Excused today. Commissioner paulson. Here commissioner rivera excused. Commissioner stacy. Here. We have a quorum. Members of public make up to 2 minutes of remote public on an item dialing 4155540001. Access code 2591 574 6761 to rid your hand press star 3. Speakers will hear a choim had 30 seconds remaining and another chime when the 2 minutes have expired. You must limit your comment to the topic discussed upon if you dont stay on the topic the chair may ask to you limit your comment to the item. Public comment made in a civil and respectful. Mute, thank you. Thank you. Public comment med in a civil and respectful manner. Address remarks to the commission not to individual commissioners or staff. On behalf of the commission thanks to sfgovtv staff and puc staff for assist analysis. For those present, if you have in the done so silence your electronic device. The dial in number is 4155540001. Access code 2591 574 6761. Raise your hand to speak please, press star 3. On todays engaged the commission will adopt water rates for 2024 to fiscal 20 ticks on item 6 and proposal to adopt sewer rates for year ending 2426 under item 7. The commission received written protest by mail and considered those pursuant to prop 218. Any Property Owner or customer submitting a written protest in person today should submit protest to the Commission Secretary before the commission acts on the item later in the meeting. Thank you. Observe the first item the San Francisco puc acknowledges it owns and stewards of the unseed lands within the historic territory of the tribe. And other upon descendants of the historic [inaudible]. Recognized Mission San Jose band of alameda county. Puc recognizes that every citizen residing in the greater bay area has and continues to benefit from the use and occupation of the tribes lands. Since before and after the San Francisco pu c commission founding in 1932. It is important that we not only recognize the history of the lands on which we reside but also acknowledge and honor the fact that the people have established a working partnership with the puc and productive and flourishing members in the bay area communities today. With that, ksdz you read the first item . Item 3 approval of the minutes of may 9 of 23. Colleagues, comments or edit to the minutes . Jury room if 91 can we have Public Comment. Members of public who wish to make 2 minutes of remote comment on item 3 the minutes of may mine press star 3 to spreek. Speakers hear a chime had there are 30 seconds and another had expired. Are there members who want to provide comment on the minutes . Do we have callers with hands raised in there are no callers wishing to be recognized. Thank you. Public ment on item 3 is closed. Commissioners stacy. President ajami i want to say i missed the hearing i did revow packet and watched the arkiefd video i feel prepared to vote on the issue of the minutes. Why fantastic thank you for acknowledging that i appreciate it. Can i have a motion and second . On this item . Moved. Second. Roll call, please. President ajami. Aye. Xhrp paulson. Aye commissioner stacy. Aye. Minutes approved. Could you call the next item. Item 4 report of the general manager . Thank you. The thing i have to report today is we it is always celebrating and sad when you lose a member of your team to a retirement. Today i like to recognize Charles Pearl or department chief Financial Officer today is his left day of work and thank him for his service. Charles served for 15 years with another 3 years of service at the airport and the mayors office. Upon commissioners, when i arrived here in 2021, charles offered a perspective the fighting on behalf of the rate payer and keeping costs down helped me appreciate the complexities of the agents budget rate and revenues, i saw followed a pragmatic fiscal conservative path that navigated through recessions, droughts and of course the pandemic. Charles lead this agency toward better decisionmaking, Financial Plan and financing areas. For example, we have strong Credit Ratings allowing us to access the important credit markets to financials our capital prushth programs. With over 10 billion dollars in finance transactions underwent his leadership. Power credit was created and, the first bonds in 2015. Providing capacity to finance the infrastructure needs. Green bonds an investment category was created under his leadership. All of our fiscal policy we use today were developed by charles and his team. Other ordinary care chiefments 10 Agency Budget cycles supporting the past 15 fiscal years ensuring Capital Budget were reviews, and report and closed out. 8 cost of service studies water, sue and power rates and Financial Planning process that guides our financial decisionmaking. Lastly, he mentioned and developed many of the finance leaders with us today. And others when continued as successful careers. Commissioners. Charles accomplished a lot he is leaving the puc in good hands with strong manager in technical and critical financial roles. I cant actual how much we appreciate charles leadership over the past 15 years and support of the pucs mission and values and i tell you x there is no mentor for the year and a half i have been here on financial stewardship and good financial decision make. Charles, thank you very much for your leadership. [applause]. Thank you, i want to thank you. It has been a pleasure working with youy are right we have done a few things the past 15 years. And as dennis mentioned we near good hands. Well is great people behind me you will hear from a few today i want to let you know that all is good. Thank you. [applause]. Commissioner stacy. Thank you, mr. Pearl i wanted to say, thank you for your service i have not anyone here long but i know how absolutely critical creative financing is to keeping the rates down and making sure the puc can do what it needs to do. Thank you for your many years and i look forward to working with your great team who will continue to do good work. Thanks. Commissioner paulson. I like to chime in to i than of the men meetings i have attends in the my in my years here on the short number here on the commission i than had you are responsible for report it was clear and i felt like, yea i know what is going on when you were done. Thank you for the insure time i have known and you appreciate it. And in enjoy what you will do now. [laughter]. And i also. To add my word to the and say i amming very much appreciative of the time we spent working together in the past few years. I always appreciated how would listen it my academic idea and help me translate them to Real World Solutions and you know i appreciate your patience. Thoughtfulness and it is fact you engage in the the conversations without willing to brain storm on some ideas. I have been a big fan of the and financing we used. And it has been wonderful to get to know you and also than you were behind them and i really i know and i hope is this we continue on this path. As we move forward. It is you know great mentors create great future next generation of employee and next generation of leaders. I have no doubt have you done so. So, you will be missed. I again you really appreciated working with you. All you have done for this institution. Thank you, charles. Madam secretary that concludes my report. Public comment . Yes. Public comment on this item. Why members of the public had wish to make 2 minutes of remote Public Comment on the r. General manager, press star 3 to raise your hand to speak. Speakers will hear a chime when there are 30 seconds remain and another 2 when it expired do we have anyone present to provide comment on the general managers report. Mr. Moderator callers with hands raised. Well is one caller in the queue. Thank you this is item 4a. Hi. Good afternoon this is denise from the center for biological diversity. And i wanted to say you know when you acknowledge the anative American Land we are on we should acknowledge im sorry. Im sorry speaker im sorry this is item 4a the report of the general manager on the resignation of employee if you want to speak upon urn gerund Public Comment do so under item 11 general Public Comment. Thank you. There are no callers in the queue. Public comment on 4a is closed. Okay. Can we have the next item. Item 5 the bay area water splice bay agency update. Members of the commission, last mont the board issued notice of preparation for development of environmental document related the tuolumne voluntary agreement. Of the state board part thankful perform an Environmental Review of that proposed voluntary agreement that was documented in the november 2022 memorandum of understanding that San Francisco signed on to with other Tuolumne River per and state resource agencies the board will evaluate sna voluntary agreement as an maam to the bay delta plan. There was oral meants at last third degrees public hear nothing support of the state boards effort. I forded those comments to you last week. I stated the proposed voluntary agreement if the tuolumne agreement could be a big step forward with flows and increased habitat for fish in the tuolumne and ensuring a reliable supply of high quality water with a fair price. In addition to boska there were 20 members of public that expressed support for the state boards proposed process included a member of your starch and 15 individual boska member agencies. I want to really recognize the puc work with the resource agencies and others this lead to this november mou. This is the reason the state board is taking action now. I want to express appreciation for the leadership of herrera for the support of the commission for this work that is secured the successful effort. Both mou and the state boards evaluation of the proposed voluntary agreement are when we have been advocating for some time. I am sure you are tired of me talk willing it i want to call attention at this time fact it it is a big success it taken support and leadership to get there and thank you for what. Boska looks forward to the robust environmental evaluation of the voluntary agreement. And together, the activities are critical step to enable to you meet your legal obligations for the customers. We are here to support your effort in this. However that needs to happen we are here to express support for the state board that concludes my remarks. Colleagues any comments or questions . Thank you for enengaging in the press and providing updates on na. Appreciate it. The upon upon presentations from boska was disgraceful. Boska done none of itself own analysis on the tuolumne agreement. I have not done analysis after giving a presentation to staff followed up with a letter pointing out the flaws. And could not responds and they never did. One things was 90mgd of water developed. In the workshop on march there was an analysis that commissioner moran was fair enough and staff to look at different scenario the promising was to reduce the design drought by a year and insert rationing activelies probably too aggressive but compensated for in the run off. And developing 35mgd would make you whole by 2045. With the figures used in the Water Management plan we know are ecageerated this is worth looking at. We can reduce the amount Water Supplies and put simple changes. Ffgs disappointing with boskasm thank you. Next caller hello you have 2 minutes thank you. Im dave warnir from pamo alto i want to comment i have respect for coo sanculla in this circumstance i give a different perspective on the spring water Board Meeting left week. My sense is the Tuolumne River will have a tough time getting through the state water board i listened to the first 2 workshops which were about the seasonals. I think the water board will look at the science and one of the conclusions i came to was that you know the study that said that the predator assumption in the fish pomp lagz model was just an sxuchlgz not based on data. There was another comment. Largest impact on the fish population model. When you look at the 2 things the model is it is needs to have the predator removal and you look at the predator removal data an assumption special then in the workshop a debate about that. I think this is one small peeves many place the trv will have a challenge. I would not hold out too much hope tell paddle but you never know and im sure the biasd that it is in the enough for the fish. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Why next caller, 2 minutes. Hi. You know the fish need increases to fresh water flows and because the voluntary agreements dont provide the necessary fresh water flows the fish need. With draw the lawsuits against the state water board. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your comments. Next caller, 2 minutes. Commissioners. Once again you hear somebody Say Something and you agree with her. So yall get the report of how much salmon were counted this year in the Tuolumne River. So where is the Empirical Data . We all know how to do a Needs Assessment on the Empirical Data. So yall have the audacity to go and file a lawsuit but you dont have the right frame of mind to dot Empirical Data that is affecting the salmon in the Tuolumne River. Yall should feel ashamed of yourself. Somebody coming and saying something and yall agreeing. So, what peter is saying from the last workshop we had, does in the Pay Attention to the workshop. Yall have the audacity to challenge the state with a lawsuit. Think about it. Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing your comments. There are no more callers. Public comment on item 5 is closed. Thank you. I have could you. Please read the next am why. 6 and 7 will be read together. Thank you. Item 6 public hear to consider adopt a 3 year rates for Retail Water Service in San Francisco and suburban areas effect with meter reading after july 23. Institutes the action of the project purposes of the California Environmental quality act or ceqa pursuant to code section 31. 04h. Planning department determined this is exempt from ceqa. Item 7, public hear to consider and aadopt a 3 year schedule of rates for Sewer Service in San Francisco to take affect on or after july 1 of 23. This action institutes approval action for propers of the California Environmental quality act pursuant to code section 31. 04h planning said this is exempt from ceqa. To clarify, there will be one presentation for the 2 items well call for 2 separate Public Comments for each item separately. You will have a chance to comment on each item separately. With that, go ahead and. Good afternoon. Im erin your Financial Planning director and im here to talk about a proposal to increase the water and sewer rates for the next 3 fiscal years. As the secretary went through there are 2 items this covers both. You will be getting 3 separate presentations from myself on the finance portion of the rates increase. Come our communication director on the out reach we have done. And from the chair of our rate fairness board on that bodys review of the rate proposal. Observe i dig in to the content i want to thank a few people. These studies take effort across the agency and there are folks not here today who did a lot of work. Matthew fryburg the project manager for this program. He would be here give thanksgiving presentation but taking a much needed Family Vacation and im glad to give him it time off. Angela lawary cord nayed the legal required out reach and above and beyond to ensure we reached as many people in San Francisco as possible. She is amaze and im grateful for her support. Assil discuss in the presentation this rates proposal includes a culmination of multiyear effort to break out a storm water charge part of sewer rates that project had people across puc working on it over the years. I want to thank 2. Ragender in it managing the billing system upgrade needed to manage tht learning pest change to the billing system in history and done an incredible job. We have a lot to thank him for. Willis in wastewater done a great job providing gif analysis needed to support this effort. Again if you receive information from our agency from gif regarding storm water have you will to thankism spent too long but thanks and gratitude to everyone i mentiond and those i have not we would not be here without your help. Thank you, everyone. Moving on to the presentation. I will start with i background on that the rate study was and how we got here and dig in the details of water and sewer rate proposalless themselves. The San Francisco charter requires the puc hire an inspect rate consultant every 5 years for each to analyze finances and recommend rates needed cover our costs. Our left rate study complete in the 2018 we were due for another. We hired consultant request for proposals in march of 2022. And they had been at work with staff over the year developing the rates here today. Among the requirements i want to highlight the compliance with california prop 218. And requirement that rates meet cost of Service Principles i will talk about this more at the core requires detailed Financial Analysis in order to ensure our rates are fair and equal it is one thing to do it correctly if you are not transparent there is no point. So another thing we complied with throughout the process is the legal mandated out reach and presentations to our rate fairness board this is required by the charttory hear the details about the proposal. We had 8 separate meetings with rate fairness board in the last year and also done out roach to reach people not able to attends the Board Meeting and need to hear about the rates through other venues. Low steps to the rate study process. First is the revenue requirements analysis this. Asked the question of when rate increases are needed to cover operating costs. The second is the cost of Service Analysis. This is the heart of the rate study. Have a one year old at home im sympathetic. Member of public engage youngest one. Gotta wait for public meant. [laughter]. The cost of service was the heart of the study. We go through line by line everyone one of the costs and again making sure when we are proposing is fair and equal. And finally rateys design is where you take the total dollar aims and actually structure them to the rates that will show up in our rates book. Starting with the revenue requirement analysis. Rates proposed are based on the 2 year budget and 10 year improve am plan this Commission Approved in february. They set to cover our operating and capital cost and comply with financial policies. Most of the driver of the rate increases is on the capital side through revenue and dent service on knew and existing bonds. Capitol costs is 80 of costs during the 3 year period. The tain shows increases for water and sewer. For each of the 3 fiscal years water revenues need to increase by 5 and sewer by 9 in order to meet our requirements. It is important to note that these other rate increases over all for the agency. Because differents ways customers use the system the bill impacts for customers will vary from what is shown here. Across all customers the rates provide increases in revenues. The next step of the study is the cost of Service Analysis. I mention third degree is complicate im not going to go to detail in the presentation. Rate study report written by the consultant has a lot of this information as dot presentations begin by consultants and staff to the rate fairness board. Just to give an example of the way the cost of Service Analysis works. We take all of the operating expense of the waste water. Zoom in at a Treatment Plant. Southeast plant. We functionalize every one of the costs through the portions of the Wastewater Treatment plan of the digesters. Primary clarifiers. You take each of those functions, say the digesters, use billing data a waste water simpleling and information about what is coming in to the Wastewater Treatment plants to allocate the costs to cost drivers. And the case of the digesters the main purpose to remove solids. Now you have a cost for removing solids from water water that gets allocated to customers we look at customer types a restaurant flushes more organic matter than an Office Building restaurantses get a higher. This press is all there to ensure the dollar amount charged to a customer is truly related to the cost that we incur at our system to provide that service. We go through this process for every operating expense and capital expense line by line in our budget. 2 things i want to highlight that were updated this year. This are notable. First, in water, we updated the water usage Data Customer class to reflect post pandemic trends and use. We are not notoriety lose for the commercial usage of water we saw during the pan dem tick has not fully recovered and we are seeing higher residential uses and peeks of residential usage if people work at home throughout the day this drives the Cost Allocation for commercial versus residential. And thats updated in our study to reflect the new normal how we expect San Francisco to use the water system. On wastewater we spent an amount of time on a mass balance. This is taking billing data from customers how much wastewater they discharge. Sampling and in flow data to Treatment Plant s and rainfall data to reconcile where the inflow come from customer or from storm water run off or infiltration to point this is is important to support some allocations we make. And it is one this will be a great bed rock for our agency as we move forward on sewer Cost Allocations. Turning to the rates themselves. On the water side this shows the current water rate structure. We north proposing to make changes to the structure of the water rates. Fixed charges. Include 2 components. Customer costs and call upon center and the same for ofef every account. We have meter charges. Cost maintaining the meter. These vary. You pay more for a large are meter. On the volume side residential and nonResidential Rates. For both customers bill in the ccf hundred cubic feet 748 gallon its is goofy but the water industry uses. For nonresidential well is one flat rate. Track water usage helpful for conversation plans. Multifamily customers have a similar structure theirs per dwelling unit a 4 unit building you get 3ccf in the first times 4 equals 12 per mont at the first tier rate. As i mention thered is in changes to the proposed structure of the water rates however well are key things that come out of the cost of Service Analysis i want to highlight. Unfreed water rates versus small number of customers take water from upstream of the pleasants. Those are going up result figure a higher Cost Allocation to raw water supply driven by the completion of the cal various project that was an expensive project. Second, again due to the reallocation of costs due to customer change and behavior and usage the Single Family Residential Rates are having a slightly higher allocation of cost than before. From 26. 3 to 27 does in the sounds big but when you talk millions that does make a difference. This slide shows the actual proposes fixed Monthly Service charge for water customers. On the left side the table shows the standard charges. The supplies to e anyone who opens an acounts the right fire Service Charges for customers have a private fire Sprinkler System for putting out water on their property. This shows the volume challengers for water customers hard to visualize the numbers later on i have an example bill we can go through. Turning to sewer. Of as with water now sewer charges have an if i canned and volume component. On the fixed side there ask a flat customer charge does not vary. Same for all wastewater customers the charges are more complex. To begin with we dont have data on how much wastewater you discharge what we do is take your meters water and multiply it by a slow factor which estimates the proportion of that water that goes down the drain instead of used for irrigation or cooking or giving to pets. For residential customers we take that wastewater discharge multiployed by a flat dollars per ccf. Nonresidential customers we get more complicated driven by cost principles. A restaurant might discharge more oil and grease than an Office Building that means it costs more to treat sewage from an instruct than from an office when nonresidential opens an account they tell us their business type and base different rates off sampling from different types of customers and whats in their sewage. This shows the propose the chink to the structure. Now im going in this in a baptist detail on the next slide. The big thing here is weer going to break out the storm water portion of our combined sewer system and separate line item on the fwoil reflect the costs of manage collect and treating storm water. The key thing on this slide is this is how customers see it on their bilt 6 charge will remain. Wastewater charge discharging will be the same. But the storm water challenger a new line item. Lets talk more about that. Now. Again. The reason for this change guess become to our combined sewer system. Outside of a portion of downtown sacramento we are the only that is a combines sewer system. 23 of the wastewater costs go to managing the storm water portion of this system. So, that monies that right now 23 of revenue is paying for the storm water portion of the bill. This proposal by itself is not increasing the amount of revenue the puc received. We are changing the way we allocate the cost and how they pay. The goal is to be more fair and become to the cost principles i will give an example. A Big Box Store may have a single bedroom. Right now the way we bill for wastewater is based on water usage and estimated wastewater discharge that is low for them. However, in rain storms that large roof of the box the big parking lot collect treasure and oil and all thing this is we have to collect and street. Right now, we are not charging that customer for that contribution from the storm water run off. This change to enhance the rateings by ensure each customer pays their fair share. Most will see very little change to bills from the rate restructure. We bun bill mates for everyone in the city of San Francisco so see hold be impact period we dont believe that the average residential customer, for example, will be seeing a big change due to storm water itself. However. Some like the Big Box Store or large property ordinance will see a bill increase. We are highly aware of the impact on the customers and tried come up with ways we mitigate the impacts. First of all based on discussions with other utilities we are phasing in the storm water charge over 7 years. That means instead of jumping strit to 23 percent. Ref nows from this portion we will do this 1 in the first. 2 in the next the end of the 3 year rates 10 of our revenues come from storm water charge. This phase in does 2 things gives time to adjust budget and plan. Second gives them time to take action. One later items today will talk about the storm Water Credit Program i will hear more from the staff the idea is customers had install rain guard and pave am and green roof or other infrastructure on their property that captures and storm water instead of discharge telling be eligible for creditos their bill. Increaseers we have several existing and upcoming Grant Programs to help fund the up front Capitol Investment needed to install this green prushth. We are really dedicated to working with custody norse make this new storm water charge help them. To help us. The idea here when you use less water. You save water for the puc and money on bill. When you manage run off from property you save money on your bill and help our agency achieve our management goals. Here is what that charge will electric like for a customer. This structure is based on out roach to the many other utilities who have implemented storm water charges. On the right we have the simple residential charge. This applies to most customersch it is for Residential Properties with 6 or fewer dwelling units. Duplex. All up to a 6 unit and under 6,000 square feet on the assessors property area. These customers charged on a 3 tiered rate based on the total parcel area. On the left side you have what we are labeling here the standard charge this applies to everyone who it is not fall under the crip tear where that large apartments. Mixed use Retail Store Front on the bottom floor and all nonresidential, commercial, municipal buildings vacant lots that are out there. There is so much version in what the customers land areas look like you cant group in tiers like residential we use gis imagery and done an analysis of the lands areas of every property in San Francisco and classify today in either impermeable or permeable. Impermeable roofs, driveways, asphalt things that water hit and rolls off. Rate per thousand square feet of these surfaces is higher than for permeable. Per minute you and you alone is lawns or guardence. A lot think there is in run off from that water soak in. We have seen we get big storms like back in december and january we get saturated and the permeable surfaces have some run off. The low are contribution. The difference with the 2 is based on modeling by Wastewater Team on the actual performance of different Surface Areas in San Francisco and level of Service Design storm. This is alost numbers on this slide it is together showing the proposed month low Service Charges. Waste and the storm water charges for the next 3 fiscal years. You seat storm water honoring appear. And i will reiterate that this addition of a charge is revenue newt roll for the puc if the storm water charges were not there the wastewater charges going up more than they already are. Again of look at tables of numbers it is heard to visualize the impact i like to pause and show impact on an average residential customer. The bar charts show the bill currently under our current rates and the next 3 fiscal years. 136 dollars a month and the end of the 3 years up to 174 a month on average an 8. 3 increase each year. We like to also put this in context. So this slide shows a comparison to many of our peer california utilities. The darker shaded embarrass are San Francisco current rateos the right as well as for next fiscal year on the left this. Is showing the average bill in each. Using the water usage that is average for that utility this it is our best toefrt get an apples to apple comparison when a customer would pay. We are in line with other utility and made this slide sever months ago and there has been news that many fellow u stillities dog their own rate increases not shown here. We know the increases can be challenging. I want to highlight that we have an Affordable Discount Program john will talk about this program as well as out roach in order to make sure that anybody impacted by the rate increases is given the support and resources they need. Before you transition i have a few clarifying questions. Absolutely. You touchod combined sewer systems. I dont see these people in the last slide you had if you have them up. They are not none have a combined sewer system. To clarify for everybody. Can you dissect this more what does it money to have a combined sewer system and why San Francisco has it and nobody else in california. Yea. Absolutely. Right. A combined sewer system captures and collects storm water and wastewater in the same pipes. That means once you flush the toilet we cant sprit that out. Many new are cities are built with a separate set of pipes so they do a lower level of treatment of the storm water run off it it is in the as dirty. San francisco being built in the gold rush many pipes date to the 1850s on the sewer side. That was the only way you did it. There was no treatment pleasants at the time. Plus side of combined system we treat all storm water run off to a higher level than many others do. So when we discharge that to the biand ocean it has gone through more treatment then and there a separate sewer system. We are similar to new york, wash washing. Yes it it is an older way of building. Many east coast. New york, philadelphia would have this. But because most california cities built after people separated point its is not common in california. One other thing on that bill slide. We attempted make apples to apple on the sewer portion we go to each utility or city and see where they were paying for separate sewer systems pay on property taxes some utility. That is included here. A couple of things to make sure im fully understanding it. If a city or service area has a separate sue and storm water system. They need to use less energy and less resources to tree that storm water so the cost of their services is lower . Typically yes. Every utility is unique where they are. And you could have big spikes for a separate system. Of course, age matters, too much but like you dont take it black water and storm water and treat them the same one has a lot more things than. Uhhuh. Jot second thing is, when people pay for the storm water on their property tax, thats totally separate inltd coo of electronic . People pay goes to general funds and the money reallocated yoochlt thats correct. Cities that pifor separate sewer systems via property tax is different approval process. It is paddled through the city to the utility different than when we do here. One other thing is has the whole excuse me. Im talking, thank you. When we go back to cities and that have storm Water Systems set up. Some of those those utilityers newer so they had to go through different process to be able to set them and up have rates . Thats correct. And i guess the left question is how much of this is driven by the extremely [inaudible]. You are experiencing versus when we obviously age matters. You know the cost of service matters. But with the storms this we have the past 1020 years has that an impact on the efficacy of our system and the need for reevaluating how we deal with the system . I thank you is more a question for the infrastructure folks versus finance. But i can say what what is reflected in the rate and Cost Allocation is going become to our capital plan. Think to the discussion around the capitol plan we have big projects around the southeast Treatment Plant and we have investments in prevenning flooding. Those cost in the capital plan are allocated to the storm water costs yoochl thank you very much. Perfect. Okay. Great. Now i will hand it over to john for out reach. If i can get the slides back up. Good afternoon, commissioners. President ajami im john the communication director at puc and im here this afternoon to talk about the public out reach and enengage am campaign. Our approach was really to create an engaging and inclusive and multilingual out roach cam tain pain to educate the public about the need for rate increases. When was changing. And ways for custody norse save money on bills. Now we recognize that a rate increase is going to be difficult for a number of our customers. Money saving options were a central focal point of out reach. Created a web page with the ways for our custody norse save money on bills. That web page includes easy ways to get information and sign up for the programs. Everything from our water wise evaluations. To free toilet replace ams. To grants. To help manage storm water with rain gardens and living roofs. To our Customer Assistance Program for low income. I want to thank this commission for the action you to being in april to strengthen our Assistance Program so now starting july one, dips counts for customers with low income increase if 25 off the bill to 40 off the water and sewer bill and if all of the customers now enrolled in this program and qualify for that greater discount will get that increased discount automatically applied the other principle that we had in this out reach in this rate cycle was to reach as many customers as we could and reach people where they are. So, a couple examples of how we tried to do that. I will take the formal note required under prop 218. We sent the notices not just to property ordinance which is what is required but sent them to all customers whether property ordinance or not. We conducted virtual town hulls to make it easy for people to attend. And we held them different times of day. One in the morning, lunch hour and one in the evening. To make them as convenient as possible for people to attend. We had at the town halls had real time interpretation in chinese, spanish and filipino to make them accessible to the Diverse Communities we serve. A dedicated web page that was i one stop shop about the rate proposal. It can tains everything from the formal notice, to questions, to a bill calculator that allows customers to put in their information and get an estimate know what the proposed changes would money to them. All that information we had translated and up in 8 languages. We did direct presentations to key organizations like the chinese chamber. The bayview merchants association. The well tino task force to name a few. Used all the tools at disposal. From bill insert this is were in 4 languages. To messages that would physically appear on paper bills to the messages on the money count web portal. Something different this we did this time was to mail information about our Customer Assistance Program and our rebate and incentives and discount programs to every customer who submitted a written protest to ensure they had Resources Available to them. We emphasized the Digital Tools this time. So, you know a lot changed in the last 5 years the Digital Marketing front our Campaign Tactics had to change as limp our focus was on informing people about the town halls and then driving them to the dedicated web ping to get the information they needd and have their questions answered. So we did in this a number of ways. First we sent 3 multilingual black e mails went to 78,000 customers. And this extremely high open rates. Between 54 and 65 . To put this in context. E mail open rates vary in government we have a high open rate with the average is 30 . But for these we saw that number either near low doubled or more than doubled. And we create third degree designated web page and it was in the top 5 most viewed pageos the puc website. One point top 4. And that page and subpages have now seen more than 9,000 unique viewers to date. This tells us people got that e mail, opening and going to the website to get the information they were seeking. This time we also launched a robust web and social Media Marketing campaign. This was a way to reach a lot of people where they are. Which is online and different languages and do this affordablely. So, we did in in several ways. We had paid adds on social media. We also put together a short 2 minute video about the rates principle and boosted that social media post. We did the display adds shown when San Francisco resident and by zip code and shown on a whole Cross Section of different websites range from espn to abc 7, to cnn to the bbc. To cbs sports and to univision and cites. And saw good results. On facebook, instagram fronts adds shown to San Francisco residence dents 600,000 times the click rates higher than average showing that messaging was effective. I should note we had 113 unique viewers on just one of the platforms. We had another 52,000 unique viewers on puc facebook adds and 16,000 unique viewers on the rates video. The display adds were shown on different plat forms shown to San Francisco residents more then and there 488,000 times. Had a higher average click through rate as well. And part of this out roach we had a focus on low income imbrandt and bipoc community. Make sure they had the information come information about the promise helpful to them. So our campaign included human translated material in web pages in 8 languages. And this the difference is important we did in the rely on goodlett translate which does in the meet our standards for cultural communications. We put out rates bill inserts to all customers. In 94 languages. We had Spanish Language ads on univision and partner platforms for news, sports and entertainment. Had Spanish Language blast e mill to univisions San Francisco e mail marketing list separate from the ones we did this reaches 80,000 latino resident in San Francisco. We also had chinese language print in ads. Had filipino on radio. And had digital ados k dlx a popular Radio Station with the southeast communities. And i want top note that all of this work was done as a team efforts and involved experts from our finance team, water enterprise. Wastewater and it departments. Our Customer Service and our policy and gentleman affairs team. With that, im happy to answer questions you may have the next speaker is going to be howard ash chair of rate fairness board did not know if you want to transification now or if you have questions. Questions. You have a question. One comment. I did note that your social media stuff was intense. Just even without looking for it there is always when i got on instagram or facebook, cabam, there was good stuff from you guys. I looked for it and found temperature we were trying to reach as many people. We received the paper copy of the reality change and it was an dining room table and still is and both my kids read it and everybody came over and my husband and had a few discussions. I appreciate that. We appreciate the grass roots out reach. We will turn it over to howard ash from rates fairness board good afternoon. I have slides, too. I think they are coming. I will introduce myself howard ash and a civil yen i serve as chair of the rate fairness board and i have been since inception over 20 years ago. We were initiated in the early part of this century. Prop e in 2001. We had some thoughts about the presentation and the rates for water and wastewater. This is our our the members of the board you see that we have 3 City Employees. All very good financial types. Helpful. You see that we have 3 vacancies 2 in the Business Community. We typically had problems filling those seats i asked you if you have contacts or everybody who may want to serve we had a general manager at a big hotel. Someone from restaurant council. Someone from loaned a distributorship and somebody from the brewery. A staff member of a business a representative Large Business and Small Business contact and staff and like to increase and have the visibility of the Business Community on the rate fairness board. A plug for that. This it is from the charter. We were establish in the 2002. Hold hear ands had many and i say over the years i have been in many rate fairness Board Meeting he was precise and good. It is our obligation to provide comments on the staff proposal which is when we are doing today. This slide has evolved over the years this is the shows this they there were multiple rates about the fairness and rate payors and fair to the utility and they dont have money and that fairness among customers. And different and we want rates that encourage conversation and transparent. We try to have the make sure that the staff is balancing these. I say that the role of the rate fairness board is in transparency and open uponness and we provide a forum for the public to see and attends and get in great detail on all of the numbers you show a lot earlier. We are seeing much more of that in our detailed meetings with the staff and aarons staff and so we get into it and provides a Sunshine Forum for the rest of the customers. I like to he this slide who may not have the perspective i have and there are folks i did not present to in the past. A snapshot 20 years ago and today with the puc commission. There was financial shananagans going on that spurred the proposition we developd and establishes my board. The Financial Arrangements within the utilities not codifies. Individual ratings for the utilities. 20 years ago an arm of the general fund and it it is much more transparent and we think better for the customers can all involved. So. Where do we stand on the press the staff proposal . We note that we they got 3 year rate in other time theys have gone 4 or 5 year its is fine gwen we there is some uncertainty on the economics side. But this it is all related the capitol plan driving needs for revenues for the organizations. The water side. Maintaining existing tiers is fine. But the very predict okay rate increase and low 5 per year and follows the costs and mentioned most low due to the capital we preponder to friend. We note for the tiers there is in the difference with combon 2 it is not that great for conversation but it is a the cost of service. This is the trade offs that goos when you do rate making looked at the multicolored chart. A lot of different interests and a lot of different factors to fare rate and have to make trade offs it happens we have some conversation on the costs dont let us have a strong conversation. Thats one of the choices we make. When we get to the wastewater side. They are predictable than relate to the ss ip but a greater increase because of greater capitol requirement for that. The changes allocations are mall. In the third we mentioned the this funds balance i say that the Financial Professionals who are the City Employees are focussed on this and well is a level of revenue that the wastewater needs to meet the cover nance and the requirements of the bond. And the staff can go in more about that. That the the high rate. Were what more above balance on from the front years and close in the out years this is a trade off between rates stability and predictable rate increase and not one percent one and 20 the next. I of course it is over all will we believe the proout weigh the const. One of the factors if it is erin mentioned the big box. They are creating storm water but not paying for it. It is a way to another element of fairness that you that is the will ultimate primary focus on why it was developed. To spread the cost on the customers causing the cost. And there are mall impacts of customers you upon can meter this it is a thing that you know not everybody wins. But over all believes the proo out weigh the const. Finally there is the issue of fire service the rate fairness board this is near my heart i pay this every time. I have gone through multiple condition sulants they have a different way of figuring out the costs for maintaining the water. I will mention today this morning we had the back flow test. We fwt a b plus. Anyway the rates have come down in 20 years. It would be nice if the staff focusod one method. And you will hear about the you will hear in a bit about power costs for the properties in to the mow a big rate increase this is real propertiful put in money. You know make it so they dont spend as much. With this i will answer, finally, we are am a thank you staff was good they always answered question and followed up with Public Comment when it was there. The rate fairness board we have 3 City Employees from Different Department head and do this in a regular job and have been good and helpful and we [inaudible] studies for us. With this i will conclude and happy to answer questions you have. Mr. Ash, thank you from 3 public volunteer public servances appreciate the time and energy. Colleagues any questions. I appreciated your comment on the tiered pricing. It is i balance of access, affordable and other things and i think this is where that fell on. Tell be good to have this conversation and also the rate stability and affordability sort of equation is always so many utilities out there i work in this industry and they go year and year not really attending to the need for raising the rate and than i raise them 30 . Which is in the a very good financial practice for sure. Your comment on methodology used. I appreciate that. And also wonder and i think staff can address this issue. Is this changing the understanding of the rate and needs evolve or changing different consultants provide Different Services that is the difference you are talk about this fire service. It is they are not much difference until the there was a big drop the first time we did it. It was about 65 dollars a mont and town to 40. I dont think it was study before 2,000. But in the inter~im it is stable but guess down a few months i think that it is how each has a different method. Will steams like one way to do t. Is a mall part of the bill. For context i am in a 3 unit building and the fire service is 34 dollars a mont. Water and sewer from 120 to 180 depenning on who takes vacation e. Not this much thank you. 95 appreciate that. If there are no more questions. Do you colleagues to you have questions. Thank you. And i appreciate this. Can i can ask you another question, you talk the higher peek residential users. And that was quite interesting can you explain what do we have numbers. Im assuming not one to one. A lot of people work in the commercial sector here. They live outside of San Francisco. I wonder how this fairs now . Im not able to remember president numbers off the top of my head in general what we have automated meters we are able to get hourly usage for every hour every year. We look at prepandemic numbers and all residential custody commerce peek in a month or day. Overall usage is down. Butt pokiness has in the changed much. With residential usage is up temperature is more peeky. We are seeing more throughout the summer time especially. And all that destale in the rate study report when we saw the changes. Okay. And then on the does this impact which one wastewater plants is the change of the flows. Over time as well . There is not as much an impact of the peek on our costs for wastewater again going back to the combined sewer system they are built for rain evens that is more than any everyone flushing at once situation. Got it. Thank you very much. Mr. Stacy. Thank you. I think id like to hear public ment before i make a lot of comments as a preliminary matter i want to say thank you for the clarity of your presentation this is complicated. Processing of numbers and understanding use of the water and thanks to the rate fairness board this is hard work and i appreciate the work the rate fairness board puts in. I attends aid virtual town hall and saw the intel yens of the conversation and the amount of happening information staff provides the simultaneous translation was a positive part of that meet and impressed with the number of questions and amount of information staff shared. And i also saw lots of adds thank you for this strong out reach. I read all of the protest letters and there were some recuring. And i also really appreciated the amount of work that went into the study that under lay the rate changes. Complicated but collaborative. Between puv staff and policy. Decisions and the consultants. And i really appreciate how you boil today down for us tuesday. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner paulson. I want to thank those had made the presentation. We have been there has been lots of discussion about this this it is day one we the analysis and the talk and the ting up today and just to run through all that data and delay it out there in one presentation was helpful and summarized all the work that you acknowledged that you have done and your team has done. I want to thank you and i also as commissioner just mentioned. I saw the the amount of laters letters of protest and i have few more after Public Comment. Thank you for the presentation and howard for the summary and the 20 years of when you have been looking at and had was like when you started. American stacy. I forgot i had a question. In the number of the protest letters people were still complaining about the drought surcharge and some predated our action a few weeks ago. I wondered whether there had been public notification the commission rescind third degree draught surcharge . Yes. There was, commissioner stacy. We put out a press relets around that and on which is upon our website as well. It is included in information on our website. About the rates proposal. And then we provided this information. When we received inquiries had a dedicated rates e mail if folks raised questions about the drought surcharge we were very quick to note this had been rescinded. Thank you. Why certainly. Thank you. I guess we are ready for Public Comment. Call Public Comment on item 6. Please. Member of the public had wish to make remote comment call 4155540001, access code 2591 574 6761. I did not receive one piece of paper about rates i fund out about this hearing 2 days ago. I speak as an example what is happening. I dealt with 47 nationalities [inaudible]. I did not hear one word about this. I have a problem concerning the, the out flow flood that happened in january. When all the way 7 blocks and our retailers had damage as well. We need to have a comprehensive study on how we are going to mitigate this issue. This statute second flood in 15 months the first the small are one this one over sing neighbors exit know about 6 or 7 merchantses flooded. In corporate. Some small. Mall ones they are holding on tooth and nail because of covid. We mead to take better consideration and huwe approach them. I think that he should look at this increase before we vote on it. Because i than 2 other neighborhood groups across town one on the east side and more in the west had the floods. I dont think my merchants should have increases at this time. We have an sfmta had taken our parking thank you. Jennifer . Steve . Yes. You are up. Im steve murray i own a landry mat on mission this is the nil in the coffin i know you are away how many laundries have close in the the left 20 years the people you proport to want to help the most other low income residents this use the landry. It it is a shame. I dont know when to say. The hits come with you, pg and e and im the middle man i get stuck serving the community. I dont have to have it i could have put a jamba juice i did a laundry mat when i did a seismic up grid in 2006. The female come in i never made the money i could off that space. Since i own building i tried to dot neighborhood right. Keep it up. Clean, lit, safe and it it is part of the communities. The people are my friends this is is ridiculous. I 30 increase. And then you know smoke and mirror. Going from the storm water. You say it is for big box not a lot here in San Francisco. Mostly residents. This is who isum. Who will may for it. The same people that are using that laundry mat, the residents in the buildings. As far as your out reach. And fancy presentation and how you came up with numbers that is good and expensive. But the out reach you had have done is on the voters ballot. Not on facebook. Thank you. Roberto . Patrick in im pat denchel. I have been live nothing San Francisco my whole life. Up on Mount Davidson. And im a Civil Engineer with 40 years experience. I work in the under ground construction and technical engineer. I ran numbers last night. I republican a few back when you sent your brochure to compare with the other counties. Looks like we are proposing increase of 10. 2 a year based on the next 3 years almost 30 . This comparris with looks like mayorin county proposing 12 a year. East bay 7. 7 a year. Here is the i didnt have. Goes back to what user you are. I live by moiz in a big house on Mount Davidson turned out this way. I am using 1. 8 units per month. According to the website records, the average san franciscans residents is using 5 opinion 46 units per month. I republican numbers as youing this 5. 46 number. In my case 1. 8 units per month based on last year and this year, my rates will go you have 16 a year. Because of the new lump sum items you have on the bill. And thats a 48 increase for me 3 years from now that does not seem fair. Also, thank you, patrick. Yes. Thank you. Don. And we will have mark, trace and ted. Im donald a partner in a law firm. My professional opinion that the proposed rates are over charges that exceed what is permitted boy prop 218 and now part of the california constitution. Unfortunately, this proposition 218 hearing is in the an adequate hearing. It lacks machinery for submission sxeflgdz resolution of complaints by parties. The primary procedural rem doe boy this hearing is this if the majority of all the california, San Francisco rate payors 100,000, the majorities of them objected only the rate increase rejected. Puc rate payors are vitaled a pair hearing whether the proposed rates are over charge this is is in the such a hearing. Thank you. Mark . Tracie. Hi. Thank you for hearing me out. The out reach part that someone mentioned before included an error on the first mailing. And it did not have information on it. As well. So whether this was discarded or not. There was not an adequate information on the first mailing out of this planned rate increase. And so for howard ash to say that the puc has in the had steady rate increases they have had steady rate increases since 2016. The rate increases have gone over 3 or 5 or 8. 3 . Here i heard 3 increase per year. A. Ly and 5 increase. Okay this does in the include the storm water charge. Are we having a separate Public Comment about the storm water charge. I will save that. We will have one more on waste and storm water. In addition i was out in the sunset and we get a different proportion of groundwater from the rest of the city. Okay. We get 80 at my house. 80 percent groundwater and 20 hetch hetchy it is rest of the city gets Higher Quality water. I didnt drink the water that puc supplies out in my house but yet according to the rate next my rates will go up. And i dont think this is fair and i of course that lawyer who this is inadequate hear and does in the address all our concerns. Mr. Herrera. Could you clarify i know we pushed our hearing because of that earlier mailing that had to be corrected . Am i correct . Thats correct. Can you state that one more time to make sure. That mailing went out an error. It had to redo it. We had to push our hearing out 2 sessions. One session for 2 weeks to make sure everybody had adequate time. Yes we know this happened but we actually made sure brandnew mailings have gone out and hearings set and the proper information provide to public. Thank you for bringing that up that was important. It was sent out. I wonder like these are all mailed . So out. We all i received it. So motive not have been a puc problem they have not arrived at Peoples Properties might have been mailing issue. I want to make sure we clarify that. Because obviously, we sends you a bill. We have your address all that gets sent out by account addresses we have. Correct . Yes. All proper procedures were followed and it was mailed on the second notice. Go ahead, please. Im ted. Long time San Francisco residents the rate this that the increases are proposed are going by 2033 nile 250 dollar bill a mont will be over 450 dollars. I want to know what is plan in the future. To make future water and sewer rates affordable. Have you talked about a habitation tax . That is the knowing when my home gets rainod. Why should i be charged if it rains on mr. Herreras house but not mineful how are you going to charge for something you cant meter . I want to know what the puc is doing to submeter renter aarey apartments and condo units water consumption and pre2018 buildings 75 of the city Housing Units never see a water bill. I want to know how much the city and county of San Francisco is going to pay for the rain run off on their streets and buildings. Parks and schools and the like. How about the airport . And shark park and other San Francisco loeshgzs like hemp hemp competence moccasin and trace sne i want to know if another year like 2022 happens where we only received 50 of our annual rainfall will that result in a 50 reduction to rate payors as a result of rainfall charge that you are proposing . And lastly. I find it hard for San Francisco to be negative about the red faith. When you run an election thank you, sir. Do we have others present who want top ment on item 6 . Hi. There. Im upon dean. I represent condo in 1822, 23rd street potrero hill. Im going to echo that comment most people in the building dont get water bill and dont care. I will have to jack their rents they are not here to speak so im a middle man. But in any case i would say because i used to be the account actant of the hoa in 2014 the median usage was 729. 2 for 8 units now 1337. To to dollars per month. Based on had i see here is that the Wastewater Rate increases will keep going up sick until 2032. And the wastewater is the bulk of where the rises raises or whatever, are coming from. So. I dont know im going to pass this on to a tenant. So in any case. Rate payors bore brunt of rate increases you see from 2047 to the projected principle we will have basically almost 100 increase. The wastewater is projected in 6 to 20 tloochl other costs are rising pg and e, even with their increases this year they are still lower than puc. It is 35 . Unless [inaudible]. Thank you. Any other speakers present . Do we have callers with hands raiseed speak on item 6 . There are 5 callers. Caller have you 2 minutes. Good afternoon, commissioners im molly fulton speaking on behalf of sierra club california. Live and pay rent in utilities in the San Francisco bay area im speak about this rate increase november of 21 when the puc adopted a water shortage emergency there was water in storage to last 4 and a half years the following april a surcharge on rate payors. Instead of raising rates and passing to rate payors trying to make ends meat, puc should cut costs in other ways including dropping the lawsuit against the bay delta planful reducing drought by a year and finance sales projections to reduce the amount of investment in alternative Water Supplies. Not be needed. There are other ways and actions the puc can take to reduce cost and save money that dont include rate payors by rates will have an impact on low income and minority communities. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please, 2 minutes. Commissioners, first and foremost have you a long presentation. And it is so convoluted and muddy. You muddy the waters you have something to hide. So let me tell you in the 2 measly minutes you give us, qualified out reach. You have not done that. Secondly, there is no out roach to save the ordinance of laundry and some businesses so you have not got that input. You had the presenter saying all the rosy stuff so they want to i dont know whether they serve you right or what . But we are listen to it is very convoluted. And this is a very bad reflection on this commission. During the pandemic. Certain things help they are not mentioned. We can talk about when you give us the Second Opportunity to talk about the costs and some companies. This have listed millions of dollars. If you tree the constituent and citizens of San Francisco like this, it will be a very bad reflectionow. Very, very bad reflection on you. Especially during this pandemic. A lot of this people are suffering. Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing your comments. Next speaker, please. Peter drubbingmeyer. A lot of the rate increases go become a long time. You have been celebrating the anniversary of hetch hetchy with well built system and the puc coasted for decades. Was not until the 70s when wholesale customers sued they were being charged more then and there retail payors and the money was not going to maintenance. Started to change and boska came and pushed for the water system improve am program to create seismic up grids. Price of water tripled since then. Project this is should have been started many years before. Now the sewer system program. Those were thing us inherited. But you will leave a legacy yourself. I think you are about to make a huge mistake in july and staff produce the water supply plan and inflated the demand projections and water need projections. I have been warning but this for a long time. I never been wrong i cant be wrong or you will point to it and rowel out everything i say. We caught staff cooking the books on socioeconomic projections and urban water plans and rationing projections and here we are warning you that you mode it take a look at the water supply deficit before investing in unnecessary supply and i get ignored like with the clierment change mraun did not look at return periods or current dma understand. This it is an opportunity to avoid a mistake. I hope you will do that. Thank you. Thank you. Next caller. Thank you. Thank you for your service. [reading fast] there are no caller in the queue. Thank you. Public comment on item 6 is closed. Thank you can we have Public Comment on item 7 . Yes. Thank you. Members when wish to make 2 minutes of remote comment on item 7 the 3 year schedule of rates for Sewer Service press star 3 to speak. Speakers will hear a chime had there are 30 seconds and another chime when 2 minutes expired. First we will are patricia. Jennifer, steven. We i am very much emagainst this. The reason why is you have not included the reper ses for all the floods that happened in yen and the studies. Number 2, all over this city we have seniors as well as this machines apartment complex. We are chasing out the people on ssi. We are chasing out the middle and lower income attentives with the rate increases. This is very sad time for all of us. Im upset also about the fact a few years ago you sold some of our water to outside cities. And mark for identification us are getting recycled water instead of our hetch hetchy water. I have to use bottled water all the time including washing ditious i have an autoimmune disease you gotta do a better job i know you inherited a mess and i than a lot of things that happen the people are doing a good job trying to study but we gotta do it better. Otherwise the city will die. And i really love the people who live in the city. I love the diversity. And im going become to the marina cal hallow they think we are rich but we are 45 of the people own homes are retired military on ssi. Than i cant afford this. Thank you. Jennifer, steve and roberto. Hi. Im jennifer. Im a resident, homeowner and mom in the marina our neighborhood had 2 sewage floods the last 15 months. This is created a life and safety issue for my family and community. My children cannot use our yard. We have sewage from the San Francisco pipes in my backyard. I disagree to increase sewage rates how can we talk about increasing rate and not identify solutions for a major sewer issue caused health and safety issues for the community. Closing an out fall. There is no out reach. I tried to reach you guys im happy im looking at all of you. You hear my voice crackling it has been hard it was scare. The first flood she was 3 months i called 911 and hard to dpet them out they upon couldnted believe there were 3 feet and my husband was not home the last on december therein. My father on the floor making sure sewage did not come in the house. I tried reach you my supervisor, aid said 100 year flood and puc will not get back to you. And i am glad im here we have an issue there. Life and safety issue. 911 was called. Rescued a woman out of her car. Im asking you to look at this. You dont have a hundred year flood every 15 minutes i need a plan to if i can the pier street out fall before you approve a rate next how do we know we will have enough budget to fix this. Now im told there is a you want to close at fortmason and my aids office said they will double down. Im scared for my family and glad you guys can hear this. Thanks for your time. Thank you for coming. I appreciate it. Steve. And roberto and patrick. Steve again. I i guess you will talk about the water that is falling on the officer now that im i said i own a laundry mat and that will go up 30 i ken do this i cant pass it on to these people looking at them. This rainfall are falloth officer are the attentives upstairs than i will pifor temperature thats who the land lord in thes city will pass this on to. Im a larnd lord i stay below market rents. I did in the dot seismic upgrade. The fire alarm the mandates the city come up i did not pass that through. I have a lady upstairs im not throwing her on the street i could if i wanted he has not paid since the pandemic started. The city is dying im a liberal Democrat Union member my life you fwies are kick the back when it is down after the pandemic. Rampant inflation we all suffered. It is like lets get in with the concrete. Eggs and groceries and gas. Everybody is getting their dig and here is the Water Company . Come on. Put it on a ballot. Out reach that is great but what did we get a dozen people, 5 on the phone. Thats not out reach. Out reach is ballot box. Put it to a vote. Is roberto here . Patrick . Mark. Patrick here again. On the wastewater issue. Im going to speak of the run off charges. I dont understand why after all the years it has not been taken oust property tax. I look at my property tax. It is good i owned the house since 85. And im paying fortyfour of my tax based on the land value about 2200 a year for me. My neighbors assessed values five and 10 times mine are paying 10 to 15 thousand dollars a year for land tax. I dont see why that money is not enough to cover the run off, which has been covered for the 64 years i lived here. And i just dont think this is a fair charge. It looks like tell go up significant low. Based on my 4,000 square foot lot. Thank you for putting the nice parcel maps on the internet i enjoyed downloading them from 46. 60 and present. Maps to figure out the house compared to the land expect do your q cua calculations. Thank you. Thank you. Mark, tracie, ted. No mark. Tracie . My comment is about the storm water run off charge. Our taxes property taxes do pay the puc received this money through bonds. And you in we will be billed in twice for the storm water run off charge through property taxes and now a separate line item on the bill. The puc gets monfrethe city for property tax x. Now we will be billed if there is no storm for the next 3 years and should be grateful because it is in smaller years. What happens when there is no storm. Before was mentioned this we need to compare apples wapels. With other cross the nation other states have storm run off water charge. But you failed to mention this water is included in peoples property tax bill, too. It is irrelevant not apples with apples we are trying to accomplish here example across the country. Who do you suppose we have a charge they live in areas that have rain and we dont have regular rain we live in a dry climate and you know we have a drought surcharges. So we are a state who experiences drought and this is not normal. Now we will pay a storm water charge among low on our water bill i asked you not approve the storm water charge which is greater than the tien mentioned by the people who have put up the slides. Thank you. Ted . Anyone present to comment on item 7 . Mr. Moderator. Hold on one more. So i e louded to the wastewater on item 6 on my that adopt exclude projected water water rate increases from fiscal 2024fiscalening 2032 will be 5. 2 a year that is the bulk of the bills the new storm water charges add to the fixed cost per mont, we added a sewer about like 5 dollars mermont in 2018 year. Rate change. Projections say 6 charges with the water, sewer and storm water will be 35 a year for my condo. I dont know how others will fair. I have a sick,000 square foot blgdz. I have permeable land but others i dont know what represents big box. I have seen 3 representatives and 2 of them from small and Large Businesses are not present on the rate fairness board. I dont know how fair rate board is. I cant comment im not a business owner. Anybody elsement to take a shot. Anymore members . Present to provide comment on item 7 . Those who want to make remote Public Comment press star 3. If you want to poke to item 7. Do we have callers . There are 2 callers. You have 2 minutes. Hello . Hi. Are you peek with mow . Yes, your line is open. Good afternoon. Can you hear me. Yes. Thank you. Im david hooper calling on behalf of solutions. Not sand bags. I appreciate the fact that finally the puc realized obligation to deal with the sewer flooding on the exchange and throughout the Mission District and it is addressing the issue at 15th. However, i would like to say that the big problem is the cost of the sewer storm sewer surcharge. And this is because is this could have been less if the puc dress third degree this in the past. 2004 the first major flooding since then it spread throughout the city. Now dealing with liability issues this will eat up everybody in the city. One way or the other. We are in the talked about that. I hope you acknowledge that if this issue had been dealt with under previous leadership. It is would have been less expensive instruction costs have increased so precipitously. I would have to say that you need to address the issues quickly and quit kick the can down the road. Thank you. Commissioners 2 additional callers joined. Your line is open you k have 2 minutes. I want to bring to your attention, commissioners, the first name and the out falls. You hear me but dont pay takening. I want to Needs Assessment on the fourth main runs here empty. [inaudible]. If you have an earthquake and entire area will be flood with sewage. This problem started in the year 2002. Now, when we come to the Treatment Plant. And all the millions and millions and millions of dollars that that has and wasted. You know it. And youll cant do anything about it. And then you have your staff. Trying to talk about facebook. And that time connection with the community. This does not work. Had works is the businesses. You have over 71 homes vacant in San Francisco. We have over 40 million square feet of merchant space vacant in San Francisco. Your staff has not mentioned a word about the financial district that was everything was closed during the pandemic. So you keep on trying you are hood winking us. Stop hood winking us. Businesses like a laundry mat. Forguest about, thank you. The purand cells sells it to wwe. A southeast pleasant at a mark up how does puc mark up processes to sell to electricity. Power earnprize cant do anything straight they are [inaudible] substation and such a disaster pg and e refused to allow them until i if i can the ground. And you are limited because it was extensive and buzz we cant get anybody to run at this times pc policies made it impossible to get people to run something. We have a [inaudible] [inaudible] cant run more than a couple weeks a year. Ef and [inaudible]. The [inaudible] instuld and abandoned in accomplice. Of a history, there is no excuse for raising the rates. If anybody doubtses it is Public Record and can be looked up. Thank you. Next caller, you have 2 minutes. Thank you. Peter drubbingmy are Tuolumne River trust. Of the first deferred maintenance of the sewer system. Water should be [inaudible] begun long ago. What i are seen the puc put amount of time and energy in to fight with water board over needed regulations to improve the ecosystem of the tuolumne and the bay delta. You dont need bay delta plan we have shown you we meet the flow requirement without the risk of running out of water. Had 7 workshops. It was clear. Nothing happened. I encourage you get your priors straight. All this energy in fighting state water board and infrastructure falling apart in San Francisco. Thank you. There are no more callers in the queue thank you. Public ment on item 7 is closed. Thank you. I irrelevant appreciate everybody here had made comments. Couple of clarifying points. And i think may be we can have a staff member come up and clarify. There is no such thing Double Charging the wastewater the storm water on the tax bill and on the. All the staff is doing is separating the existing Wastewater Rate in 2 portions. One that is wastewater of the other that is addressing storm water. To make it more fir for people who dont necessary low have contribute that much to the storm water that is happening. And which i would like for to you clir foil a bit. One quick second, i irrelevant appreciate you being here. I have had 2 kids they are more grown. Where we appreciate that one thing, unfortunately when we are dealing with is Climate Change. We are hundred year floods all happening. So we are not going to have a back and forth that is not the process. I want to make sure i clarify this for you because we really are dealing in within uncertainty this we are not dealt with before can we improve our processes. Absolutely we can. However, there is no guarantee. Upon we are not going to have the major storm everyones helping next year because that is the reality. We are having draughts and floods we never had. Want to clarify that. Remember. Thank you. Can i ask to you thank you so much. Could you clarify . So. Property tax. S. The puc does in the receive monfreproperty taxes or the San Francisco general fund. Our water and sewer rates fund all of our ecpend tours capital and operating. This storm water portion of the bill show up on our u stillity bill is different than other cities where they have a separate sewer system and could collect that on their property taxes we would not Double Charging by doing this the left thing our wastewater charges do already pay for the entirety of the combined sewer system including the storm water portion. Yes now you are trying to have a line. Rather than all in one. Now it is collected in a line item. We will break that out in a way that change alone is revenue neutral. Wastewater portion will be the storm water goes up. So commissioner paulson. So, i want to thank everybody from the public and showed up and on not to have having to do with the wonderful out roach. People have not been coming to peek and meetings and so, does not merit what the issue is the fact you came out and it is important to us as commissioners to hear you. But to put this in perspective whether or not you are talking about you know things that happen. And lots of things happen. Mull pull departments were involve when Marina Boulevard when everything went crazy. Not just the puc every department was out. 17th and folsom is being worked on. There is just whether it it is Climate Change or urban planning if a million years ago this it is what the puc is put together to deal with. And im very proud to be a commissioner here in San Francisco as opposed other places. In other areas because we do invest in our infrastructure. Water is free in california. What cost system to deliver and maintain it thats where the costs in from. We are not like other area the in the country not in jackson, mississippi where people years cannot in their tone open a water facet and in the have point come out this is not San Francisco or hat puc and when the stele is b. We are not flint michigan an industrial city. Where they have just let people have rotten water. And let the infrastructure fall apart that is had is happening now. I have taken with my fellow commissioners tours throughout the entire water system and the sewage system. Outside my house i have a contractor that has been put nothing seismic water line and replacing suers. I happened to be in my town in my city on my street and they have been it mucking up the streets and music to my ears they are if i canning everything. That is what San Francisco is about weir not flint, michigan. And it is a lot of work and it costs moncompetence voters have approved the ability to get bonds. Did it in 1914. When after the earthquake. Controversial then the same way now. But it is this is what San Francisco does makes things work. We are willing to taxpayers are willing to spends this moncompetence put it together. Is everything perfect. Of course it is in the. With water thats when we stand for and that the when the costs are. And that is thats value i think that this commissioner appreciates and is willing to take care of the will of the voters in San Francisco. The resident and businesses that are willing to despite the craziness this helps to take care of business in utilities. Thank you. Why thank you. Commissioner stacy. This is a difficult and complicated decision. It is something the commission dealts with throughout the year when we look at capital projects, maintenance and prescriptions. We hear about the emergencies. So what we have to do is balance how to responsibly maintain up grid xupt our system and thats an on going process and cost. And there are problems throughout the city. But i think this the puc ws to address those. Like the situation in the marina like other parts of the city we gotta keep upgrading and updates our system. And main and that is reflect in the when the puc has to include in its rate charges. A lot of the protest letter and people here today talked about affordability. And we recognize this san frap is an expensive accomplice to live. We have been losing residence dens to costs. And i think this the Customer Assistance Program that staff worked heard to put in accomplice will help our customers as much as we can and sort of an on going way and probably increpal. Is it enough. Prebl not. I dont think that mr. Coyote men you can clarify for this. I dont think we have a program that would help Small Businesses like the lawnedary mat. Thank you. There may be other city departments. I appreciate you wait commissioners are speak. Go ahead. I heard your concern loud and clear and who your customers and clients are. There may be other city programs to help Small Businesses especially like yours i wonder whether the puc Customer Assistance Program will extend to a Small Business. The Customer Assistance Program is for residential customers. However we have other programs including a program for rebates on commercial equipment like washing minutes that a business like a laundry mat could take advantage of. One of the other recurring issues this came up in the protest letters was irrelevant that may be the system does not encourage conversation. And i think that the rates proposed by staff do achieve a good balanceful we have alost fixed costs in our system. So we have fixed costs for water and wastewater and a cost that is based on the volume and a volume assessment. I think that it seems hour storm water fee will be based on hard surfists versus absorption systems. So. I think this there are elements within the rate structure that encourage conversation. It is a tough balance. It is a tough decision buoy respect the work that staff put in to it. Work our inspect consultants put in and the rate fairness board have thought about is tht best way of paying for really necessary costs. And also being aware of the burden on rate payors and the independent stud locked out 10 years but asked today it approve 3 years out it gives us a chance to monitor and reassess and respond to changing conditions. One left comment on the letters. I read supervisor safais letter this morning. About his concern about the departments rec p and sfmta having to pay for their water it is a complicated issue and calculation. At the heart it seems liege the right decision that the d. S pay for their water use. If the departments are not paying it concerns me that falls back on the puc and then on to the rate payors. So at least in a conceptual level it makes sense the departments are paying for water use. But i than the details are complicated with and among the departments. I think those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you. I guess i close this discussion and we can have more back and forth, obviously. Point out a few things that are important as you heard. One is every Water Utility across the country and in california dealing with specific challenges. Make sure we dont have deferred maintenance i appreciate commissioner paulon mentioning flint, michigan and yacks, mississippi both those cities this a lot of mince they had to make last minute not wise decisions to switch water supply sources or things they should not have done that impacted rate payors, there is a tough balance to make sure we have the right rates and maintain the system not high evaluate quality. Water come out of the tap as clean as any water cloner than water you can find. I want to clarify you mentioned recycled water we no recycled water come out of your tap at this point in time there are no regulations even not a single regulation passed in california or the nation that allows for utilities to put tree the recycled water and put it in peoples pipes. There are other ways they put it under ground and tree it and leave it there is no recycled water coming out of taps. And pitcher anything that come out of your tap motes highest standards. And we test the system hundreds and hundreds of times a year. Want to make sure you know. So this is one thing that you need ton. The bottled water is not the whole discussion with we will not have it here. I want to let you know the bottled water is snore as revving lit exclude clone as the water that come out of your tap just to realize. And the calculation we right now in San Francisco paying 1. 3 cents per gallon that is provideed us. Just for to you put it in perspective. The gallon of water. This is as affordable as it can be. We rescue noise there are people who cant afford this thats why we have prospects we tried to make sure to help people to install better if i can urs and improust efficiency of the buildings and homes. And this is something we have tried to work on and still suggestions you have we can improve our services we are always here to listen. Always. We really do appreciate you engage and coming and talking to us we are always listening. I know the 3 of us and the commissioners not here all 5 of us are interested in Public Engagement and understanding occurrence and trying to help inspect anyway we can. That list i was trying to say aging infrastructure and Climate Change. Flood and draughts are really, really reeking havoc in Water Systems and wastewater system across the nation. Across california. Every utility is dealing with this the third one is affordability and access. Very important issue. First environmental. Regulation. This are we are realizing we have to take care of our environment. Those are impacting the aim the cost of service we provide and how we take care of our eco Social Security and watersheds. Those are adding up and making us more sensitive to different things. But again this it is something this we have tried heard to hit a right balance with in the expensive but being affordable and also making sure we maintain the system. And that is the key here x. You know could we improve process . Absolutely. Well is a process and we have tried to make sure we do our best to engage the community as much as we can. We can always do better. Nobody is perfect no institution is perfect. I think on a closing segment, i want to go back to a thing that an american stacy mentioned about supervisor safais letter. I think it it is important to make sure we take conversation and efficiency and also take that message to our city governments to make sure they are also treating the water they receive in their utmost thoughtfulness they can and mindsfulness they comprehend that is something we want to make sure happens and you know ultimately important the rate payers are not going to take that burden. And with this. I think this is all my comments if there are other comments . Questions . No. Can we have a roll call on this item. A motion. Sorry motion and second. Item 6. Must have to approve the 3 year schedule of rates for Retail Water Service. Item 6. Yes. Second. Can you say it again. Second that motion. Thank you. Roll call, please. President ajami sorry. Why im sorry. Yes. Sorry. All the papers i have. I have to read the statement before we move there tochlt make sure we dot process properly. Regard tologist item 6 and 7 the commission holing the public hearing on the proposal to adopt water and sewer rates for fiscal 2022026. With article 13d section 6 of the california institution. Also knownace prop 218. Consider all protest and provide the Commission Shall not impose if written protests are affecting Property Owners. Written notice of the rates and the date, time and location of the hearing. The written notice advise property ordinance of right to protest the rate and instruct third degree any written protest mail to the Commission Secretary or handled delivered to todays hear to be counted the notice instructd that any written protests must, state that the Property Owner or customer in it opposition to the rate increases. Provide the location of the affected property boy assessor parcel number, address and Customer Account and name and signature of the person mitting the protest. Notice stated that oral comments, thank you. The oral comments at the public hearing would not quality foil as a formal protest unless accompanied by a written protest the puc welcome all inpew during the public hearing the commission received 351 written prosecute tests by mail and 4 written protested hundred delivered to the secretary todays hear the puc has 177, 564,000 property ordinance or customers with water or wastewater accounts the total number of written protests receives does in the amount to the majority of the affected property ordinance or customers. Having counted and considered all protests against the rate with prop 218 the commission may act to adopt the proposed rates. Thank you. Do we mead to dot motion and second again. Can i have a motion and second on item 6ch move to approve the 3 year schedule of rates for Retail Water Service. Second that motion. Roll call. President ajami. Aye. Commissioner paulson. Aye. Commissioner stacy. Aye. Item passes. Can we have a motion and second on item 7 . Move to adopt the 3 year schedule of rates for Sewer Service. Second this motion. Can i have a roll call. Item 7 president ajami. Aye. Commissioner paulson. Aye commissioner stacy. Aye. Item passes. Could you read the next item. Next is item 8 authorize staff to adjust the storm water charge portion of the sewer bill with proposed rule and regulations and public hear to consider and action to adopt rules for storm water credit perform requirements sharter section 104 july one of 23. This institutes action for the purposes of the california equality act ceqa, pursuant to the code section 31. 0 for you heart attack. Planning determined this is exempt from ceqa. Good afternoon im walis a watershed planner in the urban planning dii having of wastewater. Todayil introduce the storm Water Credit Program to is up element the storm water charge. May i have the slides . So. Today i will start with an over view of the storm Water Credit Program. Recap the charge rate structures and introduce the proposed Credit Program rowel and requirements and next steps. Part of the development of the storm water charge staff developed the follow to guide the development of a Credit Program. Firstly the program will provide a way for customers to reduce storm water charges managing storm water on property. Way that they manage this is keeping the water out of sewer system using Green Infrastructure technologies include rain gardens, harvest systems and per minute you and you alone pavement. Simultaneous be impacted by the charge more than other and so this Credit Program will mitt fwit that bill impact. Next the Credit Program aline rates with cost of service for managing storm water. Will account for the benefit the Green Infrastructure provides and incent sunrise customers to help the sewer system by collecting that water using Green Infrastructure and the Credit Program ensurety credit amount and level of effort to receive a credit is present to the scale of the project and the customer are tag that includes developing a credit that it is more simple prop for residential customers. As you heard from erin the now sewer rate will have 2 separate charges. The new storm water rate will vary depending on custodied mertypeful mixed use and large residential parcels billed urged the standard based on the measured river of permeable services on the property. A tiered flat rate structure determined by the parcel size. Design of the Credit Program will mirror the 2 rate structures. For standard charge customers the storm water credit will follow the same as the standard storm water rate. The standard charge based on measured areas the credit would reflect this and calculated on the area of a property draining to the Green Infrastructure on property. Way it works is by capturing storm water from a drainage area. There were different rates and so that credit would be equal at this time same rate as those challengers for standard customers. There will be a mack credit for standard customers that would be 90 off of the storm water portion to accounts for if i canned costs for managing storm water and acknowledge the performance of Green Infrastructure during large are storm events. This is an example what this might look like on an amongly standard charge customer bill this is an example of grant projects at bets Carmichael Middle School the credit here is applied to the storm water portion of the bill are shown in the dark blue embarrass. This collected storm water from 2 thirds of the impermeable area. They are in blue. That credit is the projects drainage area the remaining yaroslavsky billed under the standard rate. And sum row greater area of the property that drains the learning other credit would be. And this is a look at the same storm water credit the challenger is phased in the next 3 years the storm water charge phase in with credits will continue to raft same percentage off of their bill example you see the storm water and storm water of credit will next over time. For our simple residentialing charge customer the credit will again mirror the rate structure. Residential customers this have installed Green Infrastructure have in the rate and options pacific to the 3 residential tiers. The residential options are again based on drivenage areas and include officer or president i dont. Learning are areas eligible for learning are credits and the menu of options is base on the level of effort and projects we want to include a small are lower credit option for less technical options of project and higher credit for more complex projects. Could be a comfleck project a home this modifies the plumbing and routes it to a harvester and use it for irrigation. And that is an example and on the bottom right a lower tech small rain garden replacing a structure of the patio. This is i look at the full residential storm water credit menu. You see provides different options that are different for each the 3 tiers. And the drainage areas and credits are based on analysis of the average parcels in each 3 tiers. If you were tier 2 you have 4 flat rate and depends on the size of your project. Custody admirals that capture storm water from roof and ground receive up to 2 credits 85 off of the storm water portion of the bill this is an example of an average property among low bill. This is a tier 2 customer that captures the portion of their roof using a rain garden. An example of that integration is the storm Water Management ordinance requires inceptions by staff and required to submit self certifications the Credit Program will use in existing information and in the be asking more of those customers. And as with all storm water prospects staff will provide Technical Assistance to support customers in new Green Infrastructure throughout Grant Program and once than i are complete staff will who vied assistance for Application Press for credits. Our next steps would be to launch the program with the storm water charge yell first. We will be launching a residential Green Infrastructure Grant Program to fund the projects on homes. And over the nextier or so and continue to perform targeted out reach for large green Grant Program for the and more highly impacted customers. Thank you for your time im happy to answer questions. Thank you so much. Colleagues, any comments or questions. Thank you. This was wonderful this is very important and hopefully help us to deal with storm water surges better than as we face more Climate Change. Thank you for all the work and people take advantage this is important. Can we have Public Comment . Please. Commissioner stacy. I will get become to you later. Yes. Members of the public had wish to make 2 minutes of know comment on item 8 press star 3 to speak. Do we have anyone present to provide comment. Patricia. This is a beginning. But it also causes the mall businesses to small Property Owners that will get a grant and all of the suspect they key need more money. It does not completely solve the problem. I want to add something since i was attacked a minute ago. Miss stays and mr. Herrera know i. My eyes before i speak in public. And if i get attacked just be prepared because i will supply you with the proper information that was on the front page of the papers. Thank you. Jennifer and tracie in hi. I want to echo what i said before. Having a post mothers day emof the storm it is we had 2 storm in 15 months and talking about slime change and, this were brought up that are new you to we need to go back. In my professional life when i lunched a new program we do a postmortem thats what i have been asking for. We closed the pier street out fall. I told you and we have an uncertain time. Possible low Climate Change. Go back and look at the impact of closing the out fall. You know where we close the out fall we look at boats for marina. So lets look at the money we have in the budget and look at the infrastructure. And thank you for your time im glad i came here today and thanks, again. Thank you for coming. Please dont leave. To sarns jennifers comments. We have done a poe mortem on that storm and im sure you are aware that in a letter i wrote soon after i took office to supervisor stefani explained what happened with that first storm and it is not to say there has not been infrastructure, butt pier street out fall is established was in the a cause and did not play a role in either of the floods you referred to. Certainly this most latest storm the one this happened at on new years eve was a storm this had consequences and we are always do postmortem and im happy to have tee our general manager for infrastructure to talk to you outside about. Appreciate if. When we learn a part was a letter i wrote in detail demonstrating the pour street closure did not play a role and was closed torous potential for out falls in the bay and in terms of harming and done with the conversations we had with the water board im happy to are mr. Robinson talk with you outside. It it is something we are constantly looking at to minimize the possibility of future floods in an area in an era we do have increased storm risk and recognizing the mirna because where it it is. Is very vulnerable. I appreciate it. It is a health and safety issue. Thank you. Mr. Robinson if you can talk to jennifer. One more thing. The storm we received that night was almost 3 times large are than any storm. It was a significant cannot storm as yardage manager herrera mentioned. All of this we have to work with. I was there for 20 years. Yep. Thank you. Dwro is tracie here . Anymoring members present to comment. Callers if you are interested press star 3 to raise your hundred to speak. Do we have callers with hands raised . Can i have a motion. I wanted appreciate that the thought in this storm Water Credit Program. I think you will learns we go xu will have w on your hundreds at the out set when this program is instituted and when people start thinking about the storm water charges. I think the division of the costs are is a good move. In the right being direction. For people to understand. And what can each read customer can do. It is their costs and the situation president face of Climate Change and the irrelevant terrible storms we have been getting. And for the implementation questions. Thank you. I know that as we talked about having an error good data driven prop making sure everything is electroniced and we can see what is going on. I have a motion and second. Thank you. Can we have a roll call. Item 8 president ajami. Why aye commissioner paulon. Why aye commissioner stacy. A break if anyone needs the restroom otherwise the next item. Just want to make sure. Can you read the next item y. Item 9 public hear to adopt power schedule of rates for hetch hetchy purfor service in Tuolumne County. This action constitutes the action for the purposes of California Environmental equality act San Francisco code section therein. 04 heart attack planning said it is exempt from ceqa. Good afternoon will commissioners. Ref mou and rate analysis with [inaudible] team. May i have the slides, please . You. Need to bring them up first. Here they are. Thank you. We are here to propose the item fiscal year 23, 24 hetch hetchy power Tuolumne County rates. I will start out with an over view of hetch hetchy power rates. Go over the hetch hetchy power customers in Tuolumne County. And service charged through the lose or tenant agreements. Prosecute pose fiscal 23, 24 power rates and end with a time line of the public meet and notices of this hearing. If you heard earlier agenda items for retail water and sewer rates we are required by the city charttory conduct a rate study every 5 years by an inspect consultant the puc engage in strategies and solutions to conduct the 22 power rate study which was completed last spring the Commission Adopted hetch hetchy cost of Service Retail rates for fiscal 2223. And year 2324 in may of 2022. I like to highlight key out come for hetch hetchy power the first to ensure the Financial Health and premesis tainability of the utility rates set billsod program cost of providing service to customers. Almost all retail rates were set on a trajectory. The second is the modernize rates in standard customer classes. As much general use rates from departments were not only set on a path to cost of service but customers transferred to applicable customer classes from the prior dollar hour flat rate structures. Third to design rate miss a way to support the citys Climate Action goals to move to cleaner energy. Coming out of the rate study hetch hetchy piloted a new stand alone ev rate for residence den and businesses and ouieden Residential Rate tiers including those of customers with electric appliances. Addition to customers they provide power utility to i variety of customers in to the mow county urn the lose and or tenant agreements. And support the outcome of the study to set rateos i path to cost of service. Reviewed rates for per who is rates are charged through these les or tenant agreements. The first is the United States Forest Service. The national forest. Critical hetch hetchy water and power infrastructure. The p uc and the u. S. Forest service in june of 22, signed know agreement to continue can operative, dedicated effort to address Water Quality and watershed protection. Puc provide housing for the [inaudible]. The u. S. Forest service pays for electricity during rental usage time. Forest service is charged electricity at the rate of 5 cents per kill watt hour. The second is a California Department of fish and wildlife. Fish and game. Agreement with the puc to continue maintaining a Fish Hatchery at mock since creek. Effective since 2006 per agreement state this is electric rates are charged at 1 cent per kilowatt hour for similar if facility in moccasin. Employees who on the hetch hetchy water and power system in moccasin the current electric rate is charged 3. 5 cents per kilowatt effective since 2006 take nothing account of other much need improvement for insulation and water is shes. Charged through lose or tenant agreements staff is prosecute posing rate changes for 23 24. Before i doing in the specifics i would like to note that the customers combined make up a mall slois of power service. For. Com the 3 groups use less then and there 755,000 last year. And projected make up less then and there where are. 1 of of volume in fiscal 23 24. On the left staff reviewd and prosecute foezing rate changes. Getting the rates on a path to cost of service take into account the bill impact on customers. The proposal is to increase rates by 50 . And fitsical 2324 and set rates 7 and a half centeds. For kilowatt hour for forest and 5. 25 per kill with the for California Department of fish and wildlife and hetch hetchy water and power housing. We will continue to propose annual rate changes to set the rateos a path to cost of service. We will continue to evaluate usage profiles and housing rerow fitting in the near term. And the lastly i will wrap this up with a time line of the Public Meeting notices sent to customers of the public hearing. Rates proposed to the rate fairness board the primarymen venue to discuss rate changes on april 28 of 23. You saw from the presentation from the rate fairness board. Although this rate increase is learning it it is necessary to get the rateings on a set on set them on a cost a path of cost of service. Required by the charter, notices of the public hearing have been post in the the newspaper on april 26, 27, 28, 30 and may third. Dp the San Francisco Public Library as well as the puc website. Because the customers are located up in Tuolumne County, notices were delivered to hetch hetchy water and Power Employee housing clothes in moccasin on may second of 23. Notices were mailed by the Customer Service bureau to the United States Forest Service and California Department of fish and wildlife on may third of 23. Ands with any project no matter how small or big it it is many colleagues working on this. I appreciate all our colleagues issue hetch hetchy clothe and our out reach folks to who sent the notices. And that concludes this presentation and im here to answer questions you may have and thank you. Thank you. Any questions . Yea. Questions . One. And off the top of your head, how many residential customers are there now this utilize in the moccasin area and work on the system . I was told 75 . Does this ring a bell. I can say what about 3035 of our total customers were hetch hetchy power residential customers i will look. How many workers are there. Im sorry. Workers wing on the system there. The system up there. I will need to timed out the number of employees i know there are about 47 or 74 i dont know which way it goes. I got it. Thank you. Not all of them are our power customers . They can live in different place. Right. Im not i think i will have to than i can look. Okay. Company housing. It is correct this employees hetch hetchy water can live anywhere but if than i live in p uc housing they are our power customer. We all learn something new every day that is great. I appreciate that. Great presentation. Clear and i have no comments. Can we go to Public Comment. Thank you. Members of public when wish to make 2 minutes of remote comment on item 9 press star 3 to speak. We will hear a chime with 30 seconds. Do we have anyone present to provide comment on item 9 . Mr. Moderator. Callers if you want to speak on 9 press star 3 to speak. Do we have callers . There are no callers wir to be recognized. Thank you, Public Comment on 9 is closed. Excellent. Colleague fist there are no comments or economies can i have a motion and second. Move to approve the puc power schedule of rates for hetch hetchy power for Tuolumne County. I second that. Thank you, can i have a roll call. President ajami. Aye. Commissioner paulson. Aye yoochl commissioner stacy. Aye. Thank you item passes. Thank you for your hard work. And the staff. Can we have the next item. Item 10 your communication information item. I know if there are no questions we can move on to the next. Item. Please. Thank you. Item 11 yes or no Public Comment. Members of the public when wish to make 2 minutes of remote comment in the commissions jshgz not on the agenda press star 3 to raise your hand to speak. Speakers will hear a chime when there are 30 seconds to speak. Do we have anyone present to provide general Public Comment . Maam did you want to speak in . [inaudible] cofounder and former [inaudible] the [inaudible] we are the only usd a residence furthermore in San Francisco the learningest Community Farm in San Francisco with most volunteers who are mostly elder, asian imfremantle and black bayview residents. We are known and also the bayviewef is a food desert. There is a lack of fresh vegetables in our neighborhood. There is also a lack of open green space our farm provides both. Water is the most person thing we need to grow our vegetables and the community. For example i like to grow beets they have a positive Health Impact on the body. If we dont have access to water, i cannot grow my beets. If our farm couldnt afford to pay our water bill we cant grow beets. Another example is our youth program. Youth in the bayview have been coming to the farm [inaudible] they play a game called hide and seek when they hide under a sun flower or pick strawberries. The youth love a really get to see how plants are grown from the earth soil and how important they are. If they will grow up if we dont have access to water. The youth will grow up in not understanding importance of fresh vegetables. I am here to ask you. Thank you. I have can you give him another 30 seconds. Can you come back and finish your statement, thank you. Thank you. I am here today to ask you to help me with the urban furthermore in my community with the water rates. Which are so high for our farm nan prefer Community Farm. Thank you. Thank you for coming i appreciate it. Im kels a resident of the upon d10 and volunteer with the Junior League of San Francisco as well at the florence Community Farm. Im here to communicate that urban farming is an important prop to combating food deserts. Access to fresh food is scarce. Promoting food justice and health urban furthermoring is a solution born from necessity and community the city of san fran is moving in this progression with promise fund the agency and department of environments and department of public hen. Significant conditional barriers for communities to grow food in San Francisco include a lack of policy and water rates provided by the San Francisco puc. You guys. And puc has 13 different wert rate categories but dont apply to urban farming communities or organizations, those in food deserts like the bayview. During the covid shut counselling residents begin water discounts followed loyal businesses however urbeen farm and Community Gardens were not included in this process. Pu crash does in the have a water budgeting mechanism. And does in the offer Water Conversation support targeted San Francisco food producers. We would love if staff could look into some items crediting a water rate for urban ag. Guarantees for urban ag to off set the cost of water or work on and policy around water budget and support help food growers to conserve water hel oi im the air quality coordinator of [inaudible] an Environmental Justice nonprofit in soma. Since 2008 bright line worked with environmental yesterday community in San Francisco soma, china town and bayview. And we w to provide services such as workforce development. Air quality monitor and advocate for clean energy. I dont believe that all communities should have access to green spaces Community Gardens and farms. Especially those facing a food desert and poor air quality. We have worked with Community Farmers over the years and host one of our air slides black carbon devices to monitor the black carbon and matter 2. 5 in the air of bayview. We believe that water prices should not be a barrier for Community Farms and urban gardens to exist as they bring important resources to community. Fresh and low low grown food and open green spaces to find refuge in. We would like to show our support for urban farms here today. Provide guidance for San Francisco urban farms. Thank you. Thank you. Good upon afternoon, commissioners. Im sherri Clark Executive director of city of dreams Mentor Program in bayview. City dreams is a Youth Development and Mentorship Organization implements enrichment programs to help youth discover potential. Served 4800 youths since open nothing 2004. And continued to mo provide extra correct lares earn to learn and gardening program. Youth and family in bay vow dont have access to many green space affect the mental health. It is important for youth to have access to water and green santa fes in thes staechl Community Gardens and organizations like ours service faith, green space communities of color in industrial and urban spaces. The take action to reduce water rates for farm and gardens than i play a role in providing safe green spaces for communities in bayview. Thank you. Thank you this is our second youngest. Attendee. Wonderful to see. Hello, everybody im andre torres im representing the florence Community Farm. Im going to be focusing on the measures the farm takes. To be fasht everefficient and effective with water usage. So our primary objective is to ensure efficient and effective water use minizing waste with environmental goal and conversation efforts we employ measures to optimize the irrigation practices. They include electronic irrigation system donated to us by local commune partners. And allows for precise monitor and measured water usage. Scheduled irrigation date and times which are planned and add hereed and automatic weather ajustment system to refrain from over watering. Crop adjustments to watering needs and limits on hand watering that is confineed areas not reached by the system. Its the farm consider conversation to be a top prior. We strive to be responsible stursd of the Precious Resource impmrechlting the practice and seek ways to enhance our water techniques. Upon support sustainable and environmentally friend low farming. We welcome feedback or recommendations from the commission how to further improve our watering practices we value your expertise and guidance. Thank you. Thank you. We are caller provide remote comment, press star 3. Do we have callers with hands raised. There is one caller in the queue. Thank you. Your line is open you have 2 minutes for Public Comment. Thank you, peter, Tuolumne River trust i enjoy hearing the pork in personful purto you for showing up. I had comments on the water supply conditions update. The tell me water available to you might have seen we reached 1 million 384,000 acre feet this year. That is almost enough water to fill up all of the puc reservoir storage dmend has been under 225,000 acre feet. This year alone the puc entitled to enough water to left 6 years. Not uncommon. You are probably board of me talking about the issues and im tired saying them but like no one get its just how good the pucs storage and water entitles are. You know the height of the drought there was still enough to last 4 years, may be fear the bay delta plan will hit the system harder then and there in reality. But the truth is. It is 20 increase in unimper seed flow with february and june. Over the year, 14 increase. And up to half of that be San Francisco could be less. So i keep sharing these detail and no one wants to talk about it i get ignored the bottom listen is the puc does in the need to sue the state water board and oozing precious rate payer money to do so. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your comments. There are no more callers in the queue. General Public Comment is closed. Commissioner stacy. I want today say thank you so much to the people from the farm who have shown up to testify today today is important to hear about these. I have a question im not sure who can answer sounds the nonprofit in charge of this farm gets billed for water and sewage charges is this right . Commissioner stays im at the timed sang. Im the executive director of the foreign Community Farm and the president of the an finish farm bureau. Yes, we do get charged water and. E approximately during covid we were task with the growing more food due to lack of water. And as we grew more food our water costs went up. We understand that everybody does have to pay for water. But for food growers in a food desert, we would like consideration i like to point out during covid. Puc did offer to discount on water do you to the pandemic. First residential customers received it and then businesses received it. However, urban ag did not receive it and made a special arrangement but there was in policy on this. So we are asking the commission to look at policy around water urban ag is a big are thing to feed people thank you. I was interested to hear this we dont have category for urban farm and than i are an important and growing per of the city. I would be interesting in having staff work with the farm or to may be report become to us on the urban agriculture. Certainly we can have staff work with the farm to take advantage or look at some of the programs we talked about earlier. These are the not rates but to see what if there are Assistance Programs they could aveil themselves ofs they go throughout press we are happy to make that available to have staff contact them and have conversations to see what programs might be available to them. Why grit yoochlt thank you all for showing up today to talk about this. Yea. Before you leave i have a question as well. I also very much appreciate everybody coming and talking. So what do you fall under then. Is this like if in the a business or residential. What is your account . We get Irrigation Water rate. But as with our water budgeting the water budgeting you know the puc has a department to help water we look at that as closely. That water is based on landscaping or based on large scale farm and not urban agriculture. Okay. I want to make ape point about the urban agriculture. Even the federal government now the u. S. D. Agriculture has ash pointed the First Time Ever an urban farm coordinator in washington, d. C. The head of the Farm Service Agency is now a native american and working with mall farm this is is a National Issue i think San Francisco can take the lead on. Absolutely. I think the focus of the federal level is being food to food deserts. And fresh frout and all that. This is an important thing. I think may be another question i appreciate that. Mr. Herrera may be another question is how many exist. One reason we dont have specific programs associated with this buzz we have not had many. I know a few in the Richmond District as well. Im not sure if they gnaw that category or using the Community Centers backyard. I think something to think about. I also may be piggybacking on this topic. Going become to the rate discussion earlier. May be under the items initiated by commissioners. Which is the next item. I would be interested to know when we put together to make sure businesses and activities that provide service to low income community. I dont know how this can happen. Something to been and figure out working with staff. How we make sure they are not going to be impacted significantly. Versus others . Im you know the laundry mat think if than i are in a neighborhood people are in financial pressure i dont believe how to im just asking you if somebody w can look into this we make sure that these rate increases we have does not impact low income communities adverse low in an indirect way. I hope that commissioners this commissioner appreciates that is manage this we think about all the time and that was why we and when were we get feedback it is something this is helpful. And informs how we look at Customer Assistance Programs going forward. I recognize that we recognize that there are ned to being sensitive how our rate and had we do impact the most at risk munts in San Francisco that is why we tried to be on the did you telling edge of being of having programs that are trying be to innovative. Manage we will continue to do under this commissions leadership you already, you helped update Program Early 30 spring. Manage we look at in terms of not just dollar amount but ways to be more creative. This is something this we will always do in keeping the same time. Making sure we are living up to legal requirements. It is manage we will continue to strife to be creative on. Fantastic. I think that theure ban ag thing full in this category. I wander if there is the discussion around storm Water Management in a way to benefit some of activities that your farm does versus other activities. You have permeable space that can provide help with reducing storm water flows, right . This is a positive thing for your activity. I hope that absolutely. Absolutely. Flow of the water and not polluting. Absolutely. Hopeful low as part of that program we can make sure this is like the work. Thank you. Again. This was wonderful having a lot of members coming here it is always makes you feel you are working toward something positive. So thanks for take the time and coming. With that, if there are no other items this commissioners would like to initiate. Im sorry am i am. Okay go ahead. I jumped ahead i wanted make sure that fall miss this category. Go ahead item 12 initialled by commissioners. So, okay. Other items . Colleagues . No. Go ahead. Sorry. Why no , i dont know im initiating i want to comment i was pleased read there has been at least a short Term Agreement about the Colorado River in the allocation of that scarce water. It is important the federal gentleman was involved and there was collaborate rigz among the state. I know this is a hard concept for water districts and utilities who have water rights based on long willing precedent and long history and i see that with Climate Change and increasing drought and increaseingly uncertain whether this collaboration will be important in the 40 and our future. I was relieved that than i addressed. Yea. Shortage for the next few years, anyway. For sure. Bandaid to be ripped off in 3 years. Thank you. Can we have Public Comment on this. Number members who wish to comment on item 12 press star 3. Speakers will hear a chime when you have 30 seconds. Do we have anyone present to provide comment on items neighborhood by commission. Do we have callers with hands raised. There is one caller in the queue. Good afternoon. Thank you. Im [inaudible] and [inaudible] [muffled] and i want to say this is item 12. Correct. Thanks. This is [inaudible] [muffled] im sorry. We can hear you better now finish your thoughts. Im calling im director of [inaudible] commune Service Center to put in support for the desire to help urbanning culture and Food Insecurity biprogressive water policies for urban agriculture. To offering grants. Local [inaudible] and water budget to help growers [inaudible] we run a [inaudible] program. 1200 hungry san franciscans every week we would benefit as the organization from the policy and staying in support for the folks in and urbeen agreer [inaudible]. Thank you for the opportunity to peek and hope that the puc will take this on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have other callers in the queue. There are no more callers. Public comment on item 12 is closed. Excellent. I think we have no more further business . For today. So thank you for all your patience being with us all afternoon. And with this we are adjourned. Thank you. Clear clear
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