Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Replay Govt Audits And Oversight 91715 20151003

Lets get started. This meeting will come to order. This meeting is the government audit and Oversight Committee for september 17, 2015. To my right is vice chair Julie Christensen and president breed has appointed supervisor mar in her place. Could i have a motion to excuse president breed for the meeting. So moved. Without objection the motion passes. [gavel] supervisor mar will join us briefly. Hes in traffic right now. The Committee Clerk is erica major and the committee would like to recognize the staff from sfgtv who record each of our meetings and make the transcripts available to the public online. Madam clerk do you have any announcements . Please silent all cell phones and electronic devices. Completed speaker cards and copies of documents to be part of the file somebody submitted to the clerk. Items will be on the september 29 board of supervisors agenda anyplace otherwise stated. Okay. Can you please call item 1. Item 1 is a hearing to discuss the citys Response Plan in the event of a forest or brush fire within the city and county of San Francisco. Okay. So colleagues i have called this hearing today to discuss the Response Plan and the event of a urban forest or brush fire taking place in San Francisco. I want to make it real clear my intent here is to really listen, just to the Fire Department, and to Emergency Management department to really see if were really ready for this type of situation. I know theres been some confusion on this issue. People are thinking that this is about cutting down trees and its not, so i want to make it real clear to the audience and watching this on tv that this is about being ready for forest fires that can happen in the city. As you know San Francisco has many areas that consider many forests. There are places like telegraph hill. Russian hill, mt. Davidson. Golden gate park just throughout San Francisco you have these small areas of heavy vegetation, and i grew up in the russian hill area and i remember as a little kid on the backside of the home basically is a big huge area of everybodys backside in which there were no fences. It was basically vegetation back there and one day it caught fire, and about seven or eight homes got heavily damaged. This was in the 50s, and one of the things that i didnt when i was watching as a kid the firefighters i realized how difficult it was them to get in there to the back, climb up the hills and so forth and that left a mark on me in realizing that fighting that type of fire is really different from fighting a fire of a building, so and here we are. Were faced with a four year drought. Vegetation throughout San Francisco, throughout the bay area, throughout california is rather dry. Even San Francisco is blessed with what we call the natural air conditioning, the fog, it doesnt take that much, that many days like you have two weeks ago when the weather was very hot. A couple of days of hot weather, low humidity will just provide or give you the condition that can be very, very awful for fires, and today is not about lets hope there is going to be a fire. I hope there never be a urban fire like the Oakland Hills in the 90s or if anybody has been around long enough there was the Beverly Hills fire in the 70s. We dont want that to happen in San Francisco but the question today were trying to answer is if there is a fire that catches, whether its a brushes or trees or whatever, are we ready in San Francisco . So thats what were going to answer today. As you know we have seen the deftation just this week of the valley fire in napa, lake and sonoma counties with 61 probably growing. Its more than 61,000 acres of burned area with almost probably i would say 600 homes that got completely burned down. This is just really a reminder we must prepare in San Francisco. I hope this hearing will be fruitful in the discussion how our city departments and how our constituents can work with these departments to do their part to ensure that families and loved ones that safe and our city remains resilient, so first up i would like to call on chief hayeswhite to maybe have some opening remarks and call her staff to talk about this issue. Thank you. Good morning chair yee, supervisor christensen, joe an hayeswhite San Francisco Fire Department. I would like to applaud you supervisor yee and not only youre in my district but i dont recall in my time as chief we had a discussion in the legislative branch of government on this topic so its very timely as you referred there has been great devastation throughout our state throughout the last several months including the fact that we had 30 firefighters deployed. We just had 22 return last night from the butte fire and then we have remaining eight at the valley fire, and so everyone loves to come to San Francisco, but it is challenging from a firefighter perspective. I was a training director for four years and the bulk of training is in relg to structural fight fighting but we have things in the city as you mentioned and the Golden Gate Park and the presidio and a whole number of areas. Also under the freeways there is vegetation as well, so we pride ourselves on training. We have componentos wildlife Fire Fighting and we have groups able of the master mutual aid agreement with the state and we deploy our firefighters per that agreement throughout the state to help battle fires so what we prepared today is a presentation on our resources that we have, some of the training that we have, and then were certainly able to answer any questions for you. I am very appreciative and sensitive to the fact that we have beautiful open space here in San Francisco. As a mother of three boys weve enjoyed many of the parks and so forth although as fire chief i have children just to make sure there is a balance between vegetation as well as good solid urban Forestry Management to mitigate the fuel load as we would call it, and proper attention, and Forestry Management, so i would like now to introduce the deputy chief of operations, Mark Gonzales and give you an update on the vegetation fires in the city and followed by lieutenant mary shea from Fire Prevention and talk about the collaborative efforts with department of public works and recreation and Park Department and a Good Partnership existed and were going to continue to remind everyone including our partners at ucsf. We went through a process two years ago where they did significant training and creation of Defensible Space and were looking at those things as well with them so at the end of the presentation were happy to answer any questions. Good morning supervisor mar as well. Deputy chief gonzales. Good morning supervisor yee, supervisor christensen, supervisor mar. This is my presentation. Its on the urban wild land interface operations. Can you pull it up . Okay. Thank you. So the first slide is just showing from 201215 the types of calls weve had. The list of call types theyre including graphs, brush and vejingtation and vegetation and forest and including trees. This shows some of the specialized equipment we had for a while. Right now theyre stationed in the southeastern part of the city. As chair yee mentioned we have fog and even during the drought the rest of the city, the west and the northwest gets the fog. The best weather is in Hunters Point southeast so thats where its driest and one of the concerns is mclaren park so the four minipumpers are in that area and we have front line stations in the city and a lot of those companies have been trained with immediate need and trained with wild land operations and the chief mentiond that we have over 200 firefighters that do that. The main prusmers able to access areas not accessible by the engines and carry water and equipped with smaller hoses so theyre maneuverable and get in and out quick. We use the minipumpers at special events and get in and out of crowds for trash fires or vegetation fires within the events. Some of the tools that are carried on the minipumpers and some of the engineers one is a pulaiivegy and its on one head and rigid handle of fiberglass. Its a versatile tool for fire breaks and dig soil and chop wood. Often time there is is a little fire up on bush or brush they can knock it out with this and just smoother it. Second specialized tool the mccloud. This combination of rig and tools used by firefighters to cut through things and declare loose surface material. The next slide we have five of these engines that we bought from the state for a pretty good price a few years ago. When we send a strike team out as we did to the butte fire this is the five engineer engines we sent out and it was assistant chief franklin and brought an assistant with him so theyre assigned by the state to the fire whether its structure defense or setting up a defensive line. A lot of the other equipment is wild land use and shovels and the things i mentioned before and wear different personal Protection Equipment so the turn outs and pants that we wear in the city are a lot heavier and these are lighter and there is still Fire Protection but you can imagine being in the heat all day long and going through a diagram yoga class and the training as the chief mentioned. Happens every year as part of our training. We adopted the state interface wildlife manual and be consistent with the state and we work with them on the operations. Could i ask a quick question . Yes, sir. In regards to the 200 firefighters thats been trained how many of them have actually gone taken part in these strike teams or had experience find fighting these fires . I dont have those stats in hand. I would say most of them. Definitely with the last few seasons weve had they have all gotten to experience it i would venture to say. I do know that 2025 years ago when we went out not as many were trained at all. We were city firefighters. We did some of the things if parks or guards got caught we sent them out but we didnt have the minipumpers and training. I am comfortable that all of the firefighters went through this need but as well as this component its 200 so theyre planned to go out on the strike teams and like if Oakland Hills happened again we would pick from the 10 engines we have trained in that specialty as well. Thank you. The next i skipped ahead too much. So the next slide is 2014 is just a grass and outside fire responses. You could see it better on the map here. I thought it show up better on the screen but its denoted by the red flag icons and dispatch called for multiple units is by the blue icons and you cant tell by the size of the map. I apologize by that. If theyre bigger we went to the same area more than once. The little red engines and you can barely see them off mic . Bought from the state. Theyre also in the southeastern part so whether we get called for the mutual aid deployments the process is the engines go to 19th and forsom and meet up with the Strike Team Leader and assistant and grab the equipment there and take off whether going north, south, east supervisor christensen. Can you bring the map up . When we see it closer its easytory read so understandably it seems like some of these are occurring under the edges of Golden Gate Park, some of the open land, but i am seeing clusters of them along major roadways so are those dots that i see and bay street or the embarcadero in the northeast . Yes, where there are patches of open land but actually there is a big correlation if you noticed near the freeways, so a lot of open lands that caltrain has and caltrans excuse me. 101, 280, 80, all along and open patches of lands that we respond to do knock those out. So i am imagining your tracking probable cause for these as well. The roadway could be cigarettes or automobiles but we have encampments in some of the areas. If its not obvious to the officer if its a single unit or a multiunit we send out the task force to find out what the cause is. Would you hazard to guess what the most frequent cause is . I could guess and say youre probably on the right track. Yeah, so its inhabitants or a cigarette and at the off ramp and a bush to the right they throw it out, one or the other. Thanks. We had a pretty good size fire that i consider urban wild land interface but were not considered that type of city. Its a different definition. Its forest near a city. With the fire on the east side, you may remember that and affected the bay bridge traffic a couple of years ago and pretty significant and as i mentioned mclaren park can get going pretty well. The last slide is from 2015 same call types, the imagines are in the same. Engines are in the same place but our objective is protect lives and civilian and department and members and protect the structures and mitigate the situation and i am proud of our teams and they have done a really good job. These fire conditions are [inaudible] members havent seen. Theyre creating their own weather systems and imimpressive of the job and i am proud of them. If you have any questions i am glad to answer them. You talk about other areas of mutual aid and i assume its reciprocated also if we ever needed help . Thats correct. Okay. Which i guess county that would be were in region two. There are six regions in the state. Were in the 1 2 of the region two and its made up of 90 counties. We have an agreement with them. More immediate need we go to front line engines. Everyone else and mutual aid sends five engines and strict strike leaders and we will send out what we can but we have to maintain the fleet in the city. The concern in the city is we have wood buildings in the districts and theyre all next to each other so we need to keep our fleet of engines up to partoo and were trying to get that done as well. Do you know if these other locations, other counties, whether or not theyre as well trained as our firefighters . I would say some i would say most just as or sometimes more because thats what they do predominantly. Thats primarily what they do. And in regards to we have engines here and again theres some freak thing that happened and something gets out of hand do we have access to air lift of water what do you call those airplanes that dump the water . We can order on anything we might need from the state and if the state has the asset we would get it. Do you know where the closest plane would be . I have heard this is pointed out. Last i heard moffett field. Theyre close if we need them. So they can get here within 30 minutes . Now, i would venture to say no because most of the planes are busy at the other fires. Right. But historically throughout the citys history we have never done that. Okay. Supervisor mar. Quickly i wanted to ask about the Golden Gate Park dispatching and also theres an area in Central Heights where the cliff house is where there have been a number of incidences according to the maps and old houses with big backyards that butt up against city and federal property but i see there are single unit dispatches and multiple unit dispatches and there has been some changes in patterns from 20142015 but when its multiple unit dispatch my guess is thats a more severe fire so youre using more units . Theyre want final call types the way it was pup pulled up and initial call types and what they said to the 911 taker and oftentimes theyre people camp fire down by the beach but we had a good fire there i remember in the last two years that was going pretty well and actually some of the companies were asking for minipumper engines over there and its a compromised area and it would entail getting another minipumper which is a little bit of money. Right. And most of the Golden Gate Park is in district 1. I see that the katy tang district site had significantly more for an increase in a year of the single unit dispatches along lincoln way and do you see patterns and changes like that as the homeless shift isnt park . I would agree where youre going with that maybe. I havent been around Golden Gate Park lately. My travel is from Bernal Heights in that area but i dont know if the Homeless Population has increased in Golden Gate Park. I dont know. The last thing i wanted to complement you on a tie clib and it looks like a pulaski and its cool. I can give you one. Lets make sure we all get one. Okay. Lieutenant booshay for the rest of the presentation. Hi. Good morning. Lieutenant mary shay with the Fire Prevention at the Fire Department. As you can tell im trying to prevent fires so from my end i try to do what i do to prevent fires. Regarding the management of forest and brush fire in San Francisco from prevention we got a look how the city is like. Although we cannot really say were totally a wild land urban interface Area Supervisor as you know we have pockets that we consider so. One of the main and important things about San Francisco were a urban city that doesnt fall under chapter of the city code and deals with other zones and the other important thing that the Fire Protection of responsibility of San Francisco falls under the local authority, not federal and thats the fire chief and San Francisco and based on cal fire the topography and the fuel we have the city falls under a rating for fire hazard severity and our main concern is through the maintenance of over grown weeds, grass, vines and other vegetation. The Fire Departments Weed Abatement Program. We enforce the code of the california fire code. That section specifically states that weeds, grass, vines and other growth that is capable of being ignited and endangering property is cut down and removed by the owner or the occupants of the premises so some direction that we get or the Building Owner or occupants of the premises could get is from title 19. Some of the examples i list here is a safe fire break of at least 30 feet is maintained around any buildingoir occupy eansz. Any portion of a tree extending within 10 feet of outlet of chimney or stove pipe shall be removed. Any dead or dying portion of a tree adjacent or over hanging a building should be removed and free of needles and leaves and dead vegetative growth so those are the guidelines that we provide owners when we identify a hazard. Our Weed Abatement Program one of the agencies we work is with the department of public works. With them annually we send out a joint later to Building Owners who own problem buildings that we know and a history of complaints of weed, grass hazard over grown vegetation. We send this later two weeks prior to july 4 and instructing them they need to abate inspect the property and abate any weed and grass hazards. The Department Also conducts inspections in neighborhoods and areas where weed and grass problems have been reported. Reports of weed and grass problem can be received through the following channels. Some of the examples are 311, a report can call, email or through united postal mail send the complaints to the Fire Department to headquarters. A report can do a walk in. They can walk into our headquarters and report it. They can walk into fire house and report a problem. One of the Biggest Group of reporters are actually field firefighter, staff because they know the area well and respond to and if they see something they would notify us. Once a complaint is received and inspectors is sent out to do an on site inspection to determine the validity of the complaint. If there is merit to the complaint we notify the owners and occupants of the premise to abate the hazard and if a owner fails to comply with that request to abate we have the option to issue them a violation. Although the first course of action is get the owner to understand the danger of the weed and grass hazard and get them to comply. Now we have any owner that refuses to comply which is very seldom, or we cannot locate an owner that is more likely the case and its an abandoned lot or its determined who owns the space or whose jurisdiction it is. We would send a referral request to the department of public works asking them for assistance and once we ask for assistance and we try to work now this time with the department of public works and get compliance. If we cant get compliance for whatever reason within 10 days then dpw have the option to abate the hazard first and bill the owners later. The main goal is abate the hazards first and the Fire Department oh sorry. paused . More than anything and as fall comes around it dies off, but i cant give you exact number. I can only tell you where the peak season is and usually around summer and peaks around summer and towards fall it tapers down. I am actually less interested in the exact number. I am just curious about the scope. Is it in the thousands or hundreds or tens . I would say its in the hundreds. Its not in the thousands. Thats for sure. Its in the hundreds and its kind of isolated in certain areas we can tell. Like we wont see anything downtown but we see a lot like near the Hunters Point bay view area where there is more open land and a lot around freeways. Yeah. Yeah, kind of like that. You can see a trend. Bernal heights gets a lot, like that. Okay. And then when you get these complaints do you feel again when you get the hundreds would you say that most of them are legitimate complaints or do you find that a certain percentage really arent hazardous at all . I would say about half. A lot of time its more like a neighbor does not like the other neighbors tree hanging over their yard, hanging over their roof than anything and i hate to say that a lot are like that. People usually keep their property very well unless they cant upkeep it like the seniors. They might have trouble and we work with them rather than hitting them with a notice of violation. We try to find people that could help them like locate their children and guardian. Problems that we have a lot more abandoned or empty lots and we dont have any in San Francisco to tell you the truth. Okay. Any other questions . Seeing none thank you very much. Thank you. So next speaker i would like to bring up is from the department of Emergency Services. Yes, sir. Supervisor yee and supervisor christensen and supervisor mar thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to speak. Ip i am the assistant Deputy Director with the department of Emergency Management. When we think about disasters in phases. We have prevention, mitigation, preparation response and then recovery. Lieutenant shay was talking about that prevention piece, what can be done . Chief hayeswhite talked about mitigation. What we try to focus on is some of the perforation. How do we work citizens to talk about Public Safety . And preparedness and we direct them to a website to what they can do if a disaster happens, in this case a significant fire, and were are responsible on the preparation size for the large planning and something happens and when we behind and to the right of the Fire Department and the Police Department to support whatever happens. It starts with the 911 call center. When the call comes in deputy chief gonzales talked about the coordination of resources and once on scene were there to support the Fire Department with the appropriate response. We take care of warning and notification system and if there are directions to give to the residents we can do that and once if the event is large enough we may then open the citys Emergency Operations center and coordinate agencies and department of health and Human Service agency and like the red cross or Salvation Army and the idea is that we create that Common Operating Picture for all city agencies so we know if there is some support needed from fire or Law Enforcement we can provide that. One of the big places where we come in is in the recovery phase and have individuals misplaced and think back to the mission fire last year and after the blaze was put out Law Enforcement was securing the area but we have residents displaced and we brought togetherlet task force and the homeless groups to find places for our residents to g were also the connection between the state and federal agencies. We brought in the Small Business association to help the businesses in the bottom of that structure affected, and when needed similar to when fire may deploy we have our own assets deployed right now to the valley fire to help with the Operations Center and learn about the sheltering needs they have and how to coordinate it so were there to before the event help the citizens get ready. During the event to support Law Enforcement and fire, and then after the incident to make sure that we get our citizens back to a state of normalcy. Okay. If we do need help from other jurisdictions, other counties in terms of this mutual agreement who actually contacts them . Is it the Fire Department or your department . It depends on the type of resource. The chief could probably explain specifically and correct me if im wrong. There is a master mutual aid agreement that deputy chief gonzales mentioned and its exercised regularly and they have protocol in place to order the resources. If its not fire, emergency medical then it would come to the department of Emergency Management and we go to the Coastal Region of the California Office of Emergency Services and make requests to them for the need, whether its sheltering resources or whatever the need is. Okay. So if the Fire Department needed mutual aid then i assume it would be from their request would come from the Fire Department to other jurisdictions. Is that correct . Thats correct. Okay thank you. I am glad this coordinated. Thats the idea. Other questions . Seeing none. Thank you for coming here. Next up i would like to finally invite the fire marshal from ucsf and present on what they have done to prevent a forest or brush fire occurring in the area surrounding will campus. [inaudible] chairman yee, supervisor christensen, supervisor mar thank you for inviting me for this and i am former cal Fire Department chief and have a lot of experience. I wanted to discuss the efforts at the mount sutra Mountain Reserve and i am responsible for the fire assessment at ucsf and were the responding agency as you heard if a fire breaks out in that area. We have an excellent working relationship with chief hayeswhite and her staff. San francisco Fire Department is one of the premier and happy to have them here. We own the 63acre reserve and maintains the open space and originally planted in 1886 and there are a primarily tree species there and we maintain the reserve, ensure the safety of visitors and buildings and neighboring homes. Several buildings including the hospital and the central utility plan behind the report provides the power for the complex. The regeneration medicine building built on the cliff its the unique building on the side of the mountain and the adjacent to the reserve. Ucsf [inaudible] san miguel housing complex is in the area and houses students and families and adjacent to neighbors hopes. We are committed to have the reserve as a resource and staff is responsible for the maintenance and collaboration with other departments. Daily maintenance is performed in house by two full time forestry technicians and professional landscape and Tree Companies and regular maintenance includes maintaining and establish the trail system, addressing hazardous or fallen trees. Every two, three fiscal years we have aar boshist come in. And maintaining along road and roadways building adjacent to the reserve. Our nonprofit partners build and maintain trails and a nursery and provide thousands of hours of trail work each year. Our fire Hazard Mitigation efforts in 2013 we were concerned about this and collaboration with forest experts and the San Francisco Fire Department to look at the risk and we aggress that these conditions existed in the reserve paused shrubs and mowing non woody plants. We continue to monitor the area and ensure the safety of structures and visitor to the trails. In the two years since we performed this work much of the vegetation has grown back and we plan to repeat this work this fall. If the department agrees with our agreement we plan to revisit the work that was done two years ago. In conclusion ucsf understands the value of this open space reserve that brings to San Francisco and were committed to maintain the reserve as a public resource. Our priority is protect the hospital, neighbors and visitors. We want to work with the San Francisco Fire Department and stakeholders and mit giet any fire risks and keep it safe and accessible. You can see on the over head can you see that . Okay. This is an indication of the work weve done. Its little hard to see on this screen, but you can see its a buffer mitigation effort around the reserve itself. And do you have any questions . I cant tell by this map, but the reserve that youre talking about doesnt cover all mount sutro, does it . Its the wooded area up there. Even on the other side of the hill. Yes, sir. I didnt realize that. Where would the sutro tower be on this map . I dont know exactly where its at. [inaudible] off mic . Okay. [inaudible] off mic . On the east side. [inaudible] okay. And theres a private section. Right. [inaudible] okay. [inaudible] i mean [inaudible] where is it . [inaudible] off mic . Right here. The tower is on the legend the tower is where the legend is placed so you cant see the tower. Yeah. That gives me a better orientation of what i am looking at. I dont have any questions but thank you for being a Good Neighbor in San Francisco. Sounds like youre doing the right thing in terms of preventing doing the things that will prevent any disasters and working closely with our city departments. Thank you very much. And we enjoy your trails. Thanks. Actually those trails a lot of people dont even know about. Okay. Are there any Public Comments on this item . [inaudible] on this item, Fire Prevention . The valley fire because 17,000 for the restrugz were destroyed. As a holy leader, holy representative of [inaudible] human disaster [inaudible] from the families and structure natural order and management and [inaudible] from holy practices. Mission parkway and concentrate too much on the [inaudible] of gloria glory and economics and [inaudible] great disaster. Denise louie. I am here as a San Francisco native voter and taxpayer and i want to say thank you to everyone for bringing attention to this problem of stands of trees around the city that have been unirrigated, stressed and are now dying that represent a hazard because they can fall over and hurt us or they can fuel a fire storm so i would like to say that i will i would like to ask rec and Park Department and the rest of the city officials for example what about those trees along oshaughnessy in glen canyon that can hurt or trap people on the new handicap access path that parallels oshaughnessy . What about the silver tree preschool . Have those families been alerted to the fire risk, the danger . Do they have an evacuation plan, fire drill . What if the children are trapped in the canyon . These are all things to consider. Okay. Thank you. I think that this is a phenomenon in San Francisco and we need to think about the real risk to our housing stock, our use of water in case of a big fire, and the liability to the city in the case of people and property get hurt or damaged. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other Public Comments . Good morning government and oversight. Its going to be a cool night and were going to see this item by the fire light, and i hope it works out right. I thought you should know. Its going to be a cool night, and were going to work out this item. Make it work out right, and its going to work out and i hope you give it a go. Its going to be a cool night and were going to make this item work out by the fire light, and its going to work out right, and i thought you should know. Thank you. Nice seeing you again. Its always hard to follow a song. My name is Sally Stephens and i just wanted to talk about two things. One is theres rec and park is in fact has plans to cut down trees just because theyre not native and replace with grass land and we know its flammable and thats where the fires start and spread rapidly so i hope in all the discussions that the Fire Department is having on managing things whether they talk with rec and park that theyre focusing on some of the changes that are going on and the transformations of the landscape that are going on that could potentially creating a greater fire risk especially with ignition and things like that, and the other thing that people forget about is the golden gate Recreation Area is also doing major landscape transformations. You have the fortthumbsom and covered with ice plant and mitigates fire because of the water in the plant. Thats all taken out. Ocean beach a lot is taken out and replaced with grass lands so i hope when the city is working on Response Plans and things like that that theyre working with them as well and make sure theyre not doing things that might negatively affect the people around lake merced or inut outer sunset in god forbid a fire should start there or take off in that sort of thing. Thank you. Thank you. Any other Public Comments . Come on up. My name is [inaudible] and i live in district 7 right at the foot of mount set ro. I think one of the things we heard first i would like to thank the Fire Department and yourself for organizing this. Its been a very interesting morning for me. One of the things that weve heard is that the western side and the northern side is less vulnerable because of fog and i just wanted to talk a bit about that. Living where i do i see the fog coming in to mount sutro all through the summer and in fact very often the forest is wetter in summer than it is in winter. There was actually standing water there a few days ago even before it started raining because what is happening the trees precipitate the fog. They precipitate the fog moisture and the under story holds the water so in some cases reducing the vegetation increases the fire hazard because what happens instead of having vegetation that holds the moisture you end up with flammable vegetation that dries out more quickly and its one of the things we should take into consideration rather than applying these rules. Thank you. Hi. My name is anastasia [inaudible] and listening to this presentation and people generally know that brush and shrub and dry grass are much more flammable than trees especially [inaudible] trees, and you know the plan which is coming up for certification soon and replace [inaudible] with something called native grass and shrub habitat and i dont think its a very wise thing to do and mclaren that has more fire danger than where i live and 800 trees are going to be removed and something native is planned. This native stuff is very flammable. Okay. What is happening on Mount Davidson and [inaudible] and area program. What they do is they kill they use herbicides very toxic and they kill the vegetation and leave it there so you can walk there and see the [inaudible] which was killed and left in place and i dont think its good for the fire, you know, for fire safety. Just recently posting limited posting all the [inaudible] eastern side of the Mount Davidson are dead, brown. There was posting say i they were going i didnt see it again. They didnt post and use toxic poisons. One was just recently classified a probable carcinogen and this program should be changed with the Forest Management for fire safety thing. This is really dangerous what theyre doing. Thank you. Thank you. Any other Public Comments on this item . Seeing none. Public comment is now closed. [gavel] i want to thank the Fire Department and the Emergency Management department and ucsf for being here and giving your presentation. I wasnt too sure as i said in my opening remarks that i wasnt sure where we were at in terms of being prepared for one of these rare urban forest fires, and after hearing todays presentation i feel very confident that San Francisco is very prepared and i feel also that this corination between the departments to make sure that we dont have something happen where one is pointing a finger and saying wow i thought the other department was going to take care of this and i think ucsf is a good example how to take care of a certain area and working with the neighbors to do this, and in regards to the message here i am hearing is all of us in the city, the residents, play a role in preventing any disasters to happen. The reporting mechanism that we have to complain about certain things we shouldnt look at it as a complaint, but more of a Good Neighbor pointing out something that maybe dangerous to other neighbors, and thats a good thing, so if there are residents that feel like theres some areas or a lot or whatever that seems to be in a position of starting being a fire hazard they should really report it. What i heard is that not all of them are going to be considered dangerous, but let the experts here, being the Fire Department, remember whether its dangerous or not and not us as residents that know less about this stuff so thats my comments. Any other comments . Seeing none okay. Seeing none so this item is closed. Again i want to thank the public for coming out and making their comments. [gavel] mr. Chair would you like to make a motion . Oh yeah, can i have a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair. So moved. So objection so the motion passes. Go ahead madam clerk could you please call item two. Item two is a hearing to present the comprehensive annual Financial Report, single audit and management letters prepared by the citys external auditors. Good afternoon mr. Chair, supervisors. Ben rosenfield city controller. I will describe what this hearing is and turn it to others in the staff and the external auditor to present. As youre aware each year at the close of the fiscal year we work with departments to compile statements that reflect the citys Financial Health and required disclosures and those documents are compiled by us which in this sense were serving as management, and then each year the Audit Committee of the board and the board of supervisors itself retains an external financial auditor to review those statements and comment directly to you, the Audit Committee of the board of supervisors regarding their findings and a normal check and balance that exists in governmental accounting and Management Practices so were here today to interviews those external auditors to you and talk you through their findings for the last years cafr, our comprehensive annual Financial Report and to talk you through their audit plan for the fiscal year end process that were in the midst of so thank you for your time today. I will turn it over to carmen lafrank in the Controllers Office that leads this office for us. Thank you. Hi. Good morning supervisors yee, mar, and supervisor christensen. So as ben mentioned we have this hearing every year to allow the auditors to present their findings and their audit plans, so before you have a list of the speakers. Its going to be kpmg our external auditor, the senior manager will present the audit plans and results of last years audit and have mgo and annie louie is the partner and present the findings and plans. And then we also have a representative from the airport who received a finding this year, wallace tang and miguel [inaudible] from the department of technology and we also have other speakers available from departments for the single audit find focusing you have questions and i am available. I will turn it over right now. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Good morning. My name is jamie and a senior manager with kpmg and i will be presenting we are performing right now. Okay. We will be presenting kpmgs audit plan for the 2015 audit as well as recapping the 2014 audit. You will see here we will start with our engagement team. Overall we have a lead engagement partner nancy rose and concurring review partners. The managers including myself are assigned to each of the departments that were responsible for auditing. Overall we have good continuity. Each member partner as well as senior associate and manager are repeating over the past three years on the engagement. So to just to the audit objectives our objectives is express an opinion on the Financial Statements prepared by management. We provide reasonable but not absolute assurance that the Financial Statements as a whole are free of material misstatements due to error or fraud. What this overall means that we audit to a materiality level. We audit and test the design of key controls of the accounts with significant risks. To move on to the responsibilities the statement of auditing standards require us to disclose roles and responsibilities within the audit so the next slides you will see here are the responsibilities of management, the Audit Committee or governance as well as the auditors so i will not go through all of these in detail, but i will point out key once of management, so the key ones being the fairly presenting a Financial Statements in conformity with the general accepted accounting principles and maintaining control of reports and the statements do not relieve those of auditing and management of their responsibilities. As far as our responsibilities as your auditors we conduct the audit in accordance with the professional standards to obtain a reasonable assurance whether the Financial Statements are free of misstatement as i indicated earlier. Its not designed to detect error or fraud material to the Financial Statements and overall we will provide a communication of significant deficiencies and material weaknesses of internal control to management and those of governance and contact the audit with professional skepticism and governing auditing standards. One thing to note in regards to other information and documents containing audited Financial Statements several reports may have an introduction or statistical data which we do not opine on this information. We do read the data for reasonableness and identify inconsistencies or misstatement of facts. Anything that is not resolved account lold up the could hold up the issue of the report or modify the opinion. To move on to the audit plan our scope of work for the 2015 fiscal year consists of the following departments. The San Francisco Health Services system, the municipality municipal transportation agency, mta, the Public Utilities commission and the San Francisco international airport. We perform the single audit for mta and sfo as well as additional agreed upon procedures for mta and we issue an additional report for puc on the balancing account of the water enterprise. These audits are performed with general accepted accounting principles and auditing standards as well as government auditing standards. To recap of the 2014 audit results all of the departmental audits we issued opinions for were clean, unmodified opinions. We did have one deficiency that we have reported for the airport in regards to timely reviewing of monitoring of Capital Asset records. This finding the management recorded adjustments of Capital Assets related to items that didnt meet this definition of Capital Assets, assets no longer considered existing and assets which appreciation was calculated using this formula so an adjustment was made. We provided a recommendation to management to perform the annual reviews of the fixed assets and focus on the appropriate accounting and transactions. At this point in time as were in midaudit were are testing the remediation of this and that is still in process. One disclaimer in regards to Public Offerings if it should be the case that the city wish to incorporate the Financial Statements in our report into offerings securityings we are required to perform procedures to events and updates and consider whether the manner of the presentation is appropriate. The procedures would be under a separate engagement letter compared to the engagement letter of the audit Financial Statements. In regards to the audit timeline and key dates so we completed our planning and interim filled work of the departments in may and through august. Final field work is start. We started here in september and that will go on through january. Our deliverables and target dates so the puc we plan to issue that audit report on october 16 and have that be the first one out and the remaining departments will follow the following week of october 23. We will issue the significant deficiencies report on october 23 as well, and then the single audit and other report will fall in line to be issued by january 31. And lastly we always like to disclose that we are independent with respect to the city as defined by the terms of the professional standard. So i will stand for any questions or comments. Colleagues any questions . Seeing none. I guess in terms of the deficiency from the airport mr. Tang is going to address that later . Yes. Okay. No questions. Thank you. Thank you. So next we will have andy louie of mgo present her results and plans and have the two departmental representatives speak to the findings and one for the airport and the other for department of technology. Thank you. Good morning. I am from mgo, one of the partners on the citys engagement. I am here to present the fiscal year 1314 audit results and the plan for 1415. So first i would like to go over the scope of audits for mgo and annual Financial Statements or the cafr for short. The single overall audit is for the federal awards, the retirement system, the [inaudible] agency of the redevelopment agency, the two hospitals, the port of San Francisco as well as the finance corporation. I adopt to point out that the citys cafr incorporates separate Financial Statements audited by kpmg as mentioned in the previous presentation. In terms of the audit results for the Previous Fiscal Year we issued opinions on both the citys Financial Statements as well as the single audit. That is the highest level of assurance you can receive for these. We issued reports related to the internal reporting and compliance and i will go over later in the slides. We issue a separate report directly to this committee and that report includes communications under professional standards as well as our audit authorization from the various audits. So in the next two slides i will go over the required communications. 22 of the. Two of the items that were required to communicate to the governing body is the professional standards and timing, scope of the audit. We communicated those two items in the previous audit plan that was presented last year. The remaining required communications which i are list on the slide are included in the report to and report to the gao and these are standard items that require to communicate. What i do want to point out in the report is under number 3 qualitative aspect of accounting aspects under this item refer in the report talks about new pronouncements that are required to be adopted by the city in terms of accounting treatment and accounting presentation so during the fiscal year 1314 the city did implement a significant standard gasb 65 which changes the classifications of certain balances or certain account on the Financial Statements so compare 1314 Financial Statements to that of the prior year it will look a little different because of the new pronouncements that were adopted. In terms of the audit implementations we had one recommendation that we have with the audit relating to the citys Overall Information Technology governance and we considered a significant deficiency which is defined to be something we believe is a matter of concern that would be useful to the gao. What the find was that the comment related to the overall governance of the city whereby each department has their own policies and procedures regarding the systems that they use, and there isnt a centralized body for the city that would issue policies and because of that each department has different processes, if you will, to govern their own system, and we believe that a centralized oversight body would be necessary. In terms of prior recommendation as part of our audit we do have recommendations that we have made in prior year that we made outstanding. One of the outstanding findings in terms of the Financial Statements related to a comment we made in 2013 and this is for the payroll process. During fiscal year 1213 the city implemented a new payroll system called emerge and while the system transition took place some of the policies and procedures by departments were not updated so our comment relates to that. During the 1314 financial audit we went back and revisited this particular situation and found that corrective action happened implemented. And other prior years recommendations that we made outstanding was from fiscal year 1112 and this was an informational item so it wasnt a deficiency. In 2012 the gasb which is the body that makes accounting standards for governmental agencies nationwide they issued two significant accounting standards, 67 and 68 which relates to pension benefits, and the accounting and Financial Reporting requirements relating to such benefits. 67 is the requirement that we have the Retirement Systems and the planning and 68 is the [inaudible] benefits for the employer for the city as a whole so we just at the time we made a comment to communicate with the city and inform everyone this is a significant standard that would drastically change the Financial Reporting of pension benefits. 67 statement 67 was implemented by the system during fiscal year 1314 and the city as the employer will implement statement 68 in fiscal year 1415. Next i will go on to the recommendations relating to the citys single audit which is the audit of the citys federal award compliance. Sorry it should say current year. So the first comment that we have again is consideration of [inaudible] c and [inaudible] monitoring and we found this situation for two different federal programs that we had audited. The first is the work forcement act cluster and [inaudible] research and demonstration projects. Both programs are administered by the office of Economic Development development and we found when the city passes on federal funds to other agencies outside the city, what we call separate recipients and communicate the title and number and other information. We found when the city provided funding under these programs to their recipients such information was not communicated at the time of the award as required but they were communicated during the award. The second financial the suddenly federal award finding is for the programs listed. The first is the continuum of care program and served by the Human Service agency and the second one is the pilot demonstration and Research Project by the office of work force development. This finding related to you a report that was required to be submitted anytime awards are made and has to be made at the time of the award and we found that the reports were not filed. This finding on procurement and suspension debarment is also a significant deficiency and relates to the Child Support Enforcement Program that is administered by the department of Child Support services. For this particular finding it relates to the contracting process. For contracts that are funded by federal awards there is a requirement to make sure that the contracting entity is not suspended or debarred. In one of the examples we selected for testing the department of Child Support Services Utilized a blanket contract that was procured by the city, but because the blanket contract was procured for the city overall at the time the procurement occurred the contractor was not checked against the federal suspension and debarment listing so we listed this as a finding. Im switching now over to the recommendations that were made in previous single audits. The first one result relates to the fiscal year 13 and. With single monitoring and for the agent clusters. Similar it was about communicating required information to the city at the time of the board and during the follow up audit in 1314 we found that the corrective actions have been implemented. So now i will switch over to the Audit Service plan for fiscal year 1415. Im not going to go over all the items in detail but i do want to highlight the three items that are listed. The first one is the plan scope, so as i mentioned in the previous slide we will be auditing the same components including the citys cafr, the single audit retirement system, the Successor Agency and the port as well as the finance corporation n terms of the timing of the audit we provided a timeline on page five. Although the plan you can refer to for more details but overall we expect to issue the citys Financial Statements by midnovember, the week before thanksgiving and the single audit will be issued by january of 2016. Lastly the [inaudible] relates to our responsibilities as well as managements responsibilities. These are required communications that are provided to you in our Audit Services. With they will take any questions and comments. Okay. Thank you. Any questions . Seeing none thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you. Wallace chance will come up and chang will come up and give status for the airport. Thank you. Good morning chair yee, supervisor christensen and supervisor mar. It is wallace tang airport controller from San Francisco international airport, business and finance division. Relating to the fiscal year 2014, the findings regarding the untimely real and monitoring of Capital Asset records that happened as part of the airports Continuous Improvement effort starting fiscal year 13 and 14. The airport was taking a proactive approach to start cleaning up the fixed asset and Capital Asset data base for getting ready for the upcoming city wide Financial System replacement project. Our goal was to clean up the data and make sure that the good data will be wrote into the new system. As part of that clean up effort we had a Capital Assets account to see if they met the policy and we reviewed the reasonableness of useful life of fixed assets and through that effort in fiscal year 13 and 14 and we worked closely with the airport project managers and we identified certain adjustment and we were the one that initiate adjustment and show it to the auditor that should be the adjusting entries in fiscal year 13 and 14, so to address the findings and to strengthen the internal control the airport has taken multiple corrective action to address the witnesses related to untimely review and monitoring of Capital Assets records. One of the action thases we took was on the top of the annual review for year end close purpose we schedule the project manager to confirm the reasonableness of useful life whether the accounts met the capitalization policies and also and the items that are supposed to be capitalized versus expense and we identified in our Second Quarter close and Third Quarter close during the fiscal year, so that has been implemented in fiscal year 15. And also next at the airport we created and updated the new set of construction in progress policies and procedures to make it clear to the project manager whats supposed to be the requirement for booking Capital Assets. Regarding the suggestions from kpmgs recommendations from last years finding related to reassessing the resources, the airport has created a fixed Asset Accounting Group in fy 15 to strengthen the resources to focus on the accounting. With that i am open for any questions supervisors. In regards to implementing this new system to look at the fixed assets has that been completed yet . Yes. We have completed the 100 confirmation of all the fixed assets and value of fy 15. So there were Additional Resources put in there for that effort to make it happen . Yes. So my question is moving forward yes. Will you continue championing of resources to keep everything updated on an annual basis . Yes, we do. At the interim we have already hired one additional staff to focus on the fixed asset and we have the starting plan when we do the upcoming two year budget were going to put in requests for permanent positions that will focus on fixed asset accounting so we have the interim solution and the longterm plan. Okay. Thank you very much. Any other questions . Seeing none thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you chair. Thank you supervisors. So next up would be miguel camino. Good afternoon. I am from the city and cio. I just wanted to respond briefly to a couple of points regarding the Information Technology governance finding. We have been working really hard on a city wide chief Information Security officer recruitment. Whats different about that than previous situations is that departments have had and still do have Security Officer functions but this is an actual city wide authority. We are getting very, very close. We had engaged in executive search firm and close to have finalists to review and select from so i see this position being filled very soon and instrumental to making progress on some of the concerns, and also at the committee on Information Technology we have an architecture and policy review board that is a working group that functions to collect the stakeholder groups from various departments and organize the conversations around technology policies, priorities and recommendations, and then bring those back forward to the official governing body of coit for consideration, discussion and approval, so that is also a city wide cross departmental coordinated effort and discussion. That body has been officially instituted and has had its first working meeting, and were making progress there pretty rapidly, and again once the city chief Information Security officer is in place i think that will also accelerate the outcomes of that policy review board so thats the departmental response to the findings and the concerns. May i ask a question . So are there departments exempt from participate something. Exempt from participating in which component . In being over seen by chief inform Security Officer . No. The city will have responsibility and authority for establishing the federated Security Policyo the umbrella Security Policy and departments have Departmental Authority to kind of take it from there just like a federal law type of structure. This citys staff person reports to me as the chief officer with a dotted line to the controller directly so its very clear its a city wide purview. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions . Okay. Seeing none thank you for your presentation. Thanks. And that concludes then the presentations for this item . Yes, that conclude the presentation unless you had questions for any of the other speakers . No. I dont. Supervisor christensen . No. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your presentations and now are there any Public Comment on this item . Airport commission group, a policy as standard procedures please elaborate, communicate, connect to the world with perfect open window to the world. Any other Public Comments on this item . Seeing none. Public comment is now closed. [gavel]. Colleagues could we have a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair . Im sorry . Could i have a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair . [inaudible] okay. Any objections . Seeing none the motion passes. Thank you very much. Madam clerk item number 3. Madam clerk could you call items 3 17. Items 3 17 are ordinances and resolutions with various settlements and agreements with the city and county of San Francisco. Okay. Before we entertain a motion to convene in closed session is there any member of the public who wishes to speak on items 3 17 . Seeing none public is now closed. [gavel] colleagues is there a motion to convene in closed session. [inaudible] moved and seconds. Motion passes. [gavel] so members of the public we will no covers. Actually there have been some utilities completely punched in we are now back in open session. Deputy director john gibner. The city voted to amend the ordinance for number 14 to reflect in the body of the ordinance that the lawsuit was filed in San Mateo Superior Court and voted unanimously to forward items 3 17 to the full board with positive recommendation. Okay. Thank you. Colleagues can i have a motion to not disclose what happened in closed session . Second . Okay. No objection motion passes. [gavel] madam clerk is there anything else on the agenda . There is no further business. Okay. If theres nothing further the meeting is adjourned. [gavel] thank you very much