmagicand the partnership that were able to be effective. We really couldnt do the work we do without them so in short we want to thank your ongoing work in the community and on behalf of tendon expressing severe gratitudefor the work theyre doing. Iq. Thank you for sharing your comments. Do wehave any further colors in the queue west and mark. There are zero colors remaining in the queue. Thank you andwith no more colors the Public Comment on this item is closed. And thank you again everyone for your participation in the hearing and thanks to my colleagues orcosponsoring. Colleagues, couldwe have a motion for the full board with recommendations . So moved, it looks like supervisor mandelman got there first. Please call the role. On the motion offered by supervisormandelman, vice chair chan. [roll call vote] there are 3 ayes. The motionpasses and thank you all. And mister clark, we are ready to call the next item. Agenda item number three is a hearing on the findings and recommendations of the office of City Services auditor of the social impact Partnership Program of San Francisco Public Utilities commission. Members of thepublic who wish to provide Public Comment should call the call in number which is still 4156550001. Todays meeting id is 2492 838 5397. Press the pound symbol twice to getinto the meeting and the press start followed by the number three to speak. Wait until thesystem prompt indicates your line has been unmuted and that will begin your period to enter your comments. Thank you mister clark and welcome supervisor mar and supervisor stefani. Supervisor mar was of first sponsor of this. I do want to thank you in advance here supervisor mar for not only your leadership in sharing this committee previously when alot of this work got started. But also just for all of us , your advocacy and work and leadership around particularly around anticorruption issues and Good Government and really, this is i would say the latest example of you really making sure that there is transparency and accountability ingovernment and so thank you for your leadership. I know we have a number of folks who will be presenting. Do you want to just know that we will be setting theclock 10 minutes for each presentation which is how we work in gao. And i will now turn it over to you supervisor mar for any introductory remarks and the presenters will be speaking after you, supervisor mar. Thank you chair preston and supervisors chan and mandelman for allowing us tohold this hearing and thank you supervisor stefani for cosponsoring and joining us. We focused on an audit at the Controllers Office conducted at the social impact Partnership Program and also known as the Community Benefit program. This hearing has been a very long time coming. Shortly after i was sworn into office labor leaders began raising alarm bells of their concerns about contracting decisions and a lack of oversight for this program and at that time i was chair of this committee and the first audit i commissioned included in its scope the Community Benefits program. This was in may 2019 before mohammed never was charged, before the pandemic, before the controllers Public Integrity reviews and before the general manager resigned in scandal. We were informed in 2019 that the Controllers Office was beginning an audit of the state program and at their request to remove anyconflicts between their audit and the bla it was removed from the scope of the bla audit and weve been waiting for this report ever since. In the meantime my office has continued to do all we can to follow this issue. When we submitted a letter of inquiry to sf puc to retain records that led to the creation of a contract dashboard for this program and i understand will be made public this year. I also submitted a letter of inquiry to the parsons joint venture who were awarded the first andsingle largest contract under this program. That contract itself worth 150 million and parsons was willing to provide records of their meeting and Financial Transactions and i introduced a subpoena motion to secure those records and for the past three years my office has been in close communication with sfpuc leadership about our concerns and concerns that todays report validates. The social Impact Partnership is intended to serve an important goal and we can deliver millions of dollars in benefits for our communities but only if we havea program thats transparent , accountable and effective and unfortunately the program has fallen far short of that so today we have new leadership at the sfpuc and finally some findings andrecommendations from this audit. We will hear first from the auditors about their report and from the sfpuc about their response. And mygoal is to have an open dialogue with this committee , with the sfpuc and public about the findings of this report and where we go fromhere. Finally i just wanted to say government requiresthe trust of the public to function. This program has failed that trust and the public deserves answersand i am committedto ensuring the city takes every action needed to address these shortcomings. Thank you chair preston. Chairman thank you supervisor mar and unless any other colleagues have introductory remarks, supervisor stefani. Thank you chair so much and thank you supervisor mar for calling this hearing and for all the work youve done on this issue and thank you supervisors chan and mandelman for working on thisas well and for hearing this item today. I agree with supervisor mar government requires the trust of the public to function and it is one of the reasons why i focused on anticorruption work in the past three key pieces of legislation in this area and its line i am cosponsoring this hearing because again its very important to restore the public trust. One of the most important things we can do as the board is to restore confidence and honesty in our City Government and for too long weve seen that too much money as flowed to grants and contracts without oversight or competition to the detriment of taxpayers and in this case to the ratepayers. The problems with the administration as the Partnership Program extends beyond just the sfpuc. Many issues identified are similar to those that grant money was administered in the city and in that case our city auditor found that of the threeyear period spanning 2017 to 2020 any departments issued 746 grants to the tune of 5. 4 billion. That meant that nearly 2 million, 2 billion per year was awarded to grants and the city had no loss setting minimum standards, documentation or transparency and Department Heads basically had unlimited discretion in the manner and method by which they make these awards whichmost are very familiar to a contractor if they are subject to much more scrutiny. And in response we passed my grant oversight legislation and ill be honest, writing that legislation tookwell over a year to draft. This kind of work is incredibly laborintensive and i want to thank the auditor for this audit and for the subsequent legislation thats going to follow. Grant legislation that we passed unanimously is found in admin code 21 but in this case the audit i guess by lack of internal controls about how it selects social Impact Partners aretroubling. The audit identified issues the contract enforcement which means that were conveying contract awards onthe promises of services that end up never being delivered. I feel strongly the program as its currently governed is no longer tenable and im sure you all agree. I realized, i appreciate the pucs willingness to address these issues and i look forward to working with them to find a legislative solution for the future. Its so important we instill in all of these contracts, grants, everything that was involved that we have oversight, public input and transparency. Its the least we can do to start to restore the public trust in our City Government so again thank you supervisor mar for calling this hearing. Chairman thank you supervisor stefani and supervisor mar do you want to follow up the first presenter . Are going to have first up Mark Delarosa from the Controllers Office presenting on the key findings and recommendations from the audit report. Thank you so much mister delarosa for all your work on this. I will address the audit first. Thank you supervisors. Good afternoon chair preston and supervisors chan, mandelman, mar and stefani. Mark delarosa, director of audits for theControllers Office. Joined today by nicole dyer from the shan consulting which is the audit firm that we in the Controllers Office worked with to complete this audit subject to your agenda for today. We issued this audit as an example of Public Utilities permission for short Impact Partnership or Community Benefit program lastdecember. And the audit contains three main findings. Some conditions that we want to go over in our presentation today. Before i turn it over to the vice chair just some background on the second slide. In fiscal year 1920, the Controllers Office included this audit of social Impact Partnerships to our work plan based on our limited Risk Assessment and also as part of our work planning process we considered an interest in revealing this including input from supervisor mar. Due to the onset we had to delay the start of this audit and my team was diverted to citywide Cost Recovery efforts. As our bandwidth and resources ease. We were able to initiate in march 2021 and we enlisted the assistance of the shaman for this engagement. This is a performance audit conducted with base fund generally accepted standards. The overarching audit objective is to assess the appropriateness and effectiveness of the pucs governance andoversight of this program. We offer before you seven recommendations that focus on strengthening the programs and controls. As with all our audits we offer these recommendations to the oversight of the program and make the necessary policy calls that are necessary. Lastly we added this to be a part of our suite ofPublic Integrity assessments and work given that in late 2020 , we learned about some contractor concerns at the puc recording a former sfpuc general manager. On thethird slide , we will show you what we have completed thus far. This is the work we have completedin line with our Public Integrityreview and audience. On the next slide we basically framed the presentation for today. This is the history of the program created in 2011. Through puc permission policy that enabled the contractors to provide submissions necessary to be a Good Neighbor to the community by Service Operations and part of that is operationalized i having contractors pledge as part of their contract to donate money. Inkind goods and services and volunteer in at risk nonprofits that are impacted by sfpuc projects. They made this commitment as part of their proposals to the puc for certain contracts and receive points for doing so. The next slide is a quick recap of the members for these programs. Since 2011 and as of december 2020 the puc has executed 84 contracts and has led to contracts for commitments to over 22 million of financial donations. 82,000 volunteer hours and nearly 1 million inkind. Only a portion of those have been delivered so far and auditors will talk more about why there is a gap and why delivery can be committed since part of that is connected to multiyearcontracts that will be delivered in the next decade. With that i will turn it over to ourfindings and recommendations. Good afternoon and as mark mentioned nicole dyer, project manager for this program. Mark provided some key points related to the background of the program and inmy brief presentation ill highlight our conclusions and recommendations. If you go to the next slide please. Overall we found although they were involved in the program a decade ago this includes inconsistencies that cover the contract awards but in the end would not affect the city and its residents. Internal control weaknesses, unreliable recordkeeping, insufficient Program Monitoring and an unsustainable framework. Our findings suggest subcontractors not for filling their commitments and we also know the commissions remain intact. With roughly 2 3 all commitmentsvalued at 225 million, scheduled to be delivered over the next decade. Its imperative that sfpuc addressed the weaknesses identified by the audit and ensure the programs longterm success. The first findings in the report focus on the value of the program and impact sfpucs design implementation have had on the facility. Specifically the audit found sfpuc did not always enforce commitments and since the inception 22 of the84 contracts have expired. Of those , seven as shown in the table and theslide have those commitments with a total value of 685,000. Despite obligations requiring those contractors to meet the commitments. Sfpuc also did not always demonstrate it attempted to put forth requirements. Next slide please. To better ensure contractors commitments and provide greater accountability we recommend sfpuctake steps to enforce contract requirements related to the program. Here we have several potential methods of enforcement each of which we believe would be costeffective for their commitment. Next slide please. The second financing report focuses on internal controls, weaknesses related to contract commitments, monitoring and enforcement. Specifically sfpuc did not always follow its own guidelines and cannot always provide the same limitations showing that established policy. For example ive shown in the table sfpuc was unable to write key documentation touches conflict of interest forms and in one instance a summary scoring sheet. Next slide. To address these internal controls we recommend sfpuc assess guidance and procedures and write their pretension policies and protocols for reviewing the report to ensure information is accurate, reliable and supportive. Next slide. Next slide. The last finding in our report focuses on the needs of the development of a Sustainable Program framework with a key focus on key componentsrelated to Program Accountability ensuring sufficient resources. And enhancing transparency into the program. As discussed previously we recommend sfpuc established procedures by addressing these and importantly to increase transparency we recommend sfpucs Program Performance dashboard and implement controls to make sure its accurate and reliable for the public. This concludes our presentation and i will take it back to mark. This next slide really just shows the deliverables that we completed as part of our Public Integrity body of work but we also list those that are forthcoming. The ones that were working on as part of this body of work is the assessment of the environments as pertains to the ecology. Were also working on a Public Utility Commission contracting process and then the last one that we have in the pike currently is ourmetrics compliance and citywide recording. We obviously roll out additional reviews and assessments as deemed necessary and that completes our presentation id be happy to answer any questions you have. Chairman thank you so much for the presentation mister delarosa. And representative. Chair preston, i have a few questions and if we could take questions just on the controllers presentation before we moved to the presentation in the puc. Thats fine, go ahead. First mister delarosa, im glad to hear in the final slide in your report that theres still forthcoming Public Integrity review of the pucs overall contracting practices. And many others i think were i guess surprised that that wasnt included in the audit report. Thats correct supervisor. We have as weve been saying for months we have had some of our priorities to make sure theres funding to them but we have one thats specifically focused on some of the key internal controls that are identified in the harlan kelly report similar to what we did for the department of public works regarding mister newmans allegations. Thats good to hear and im certainly appreciating all the work on this. This performance audit looking at the it program and the lack of delivery of the Community Benefits as has been promised and the lack of overall guidelines and internal controls for this program. For the follow up on it i just had a question for the audit of the puc contracting processes. That was a key part of our inquiry as well. Not just the delivery of the benefits but really the question of whether the contracts were awarded through Improper Conduct orcorruption. And since these contracts were awarded in part based on their Community Benefit commitment and also really because former general manager kelly was charged by the federal agency and resigned over accepting bribes for providing Insider Information to a potential contractor. Then also because the former deputy general manager juliet ellis who is really the key person at sfpuc in developing this social impact Partnership Program also resigned about a year ago and she faced in prior years ethical charges of ethics violations and an investigation by the ethics commission, District Attorney the Political Practices Commission for steering a contract to a Nonprofit Organization that she was on the board of and received financial compensation from so i think its important that we look at you know, the contracting practices that the puc for contracts but also other contracts as well. And that has been a key part of this inquiry to so i look forward to the report. And i also have a question. This report is a little bit different than the prior Public Integrity review report. And i noticed this one, one significant difference that theres an audit firm that was contracted to do this , to conduct this audit versus the other reports that were done and the prior Public Integrity reviews of widespread corruption across so many departments were done by Controllers Office and the audit staff so i wonder if you could explain that and does this have anything to do with potential conflict of interest resulting from the fact that the deputy controller todd rice from overseas the audit also served as the sfpuc assistant general manager and cfo when the socialImpact Partnership grant was launched . Thank you for the question supervisor. The operational decision we made to contract was actually more aligned as i mentioned earlier with the resources that we had at the time. We knew that we wanted, we needed to start this audit because of our commitment to be to the covid Cost Recovery and it was tasked with working wit fema and submitting all our reimbursement. That took up a lot of our time because we had to figure out a way to make sure that we initiate this audit. So that the route of the contractor was primarily due to the resources that we had. Regarding the distinction between the previous i guess seven assessments that we completedversus this audit , really there is in the audit world theres a big difference between what you can call an audit which as i mentioned earlier complied with the generally accepted government auditing centers which are basically a set of standards that we have to follow on documentation and regarding introductory centers that is a little bit more involved than an assessment which is basically the first that we completed. Those assessments although we did follow as much as we were able to throw out the process in terms of theevidence we gathered , we didnt follow the same steps that a normal audit would. Its just the physical thing of theengagements themselves and methodology that we used that was different. You are muted, supervisor mar. For my question, its the fact that deputy controller rice from overseas the Audit Division and supervises the audit as far as i understand had a potential conflict of interest given the fact that he was served as the deputy general manager and cfo of the Public Utilities commission prior. All of the audits that we conducted and City Services auditordivision , we asked them independently in terms of having to follow thestandards. In terms of the impact that the controller would have, there was none in terms of you know, the evidence that we collected and accounts that we presented were not impactedat all. Again, the operations decision that we made to contract it out was primarily due to the bandwidth of our audit. Chairman the additional audit on the puc contracting and procurementpractices , is that going to be done internally by the audit staff at the controllersoffice or contracted out . That one is currently ongoing. Thats listed as a Public Integrity assessment. And whats the projected timeline for that like when it would becomplete . The next one in line is the department of the environment which is an issue next month. Thereafter it will be the puc. We hope to or we plan to issue that one in the spring so by april 2022. Okay. And then one final question just on the overall work on this audit and in our inquirie here at the board. Why did it take so long to produce this audit report . This again as i stated earlier and this really predated the broader corruptionscandal. We were told the work had already begun on this audit. We were told that this audit was really underway back in 2019 and also in 2020 and yet in yourpresentation , you stated that the audit firm did not start the project until march 2021 and you say this was really because of the pandemic and the Controllers Office Staffing Resources but seven other Public Integrity reviews started years after we were told this work was started work completed first. Thank you supervisor. As mentioned we initiated this with the commission in march 2021 and they completed it and issued it in december 2021 so given the timeframe of the completion of the audit itself it is reasonable for a performance audit this size to be completed within that timeframe and youre definitely right on supervisor in terms of we started the planning earlier. We included this in our fy 19 20 workplace that we issued in july of 2019. We started the planning and scoping event and that really part of that was we were wanting to see what the bla has scoped to make sure that we did not overlap or that we were consistent in terms of what it is that we are going to the looking into. So part of the delay is really that we were scoping the audit in fy 1920 before covid but we didnt get very far given that we were also trying to see what the bla results were going to be before we initiated the audit report. Chairman ihave a few other more specific questions about your key findings. I guess the first one is that the audit did not conclude that fraud or abuse of power. Supervisor mar, i dont know if supervisor chans question was a followup on the previous line of questioning or something new if it was a followup just before you move to the next topic i wanted to see if supervisor chan had a question on that one. Im happy to wait until supervisor mar is done and issue afollowup. Iq. Sorry supervisor mar for the interruption. I have a few other questions more specific to the findings. The audit did not conclude that fraud or abuse of power by sfpuc staff happened through the program and it also, but it also found a lack of internal control and transparency for such that these things could have happened so my question is did theaudit look at evidence of fraud, malfeasance or abuse of power . Again, you didnt find evidence that those things happened but did you find evidence that they didnt happen . Or was the evidence missing . Simply because documentation for this program in general. The question supervisor. Based on our audit scope that we conducted and we indicated this in our report, we did not find evidence of page play kickbacks for staff and directives given by staff about beneficiaries should be but we did find that the environment that exists were that these things could happen and the environment exists today that the internal controls are lacking and made it vulnerable to potential abuses and including four documentation as we mentioned consistent application of program practices. Under finalized policies and procedures and lack of Contractor Compliance and performance monitoring. Based on the available information and based on the focus that we had for the audit itself, that is the conclusion that we reached that theres no evidence of those based on a limited information that wewere able to find. It sounds like we can take that lack of documented instance of fraud is less evidence that fraud didnt happen and its more as evidence that whatever was happening in this program was either never welldocumented o perhaps even covered up. I appreciate that. I look forward to these issues being addressed in the audit of the pucs contracting and procurementpractices. And in the report there, theres an example given of a contract being awarded on an accounting error for the value that the Community Benefit commitment . I was wondering or my question is how wide was the sample of contract review to determine if this was an outlier were truly exemplary of this program and the 84 contracts worth over 2 billion that were awarded . I would defer to nicole if you can provide a little bit more detail on the methodology. Im trying to pullup that specific question, my apologies. We looked at as part of the performance audit we dont look atevery single contract. We had simple selections and i believe we looked at 10 participations but in total, i want to say welook at roughly 20 contracts. My apologies. Thank you for that. And nicole, for this one example in the report that im referring to where you cited a contracting award based on accounting error for the value of the commitment, would you say that was just an outlier or is there any way to determine how widespread that problem existed within the entire scope of contracts forwarded with fip commitments . Im not sure exactly which comments youre referring to but there were two instances where we noted contractors had given commitments that were dependent on the duration of the contract and total yes, it is reliant on documentation maintained by th department. Thank you. Chair preston, maybe i will limit my questions for the controller right now. Chairman thank you supervisor mar, supervisor cha. Thank you chair preston and thank yousupervisor mar for your leadership and bringing up this hearing. My question is more of this trying to understand the mindset of a controller when you evaluate thisprogram. I definitely understand its an audit in the program but i wonder if theres any flaws or wrongdoing. Im actually trying to understand the controller actually must read the goal or actually the setup of the program at all because the program itself is basically saying to contractors if you do xyz specifically, donating to the department then you are going to get additional points in your contract evaluation and process. So im just asking from a policy or principle, is that even agood idea to begin with . Should the program even exist at all . Thank you for the question supervisor. As the director of audits i have to stay within the lane that we are given from an audit perspective we certainly follow wherever the facts lead us depending on the scope of our engagement. We leave the policy decision of whether the design and whether the assistance of this very program should since we do recognize that 2011 created as a policy, we have policies from the puc. We just ask about engagement and were looking at what the effectiveness and appropriateness are of the internalcontrols around the program itself. So ill save my response for that. Thats understandable because along with the audit request all the premises based on evaluating the program, why it exists andwhether it should exist or not. Help me understand though, maybe this is not for the controller. Maybe this is for the sfpuc but my assumption is the program, the way it came about is what i like more and more so perhaps i should hold this question for sfpuc. I just wanted to get a quick understanding from the controller whether the Controllers Office, whether theres even the discussion or evaluation whether its even a good idea for this program . I will stop right there and maybe save that question for sfpuc. Chairman thank you vice chair chan. Before we move on to other presentations i do have a couple questions on whats been presented so far. I guess just back to this issue around the definition of what supervisor mar asking about the scope of the inquiry. Staying in the line lane, im trying to understand who defines that lane for you and im trying to figure out where theres a more Narrow Program to adhere with certain limits and theres going to be a broader rapport or there were decisions made around the scope of this so let me just get your take on this. Who decides as you say the lan here and whats inside and outside . Sure. This particular engagement and actually all our engagements is a riskbased approach in which we look at what are the key elements of the program and that merits fieldwork or datagathering. We definitely want to distinguish between from the very beginning kind of the material controls versus the primary focus of the performance audit. Is it performing well, complying with its policies and procedures . Is it following best practices which could also be a focus of the performance audit versus more of a Investigative Approach which is definitely honing in more on certain individuals,certain contractors. Thats really from an investigative side more than for a performance audit side. So really in developing our audits as a scope and objectives, we use a riskbased approach that is based on interviews, Data Collection from the very beginning so that we can actually focus on the key risk areas that we should focus on given that we have limited number of hours for this engagement and really what ended up in our list of audit objectives are really the internal controls surrounding the monitoring of the civil commitment and policies and procedures that are being used by the puc itself during the lifecycle of the contracts. From the very beginning of solicitation to the very end which is thecloseout. The awarding of the contract andmonitoring of the contract, thepayment , the administration of the contract itself. That was really the focus of what we audited based on the Risk Assessment that was completed in the very beginnin. Can youexplain what you mean when you say Risk Assessment, what risk are you talking about . Its basically from the beginning this is kind of whateverwere tasked with auditing a program , we enter into the Planning Survey base in which we gather as much information as we can. We interview as many stakeholders as possible. We gather documentation, data and based on that plant preliminary assessment all of that information in aggregate we then develop what things are sounding outside of the realm of whats expected by similar programs. Its really an assessment of the information from the very beginning that we are, we focus on certain areas of the program that merits further research and further analysis. So did that preliminary assessment, i mean, im assuming based on what this final report shows or audit shows that the preliminary assessments set off some pretty big warning bells and im trying to understand why at that point in time is limited to a performance audit as opposed to as you say an investigative audit or was it the case that at that preliminary assessment you didnt know that these risks werent so substantial. Im trying to understand. I think through the discussions we can outline what the scope was and i think youve made that clear but i guess im unclear on that point intime when that position is made to do that performance audit , not investigative . What did your preliminary assessment not show the substantial risks that would have warranted an investigative audit, not just aperformance audit . Again, very good question. On the Program Performance audit front, listed the services of a performance audit of theprogram itself. From relative to the survey that we completed with them, its really just focused on the program itself. It can be done to make the internal controls better . So thats pretty much how it looked from the beginning. I feel like were going in circles. It sounds like itsan internal cost to the Controllers Office based on the preliminary assessments. The scope of this and what kind of whether this can be investigative or performance audit. We established that the scope of the audit does not include any thing that supervisor mar asked about going to certain contractors interviewing with them, investigatingindividual people, looking into whether fraud did or did not occur. I guess im still looking for ananswer on why not . I think youve answered the internal cost to the Controllers Office but i dont understand why that investigative work was not part of this. Is it that there was a parallel investigative work and is it that City Attorneys for pending criminal cases, is that whats covering theinvestigative work so you didnt need to at the Controllers Office or Something Else . I just havent heard. I understand its limited to performance audit, i dont understand why. In the course ofhow investigations are started , really it hinges on the Controllers Officeand theres most of the invested investigative audits with the City Attorneys office. There may or may not have been similar topics ongoing investigations that are going on at the same time. If there were investigations outside the controllers offic , would that be a reason that the audit would be limited to a performance audit instead of being some broader investigative audit that you described . Yes, certain situations lend themselves better to be reviewed from an audit lens. Given that its not so much attributed to certain individuals or certain contractors its more kind of a systemic how things are done, policiesand procedures. Theres definitely a lane for the performance audit now that we take and on this one i think what the performance audit engagement that we set out to do, that was how we set out to do this particular one. Thank you, has the Controllers Office since the start of this program done any priorperformance audit or any other type of audit of this Program Since the first . I believe this is the first we have conducted. Chairman as the Controllers Office done prior audits of the puc that would have included this in a broader scope of audit . Actually know. One of the things weve done over the years is looking at the various enterprises or divisions within the puc that we have not yet at the time audited the external Affairs Division of the puc was which was its own distinct at the time. We have done audits of the Management Enterprises wastewater where weve also done Business Division as well as others that are more kind of Enterprise Business function related. Chairman back to my prior question but whose job is it to investigate broader misconduct in the contracts . I understand other departments do that but as for the scope of what the controller could do, is that right . Correct. And then another thing thats fairly specific but i know its in the report was around. There was reference to the City Administrators Office in reviewing panel selection. And a commentregarding the city administrator on page 7. As independent of puc and that kind of jumped out at me. I just wanted to give you a chance to address the role of city administrator inthis program and any aspect of oversight of this. Does the program or selection process, it seems like from the report that its important that the city administrator is independent from the puc. Obviously this is all occurring at the time when city administrator was married to the head of the puc. Can you address that . To clarify that, we we over referring to the Contract Monitoring Division which is the Division Within the City Administrators Office so we were just making a distinction that the city Contract Division is not part of the puc which house that statement. Chairman okay. I was going to ask another question but ill hold off until i hear from puc and turning back over to supervisor mar. It looks like supervisor mandelman is on the roster. Chairman apologies supervisor mandelman. Thank you chair preston and supervisor mar. In a lot of ways i think this report sort of asks a lot of questions and i think i saw supervisor chan heading in the direction of trying to address some ofthe bigger questions. And it may be that we cant necessarily do that in the context of what the Controllers Office has done here alone but it does raise basic questions about what San Francisco is getting for these programs. I was interested particularly in the parts of the report where it looked like you had looked at at least a couple of other jurisdictions by way of comparison. Itlooked like you looked at detroit and a particular program in oakland. I am not very familiar with the social Impact Partnership at sfpuc. Im learning about it. I think ive talked about finance and imlearning about it here. But it sounds like a whole bunch of. I dont know how many contracts, 5 million i imagine and you did not look at all, right . You looked at a sampleso theres a lot of contracts out there that have this requirement. The requirements, thats not really a requirement attached to them. My impression is that theres not really a standard. Is there a standard for what contractors are expected to propose or is that when you said maybe itprovides more clarity. If that part of providing more clarity is what is the nature of your proposal thats supposed to come in as people are trying to get acontract with the puc. It looks like your , it looks like Mister Keller withthat, that is relatively undefined in my right . I will defer to the employee whos more familiar with the actual documentation but from my understanding and as i emphasized more broadly that there were no standard procedures and approaches. Im guessing that that translates to the templates that are used as well. That is a very good question supervisor. There is not a specific amount that they are given to propose on. It is compared to the proposal that they received. There is no minimum. There is general guidance on the types of commitments that contractors should make and protect program and services but there is no civic guidance on the amount and there is not the documentation that they provide that information to information. Similarly sounds like from what youre saying theres not a ton of guidance for the scores in figuring out how to weigh these additional benefits are being offered against the value of the contracts. Presumably its the same, the primary motivation for puc entry in the contract isbuying things for the public. We want to get the greatest value out of this thing and now we also and for persons who are trying to work these contracts are supposed to think about this other set of things that were supposed to compare thats not entirely clear what the relationship between the body of the contract, the thing were trying to buy and these additional benefits. There is in the sick proposal themselves and in participation they do provide documentation on how theyre going to support the proposals by component types. Its just unclear based on documentationprovided how people would have known to weigh each of those before to give a five versus a fourwas more so done on comparing the responsibilities that they received. But there was no guidance. Are contracts awardedwithout any set proposal . I mean, if its truly optional. For the contracts we looked at about 20 percent of the contracts that have been awarded and for the contract all of them at that were awarded all those commitments. What we were finding is that you took that set component out, itcould swing these more in favor or not in favor of contractor preventing. That said element did determine the award at least in some cases. It impacts the award decision. It has the impact. From these other laws, were detroit and oakland the other two examples that you looked a or did you look more broadly. We tried to find other programs that were similar to San Francisco. There were a lot out there you were able to identify. I think the only two we could find, it doesnt mean there are more outthere but those were the only two we could find. There is a required component for their contracting for those programs. So there wasnt a lot to go on withmarketing of best practices. It looks like for detroit, did they have a particularly anybody about how to do stuff and did a that the dollar amount to the value for the public for those additional benefits that is supposed to be given . I think for someof them and im not sure. It was the first time for the Contract Value. Oakland, it was just for that particular redevelopment project. That it was going to and they probably carefully negotiated with the select developer what the benefits, the additional benefits and sort of Community Hiring and apprenticeships all the other things that you would want to but it was done in the context of okay, were going to talk this out and negotiate this very much for what their particular thing, not in the process of the board requirement. In other words it doesnt look like a board requirement, more of a sort of clarity around what youre going to do for the billiondollars of the contractors not doing that. It just strikes me the program like this, regardless of whether its right for bad action is right for not getting the best value for contracting government. If we have enough trouble just selecting the folks who can deliver the thing that we want delivered on time and on budget and adding in an additional element of sort ofundefined , unspecified and maybe not actually to be delivered benefits that may end up swaying the contracting seems like a problem. Thank you supervisor and it certainly echoes those concerns. I did just, so im just trouble by as i previous in my Previous Report what it takes to set off a more urgent chain of events in really a more detailed audit. What ive heard for mister delarosa is and auditors is that the environment exists where theres a risk of fraud or you know, fraud waste or abuse. Thats sort of the big coming out of this is that that environment exists and then we call that with the fact that we look at that slide that was presented and when youre talking about commitment for example of 21, 22 million of which only 6 and a half million have been delivered. Like, thats a huge gap. I dont understand how that, if we know the environment is not a wellregulated program. That the environment existed for abuse, fraud, whether we have evidence of it. We have all that other stuff withmister kelly. Like, i can understand. What is the alarm that goes off at triggers the complete Forensic Audit interviewing all these nonprofits about what theyve heard about what theyre going to receive, not receive on the committed amounts. It just feels like we go a year or two and we get a more limited audience for a broader audience on puc coming up later im trying to figure out what else. If youuncover actual fraud , you would refer that. I assume that would get referred to an enforcement authority. Cityattorney. But what happens when you determine on a Major Program billions of dollars that is supposed to go to, that the lack of oversight regulation and paperwork, documentation and fulfillment of commitments is this extreme . That it just, is there some line and i thinkim trying to understand. Where all of a sudden this bumps up to the topoftheline and with a recommendation from the controller on an urgent basis dives into that broader audit that to figure out who did what and what their waste fraud and abuse and whos responsible for it. Does something trigger that, and its if not this report what. The district provides the supervisor with thecontact from the undeliverable. There certainly only a percentage in that graph looks to that delivered but as we noted, though some of those undelivered architects to contractors or multiarea, hopefully delivered in the year especially given any new changes that puc makes to the programs, that they hold accountable all of the contractors with their commitments over the next 10 or so years. So thats just one of those contracts and then on the triggers, i think as i mentioned earlier in the presentation the audience should really emphasize that our audit will focus on internal controls and how those that are tasked with oversight of the puc, of the program itself. They can take a recommendation in the findings that we have as a whole so they call into position about the program itself and its existence, its design. We take that into policy paul in this particular audit. Iq, i mean i just am left. I dont want to repeat myself but im left withthe question. Weve had major corruption scandals in the city as supervisor mar addressed. The response from the administration was that the controller and City Attorney were going to beleading these efforts so again , we have this particular program with such potential for i dont even want to say potential. The circumstances could be more extreme in terms of potential abuse and it sounds like we have this report on the program and then folks would just sort of do with with that what they will. But based on and i realize its not a problem with the Controllers Office but it doesnt sound like theres any next step that automatically occurs from the Controllers Office. When rather than laying this out and saying theres this is problematic system of control and then inviting the department to add the oversight body of the department to deal with it. Its just not some nexus. Weve got to this place where you dont investigate to find out if theres a kind of wrongdoing that you would refer someone to the da or to the City Attorney. Like, whose job is it to take that and look at whether there isevidence of fraud and abuse. In terms of next steps, from our perspective, from the Audits Division we do follow up with all of our recommendations and we make sure that every department actually has implemented the recommendations that we record them out. And obviously we do have information that needs to be shared with anyone outside of the Controllers Office for attorney and da. We will do so and weve done that inthe past. But none of these recommendations look backwards at what an investigation and a different type of audit would look like. All the recommendations are on how to move forward and hopefully make sure the balance of the committed fund gets out there and there are better controls moving forward the gap here is beyond whatever may be looking in the Prosecutors Office , that theres no real Forensic Accounting for Detailed Analysis on going backwards of whose doing what on the contracts. And its an observation i guess, not aquestion. Ill turn it back over to supervisor mar. Thank you chair preston thanks colleagues for all your good questions. I did have one followup, a few more followup questions and you know, i think again i really appreciate all the work that was done on this performance audit and the key findings and recommendations and well, again we will hear from the puc on the responses but forme , and i think for chair prestons comments, the bigger issue that weve been looking into through my inquiry is also whether theres been fraud and misconduct in the awarding of actual contracts which amounts to over 2 billion just for these 84 contracts especially given the circumstances around former general manager kelly and former deputy general manager alices resignation and the charges and allegations against those two men. But i guess i just wanted to ask on the issue of conflict o interest. As i mentioned, theres a couple of concerns i have around this particular audit and the one thats coming up which hopefully will address my broader concerns around the contracts issue and whether there was fraud or misconduct. And sort of the connections between our two city departments and key leaders at thedepartment. We have todd rystrom who is the assistant controller right now overseeing the audit and was previously the cfo of the puc during the time when the program was being implemented andthese contracts were issued. And then now we have to you know, the new general manager Janice Herrera and even the new chief of staff ron quinn coming over from the City Attorneys office who had a role in an Important Role to play in the investigation and on particularly around fraud and misconduct so im just raising that as a concern. And i dont know. Mister delarosa, if you can respond to that again as far as if these potential conflicts of interest have any or being considered even in the upcoming Public Integrity report on the puc overall contracting and procurementprocesses. The question supervisor. Weve definitely every single audit that we and we make sure that we follow the yellow book which is our government auditing standards part of that is ensuring we do have sufficient controls in reviewing our audit report. To ensure that it does provide for the quality of gathering and presenting that so we do have that assurance for all of our audits engagements that we do follow all the standards including checking are conflicts of interests. Thank you. Okay, why dont we moved to the presentation and we have to actually undo chief of staff ron quinn here to present the response to the this audit report. Mister quinn. Thank you supervisor and thank you to all the supervisors whoare here today. Ive been listening and its very clear. Im here today to respond to the audit and the broader questions about the program and about things that im happy to engage in those discussions as well. Mypresentation focuses on the response to theaudit that came out which was the performance audit. Can we go to the next slide please . First of all i just want to start by thanking everybody for having this. Important discussion and i think the Controllers Office and i want to say the puc takes this audit and its findings and the types of questions which are asking as i go through this, im happy totake questions. I am here today not because dennis puc herrera doesnt think its important but today we had a four hour budget meeting at the puc commission which had been longstanding t determine the outcome. I want to start by saying that there were in my mind or in the puc there were three main findings. There were lots of findings to this audit but three main findings. The first of course is the program lacks sufficient internalcontrols related across the board solicitation, commitment , monitoring. And the second of the frameworks set up to overseeand manage the program lacks transparency. And proper procedures. And the third is that because ofcontractor submits , were not they were unable to establish they weremet. You cant, with confidence say that the city ratepayers and residents. Best value in ordering those contracts at all those are very serious. Those are not the particulars of things but thatsthe big picture. As youve noted, the contractor audit did not find that the particular people engaged in wrongdoing and did not find that there was impact. So it was another thing. But the audit came up with seven recommendations. And what the puc done did was immediately commit to concurring withall those recommendations and implementing those this year. That includes making a Transparent Program where people willknow who is getting the commitments from whom. Whether they are being delivered. That information is Public Information thatshould be available and will be available. Weve also committed to bringing this program back to the commission with real rules and regulations and then to the store. That goes with some of the things we will be talking about a little bit later and what are the rules and regulations and how is it decided. Those should be available. Likethe lb program has rules and regulations. All city programs have rules and regulations and this will be nodifferent. So our overall goal is to improve this program not in the abstract but in veryspecific cases and to address this so go to the next slide please. When the audience was issued, we took some steps. Our commission and it was sort of asked earlier when this started in 2011 and the puc commission asked to have a program in which we were encouraging our large contractors to be Good Neighbors and to provide benefits to the communities in which we were doing work. Not to the department but to the community so thisdrew out of that. And our commission itself is committedto continuing this. So we publicly committed to continuing this program upon the factors that we just laid out which is the commission and theboard will come back to it as well. We contacted firms and we have outstanding documentation requests that the audit found severe problems in documenting whatwas happening. Supervisor martalked about where are these records . We contacted that and started to work with the City Attorneys office to bring some of the quicker things to action. So the rfp language and serving notices that instead of saying this is the program, this is how it exists we took out the programs that there will be addendums. They will tell you what has to happen because we want this to be very clear foreverybody to tell how the program is , how a recipient is selected if not the pointing the finger as well have a threshold. Updating our conflict of interest forms and creating templates that align with the language that we audit so we startedto do these things right now to be able to get the quick language out there. And the communication to people that this is not about what individuals in the puc want done this is about we want contractors to work in the community and when we go to the next slide please. What those actions sort of took the first couple of weeks and theyre still in process but we have to sort of really move quickly into the overall assessment. This first bullet is its just a bullet but it goes to some of the questions i think that have been asked which is the rare comprehensive assessments of all Program Reporting documentation. That really means the puc having to look at what happened here. Who agreed to do what, how that happened, did they do it, why not. How did that align with them still getting contracts read all those things that came into the things. So this audit did not, this audit looked at 22 of the 84 contracts that have these commitments. We really have to look at everything. We have to know whatsgoing on. Were going to just the structure as was recommended in the audit to make it very clear that this is the core function that we are hiringfor is the work. Is the whatever the scope of the work in thecontract. Thatshow youre being rated. Thats how youre being awarded. Your core function has to be contracting work. We are internally strengthening communications with the firms to really go out and figure out what it is that we are, was being delivered and how we can establish that and how we can show that to the public that its actually beingdelivered. And we are working with our consultants and our internal it department to put all these thingsinto dashboards and be able to allow it to happen. Those are sort of the things were working on. Right in the near future. Go to the next slide. But as i said we want to commit to all seven recommendations. And not just the recommendations butthe issues raised in the audit. I dont want to get all this done this year. Usually we need, we have some work to do with our recordkeeping obviously we have work to do with matching. There was a disturbing section in there that the records that we had from the contractors mass with the records that the puc had and there was inconsistency there so we have to go through now andon everything in our database and make sure its accurate. We want to make Crystal Clear to everybody that he puc will not direct contractor commitment. Thats an important piece. It sounds like a small piece but its an important piece and it goes to the core of the trustworthiness. Is this being done at someones direction to go to a certain place. The pucs website said it wasnt happening but then i pointed out therewas contract language that could happen. There needs to be rules and regulations andaccountability , direct rules that say employees cantdo that and the consequences ifthey do. So thats an important part. Holding people who dont do the work accountable through liquidated damages, through contracting them, through looking at how many what other work they are doing. Ive gone through and look at the seven contracts that they highlight that they use in the work. Six of them, those are the only contracts that they dont have other contracts of commitments. Sothat raises some issues. Another one does have contracts so we have ongoingdialogues. We need to figure out how to hold those accounts in lots of ways. But heres the two bolded main things that have tobe done and their big. And develop comprehensive clear consistent policiesand procedures for social impact programs. That means what is the Community Benefit, what counts. How do people, how does our labor partners and nonprofits, how to apply and make themselves known to vendors who are being asked to do this so that they can be selected to directly. How it is that we are making sure that they are actually getting those whats promised to them . How is the rules and regulations for the panel or rules and regulations for the employees working on the contracts, rules and regulations about keeping records and publishing them and of course obtaining formal authorization for these policies and procedures both through the commission and the board. This program is 11 years old. I think one of the things that, one sentence that stood out to me is that this Program Works rules and regulations that one would expect from a program as mature as this. So thats what weare committing to do. Going to answer questions and im happy to engage in this discussion, start this discussion about the policy discussions that youre having but that is i hope leaving you with a sense of that this is not seen as a piece of paper that rolled in. This is seen as a serious statement on the lack of rules and regulations and follow through. The promises made to the community that have to, that we have towork on and have to make sure are going to happen. So thats our response. Thats the puc response. Thats not that this didnt happenor this information is wrong or you dont get the context. It is yes, lets make this work and lets look and see who did what and lets look and see what commitments were made and how can we focus on that so with that i would love to take on your questions. You mister flynt. Supervisor. Thank you chair. I do want to make sure i get in touch supervisor more and im happy to go after you if you want to start your questions. Thank you chair. I had a few initial questions. The first time i want to start by acknowledging the departments conference with every finding and every recommendation inthis report. So thats an encouraging step forward. But i do want to start with a district question and i realize youre still relatively new shipping over tothe puc in your role as chief of staff but my question is how did this happen . How did we reach a point where contracts worth tens of millions of dollars in Public Benefits and billions of dollars in total Contract Value add such little oversight, documentation, transparency and accountability and i understand that julia ellis is gone. I understand kelly is gone and understand all the staff who were responsible for this program have been have left the department and have since left the department. You agreed with all of these findings and recommendations and its a new day for the puc but we need to be surewe understand how it became a problem in the first place. So yes, i guess mister quinn we would like a response how in your understanding did this happen . I think there is embedded in that last slide about the rules and regulations i believe that with the ability to award contracts, with the ability to work with sums of money this large that are the publics comes great responsibility. Comes a lot of rules and regulations. As a former attorney who works as a head of purchasing team, the Contracting Team i heard over three years how hard it is to get is thecontract and part of that is we need real rules and regulations. We need those rules and regulations. So that we can be sure that people are making decisions about spending public money. Based on agreed set of principles. This Program Never had rules and regulations. It had policies that were on the website. Policies that said what they were going to do but they were never cemented down to rules and regulations and as the audits came up and said the website said Something Else and the contract said something out. How did that happen. Where does that lie . I dont know that just having rules and regulations are enough but i do know that the testing, the agreedupon mandates that this is how it shall be its very easy to just get a contract out and to move forward. So i dont want to sit here and castaspersions on individuals who i did not work with. And i dont want to take any sort of hiding that im brandnew to the agency. This is a longstanding program in this agency and by this date it should have had rules and regulations that set off alarm bells and required compliance along the way. And it didnt. Thank you for that mister flynn and again, i know that the next steps for the final few that you highlighted were to develop the clear and consistent policies and procedures for the sf puc that have been needed and as you said have led to the very problematic implementation of programming over a decade where two thirds of the humidity benefit has still not been delivered and has also left the pucs contracting practices open potential he fraud or misconduct so i appreciate thats a high priority and do bring this proposal to the commission and the board of supervisors. I guess maybe question i have on that is will you commit to working with this board of supervisors on developing these legislative changes proposed that are going to be proposed to correct this before they are introduced and im asking because were sitting here having this hearing today because of decisions that were made in the dark behind those doors without any transparency and Program Management was frankly incompetent and if not corrupt. I think the only task force is the solutions are working collaboratively and transparently with this policy making body of the city and county of San Francisco so is the department committed to doing that, to working collaboratively with us rather than running your proposals for. The department is committed to working so the department as the permit, we have to work with the boardon these issues. But the part of doing it publicly at meetings adds to transparency in rules and regulations where theyre being debated but theres also room to meet with people and a sort of flushed outissues. I want to , i dont want this, i want to put context on something you said which is that two thirds of this, of the commitments have been delivered. I think its more than two thirds that have been delivered but its not two thirds that should have been delivered and have not been delivered. The audit found Serious Problems looking at 22 contracts looking at all contracts that were closed out and found in seven, a large number seven that were closed out and not fulfill their commitments. No small number and im not saying thats a good thing. In those there were 683,000 of commitments that have been promised not delivered but the 21 million its not that the 21 million, that is, those are commitments that go into the future. What this tells us is there was not a mechanism to measure as itwas going along areyou doing this , what are you doing . Theres the on boarding, theres the closeout andthere that middle work to make sure its happening. Thats important work. Im not here to excuse it but i am here to say that commitments also includes working towards getting the commitments that are outstanding delivered those are not undelivered because the contracts were closed out. Those were open contracts and we need to makesure they get delivered. I wanted to make the context. Iappreciate that but just on that , there is still the key findings in the fact that two thirds or maybe over two thirds of these Community Benefit commitments made to the social impact Partnership Programs have not been delivered and i acknowledge that. Most of the contracts are still open so hopefully some or even all of the remainingbenefits will be delivered in the coming year. But does the department have evaluation metrics on what like over 10 years into the program, of the Community Benefits should have been delivered . 11 of the contracts, 11 of the contracts have been closed out. There were 84 contracts, 82 or 84 contracts that havent. Since those there have not been new contracts thathave been there. 11 i believe of those have closed out though the others are all open. I dont know the amount of the four contracts that are identified in the audit report that delivered full. I do know that in the seven that were found as a shortfall, that didnt, that were off closed out like that that value is on things and thats the 683. But i dont want to, thats 683,000 in and its almost 40 percent i think of what should have, 30 or 40 percent of the amount that should have been in contracts. So that it was a large portion of what was supposed to be delivered onthose contracts. I want to make clear that the 21 million is not the shortfall that hasnt been delivered becauseit should have been. Those were just the ones we have the obligation to make sure they would be delivered and i dont know if that answers your question. Thanks for that. And again, i look forward to my colleagues as well working with the department on creating the guideline and procedures and Enforcement Mechanisms that are needed to ensure that this program is fulfilling its goals as promised so thank you. Thank you chair. Thank you supervisor chan. Thank you chair and thank yousupervisor mar for those questions. I think if i may i want to just refer back to those questions that i had earlier with the controllersoffice and try to have a better understanding. I think that while its not clear to us exactly why the program was created the intent for it, but those that created the program now are under investigation. So with that, im just trying to have a betterunderstanding. With you, mister flynn on board and with our general manager herrera on the board now. And it sounds to me though, it sounds to me the discussion that weve been having with you is that the goal and theintent is to continue to keep with this program. I think if i may work a littlebackwards , from your perspective what is the goal of this program . I mentioned earlier that my impression is and frankly the general perception is that this program was established with the intent to accept donations from potential contractors or bidders so that they have some kind of advantage during the bidding process and as their reevaluated and theyve now found that whatever they have committed like 25 million is being held not accountable. So how help me understand and help the general public understand now that as we move forward the goal is because you have twooptions in many ways. For more than one option from my perspective is that you stop the program. Because of the policy intent. Is was questionable or is questionable. Therefore you reevaluate the policy whether its the best way to go. And or you continue with this because you find something to this policy. And now what youre going to do is try to put in place protocols to makesure theres accountability and transparency with this program. Obviously perhaps there are other ways that i can identify but you may so i thinkthats my question to you. And any type of that kind of discussion happens or can take place to really say look deeper with the new leadership, maybe we dont need this program but you what is the benefit of thi program and what is the policy that you intend . Thank you for that question. It is an important question and it is one that i can even though i wasnt there. Its also an impact program. It was designed to encourage contractors from doing work in the city in our neighborhoods to pledge to commit to donating inkind services, buying goods and services. Doing volunteer hours in the communities where sfpuc was having an impact. So it was designed from the beginning to look at having contractors commit to inkind commitments, money and volunteer hours for schools an nonprofits. Impacted by the ronen sfpucs work. Over time what that meant sort of on the end of what it meant to be a Community Impact sort of aunt and float. Soas we think of it today , we think of and i have someone mentioned labor to this to the attention of supervisor mar years ago. I dont know whether labor was excluded in the beginning whether it meant to be part of the community. It is certainly now as envisioned by the puc which is if someone said what i want to do is i want to sponsor an apprentice is going to join a union who really needs the wherewithal and support to get tothat program, thats the Community Benefit. That someone islikely to do. So at the core it is asking the people who we are paying money to do the work in our community to be a Good Neighbor. At the core of your question is how should we be doing this . I think supervisor mandelman had this at the core. Should we be doing this and how shouldwe be doing it . Those are questions i think the puc answered as a positive yes, weshould be doing this. Its important for us and we have a big footprint in the city. We do work in the Southeast Community a lot because theres a lot of programs there but all sorts of things that we have programs that we are doing work on. But also if its fair for this boardto weigh in on that policy question. That is one of those things we have to come and ask and put before this board which it was in the audit but this is a program that impacts the whole city so we will be working with the board but also the board has the power to bless more to say dont do this. So were going to make a case as to why we think its a good program. What helps the community. But thats those are the open policies discussions that i think maybe having taken place. Id like to, and the entitlement process, we go through someone thats going to do something and we look and we say what the impact that thats goingto have on the community and how is that going to happen . It happens though in a very open sort of way. There is discussion at the Planning Commission and board about whatdoes that mean and what does that look like . I hope by having these discussions, like clean rules and regulations whatthat means and what we think counts and how that works. Can be at that level so that its a Community Engagement that is making these decisions and its not just the staff level sort of saying we want to do this because it is a community sotheres , i think someone said taking place in the dark and then theres taking place in the open discussions. So what this report said about saying it is that this Program Needs to be brought forward and were happy to do that. We see the potential forfraud and abuse that have to be dealt with out front. But we dont want to say, we dont want to discourage contractors from really working with our Community Members. So thats how i would answer that. Thats behind it. Thats what started it. You director flynn. I really agree, looking at entitlement and development agreements, that is what we do the city. We talk about Community Benefit or any departments that come through so the community has engaged and with labor, community can engage and talk about labor in some language in the agreement. The board of supervisors can wait and especially during the project thats taking place in the district that they represent. I agree that ultimately it is about Community Engagement in terms of transparency and accountability. So while i, that is vital to you, i look to you to follow that guideline and the thresholds and what does that really look like. In comparison. For the type of project and the type of benefits that are truly tangible and truly is a way that we could deliver but really truly isa Community Benefit. By definition, not just by staff but i dont know. Like the City Attorney and legislative branch being able to wait in as well. So iappreciate that thats all the question i have. Vice chair can and supervisor stefani. Thank you for being here and for your presentation and the commitment to implement the recommendations contained in the audit. Specifically number two inches to gauge our approval from the board in Going Forward with developingstandardized procedures so we can have these conversations and get to all the questions coming up. I feel very good that were going to be able to engage in this furtherdown the line like we did with other pieces of legislation so we will be able tohave our input. Thank you for that and with regards to the labor issue , when were talking about workforce training with the benefits and everything that we actually are making sure were talking about what that means for our apprenticeship program, programs that turn into something and i know that something that the puc willbe working on as well. Labor will be providing input but i had a few specific questions i wanted to talk about before we start getting into legislation for down the line because the audit identified any pieces where contractors were scared to participate and as you said could not ensure the steering had not occurred. I wonder if you have a plan to ensure the steering does not take place. That is an important component. Thats listed in the audit and i think its embedded in the recommendations. General manager herrera said that cannot happen. If it happens, those days are over. If its up to general manager herrera or me or any puc staff to pick a favorite and say this is what youshall do , what that does is that may not give me. If i was able to dothat, that might not give me a dime in it in the fraud of that that gives me power. And with that type of power gives it influence. We need to be clear that our roles at the puc in implementing this program is to implement the program in a fair and open way and not in a way that will allow. And i dont want to say that puc employees are corrupt. Theyre not. We have good employees who are working hard and reallycare about this community. But we also need to have the rules and regulations that they are not allowed to do it and also so people know that and it doesnt allow, it doesnt foster the atmosphere where contractors could come and sort of start saying maybe you know what program do you like . If your kids soccerteam was the best team. We need to be clear thats not allowed on either end. Not just on the website, in an actual rules and employee action, as a contractingaction. At all. The audit painted a picture of a set of rules that were discussed but not necessarily Enforcement Mechanisms. And it laid the table for potential. So yes, that is a critical component of the plan for rules and regulations. Puc will present their five areas where we asked themto make commitments. Education, environment, Small Businesses. There are five areas and those areas are going to be part of the rules and regulations that everybody will get to vote on but within that people have to be free to pick themselves and the community has to be free to present to them and to the vendors this is why you should be supporting. This is why you should support labor or nonprofit or whatever it is. It plays such a Critical Role that is going to be implemented. That goes right into my nex question in terms of scoring. We know how does the puc evaluate the proposals and make sure they were fairly put forward. You just dont know without rules and regulations for any kind of transparency so im wondering how does the puc plan tochange that process in the future . Those buckets you listed, what is the scoring mechanism though people candetermine whether or not they feel things have been fairly put forward . Theres a lot that goes into making that role. I imagine what will have to do is look at we have rules and regulations onhow things are stored on best value. What does it mean to make a commitment . Is this a responsive or not responsive . Im going to be a Good Neighbor and not be totally responsive becauseyoure not saying what you want to do. There has to be rules and regulations about what does me to be responsive or not and as we roll through regulations about the amount ,we heard about that. What that means. And maybe its proportionate. If were awarding a 10 million contract, is an agreement to get 80,000 in Community Benefit, or the source proportionate totheir value their . The key is the 10 million of goods and services. There has to be a way of having rules and regulations that we are valuing the Community Benefit commensurate to what is actually being purchased by the city so theres all kinds of things that have to go in and then you end up with a real sheet that people can go in and score and determine whether this person is for a five. We dont know what made that determination before. You mentioned how those contracts have been closed out and the audit identified instances where contractors did not fill their commitments and im wondering how that puc plans to change that Going Forward and whether thereare any plans by the puc to recoup the value that wasnever provided . Theres a couple parts of the question. Ill get away from Going Forward. And yes Going Forward we plan on coming up with key metrics to be monitoring. For current ones that are bein closed out for you have rules and regulations , thats the liquidated damages in the future and theres recommendations about how to restructure that better embedded in the audit. For current ones which dont have those but they are contract terms, its going to bereally looking at whats coming up in closed out. How are going to enforce those contract terms and having those hard conversations withpeople. For past contracts these are contractual agreements so we have to do an analysis. We have to look at it because this is a writing that said we will do ask and we know they didntdo ask. What did we say in the closeout. Did we agree to that they couldnt or did we , we really have to have those contract by contract analysis. We dont want to be in a position of having to look at meetings where we want the next exit number two closeout in a positive way. Theres precedent for this. People make led commitments, people make local hiring commitments and there are ways in which we go about enforcing their own ways in which we go about saying wow, that didnt work. Can you do this other thing. We need to look at these as those Enforcement Mechanisms to get those values out. What we dont want to do i think is half a situation where the fine, the penalty is really just a benefit that comes through the city as opposed to the community so we have to sort of be clear on it sort of like what happens when someone does. How do we leverage that back. This is supposed to be money from a contractor that goes to the community. Its not really supposedto be city money. How do we make sure that is happening and that we continue to keepthat focus as we build in thesedamages . Yes , we do, enforcement and closeout is a big part of this report. Its fully half of the report is about endorsement. Thank you for that and i have one final question in terms of the program side. It looks like it has doubled in size over the last six or so years which may have been oneof the things that contributed to a lot of the issues identified in the audit. And im wondering whether or not the puc has any plans to the size of the program or whether thats somethingyoure thinking about as you figure out a legislative position. I frankly thought about that and i havent talked to the commission about that. That is the type of thing i think this is the example of the city we can look at. It has grown large because there has been some very large contracts that have been put on the street in the last few years so to digest the headlands work project spark some very large under Construction Projects that have sit commitments soit is the size of it has grown to the size of the contracts that we add to the strength. I will say as i sat here today we have not. I have not had discussions with any of them about eliminating the size so that is something you can certainly look at. Thats all i have, thank you s much. Thank you supervisor and next supervisor mandelman. I will be brief. I just want to thank deputy general manager quinn for that i get the title right . Chief of staff. Okay. For your work on this and i had my comments earlier to the controllers and you heard them clearly. I think its also clear that your commission is very committed to this program or some version of this program but i think for me, it will be important tounderstand and i can see the appeal. I can see the appeal of getting particularly Larger Companies making money off of San Francisco doing something to benefit the poorest and most vulnerable communities in San Francisco but i think the story of how that works and actually putting some structure around the benefits and making sure they are real and as i said telling the story of what that benefit actually is will be important for me because i can clearly see the cost. I can clearly see increased complexity,potential for abuse. Potential for all sorts of bad things happening. When we are attaching entirely a set of programs and expectations that can go in one of five Program Areas where presumably you would need some setof standards for each if youre going to apply this in a fair way. With additional supporting being thought through and all that again in addition to the regular old contracting process that the city seems in many differentdepartments , i dont know. I would include actually puc in this. Many different departments have trouble making sure were getting downand that we get our products delivered on time and on budget. All of this plethora of things that we worry about in terms of making government work for san franciscans and this program just doesnt add a huge additional level with it. Strikes me that has an additional level of complexity and necessary complexity if its going to be done fairly and with structure. So i just want to understand that its actually has beneficial to the community as it is costly in terms of efficient and effective delivery of government service. Message received. Supervisor, by asking questions. I wanted to, we talked about the committee by unpaid funds and i think you pointed out what i think is accurate that some of these contracts have not yet expired. It doesnt mean its on track necessarily. And i think its probably in my opinion fair to assume thatthe track record of the first batches that were closed out. I dont see a shift in policy that would suggest where on a different trackwith the remaining money. Thats our challenge is to change that. But i did want to ask mister flint, is there any evidence or claim that the puc has reduced or waived any of those investments . In other words are you aware of any evidence or claim whether kelly or anyone else actually reduced those commitments or is it of course your understanding that ill leave it at that. Any evidence of that . I have no evidence of that. I dont want to make the commitment that were going to enforce the contract when were not able to. So i dont know if that has happened on the past. On the closeout ones. Iwould also point. Let me interrupt. Im actually not just reporting on the closeout. Im singling forward we have a chart that shows us how much has been paid, howmuch is outstanding. Im asking whether that outstanding amount is in dispute at all. In other words if there are any of these folks that needed contracts that over those funds claim that puc has waived anyof those commitments . Im not aware ofthat at all. Im not aware at all. These are contractual commitments and i think thats a piece of this method that this audit highlights that we need to look at these commitments and see whats happening. I would say in the report there is an analysis of the subset of audit contracts that are open. Which theywere lagging behind and there were five or six that were listed. Some that go through all the way through i think 2028, and like its 30 percent done, 28 percent so those are ones are going to look at in particular attention. Its just look, we need to do this across the board to see if people are doing their commitments and if theyre on track there is an insight into what is happening for ongoing ones. That the auditors did look at and they did look at like ongoing performance so thats been helpful as a jumping off point to start the deep flow. Then looking forward here at the outstanding commitment, one question that i have is around payments of those amidst all the uncertainties and scandal. I understand that general manager herrera and yourself and others are trying to set a different tone at the puc as you moveforward and institute changes at the same time what happens to allthese payments . I just wonder has there been any consideration . Im speculating a bit. Im just imagining for a contractor operating in good faith here there may be some reluctance and distrust of the program. I wonder if theres been any consideration in trying to get these payments, depositing them in some third party. How does someone else have control until the programs youre puttingforward are adopted and in place and hopefully some confidence restored . What happens before those changes in terms of trying to get the payments and have the trust from folks who are supposed to make those payments that they should continue . The payments, there has not been discussion about opening up escrow accounts for payments so we can sort of talk about that. The payments that are made to the puc barmaid to keep voluntary hours in kind, different kind of direct money benefits that those organizations. There are three different kinds of direct money but if benefits that go toorganizations. And i think embedded in your question is are there recipients who we have distrust of . We have not found patterns that show. I think embedded in your question is if there was in fact an area that wewent to , nonprofitask. What do we do about that . So the nonprofits that are getting this are not under suspicion by the puc as to not doingreal Community Benefit work. They are nonprofits. Some of them have large sums o money. Some of them get small sums of money. Part of that process was supposed to bebetting them. The small sums of money, the group that we had before here the magic has received small volunteer hours of small amounts of money whereas other groups , the San Francisco housing developmentcorporation, young. It offers. Those who receivedsmall commitments. But we are not aware of the nonprofits themselves or the organizations that are getting them asbeing suspicious. We have not opened. Thats not a path. The department has been focused since its come out on how to make this program work, not one investigation ofthat nature. Idont know if that answers. I think i get the picture. If no one is doing that level of investigation that would restore confidence to the folks making the donations, this is the problem. Its one thing to say that those days are over but if that hasnt happened its a pretty big miss and no one is actually at least publicly confirming. Maybe its happening privately but nobodys publicly confirming an investigation into that or an actual like investigative audit that takes it apart. All im hearing to yourcredit youre saying puc isnt going to do that. But thats an inhouse look at the details of this program. That does not inspire a lot of confidence i would say. I would think the people putting the money in as theyre obligated to do and as i think the city is trying to enforce that they do also need to have some level of confidence that they know what did or didnt happen with respect to the commitments the organizations selected and i guess its less of a question for mister flint. It sounds like right now nobody outside of the inhouse work youre going to do nobody is planning a more comprehensive accounting investigation with detail of what went down around this program so i would love it and correct me if im wrong im just concernedthat kind of investigation is happening and if it isnt , it seems every hard to have confidence that if you dont theres not or some light on this and transparency on the history. It is pretty hard to have confidence Going Forward and i think the underlying questions remain about the future of the program. I want to correct. I did not mean to suggest weare doing an investigation of that issue. We do not. We are doingan investigation on the deliverability , whether or not we really doing whether or not thecommitments made are being delivered. Thats the transparent portion that came out in the audit. Embedded in is that they agreed to give these things that we want those given. So its almost theopposite. Were looking at contract whatever it is. You agree to give thanks to this nonprofit, thismany volunteer hours, have you done , what is your plan to get it done not should you be doing that so iwant to be clear. Maybe you heard me say were doing something different. Were looking to enforce these commitments thatwere made. Which is based on their ballot commitments. So were not undertaking, i dont want to pretend. But nobody has undertaken that more detailed investigative look at the program that ive described. From an audit perspective and as you know we are limited in our ability in terms of what we can share on our investigations especially in the public forum. But in terms of an investigative client, we do not have an idea related to the topic. And mister flint, im curious. Is there any litigation that has been filed by any contractor, by any beneficiary regarding the program . Not that im aware of. So i think thats, so number. And thank you to your team mister flynn. We have inquired yesterday around trying to get a more comprehensive list of all the intended beneficiaries and i think we got that. What were hoping we could get is a little more detail around the amounts committed to those groups. The amount received, when contract expires. If you can provide us that kind of breakdown. Not onthe fly , im saying the data and. Not on the fly. Its theexact type of information that i am asking for to beable to do the drill downs. When i get it, we will make available. It is that type of data that i think is critical to be able to sort of look to see patterns and then to startenforcing. But you donthave that. Youre going tohave to assemble that as part of your inhouse . I dont have that. The puc had built into that for the audit made clear some of the information in that dashboard is not accurate based on the fixing of that, im asking for underlying data that says just in that format that you talked about that we can share so people can see for themselves what commitments were made and crossreference it. So there is there are efforts underway to make that stuff accessible not just to run flint, not just the supervisor but to the public. Its important information. Thank you, supervisor. Thank you chair. I appreciate your line of questioning around investigations that investigation thats really needed on these 84 contracts that were awardedwith Community Benefit commitment. And actually i have a question for mister delarosa for the Controllers Office because i was hoping that this followup Public Integrity review that youre doing on the contracting of procurement contractors would do something that would include looking at whether it was any fraud or misconduct in the actual awarding of these 84 contracts with that work awarded at least in partbecause of their Community Benefit agreements. Let me clarify that supervisor. The puc assessment we are doing as part of our work will not cover the set specific ones. What we are focusing on for that assessment is really looking at the examples. Using the contracts that were mentioned in the federal report related to former general manager kelly and were using that is kind of a springboard for our what the conditions were that might just prevent these from happening. So its not specific to contracts that are before you today. Its more of a broader look at the process that led to the allegations. Got it, i see. I feel like theres a need for a followup audit or investigation on the set program that goes beyond just a performance audit and looks at actual contract awarded and whether there was any fraud or misconduct. And in the awarding of the contracts and also any direction from the staff and leadership on which organizations the contractors should be providing their financial contributions to or other Community Benefits so these are allegations that have been raised for years and so yeah. I just wanted to raise that. Thats i think whats really missing from the reports that youre presenting today and i find that disappointing and frustrating so this issomething that im committed to continuing to following up on. Thank you supervisor mar and following up on your point about this being known for years, i know its creepy to you as a recent arrival but when did the mar first become aware of programming programmatic concerns . My understanding is this goes back years in terms of the public. Is there a starting point of when these concerns were raised publicly and the leadership made aware of the problems with this program . I dont have an answer and i apologize. I just dont have it. It is true that there have been questions about this program and they at least back to when supervisor mar was calling for an audit, we know that at this point in time but i dont know when they rose to that level of the management. Im hearing about it and what decisions that they were going to respond tothose questions. I dont know when things were firstmade public. I do know in looking through the public coverage and discussions of this, i was forwarded a clip from a puc commission back in 2016 in which commissions were publicly discussing the lack of transparency of this specific program. I just think theres obviously concerns with a lot of what management do because they may be part of the problembut its another thing when something becomes public. Either a public hearing or made known through programs and other ways of making complaints that isnt public but by other departments. Im just very concerned were looking at things in the Public Record that now have existed for over five years and that is suggests some kind of structural i think problem with the way we address it. But that is a comment, not a question and unless supervisor mar or other colleagues have questions id like to open it up for Public Comment. Were checking once again. See if we have any colors wish to provide Public Comment on thisagenda item number three. For those watching our meeting on cable channel 26 or via a streaming link or through sfgov tv or elsewhere, call innow. Dial 4156550001. Todays meeting id is 2492 838 5397. After youve entered the meeting id, press the pound symbol twice and press start followed by a three if you wish to speak. For those on hold continue to wait until you are prompted to begin. You will hear a product that indicates your line has been unmuted. I understand there are five callers who wish to provide Public Comment and could you connect us to our first color . Good afternoon supervisors. My name is lisa ramirez, Public Sector business agent for 261 and in todays hearing on the puc Community Benefits audit we have the opportunity to ask questions on a longlasting paper plate collection scheme that robs and exploits the community but only if you receive the benefits. There are people present in various city departments that will not be able to claim a variance for the findings of the audit or on thecorruption that occurred in those that engaged in. We know this to be true because in january 2019 both local 261 filed a complaint with the Controllers Office and City Attorneys office which pointed to corruption and granting contracting and especially at the puc. That was well over a year before any indictments. We began in april 2019 unofficial transcript notified the City Attorneys office and City Administrators Office and hr about the corruption in dpw and specifically in puc Community Benefits program only to be told that what we did by blowing the whistle was scorchedearth. Repeatedly over the last three years weve written letters, named names and provided the receipts calling for someone to please investigate the Community Benefits scheme. Throughout these years 261 and our membership have been met with nothing but severe retribution that continues to this day. So we want those engaged in retaliating against us to know that we will not besilenced because our membership has said that we have nothing to lose at this point but hope itself. What is right andjust will prevail. You are and the communities supervisors we have faith in you. We beg you to continueto ask the hard questions. We dont believe the ball those that may be coconspirators or attempting to cover up this scheme. You for sharing your comments. We have the next color please. Supervisors my name is ali and i am shocked to hear what im hearing today from this staff. First of all our public report had to be conducted by an entity that had been segregated to begin with. He does and did takeplace. I have seen it firsthand and it will continue by the general manager still promoting the people involved like wayne jones. That is a fact and they are being promoted to continue that. Thereport itself is the controllers report. It does not reflect the fact. Let me tell you something not listed in the report that is so damaging and its undisputed fact. A any contracts at anywhere between eight and 10 percent profit scheme. Thats with the audit overhead on top of the audited overhead rate. These tell me which publicly traded company pays out of a good heart 50 percent of their profits and jeopardizes their stockholders and managers bonuses . The short answer is none. So where does the five percent or equivalent to the 50 percent of their own profits come from western mark the short answer is it comes from slopping the invoices, extra billing hours and funneling money through the same non licensed lbd projects companies. That is the fact ladies and gentlemen. So paying any money as a result of winning a contract is a bribery no matter what. And a page to play is just a marvelous way of scheming the program. If you want to look into the bribery, look at the Straight Line between companies that are paying the mandatory voluntary Community Benefit payments as a condition to make rents higher by the five percent. That is the Straight Line. Thank you for sharing your comments with the committee. Sorry to cut you off. All speakershave to money and once theyve reached two minutes we must move on first. Could we get the next color please. Eileen bogan, coalition for San Francisco neighborhoods being on my own behalf. Thank you to supervisor mar and the other sponsorsand participants in this audit. Hopefully this will be the first of other audits focused on the puc, especially on work related to the emergency firefighting Water Systems including ongoing work on pump station number two. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your comments, could we have the next color please . Caller supervisors, this investigation comes under the rico act. So you all are wasting our time. I started the investigation way back in 2002. I provided the Controllers Office with all the data that they needed. Your supervisors talk in generalities. You all have to beinvestigated by the fbi. For not doing yourdiligence. You dont even understand that this is a 6 billion now heading towards 12 billion. Five percent of 6 billion is 300million. Where is the accountability . And the joke about the sfpuc designed to give your presentation,i dont know where its coming from. What planet but not on planet earth its not coming from our earth. Youre talking bullshit. Youre not doing duediligence. Youre talking in generalities. [inaudible] sherman walton, supervisor brookter, how many do i have to name . You have no clue the task force formed by the community. This is after the five percent was shuttled, thats 400 million and they were given 150 million for workforce and theres hundred 50 before that. Thank you Mister Dacosta for sharing your comments. Could we have the next color please . Good afternoon members of the board. Rudy gonzalez, secretarytreasurer. So we represent workers at the puc. They were understaffed and under difficult and dangerous conditions not only in the city limits but beyond that there probably the work they do. Unfortunately more out has taken a heavy hit with the mismanagement and very public Corruption Cases that have plagued the department that said i represent the majority of construction workers are on these jobs and the Community Benefitprogram i think on paper and in the could be something good. But without adequate oversight and without the public trust i think we and up in the situation. Iwant to see the timing a little bit. In february 2019 this issue was raised and not in the abstract. The majority of unions in the Labor Council and city adopted a resolution calling for this very and i want to flag gratitude to all of you in this process because nothing else is accomplished the line of questioning, the diligence is in itself a measure that will restore public trust whereit needs to be we can accomplish the things that we confront us. Aspirations forempowerment and so forth but that was february 2019. This has been longstanding and ongoing the only thing that materialized out of that was leading with myself thatthe general manager at the time. You dont want to talk about the workforce as a general apprentice and they want to shift theblame to privatesector contractors. Privatesector contractors demanding accountability for years at the puc asking that the money they are asking today to get those competitive points be available for auditing purposes and youll see those contractors only willing to perform in time and voluntary work and im not surprised by the until we can restore even their faith in theseimportant programs. Thank you and i urge you to continue. Iq mister gonzalez. Mister baltazar do we have other commenters in thequeue . There are several colors remaining in the few. With no more colors in the queue Public Comment onthis item is closed. Supervisor mar. Thank you chair preston and colleagues for this really informative and important hearing that we have today. I want to take a second tothank the San Francisco Labor Council and asked at building and construction and trades council for their advocacy on this issue. And also every member of the public who called in and Mark Delarosa and ron flynn for being here and engaging in the discussion and the staff for their work on this. I want to acknowledge john from puc who has really taken every call, concern, complaint and inquiry from ouroffice dutifully and professionally. Thanks again chair preston for allowing this hearing to happen and supervisors chan and mandelman for your partnership and also acknowledgethe work of my legislative a on the inquiries that led to it. I think again, we had a full discussion today about the findings and recommendations from the audit. This particular audit reports. I look forward to seeing the puc follow through on their commitment to implement all the recommendations by the end of the year but i wanted to thank supervisors chan and mandelman here in your line of questioning about whether the value for the benefits of this program testify the costs especially as its been implementedover the past 10 years. And again, my specific issue that i really want to follow up on his what was not included in the report but has been raised publicly and has been a big part of my inquiry and thats looking at a potential fraud and misconduct in the awarding of these contracts worth over 2 billion awarded in part through the social Impact Partnership, Community Benefit impact. And also the allegations of directing contractors to provide Financial Funding and other types of support to favored community Nonprofit Organizations so im not sure. This is something im committed to solving and figuring out th best way to do that. So thank you. Thank you supervisor mar vice chair chans supervisor mar i want to thank you for the work on this. And one of the things if i may just quote what the editor of San Francisco examiner wrote yesterday about corruption. The quote was very interesting but i think that im sharing it with you colleagues because when i read that quote i think of you here and supervisor mar today. The corruption is a couple gated labyrinth of relationships that can be hard to explain. It takes motivated participators with long Attention Spans to keep track of winding narratives and dramatic consequences and i think thats what this is about. Itsactually really complicated. It takes a lot for us to unpack and i think there are multiple tracks of inquiry and hearings that were all coordinating. I picked apart the little piece of the Parts Alliance and you take the piece with the sfpuc and chair preston overseeing the committee to make sure that we schedule all these hearings in a timely fashion that goes to midtown and making sure that we have compliance from our partners and making sure all of that. That leads to sort of the fundamental of governance that corruption and even just the perception of it. That is what been very challenging for all of us especially in the legislative branch to hold our City Apartments accountable to deliver equitable City Services. At the end of the day this is not to embarrass anyone or try to put downanyone but this is really to fundamentally store public trust. To root out corruption because we know that is how we can deliver equitable City Services that we deserve so thank you so much. I want to thank youfor your leadership on this and whatever it is you decide to do today , im definitely in support of and i look forward to continuingworking with you on these issues. Thank you so much. Thank you vice chair and i just want to an those comments and also the point you made on kind of the appearance. Part of restoring public trust after so many different corruption scandals is the merits of the situation but also its the appearance of propriety and i think i appreciate and frankly have concerns on the appearance of some of these two. Supervisor mar raised the issue around someone from mar was at the Controllers Office. I dontthink anyones alleging that , i certainly have no reason to work to think that but its just that when youre folks who are overseeing have these relationships that youre saying supervisor chan, its i think becomes that much more important that you have oversight so i appreciate that there was a thirdparty independent auditor here. My concerns were with the scope of their audit but i take comfort in the fact that an independent auditor looked at this because one of the things that ive pointed this out in multiple performances in the city people tend tomove around between these various departments. We may not be the best about bringing in outside folks from outsidethe socalled city family to oversee. We have the City Attorney who had responsibility over the last few years presumably. Weve heard reference to them now running the puc. I have every reason to believe the general manager is committed to rooting out problems in the puc but from a Public Perception point of view those people moving between departments, between the watchdog and the watched essentially is problematic. I think this issue certainly we are not at the end of it. I will urge that further audits be investigated type audits, there really Forensic Accounting here and investigating what supervisor mar has referenced in terms of what the fraud, waste or abuse or not. That has to happen and i think it has to happen ideally with folks who are outside of a lot of those existing relationships and potential for the appearance of conflict. So on that, i would just ask supervisor mar is your preference we filethis hearing or that we continue it . Thanks chair. Obviously this conversation is far from over but i think we will have other hearings and legislative items to continue this conversation. So i would request a motion that we file this hearing toda. Thank yousupervisor mar and thank you for yourleadership. Do we have that motion from anyone . Supervisor chan, so moved. Please call the role. On the motionthat this hearing be filed notice has been heard. [roll call vote] mister chair there are 3 ayes. Thank you again supervisor. And lets go ahead mister clerk and call the closed session items 4 through 13. 4 through 13 are seven ordinances and continuing resolutions settling lawsuits and unmitigated claims against the city. Members of the public who wish to provide publiccomment should call the Public Comments call in number, it is 4156550001. Enter todays meeting id which is 2492 838 5397. After youveentered the meeting id press the pound symbol twice and star followed by 3 if you wish to be entered to speak. Lets go ahead and open up Public Comment on this item. Checking now with mister michaelto see if we haveany colors who wish to provide Public Comment on the litigation agenda do we have any colors . There are zero in the queue. Public comment on these items is now closed and ill move to convene in closed session clerk, please call the role. On the motion by chair prestonthe committee convene in closed session for the committee agenda. [roll call vote] there are three ones again. The motion passes and we will now convene in closed session with parting instructions from the mister clerk. Members of this committee will be leaving this live meeting and connect to the closed session meeting that we have. After the closed session is concluded the members will reconnect to this live meeting and i will present a summary of the actions we took while litigation and discussion of hello every one. Thank you so much for your patience. Good morning i am San Francisco mayor london breed with dr. Colfax giving an update what is happening with omicron because we are anxious to know when is this going to start dying down . Good things are starting to plateau. It doesnt mean we take our guard down. Even though we are still seeing additional cases, even though our hospitalizations are very high, we have the capacity to handle what is coming our way, we are starting to see just a number of plateaus and trends from other parts of the country afternoon world show the people ahead of us and the cases skyrocketing. We are paying very close attention. It seems like San Francisco is behind all of that. We are following a very similar pattern to other cities across this country. If that is any indication plus with San Francisco being 82 vaccinated it is really hopeful for the future and hopeful that we will continue to move forward. We will see some additional improvements as the days go on. I know it has been a very challenging couple of weeks over the holiday season. As we continue to say one of the most consistent things through out the course of two year pandemic the light at the end of the tunnel is here. We may go through another tunnel but know there is hope and there is light. I am here just to also say because i know that many people are asking a lot of questions. What is going on with testing . What is going on with the tenderloin emergency plan . Why are things not moving as quickly . Many of us should understand the city and bureaucracy is challenging. Keep in mind that we see these numbers of the omicron variant spike. We also see them spike with city employees. A lot of Police Officers, firefighters, muni drivers, department of Public Health workers and those at San Francisco general are out with omicron. We are going to continue to experience this challenge for some time. We ask for people to be very patient with us, to know we are doing our best, working to backfill those positions when they are out with over time and the number of other resources. These are the times we are living in. As a result we just have to adjust to our environment. To talk more specifically about where we are with omicron, what to expect for the future and you know the hopefulness when doctor colfax is smiling and excited and hopeful and giving an indication things are going to get better. I know that is what is going to happen. We get to come outside and play, right, dr. Colfax . Please welcome for an update on the covid19 omicron variant and what is happening in San Francisco here is dr. Grant colfax. Good morning everybody. Thank you, mayor breed for your leadership as we enter the third year of the pandemic. Third year. We are seeing covid19 cases drop relatively rapidly in the city. We can now say that we are on the beginning of the downward trajectory with regard to the surge. Latest data showcases peaked on january 9 with seven day average of 2164 cases per day. It has steadily dropped each day since then to 1076 per day on january 12th. This is good news. It has been a rocky start to 2022. Hang in there a little longer. The surge is not over yet. Hospitalizations which trail the peak in cases will still continue to go up. Fortunately, for now we expect to meet capacity within the Healthcare System to take care of people with covid and other healthcare needs in the hospitals. We are urging people to remain particularly vigilant for a little bit longer. Cases are still very high. Cases are still very high especially compared to prior surges. We all need to get well past this peak. Look, i know that everybody is exhausted. Lets give gratitude to front line staff who as the mayor said have been working over time to patch together coverage as colleagues become infected and have to stay home. Many of them became infected, too. Tonight bely, for the vast majority of our cases in the city, cases are mild because people were fully vaccinated with the first series and for many people they were uptodate on vaccinations with regard to boosters. At this point, it looks good with regard to making it through. We are likely to make it through the surge and come out in a much better place. It is important to emphasize with case rates so high what we see across the country, the state and locally we are in a far different place than a year ago with our prior surge. We are getting through omicron, the most transmissible yet. It is more transmissible than alpha and delta. We managed to keep hospitals, clinics and essential services open. Most cases have been mild or asymptomatic especially for those uptodate on vaccinations, especially for those who get the booster. We have proven covid doesnt have to upend our lives even if we have to be vigilant, smart and flexible to adapt to what is needed when needed. As your Public Health department i want to stress that our goal is not to prevent every case of covid. Omicron proved that is not possible. Our goal is to prevent the worst outcomes, severe disease. Hospitalizations and deaths. With regard to that, i want to ground ourselves in comparison to last year. Last year we lost 165 san franciscans to covid in january of 2021. This month to date we have lost five. Now we dont know what covid has in store for us, but we do have great defenses against this virus. Vaccinations and boosters and i expect in the relatively near future effective antiviral medication. We know how to layer defenses. During periods with high transmission when we must protect front line workers and vulnerable by masking, testing, improving ventilation. Staying home when sick. Omicron taught us we have vulnerabilities in the system of care. We need testing to be accessible, affordable and fast to truly use this tool together safely. We are working with our state and federal partners to make rapid over the counter tests easy to come by and requiring the Healthcare System partners to step up and do their part with regard to testing as they have done with hospitalization. We anticipate new tools to become available soon such as retroviral medications to better protect people who are especially vulnerable to severe disease. As we come out of onl omicron we will drop restrictions when and where they may being sense. We acknowledge that individuals have different level of comfort with the risk of covid and because of certain medical conditions. Your Risk Assessment may vary. What you are willing to do with yourself and family may change depending on your Risk Assessment. Individuals may want to adapt to their own risk and Comfort Level within the conditions stipulated under our health orders. We ask you to be tolerant and Work Together to make each other feel comfortable and supported. It is certainly possible we will deal with other variants in the future, hopefully, we will be able to wait covid among the other Infectious Diseases we have to contend with by not letting them up end our lives. San francisco, thank you for all you have done and continue to do as a city and we will continue to get through this together. Thank you. Questions . I am confused. You are saying that the cases are beginning to fall rapidly downward. The surge is not over . Well, the cases are still high. It depends if you depend surge as straight up. We are still in the surge. Cases are higher than ever before. I just want to make sure that people understand that we are not out of the woods yet. Cases are still extremely high. They plateaued and are going down. They are at a high level. We are looking at data from other places where it had been ahead of us and it showed that cases could go up fast, come down fast. We are on the downward trend. They could go back up. We hope that is not the case. Given where we have been for over two years now, i think the point is cases are starting to come down. Hospitalizations are still going up. The rate of increase is starting to slow down. The Important News is that Hospital Capacity still remains robust. We still have capacity to take care of people if they have covid or other medical conditions in the Hospital System that is a key metric Going Forward. What type of restrictions are you talking about . Well, it will be combination of factors we are looking at. It is too premature to speculate the order they would be lifted. We would look at similar processes by which we have lifted restrictions after the prior surges. It is the layered defenses we required. You know we have had the indoor masking back into place. That is something we would look at in other similar restrictions. I dont want to jump too far ahead. We are still at high rates. Hospitalizations are going up. They will level off we expect soon. Important thing is after having been through the surges we want to be responsive in a way that reflects that we need to live with this virus. We dont want to hold onto restrictions waiting for omicron or covid to go away. That is not going to happen any more. We will reach a place where covid is endemic. We will live with the virus. Our lifting of restrictions will reflect that new reality. [indiscernable] the prior boosters is that going to help us . I refer you to the healthcare orders with regard to where people are required to have boosters. Our point is that omicron has shown that people need to be uptodate on vaccinations to be as protected as possible from omicron with regard to hospitalizations which is our goal here. Getting people access to boosters is key. One of the reasons we have been so successful with the surge is because we have a high booster rate. 61 of people vaccinated in the city have received a booster and are uptodate on vaccinations. That is far higher than the national or state average. We want people to continue to get boosters. We will make them available in the Healthcare Systems including Health Department and pharmacy partners. [indiscernable] it is clearly important that we have testing capabilities throughout San Francisco that people can trust. Unfortunately we have had challenges with bad operators. I really applaud the City Attorneys office and the City Attorney for taking action and paying close attention to challenges that could arise for people taking the situation for granted. It is not unchecked power for the Police Department. The fact is we want to address the challenges of crime in our city. In facts, you know, everyone is now carrying around all of these gadgets, phones, some someones face in the public. Anyone not Law Enforcement can see everything going on. People from all over the city and when you talk about a situation for example what happened in union square. The fact that there was a lot of online chatter, our officers were aware and needed another resource through video to observe the behavior and because of our ordinance could not, there are a lot of things that could have been prevented based on information we get. We are not only asking to allow this to happen based on evidence. Part of my ordinance is to say we have to also report this information like when this is accessed by the San Francisco Police Department it will be made public, it will be provided to the board of supervisors. If there is a need to do an investigation or anything about why they chose to do it and it t wasnt necessary, that will be dealt with. The goal is to address Public Safety. The fact we need the tool. Responsible use of this tool to do so. [indiscernable] my response is that the voters will decide because we are talking about the fact that, you know, we have major challenges with Public Safety. When i say Public Safety not just about theft. It is about assault and the number of people who have been attacked on our streets, the number of people who have been robbed and as salted. We want to make sure that we are using every tool at our disposable responsibly to keep people from San Francisco safe. I dont think what i propose in my ordinance is unreasonable in light of everything that has been happening in San Francisco. The voters of San Francisco support you. Go forward with it. Thank you very much. From the mouths of citizens. Mayor, could you address the businesses and restaurants in San Francisco that have had a lousy christmas. Everyone had a lousy christmas. What words do you have for them for some of the restrictions to be lifted . My hope is that yes, as dr. Colfax said. We also have a responsibility to follow the state orders. Mostly when we look at the data, hospitalization rates, number of people who sadly passed away, it makes it possible for us to potentially remove a significant number of restrictions. I think ultimately regardless of the restrictions that is not keeping people away from these places. It is really not wanting to contract omicron. That is really what people are focused on is keeping distance to not get it. It is highly infectious and challenging, people are getting it. The good news is that people for the most part are not ending up in the hospitalizations and dying in numbers we experienced this last year before we had access to the vaccine. I am hopeful and optimistic for the future and sadly so many Small Businesses and restaurants and families and people not able to get together is very, very challenging. My hope is as we begin to reopen and see numbers decline we are careful and go out and support our restaurants. We order pick up from the restaurants and support our Small Businesses. It is going to take all of us to get through this. Part of that is san franciscans doing more to support our businesses. My drycleaner i have been going to the same drycleaner since i had a drycleaner. I am not getting as many clothes cleaned as before. Talking to find out how can i as long time customer be supportive . Donations are helpful to the businesses you care about and support in that way. Thank you very much everyone. I just feel like this is what i was born to do when i was a little kid i would make up performances and daydream it was always performing and doing something i feel if i cant do that than i cant be me. I just get excited and my nickname is x usher my mom calls me i stuck out like a sore thumb for sure hey everybody im susan kitten on the keys from there, i working in vintage clothing and chris in the 30s and fosz and aesthetic. I think part of the what i did i could have put on my poa he focus on a lot of different musical eras. Shirley temple is created as ahsha safai the nation with happens and light heartenness Shirley Temple my biggest influence i love david boo and el john and may i west coast their flamboyant and show people singing cant be unhappy as a dr. Murase and it is so fun it is a joyful instrument i learned more about music by playing the piano it was interesting the way i was brought up the youth taught me about music he picked up the a correspond that was so hard my first performing experience happened as 3yearold an age i did executive services and also thanks to the lord and sank in youth groups people will be powering grave over their turk ill be playing better and better back la i worked as places where men make more money than me i was in bands i was treated as other the next thing i know im in grants performing for a huge protection with a few of my friends berry elect and new berry elect and can be ray was then and we kept getting invited back you are shows got better we made it to paris in 2005 a famous arc we ended up getting a months residencey other than an island and he came to our show and started writing a script based on our troop of 6 american burr elect performs in france we were woman of all this angels and shapes and sizes and it was very exciting to be part of the a few lettering elect scene at the time he here he was bay area born and breed braces and with glossaries all of a sudden walking 9 red carpet in i walgreens pedestrian care. Land for best director that was backpack in 2010 the french love this music i come back here and because of film was not released in the United States nobody gave a rats ass lets say the music and berry elect and performing doesnt pay very much i definitely feel into a huge depression especially, when it ended i didnt feel kemgd to france anymore he definitely didnt feel connected to the scene i almost feel like i have to beg for tips i hey im from the bay area and an artist you dont make a living it changed my represent tar to appeal and the folks that are coming into the wars these days people are not listening they love the idea of having a live musician but dont really nurture it like having a potted plant if you dont warrant it it dizzy sort of feel like a potted plant laughter im going to give San Francisco one more year ive been here since 1981 born and raised in the bay area i know that is not for me ill keep on trying and if the struggle becomes too hard ill have to move on i dont know where that will be but i love here so so much i used to dab he will in substances i dont do that im sober and part of the being is an and sober and happy to be able to play music and perform and express myself if i make. Few people happy of all ages ive gone my job so i have so stay is an i feel like the piano and music in general with my voice together i feel really powerful and strong president bleiman due to the covid19 health emergency, members of the employees and public see all meeting rooms are closed. This precaution pursuant to the various local state and federal orders and employees will attend the meeting through Video Conference and participate in the meeting. Opportunities to speak during Public Comment period are available via zoom platform