Transcripts For SFGTV Sanitation 20240703

To participate from outside the hearing room and make Public Comment on you would today, you would dial. 415 a6550001 and use the meeting code. Of 26622771234. 6 pound pound and star three to raise your hand to be recognized. And please note that you must limit your comments to the topic of the agenda item being discussed unless youre speaking under general Public Comment and to remind you if you do not stay on topic, the chair may interrupt and ask you to limit your comment to that agenda item. We ask that Public Comment be made in a civil and respectful manner and you refrain from the use of profanity. Please address your remarks to the commission as a whole, not to individual commissioners or staff. And written comments are always welcome at sas commission at sf. Gov org and on behalf of the commission, id like to extend our thanks to the staff of sf govtv V Media Services and Building Management for helping put on this meeting, including bringing in a portable air conditioner since the main cooler for the for the room is currently out. So thank you to them. Mr. Chair, are there any requests from the commission to amend the order of this agenda . Hearing no further requests, i have a few announcements. Welcome. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the staff that brought in the air conditioning and makes our Commission Even cooler. Yeah, i was a comedy day yesterday, so sorry. Youll get 1 or 2 more of those and i apologize in advance. But on a more serious side, i had a nice walk with my partner, chair of the dpw, lauren post. We had a wonderful sunny walk down the Mission Street and we were both appalled at the condition of the streets. And our biggest and i know theres a lot of dynamics going on down there, but our focus was is how are our people supposed to be able to go down on Mission Street and clean it effectively to the satisfaction of the public and hopefully keep it clean when you can barely walk down the street without having to zigzag around a vendor, a fencer or a homeless person or any other assortment of obstructions around the sidewalk. Dpwh is responsible for the right of way, and as a commission, i both commissioners in both commissions feel it is our responsibility to advocate for the safety and effectivity of our staff to be able to clean the streets if theyre obstructed, if theyre working with apprehension. When we are walking down the street, there was a two people from dpw, specifically from the division of abating graffiti and it was very telling because one was sitting there working and you could tell he was trying to work as fast as he could, and the other one had his back to him and he was just basically keeping an eye on the equipment and i thought, wow, what a sad situation where you have to have two people, one working just to get the work done and get out of there. And the other one to have to watch it. His stuff so it doesnt get stolen or he doesnt get attacked or whatever the situation may be. So im going to make it my mission to be able to figure out how we can get the streets cleared for from a right of way perspective so our people can. Pun intended, sweep through the streets and get the job done to the satisfaction of the public and hopefully itll stay that way a little bit longer than it has been. Um going to that, i did a Little Research and, you know, had a nice discussion with director interim director carla short and she hopefully will fill in us in a little bit on the inner workings and mechanisms of how this works , because i see a problem where we have possibly legal vendors or illegal vendors. We have fencers and apparently i can use that word, i checked and then of course we have food vendors and then of course, then we have the homeless and then the assortment of other people. And when they all aggregate together, its extreme. So i know the homelessness issue is going to be a tough one to even touch because of the recent injunctions of whats going on. But but i think we can start approaching it from the illegal vendor perspective and the fencers on the streets and obviously having dpw send out staff to enforce it. Also being able to do it in a safe manner because i heard that it might not be very safe for them to even be able to do that. And how do we do that effectively . How do we take back our streets . Im going to yield the rest of my comments because i feel like im taking a little bit too much time. And i think this one is important enough to focus on and one thing at a time, as they say. So that concludes my announcements. Mr. Fuller, do you have any announcements . My only brief announcement are included in todays agenda are recent work is a memo of recent Workforce Development grants included in the in the Communications Section of the agenda. And those are primarily Workforce Development grants that also impact elements of the right of way. So good for the sanitation and streets commission and those were all considered by the Public Works Commission recently. And then my only other announcement is recently a number of new trainings were loaded for commissioners into their new training portal. So ill be following up in the next week or so with reminders and direction and support. Any support that may be needed to make sure that commissioners are able to complete all those trainings by their deadlines. Thank you. Thats all my announcements. Thank you. Mr. Fuller. Please call the first item item one is general Public Comment, and members of the public may address the commission on topics that are within the subject matter of the commission but are not part of this agenda necessarily a comment specific to an item on the agenda may be heard when that item is considered. Members of the public may address the commission for up to three minutes and general Public Comment may be continued to the agenda to the end of the agenda. If speakers exceed 15 minutes of total general Public Comment. And members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment from outside the hearing room may call. For 156550001 and use the meeting number access code. Of 266 a2277134. 6 poud pound. And then press star three to raise your hand to speak and if you are present with us, i dont think well have a long line. But if you want to just approach the Public Comment microphone. Oh and one one second, please. Oh, one second, maam. Residing property on the. Im here on behalf of my staff and my neighbors whose quality of life is constant, highly impacted by the filth. Its not on. Im short, i guess, filth and garbage that is not cleaned up in an adequate manner or time. It appears that dpw and im sorry here, im probably repeating what youve already witnessed. Commissioner magnum, it appears that department of public works has relinquished that job to the cbds that are actually overwhelmed and doing a pretty good job. Dpw has stopped sweeping the streets, especially my street natoma thats the one i can notice on cleaning days. They still come by, but they dont do the sweep. They come by and they but they still leave debris on the pavement alongside the sidewalks. That is a failed job. And it doesnt matter to the neighborhood residents how many tons of garbage are picked off the street by what organization, what people want are simply clean streets and its up to the commission to report to dpw again, i apologize for repeating that. The result of their work falls short of any acceptable standard of cleanliness and that they will have to make necessary changes to reach that standard. We know it can be zip clean all the time , but theres a standard that is definitely not met, especially in my area of south of market. There is a Nonprofit Organization and im not going to say their name at this point that serves meals on the corner of sixth and mission. You can find out for yourself. Unfortunately these services attract a lot of people with bad behavior in loss of garbage. Of course, the bad behavior, i have to add, has to do with drug use. And its rampant in our neighborhood. The nonprofit does not clean the streets adequately either. And we dont expect to clean all the time. But there has to be, again, there a minimum standard. And even i, as a resident and owner of my property, i have to clean to keep my sidewalk clean. So why cant businesses do that . And theres a code section. I mean, theres lots of code sections, 30s. So we as a group of citizens who have who have met with them in the past and at this time, were asking for the city to help us in that endeavor. Weve asked matt dorsey, whos our supervisor, to come to a meeting, but he wasnt able to. But well have to follow up. And we would appreciate the city to help them and us them, the nonprofit, because they can do a better job. The other thing that id like to mention is that the neighborhood is in crisis. I mean, its not just dirty. Its a crisis. And the other thing to address is the illegal street vending, which is right on the sidewalk. Theyre selling food, theyre selling whatever, and it attracts the wrong people and it looks terrible. Thank you. You cant walk there. Its not safe. So i hope youre making note of all that. And then, you know, hopefully we have enough authority or whatever it is that you do to convince city hall to do a better job. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. And govtv is indicating that we do not have any callers calling in about for general Public Comment. So that concludes general Public Comment. Thank you. Does the commission have any . That concludes general Public Comment. Thank you. Please call the next item eight. Item two is communications and the directors report and interim director carla shaw is present to provide that report. And this is an informational item. Good morning, commissioners. Happy monday. Im carla short, interim director of public works. I have a number of topics to cover in my report today. Ill start with the big city events recently, youve no doubt heard naysayers say that San Francisco is on the decline , using the phrase doom loop when talking about the postpandemic Office Vacancy rate and economic slip backwards. While we have our challenges, San Francisco has a history of comebacks and public works plays an important role, particularly around cleaning and beautification efforts. There are two big events showcase the citys commitment to shine. The first occurred last week. Dreamforce. The annual sales force tech conference centered at Moscone Center, drew tens of thousands of visitors. Our Street Cleaning Team worked extremely hard and strategically around the clock to keep the public right of way. Looking good. We had block sweepers on the ground working 11 routes manually picking up litter. We had our zone crews keeping an eye on the known hotspots, particularly around the metreon at fourth and mission. And we had mechanical sweepers and flusher trucks out and supervisors on the ground to pivot as needed. The efforts were noticed. Salesforce ceo marc benioff, for instance, remarked how good the city looks and i quote, you can eat off the sidewalk. Its incredible, he told the media. I must say the team did an amazing job and they are they are very proud and we are very proud of their achievements. The second event is the Asia Pacific Economic cooperation leaders meeting, better known as apec. That will be in town the week of november 12th. Apec will bring to town nearly two dozen heads of state, including President Biden and their large delegations, 1200 Corporate Leaders and 600 media representatives. The global spotlight will be on San Francisco with dreamforce, a recurring event and similar to other conventions, we had our finely tuned Operations Plan in place, focusing on strategically deploying extra staff in key locations, for example, around Moscone Center and the downtown hotels. As apec, however, presents unique challenges due to the high security requirements involving local state and federal law enforcement. We are working closely with our partner Government Agencies on plans for a successful event. While an event of this complexity is huge is a huge undertaking, its also a great opportunity to promote our wonderful city and we are excited to be part of the host city operation. We also recently wrapped up our reaccreditation evaluation with the American Public Works Association, a process that involves dozens of people from throughout the department who, since about the beginning of the year, reviewed and updated our entire portfolio of procedures that map out the steps needed to perform our work. There are hundreds of procedures that are intended to keep the department functioning properly, no matter which individual is in the job. Everything from creating designs to reduce the carbon footprint, inspecting street defects and writing grant agreements to preparing for severe storms, operating a drawbridge and responding to constituent inquiries. The updated procedures were then evaluated by an American Public Works Association panel, made up of a trio of specially trained public works professionals from other agencies who would decide whether to recommend and reaccreditation. Im happy to report that not only is the panel recommending reaccreditation, but they said our package and presentation was one of the best. Theyve seen, calling it and i quote, amazing, thoughtful and organized. You really shined. The lead evaluator told us the next step is for the American Public Works Association Accreditation Council to review the panels recommendation and make a final decision. While nothing is over till its over, i am feeling very optimistic. For a little background, our department was first was first accredited in 2010 and we have successfully gone through the reaccreditation process two times since. If we get the thumbs up this time, we will be batting a thousand. And although we do not have to be accredited in order to operate, the designation demonstrates that our procedures, practices and policies meet National Standards and in some cases stand out as model best practices for example, the Evaluation Team called out two of our initiatives as exemplary, our ethics training and specifically the ethics training video produced by our communications team. And our commitment to diversity in hiring and accommodating people with disabilities. We consider that all that across all of canada and the united states, just 195 public works organizations are accredited, accounting for less than 1 of the total. And San Francisco public works is one of a handful of large public works agencies to go through the process. Exciting for our team. On september 7th, mayor breed stopped by our operations yard to thank folks for working one of the toughest jobs in the city, keeping San Francisco clean. We all know that our street cleaning crews are on the job 24 over seven, working to keep our city clean, a sisyphean task that they take on with enormous pride, which is why it was very nice to receive that recognition. I think we all really appreciate it. The mayor also thanked our trades workers, our arborists outreach workers and others on our Operations Team for their hard work and dedication. Caring for our city. Mayor breed told everyone gathered for the meet and greet everything that you are out there doing every day makes San Francisco what it is. The most beautiful city anywhere in the world. And it wouldnt be that without you. I couldnt agree more. An end. This past saturday, we held our monthly love our city neighborhood beautification day, volunteer work day in the district. Three neighborhoods, including north beach, chinatown and russian hill. We had about 75 volunteers and were joined by board of supervisors president aaron peskin. We got a lot of work done planting trees, weeding medians and painting out graffiti. Next months neighborhood beautification day will take place on october 21st in west portal and other districts. Seven neighborhoods chair magnum, just to address briefly your comments about the illegal vending challenges that were facing, to give a little bit of context to your comments, i wanted to outline on kind of the coordination that we have with other city agencies as well as some of the constraints that we face with this. So we are public works is leading the coordination amongst city agencies when it comes to illegal vending enforcement. We work closely with the various police captains. So depending on where were operating in the city, we coordinate with the captains to make sure that we have support for our team. So in order to work safely, the police are not doing the enforcement, but they are there to support our team and if we are not able to do enforcement, they will then step in. We work also with the department of Public Health because all of the illegal food vending is actually under their enforcement purview. And then were also coordinated with our Operations Team because in many cases we have to confiscate goods and operate fines. Will support with a truck and staff to help with that confiscation. So the city is working united and coordinated, but we cant be everywhere at once. And we are seeing that this is becoming a problem in other other parts of the city. It was really initially focused on Mission Street, un plaza and chinatown. And now i think as we are having some impacts in some of those areas, were seeing that its spreading to other parts of the city in terms of the constraints , there is a state law that actually specifically decriminalizes vending. And so as you and i spoke, i really try to make a distinction between in vending where someone could get a permit in order to sell either handicrafts or, you know, their old family objects that they want to sell versus illegal fencing where people are stealing goods and then trying to sell them on the street. Unfortunately the state law doesnt make such a distinction. So we are the agency thats been tasked with enforcing any type of sales on the on the public right of way. We are working with colleagues both in the City Attorneys Office and also at the state level to see if there are any modifications we might be able to make to help manage this challenge a little bit and really try to allow the good actors who want to get permitted and want to be able to sell their their wares to work out and still allow our crews to get their work done, not block the sidewalk, make sure that were maintaining an accessible, safe, public right of way, and then have a more effective way to address the people who are not out there selling or wanting to sell in a legal manner. An and lastly, i wanted to mention our health fair. Its one of the biggest events that we have, and its happening next month. This is open to our workers from across the department. This year we have a theme stronger together and the health fair will take place on wednesday, october 11th at the operations yard. We will have a number of fun workshops, including meditation, zumba, selfdefense and reiki plus information booths, free flu shots and more. And with that i am happy to take any questions you may have commissioners, any questions . Yeah getting back to the Street Vendor issue, at what point does the police get involved in it . I mean, is it do they are they having problems with the checking the permits that these folks may have or with the confiscation of their goods and at what point does the police get involved . Thank you, commissioner. Thats a great question. Basically we the police are there to ensure that we are able to do our job effectively. So if someone is not complying with our request for either proof of ownership of an item or two, that they if we tell them they cant vend, they dont have a permit, they cant vend if they dont comply, then the police can step in because essentially theres a provision in the penal code that says you cant interfere with a city officer for discharging their duty. So if were not able to do our job because theyre not complying with us, then the police will step in. Unfortunately we have had also a number of incident where our inspectors have received threats and in some cases there has actually been some some violence against our staff. And in those cases, the police have stepped in very quickly and apprehend added these folks. So theyre theyre really primarily to protect our staff and to ensure that were able to effectively discharge our duty. We have had a really very Strong Partnership with the police after the early days. The early days were a little shakier, but i think they they are very much good partners in this with us and they are out there with us. And we have told our crews, you know, that they are not expected to do this work without making sure that they have the police there to for their own safety. Also youre saying early on, i can understand that would probably be a learning period for the vendors and is it Getting Better now . Are there less incidences of threats and potential violence or is it getting easier now to do their work . I wouldnt i dont know that its Getting Better in terms of there are still, unfortunately, many of the people who are out there are selling stolen goods, not the folks we have worked with, veinticuatro, which is a Cultural Organization in the mission and others to help really get the good actors in with a permit and able to vend legally. So unfortunately, we the folks who were having trouble with and usually those who have a permit or are willing to get a permit comply with with our team without any issue. So the people that were having trouble with are often, as i said, theyre theyre really selling stolen goods or. They are they have been very challenging to work with. And i dont think its really gotten better. We have seen an impact when were there for sure. So its gotten better at times when we are out there. I think they as soon as they see us, sometimes they will go away. So from that perspective, its gotten a little easier. They see that were coming, but we still have had a number of incidents where our staff has, you know, had a lot of antagonistic interactions with folks. What has definitely gotten better is because the partnership with sfpd has strengthened and the coordination has improved. I think, you know, our team feels very supported to have them there with us. For the individual laborer, say, whos out there doing this . And they are confronted by some bad actor. Is there a way to rotate them out of that crew to somewhere else for a period of time so that they dont, you know, suffer too much stress at that sort of thing . Yeah thats a great question. And just to clarify, so in in this case, the folks who are doing the enforcement are actually street inspectors. So we dont have general laborers performing this work, although the general laborers will occasionally support in helping to move anything thats been confiscated, Something Like that. But yeah, i think our our the manager for our Enforcement Unit has tried to be very thoughtful and work with his team. So they do rotate their assignments and you know, we are certainly trying to be mindful that we dont want to put someone back into a situation where they may have had a negative experience right away. So that is something that is that they look at when theyre trying to make those assignments. Yes, thats good. Thank you, commissioner. There we go. When youre when you say that you work with the police, is it that when you have the inspectors out on the street, the police are like following them . Or are we are you out on the street . And if something happens, you call the police . Oh thank you for that clarifying question. No they they are partnered up with us. They are basically walking right behind our staff as theyre doing this work. So its kind of like the hotspot crews where the police are there for that, too. Yeah, we dont need to wait to call them. Okay thank you. Thank you. And i know this is a challenge and its a challenge for all of us, including our citizens, who have to endure this, because i think the real problem is not so much the cleaning, but it is the bad behavior that exacerbates the level of cleaning that we have to do to where we will can never get an acceptable level of clean to people, particularly in certain parts of the city where there are other problems that are enabling or sustaining. And i dont want to judge, but problems to continue. So so how can this commission help you, particularly my position on working on the state level, and we already spoke about this privately, but just us as a commission may be possibly to invite somebody from senator wiener or senator tings office to come and explain to us the vendor legislation and how maybe they could possibly modify it to protect those that they intended to protect or enhance. And to feather out the others, because oftentimes comes with a lot of legislation. Theyre wellintended, but theyre not properly conceived. Or theres unintended consequences that result. And i think, you know, good government, good regulations will help us enforce that because right now, you know, the bad behavior is empowered because theres nothing you can do about it, you know, and a fencer, in my opinion, needs a porn license or a pawnbrokers license to be able to sell an assortment of used goods on the street. Yet theyre not even able to question that. And that shocked me. Its one thing for someone to have trinkets and whatnot that theyve made or purchased and or reselling and or just trying to make a living. And i get it. And i admit many of these vendors provide cover, color and vibrancy and opportunity for a lot of people, but a lot of them are parasitic and illegal, and those are the ones that we need to separate out. So i will follow up with the department of the commission affairs. Mr. Fuller possibly coordinating with senator wieners office and senator tings office and director, if you can think of anyone else on the state level or higher up that we can reach out to and invite to come and explain to us what the rationale is and how can they help us get our streets back under control because no matter how much we clean this, if the bad behavior is there, itll be there the next day and no one will be happy. Thank you. Uh, any further questions . Oh sorry. Going back to the events at mosconi, you said that you have some extra staff go in the area for the conventions to help clean it, keep it clean. What are you doing with the areas that those staff are no longer covering . Because theyre at the mosconi . And how are we keeping that area cleaner . Yeah thats a good question and thats one of the challenges that weve been trying to balance because of course we have limited resources. So if we need to add to one area of the city, it does mean were pulling from other areas of the city. So we are going to be looking at whether were seeing were trying to pull from areas that are a little bit less High Maintenance generally. And one of the things that were going to be looking at is, you know, how how how bad was it when we pulled people . Right. Can mosconi was our dreamforce was just a week. So can they sustain being pulled from a week and then maybe we have were in decent shape or did we get a lot of complaints during that week . So were going to be looking at the data to see what what were seeing in the and also talking to our supervisors from those from those zones to see if they noticed an increase when we when we took people from those areas and you know so i think thatll tell us kind of how negative the impact was. We i think we need to be honest that were dealing with a finite number of resources. We cant say were going to keep everything the same and still add resources over here. But if there are areas of the city that dont suffer from as many of the challenges that make it really hard to keep areas consistently clean, maybe we can then know, well, if we if its just a day or two, were probably safe to pull those resources. So i think thats what were going to try to use this opportunity to help guide us in the future when its more like a week instead of just a day or two. Um can you rotate people out . So like, oh, we only take from the sunset two days that week and you know, rich and for two days, you know, like do you guys do that or is it just, you pull someone over for a week . No, i think we try to look at exactly that, that were not trying to impact any single neighborhood to severely. So no, but we also have to you know, we have to consider kind of the economies of pulling you know, pulling someone from a faraway neighborhood to come to the mosconi. So those types of considerations as well that efficiency wise, it may take longer to get there, but but our superintendent from Street Environmental Services is here and looks like he wants to add commissioners. I can add to that question. We have a two meeting every tuesday at and our group that handles special projects, which means different events around the city that person is included. So we flex and modify our crews on on a weekly basis, depending on what activity we have. Dreamforce is not the only convention at Moscone Center. We have hundreds of conventions, so were kind of used to this. So we kind of flex and then we relax and flex and relax. A lot of the staff is coming from surrounding areas, so its not a huge impact because we want to minimize the travel time right . So we do this all the time. We have a playbook for all of our events. It does impact the other zones, but not as much as you think because were flexing all the time. And we also have a resource of additional staff working on overtime. If its a huge event. So we deal with this all the time and we manage it. Thank you. Yeah, i was just trying to figure out the process and yes. And how all that works and if anyone is getting neglected, i guess. Right. So if theres any way to change it, you know, so that no ones neglected. So if theres ask a question. So if theres a big warriors game at the chase center, were going to were going to flex for that. A special projects are going to share resources and make sure we have adequate staffing. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. And i hope salesforce was impressed enough that theyll come back next year because i think that was the motive. But thank you. Hearing no further questions. Mr. Fuller, please open Public Comment. Members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item to the directors report may line up against the wall furthest from the door. If you are here with us in the chamber, if youre calling in. Dial 415 a6550001 and use the meeting access code. Of 266 a2277134 6 pound pound. And then press star three to raise your hand to be recognized and it does not appear we have any members of the public wishing to speak on this item in person and govtv is also indicating that we do not have any callers wishing to speak on the directors report either. So that concludes Public Comment for the discussion from the commission hearing. No further discussion. Secretary fuller, please call the next item. Item three is the draft minutes from the july 17th, 2023 meeting of this commission and approval of these draft minutes is an action item. And before any motion is made, im happy to take any questions or corrections to the minutes are there any corrections to the minutes or questions . Do i hear a motion to adopt the july 17th 20, 23 minutes . So moved. Are you a second . Second, second. Given the motion, we will now hear Public Comment. Secretary fuller, please open Public Comment. Members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item three. The adoption of the july 17th 2020 three minutes may line up against the wall for this from the door. If here in the chamber, if you are calling in again, dial 415 a6550001 and use the meeting number access code. Of 266 a2277134. 6 poud pound. And then press star three to raise your hand to be recognized and. And no one has approached in the chamber to speak on the minutes and govtv is also indicating we do not have any callers on this item either. So that concludes Public Comment any further debate on this motion hearing . No further debate. All in favor of adopting the minutes, say aye. Aye aye. Anyone opposed say nay motion passes. Secretary fuller, please call the next item. Item four is the bureau of Street Environmental Services performance measure report and superintendent Christopher Mcdaniels is here to present this report. And this is an information item. Good morning, commissioners. Happy monday. Chris mcdaniels superintendent of bureau of Street Environmental Services. Today were going to talk about performance and data for street cleaning and for graffiti. The first slide shows our annual street and sidewalk cleaning request. Thats as you can see, from 2022 to 2023. We have a slight decrease in Service Orders and our Service Level agreement is at 79. The reason for this partially is some of our staffing issues that we have and also at the end of the year, we have a lot of different events that take place in june and thatll be shown on the next slide. This slide shows monthly street and sidewalk cleaning requests at the bottom. You have the different months of the year and as i mentioned, you can see how in march, april and may we have a lower number of Service Requests coming in. And then in june, it spikes to 12,520. And you can see on the upper graph how we were in the in the green for those three months. And then we went to june and had to higher level Service Requests is when our our Percentage Rate went down. This slide is about tonnage, how much material we pick up and take to our recycling agency. You can see between. June 2022 and 2023, we have a slight increase in our tonnage. The gray bar is our sweepers that are picking up trash along the curb and the graph on the right shows all of the all of the different methods of cleaning that we do within the bureau. So it includes our corridor hotspot. Thats special projects alley crew. So on and so forth. It also includes our day swing and night shifts as well. So for 2023, you can see that we have around the same amount of debris collected from our sweepers, which is in the gray. And then over to the right, you see we have an increase of around 3000 tons of material. All you can also see that the 6646 is coming from our heavy lifting. We have some challenging zones that require heavy equipment to pick up some of the debris, such like the bayview. So we use ten wheel dump truck and a front end loader to load that material. And thats why that that area is the highest. Were going to jump to graffiti this shows the public and the private graffiti , the pink area is a private and the blue area is the public. For 2023. You can see we jumped around 10,000 Service Requests from 44,000 to about 54,000. This side is just for public. So we can take a look over the years, how many Service Requests came in . This shows how well we did and our Service Level agreement is 48 hours. Unfortunately due to a lot of different factors, our Service Level agreement is down. Last year we were 28. This year, 2023, were at 36. Um, hopefully as we move forward, well have a better Percentage Rate on public property graffiti. This slide shows the private you can see the Service Orders jumped quite a bit. From 13,000 to 22,672. Quite a big difference. This is our private opt in program. We wanted to break it down for you over to your left. You can see the amount of applications that were submitted and then to the right, you can you can see how many that we are dealing with so far in 2024. You can also see in the first column that a couple of the applications were rejected and Property Owners have to adhere to our compliance requirements. And sometimes we cant approve that particular application. So we had to in 2023. It also shows how many we abated and well get into the breakdown by month a little bit later. But you can see its 300 something that we abated the light blue at the bottom shows how many of the contractor our was able to abate for us. Were just starting that program, so we think that number may go up sometime in the future. If you add up the numbers, it really doesnt add up because the total number of abatements can reflect multiple abatements per per address. Places like Mission Street and market street. Sometime the Property Owner is calling us every week, so we have to make multiple trips to that one location. The other the other side breaks it up by the month. So if we start at the top, the monthly graffiti opt out program overview. If you look at the top there, it kind of tells you in what months weve were able to approve the application. So it looks like march of 2023 was a high month for us and then down below it shows you how many we abated by forces and by the contractor. So it looks like in june we did the most of the abatement work. In 2024. This is the slide. I was referring to a moment ago. This shows you how many times weve been weve been to certain locations. The first column to your left shows that we abated 155 locations, one time. But if you slide over to the right, youll see locations where weve abated properties more than once. If you go to the. The one third from the third from the from the right, youll see we went to that that address 14 times. It tells you exactly how many times we had to go to that location. Okay. The one that stands out is we have five locations where weve been to eight times. So were tracking this to make sure we understand the dynamics of this. This this slide kind of breaks down where the abatements are taking place. On the left, you see the city map. The colors represents different districts that we have throughout the city. If you slide to the right, you can you can see at the bottom we have a little legend. So zone d has the most amount of opt in program participants. Were going to jump over to little receptor pulls. This graph shows that we have basically remove and installed pretty much the same in 2023. So the gray line is 520. Thats the ones we removed. And then as far as install red for 66, well have Additional Data for the next presentation. Thats the end of my presentation open for questions. Thank you, commissioner. Thank you. Am i good . Yes. Thank you. Um how about a questions . I guess well start with the trash cans because thats the one we just talked about. Um, why arent we replacing the trash cans . Like, why . Because weve. Weve removed five, ten and weve put in 466. But with all the, the litter issues in the city and trash issues, im confused why were removing, why were not always replacing the trash cans. I know that some people put in requests to have trash cans removed, but and people go through them and dump dump it out on the sidewalk. And i know thats a real hassle, but wouldnt it be better to have all the trash in one spot, even if it is outside the trash can, then along the blocks . Thats what im confused about there. Yeah. Trash cans. A couple questions. Thank you. Yeah, trash cans are very interesting. You have one camp that wants them there, and then you have the other camp that that dont want them there. So were dealing with that. Those debates all the time. The good thing is we have a new design on our new trash can coming. So were excited about that. And we also are working on the project with recology and our other partners to install sensors inside the can so we can do a better job as far as having recology come by and service them. So were excited about those things. Were trying to manage the two groups as much as we can. You can imagine theres some areas in the city that wants mechanical, mechanical, street cleaning and the other side of the block doesnt. So were kind of caught in the middle. We work with our our supervisors to help us manage that because its something that we dont want to really get involved in. Were here to serve. But sometimes when you get caught in the middle, you dont know what which way to go. So its best to lean on the supervisor to kind of help us make those decisions. So a lot of this data is for last fiscal year. So were developing new data for this fiscal year that were in so that graph may change a little bit. Yeah but yes, we still the 466 isnt going to improve. Like were not going to have more trash cans put out. Well get the new fancy ones, which im super excited about, you know, well replace those. But still just the number of trash cans like you can go blocks in the city without finding a trash can. And i will hold on to my trash. But i see a lot of people that are like, i cant find a trash can. And then they throw it on the street. And so yes, can we get more trash cans . I know that theres issues, but if were removing them, that just feels like were exasperating. The street problem. Well the problem is we have complaints from residents as well. Yeah oh, excuse me. Did jada durden, Deputy Director for operations. So you are correct. We do need to replace some cans, but most of the time when we dont have a cannon in the area, its because the residents complain. And so, yes, it could be in one spot. So if you have a garbage can, theyre illegally dumping, which is Business Owners and residents as well, it usually becomes a big eyesore. So isnt just small little bags around the cans. Its like mattresses. His furniture, you know, things of that nature. Business owners, boxes and things of that nature. And so they petitioned to get the cam removed. And so its been a couple of instances where we have removed the can and then replaced it back and got the more complaints about it. So its not a decision that we usually make. We usually work with the District Supervisor on where the cans should be. So putting more cans out can help, but it also can be an eyesore and difficult. But i wish in a better place if we put the cans out. Thats where all the trash would be. But that is not the solution. Yeah. No i understand that. I know people go through the trash. I work for a cbd, so i know how how big those piles can get right. But were here also on behalf of the community. And i know that theyre really frustrated with the trash cans. Thats why im asking these questions, right . No, no, no, no problem. I just was giving you both sides of the residents. Yeah because you got some who want it and some who havent. Thats why i gave you a scenario where we replaced the garbage can, and then again, the other side that didnt want the garbage can. It was a majority. So do we have any, like, rules, like there has to be a trash can within like five blocks of another one or anything like that. We do not have that. Whats a good idea . Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Okay, if i could just chime in. We do have some preferred locations for trash cans, which do include muni bus stops, city buildings, business corridors, library schools, hospitals. High pedestrian volumes. So neighborhood commercial corridors. So we do have some guidelines for that. And we did host a trash can summit last last year or the previous year. Im sorry that i dont know when. I think it was in 2022 to try to look at are there better ways to manage our trash cans. And so the can sensors are one of the things that we are hoping will give us good data so that well be making decisions that are based on data and information. But it was surprising for me to learn that actually San Francisco has more trash cans than most other cities because i often hear like there are no trash cans and turns out we actually have we have Something Like 3000 trash cans throughout a pretty small city. So we do have quite a few of them. So i just wanted to add those little additional points. Were also working on the generators who are generating trash. We hired some inspectors as of late and theyre helping us do outreach to some of the Business Owners and let them know that there are there are rules and regulations as youre supposed to have the proper amount of toters outside of your business and recycling, cardboard and all that stuff is part of your business. So were trying to get them to understand this is a partnership. We cant we cant do it all. We need businesses help. So if there at 2 00 when their bar closes, if theyre pulling out all their bottles and cardboard and putting them by the trash can, well, thats part of the problem. So we need to address the front end as well. And were doing that with our outreach team. Okay yeah. Thank you, commissioner harrison. Yeah. Id like to get back to the graffiti. Bad actors here. For me. Ask you, is there anyone looking at who these bad actors are and is there any repercussions for doing that kind of activity . 80 the bad actors, i think thats on the enforcement side. I dont know of any part of our department that is out there looking for them and has any type of authority to cite them or anything like that. Thats mainly enforcement, and we work with our partners to try to minimize that. But youre right, as soon as something is painted out, we have to go back to the same location and paint it out again. And thats that was one of those slides that i talked about. We have one location that has weve been there 14 times. Yeah yeah, yeah. Its getting i could possibly chime in. So i think there is some good news on the enforcement side, which is that sfpd has reallocated an officer to graffiti who actually had been reassigned for a period of time so that i think we really saw this proliferation happen when during the pandemic there was a pause on enforcement and then sfpd had to reassign the officer who was working on enforcement. And so there is an officer who specializes in graffiti, and hes training officers in the various stations. Now to try to help them, i guess, know what to look for or how to identify the similarities and tags or Something Like that so that they can try to do do increased enforcement. So that is something thats being worked on. But as mr. Mcdaniels noted, its not directly through public works, but we certainly provide information frequently to the to the sfpd. If we notice trends. Understand i dont know where i learned this, that there are these taggers have a certain way they do it and its like a signature and i would imagine that officer would understand that. So thats good to hear that something is being done. And also to chime in, i believe , and also to chime in, i believe that that one officer whos been reinstated now is getting a part time support person to elaborate on it because the chief and the mayor heard it loud and clear from the Business Community that the graffiti was out of hand so that is being acted on. But behavior like bureaucracy sometimes is a slow moving process. So but they are working on it. Commissioner simi. Hey, thanks for the presentation. Just to two areas, i guess. Graffiti and trash are really the only two areas in this presentation. But i, you know, you have three addresses that you had to basically do 50 abatements at three addresses as and so theres probably something on the enforcement side there, obviously. But is there i guess if my business had been hit 22 times, is there any any support we could possibly offer these, you know, Business Owners or private Property Owners in terms of preventing it somehow . I mean, thats its like every other week youre getting youre getting hit. So i wonder if there might be some way to just sort of take off that that long tail right there. So because, i mean, you hit you visited 150 places one time, right . So thats like you could hit 200 places one time if you just moved those three addresses worth of work over. I dont know if you had any thoughts there. I think the Property Owner is very smart to sign up for the program. First of all, because he had a known issue at that location. I really dont know how we can we can solve that. Maybe as we evolve in this new program, well figure out a way to get the Property Owners a little bit more engaged and maybe install some paint that we can just wash off instead of paint out. There are certain types of paint out there that doesnt require a paint out, so it has chemicals in it where you can wash it off relatively easy and maybe we can put that on the property. I dont know. Im just thinking outside the top of my head, right. Those are ideas that we can think about and discuss. Okay. Got it. Um, and then i guess secondly, this is maybe not a question with, with the real answer to it, but, you know, just looking at the i guess im trying to understand if we have a way of assessing citywide and how kind of quote, dirty our streets are. You know, so what we see here, we see requests for service. Thats individuals reaching out to 311. And we see the amount of stuff weve picked up off the street. Right. And i think the great story here is that from 22 to 23 fiscal years, you had less requests for service on 301. And yet we actually picked up more stuff on a tonnage level. So that i think, is a is definitely a good story. But is the question i would ask is, is three one and its people calling in. Right. And so every year that traditionally has gone up, i think since at least, you know, 2014, 2015, when i started looking at this stuff. But do we have any way of sort of independent of that measuring how how, quote, dirty the streets are, how much stuff is on them . I dont know if its kind of an abstract data question, but the Controllers Office has started a program they actually started before the pandemic. They put it on pause for a while and theyve been meeting with us on a regular basis, trying to do exactly what youre talking about. So were working with them. They want to figure out where is the where is the trash being generated from . Can you give us a location . We took them on a ride along last week because they wanted to actually dial in on the specific locations. So they went on a ride along with our with our folks and they gained a lot of information. I think they submitted a report out last fiscal year, but it didnt have a lot of content to it because it was only a small amount. But this years report should be very detailed and were excited to continue to work with them and figure this out right. So were on it at and the Controllers Office has asked us to participate and were doing so. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And ive got a few questions. And thank you, by the way. Good presentation. And im glad to see all these robust this robust dialog going on because thats what were really all about. But is the graffiti when you abated it, i presume you photograph it. We have to photo document just about everything that we do to prove that we were there. So is it shared with sfpd . Could it be shared with sfpd . It could be, yes. But i have to check on that. And see if we can develop and my logic there is that with the new sfpd Graffiti Task force, as commissioner alluded to, its like their signature. So after a while, you start seeing it. And i know that the da is going after a accumulated a cumulative violations to the point where they become a convictable item. And even the City Attorneys Office has been asked to say, hey, can you ein and take civil action against some of these people . Its really, i think everyone is and this is why i believe this commission is instrumental, is in bringing all these departments together for to helping sfpd, you know, document what it is getting the da to know. Look, not only is this person doing all these, but hes also doing all these that dpw hasnt sent us to, to develop a case to, of course, again, then change the behavior, as they say. Right i agree. I mean, some of the tagging is territorial and its the signature. Right . A lot of it is. Were going after graffiti and taggers. Were not going after artists which have also complained and said that our artwork is now being tagged in graffiti. So i think the boundaries have been crossed where there used to be mutual respect. I think the gloves are off with that. So hopefully well be able to recruit some of the local artists to help us with abate this problem because it is becoming its coming out of control. Agreed. Also so i would be interested to see if theres any way that we could do and commissioner semi tapped in on this one, but tonnage per person that we collect because we know how many people are collecting presumably and we know how much were collecting. And id like to know what that number is on a per person basis. But and i dont know if we would have access to this, but how do we compare on a nationwide level or based on major metropolitan, the top ten major metropolitan cities . Because i think it would be really important for the city and people of San Francisco and the media to say, oh, is it commission, is it dpw not cleaning enough or is dpw doing more than its fair share . Its just that we have a citizen problem where people are just dumping on our streets more than the average city. So it makes us, i think, shining that light a little bit differently without pointing the finger or pushing away our obligations. I think it would be very telling to see what our staffing is, what our tonnage is, and how do we compare to other cities. Okay. Just something about working on metrics and also best practices. Have you adjusted or have you had the opportunity to adjust or tweak what your levels of acceptable cleanliness is . I know we really havent established that as a commission and solidified it. I know youve been working on it, but look forward to possibly engaging soon. Mr. Fuller if we could put that on our to do list about engaging on what is acceptable levels. Weve heard from the public about unacceptable levels. We know we have photographs of what things look like before and after we leave, but it could be a matter of hours before its unacceptable again. And its a mess. And im yeah, were just trying to figure out solutions and it took us a long time to get here. And i know it will take us a while to get out, as long as were proactive at it. And i believe that your people most of all, are seeing the support thats coming from up above and the concern about how they do their job, the well being of them doing their jobs, and hopefully seeing them get better Job Satisfaction action will also increase the morale and itll be a itll be a snowball rolling uphill, not downhill. Agreed. And the Controllers Office is helping us define those standards as well. Weve had i was delighted to hear about that, by the way. Yeah, we had conversation for sharing that. Thank you. Further questions, commissioner. I got all im excited about the trash cans. Okay. So its a graffiti questions. So for the opt in program, how long does it take to get approved . Like once you submit an application that you want to opt in, how long does it take to get approved . I dont have the exact amount of days, but i. I imagine within 30 days or so. It depends on the volume coming in. You saw on the graph how we got we got hit with the when people figured out they can get their graffiti removed, they all applied. Yeah, right. So i can get back to you on that. I dont have the exact amount of days, but i can certainly get back to you. Um, thank you. And then once youve turned in the application to opt in, if you have graffiti because im assuming theyre learning about it because they have graffiti on their building and someones going, hey, you need to remove this. But we have this program and if they say, oh yeah, i want to apply, they apply that graffiti thats currently on their building. Do they have to abate it themselves or do i think they leave it there until the process and then we go out and theyre not penalized during that process . I dont believe so, unless carlo jada have i dont have that information with me. Okay well, i believe they get 30 minutes, 30 days to respond. But the Response Time is much shorter than that. On the abatement, if i remember correctly. Did i see that somewhere in the data about the typical time to abate graffiti . Yes. So our our program is abating in around three days, less than a week. If a Property Owner is notified. And their response to us, then we dont typically go penalize them further. We want to we want to engage and support them. So as long as theyre responsive and reacting, we encourage them. When we send the notices, we send the opt in information to them. So i dont know if that answers your question. It looks like Deputy Director durden might want to add. She she told me, answered the question, yes. So they wont be penalized if theyre in contact with us. And we work with them. Okay . Absolutely okay. So like. Yeah, so like what you were saying, 30 days, you have to abate it. If your opt in isnt approved for 45 days, those 15 days you guys already know theyre trying to opt in so they wont be penalized. Absolutely just making sure that once they are opted in, theyre approved. Correct. Um how long does it take for us to get out there to abate the problem . Because im assuming once theyre approved, theyre like, hey, i got something that thats what were averaging about three days now. Its less than a week. We were trending at about a week until and now weve gotten it down to about three days. Average. Thats awesome. And then for the Response Rate for the graffiti, i see thats up to 36 and its within 48 hours. You said three days. So thats 72. Wow with the graph, how different do you think about would the graph be if we put it at 72 hours instead of 48 . Because 36 is kind of a low Response Rate if youre if youre cleaning up 36 of the graffiti issues. So thats there. We have to two parallel programs for the graffiti program. So the 36 is public graffiti, and thats our Response Rate to calls for graffiti on public property. Oh, and then the three days is for the opt in program. And thats for private property. I do think when we had a lot of people opting in and please correct me if im wrong, we did actually to try to make sure that program was successful, especially since it was a pilot. We pulled some of our public graffiti staff temporarily to help support that. So im hopeful youre starting to see that line go back up in the right direction. I think that may have contributed to why our our internal Response Rate went down a little bit. Gotcha. Okay. For the graffiti that we have to. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Mailboxes and the utility boxes and light poles and. Yeah. And hopefully when we get everyone to opt in, that can then we dont have to worry about utilizing labor to go out and site and enforce, you know, maybe have less on the off the program theoretically theyre doing the enforcement per se, the notification for you through 311, which allows us to do our job more effectively rather than sending out 5 or 6 people a week to do enforcement. So i do think well likely, especially in these hot corridors where there are a lot of tags and you can see in the mission in particular, we had quite a few people who who opted in. But the legislation did limit locations. As you know. So we unfortunately , there are properties in other parts of the city who dont qualify for the opt in who we will likely still need to send notifications to. So i dont think we can totally eliminate it, but it will it will be nice if we see that go down. Like i say, you know, one block at a time. Slowly but surely. Yeah. Thank you for the questions. One last one. So you mentioned that you can put the code on to where you can just wash off the graffiti. Um, for those properties that we visited. 22, 14 times. Do we tell them that they can get this . No, i didnt say we put it on. Thats something. No, no, no. The Property Owner would have to write. They could develop it. There is a product out there. Im saying they could use it and that would minimize. Yeah. What im asking is, do you guys tell them about that product . Because youre there so much . Do we say, oh, hey, this might help with with you getting tagged so much because all youll have to do is hose it down instead of calling us and having us come out and debate it every other week or whatever. So since theyre already opt in, you know, were were obligated to do the abatement and finally, we can continue talking about how we can minimize the work that our staff has to do. That was just an idea. I was putting that out there for folks that are not in the in the program where they can where they have to do the work themselves. Yeah just wash wash it down. Yeah. Yeah could we just try to suggest that to the properties that we go to a lot and be like, hey, so i think when we do the education with the pios, we also recommend that because i do see a lot of Property Owners putting this coating up now easier to rinse down, easier to scrub off. So yes, we do educate them to try to help them, but theyre getting very sneaky now, though. Theyre putting the etching stuff on it in there where we have to totally just it just yeah, yeah. But well, yes, we are educating absolutely. Okay. Yeah. That was pretty much my question. Definitely. Yeah. Can we get all the properties to put this stuff on their building so its easier to wash off, right . Yeah. And without looking for a plug or an endorsement, if you can figure out what this paint is or what its nature is. And i guess youve inspired me to ask the question, could the city start using it on our City Property . So that way its much easier for us to abate the graffiti, because if i remember correctly, weve got quite a bit of graffiti that we have to maintain ourselves. Would it be easier and quicker if we used it . We could almost turn into the pilot and the guinea pig for it to see how effective it is. We do use it in some cases in areas and certain paints. We have to figure it out. Okay. But again, theyre getting a brand new ideas. Theyre using stuff to where its etching into it and it actually messes up the property like the cans and stuff like that. But were especially when theyre graffiti on windows and things of that nature sometimes you have to replace the whole window. Oh, no, the etching. Im very familiar. Oh yeah. Marshall turner. Im familiar with the etching, but im just wondering, how do they know about using the etching with the paint per se . Unless someones telling them, i mean, how would they even notice that theyre just getting creative . Okay, just creative. Thank you. Youre welcome. Further questions. Thank you so much. Thank you. I know i had a lot of questions today. No, thats okay. Thank you for the questions. We appreciate them. Keep us on our toes. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Fuller, Public Comment. Members of the of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item for the bureau of Street Environmental Services performance measure report may line up against the wall for this from the door. If here in the chamber if you are calling in, please. Dial 415 a6550001 and use the meeting access code. Of 26622771324. 6 pound pound. And then press star three to be recognized and. Here in the chamber, no one has approached to speak on this item. Sfcv govtv is also indicating that we do not have any callers at this time. So that concludes Public Comment. The commission have any further questions on this item . No hearing. No further questions. Mr. Fuller. Please call the next item item five is the bureau of urban forestry performance measure report and not superintendent Nicholas Crawford is here and i am absolutely blanking on your name , even though we just said it a few minutes ago. Marion williams from bureau of urban forestry and this is a information item. Im sorry, that was marion williams. Yes. Mariana, thank you. Welcome, mariana. Thank you, mariana. Good morning, commissioners. Thomas harris. Magana. Coleman interim director. Carla short. And even the deputy city attorney. Good morning. Today im here to present to our performance data and evaluations for the bureau of urban forestry and well start with slide one. As you can see, its a report of the annual count of the public requests that come in for the bureau of urban forestry services. Our department is made up of four shops, basically five shops, i should say, maybe that is cement landscape arborists and inspectors. Did i leave anything out . Carla okay. And so as you can see by the color chart that that this is the amount of requests that come in per year per shop starting in fiscal year 2019, we were at about 70,300 Service Requests that come in. We escalated to february to february 20th, 23 to almost a little bit over 11,000 Service Requests. And thats its quite a bit. However as we can see on the charts, that from 2019, we were pretty we werein of averaging about 7100 Service Requests per year. And then we had this spike, seems like in fiscal year 2022, which went up to 8400, which was approximately about 1000 or so more Service Orders than we had in the previous years. And then you look at fiscal year 23 and were almost over an account of like 4000 Service Orders. There are various reasons for those spikes. I can start with our most recent, which would be fiscal year 2023. The storm of winter 23 wreaked havoc on our street trees. There were service. The amount of Service Requests coming in were astronomical. I would liken it to it was a blizzard of calls coming in and in in in any given day, you would probably receive 100 to 200 requests just coming in. But the city was in somewhat of a of a devastation. It was a cosmic event. I would almost suggest that our think. But anyway, moving over to slide number two, which shows actually the number of requests that was completed during from fiscal year. 2019 to 23. And as you can see that we respond, added and completed probably about 48 to 47 of the requests that had come in through during those time periods. Its pretty consistent. Our Response Time, i would say that on an average, let me go back our response was probably within a day or two of receiving these requests. And even though our core Central Business in one sense or another and i shouldnt say in one sense of another, is to maintain the street tree program, which means that we are out planting, we are pruning, we are widening bases, we are repairing sidewalks, birx damages that due to both tree intrusions as root intrusions that have uplifted the sidewalk as well as historical sidewalk that has been placed in this time for it to be renewed. And so you have all of this, all these dynamics going on. But i do i would like to point out, but in conjunction to responding to all of these Service Requests , we were maintaining Central Businesses, central lines of business. So that taking me over to slide number three. And what you see here is the number of trees planted per the fiscal year. We started off, you see a very dense from fiscal year 2016 to about 2020, just about the time that the pandemic had hit. And its kind of all over. You know, we go from a6a 664 to a 378 in 2017. But this i think this is about the time we were implementing our new program. And maybe and like i said, its speculative at best because i dont have the data to back it up. But i would somewhat thinking that it was likened to this 378, we were in the process of generating and bringing crews together, getting information. If im wrong, i can always defer that to my esteem director Carla Schroeder or my Deputy Director , jada durden, which would probably give you a lot more insight than im going to give you right now. But however, moving down to fiscal year 2021, we can see that once again, we spiked up in terms of the number amount of trees planted. And this is not just with the bureau , the department of public works. This is what our also with our friends of urban forestry, a contractor that we utilize to help reach the goal of our i believe that we anticipate stated that we wanted to increase our planning, our Tree Planting by 50,000, 50,000 planted trees is that correct . Carla . Something to that nature. Can you that she is quoting our initial goal from the urban forest plan. But in fact, we reduced it to 30,000 trees because we when we did a census of trees, we found that we actually had 20,000 more trees than we realized out on the streets of San Francisco. Okay. So 30,000 is the goal. All right. So as you can see, we did in fiscal year 2021, we planted out over 1000 trees and then 1300 are a little bit over 1300. And fiscal year 22. And then we had somewhat of a drop off in 2023. And ill leave that for the q a perhaps. Okay. Lets see. Moving over to slide number four. We are now looking at the trees that were maintained by the department of public works. Youre looking at. We started off in fiscal year 2019 maintaining our maintenance record was about 3000, a little over 3700. And then once again, we trended up. So thats a good thing because i think that speaks volume for whats going on with our program. We are actually were actually maintaining were actually doing the things that we need to do in order to reach this goal. So like i said, were fiscal year 2023. We are now at we completed 4000 and 557 Tree Plantings. That is an increase of about, i think, 30 of what we are looking at. And dont get me wrong, im not number generated, im just throwing it out there. Okay. Going over to looking at the pie chart, which is slide number five, it shows you all the completions that weve done in the in the since from the beginning of our program until now, which was 2017, the darker blue area shows all the all the trees that we addressed in one form or another, whether we replant it, whether we maintained them, whether we expanded the basins. And im hoping that we replaced that we removed and replaced in kind this particular section of the of the pie chart indicates probably some are our tighter, rougher areas. Some of the areas that really we really needed to address at that particular during the time that we started our program up until now. And so youre looking at this number. Were like at were looking at a 61. We are now looking if you go to the lighter blue section of the pie chart, which is about maybe somewhere a quarter of the pie, we are actively taking care of these locations now, now and then we have moving over to the grayish blue area. We these are unassigned locations. Information regarding this is what weve done in the locations , in the areas that we have taken care of can be found in the public works tree database. Regarding the street tree program. For the record, that slide the blue pie chart was not in the packet. Oh yeah. Okay just for the public record, in case anyones looking. Going to see it. Okay sorry about that. Oh, no, youre okay. Okay moving over to the next slide. It shows the amount of services that we what the services. What services we did provide starting in 2019 until current period. And this is a make up of both the department of public works as well as contractors that we utilize to implement this program and to get this program up and running and to do the work that we needed to do. So, as you can see that we went from , um, we in total, weve had some ups and downs. Were swinging with tree pruning. We started at a high of 13 and then in fiscal year 23, we dropped down to just were just slightly under 13,000. Were at about 12,909 is with the chart is illustrating. And then when you come down and you look at the removal of trees, once again, we were at. 2181 at and we had a slight drop and which is good. So that that drop is i think that says a lot because the whole thing about is not to, you know, were trying to expand our street tree canopy. We want healthy trees. We dont want to remove. I mean, its okay. Its okay to plant new. But the more we remove without replanting, the more weve got to broaden this project and weve got to look at it from a different angle. And so we definitely its good to see that lower number there. And then Stump Grinding is also another thing that i am glad to see. Were pretty stable with that. Some of the Stump Grinding numbers in. Im going to once again, im going to relate it to our current day, our winter storm of 2023, where trees were coming down and we were we were running all over the city trying to pull up trees, remove the stump, replace the sidewalk. You know, we were we were in the we had our gordons fisherman suit on because we were out there in the rain and the crews were working to no avail. So i would say that that would be one of the reasons that were having or not one of the reasons. But you know. Yeah, exactly. One of the reasons that we you see this fluctuation in our numbers moving over to the graph number, our second graph or not our second graph, you might see seventh graph looking at the inspector street sites. These are sites that came in for in spection and the darker lines shows that the inspections that were complete covid and the lighter from my screen, it looks green. So the amount of requests that came in, we started at a high of 9447 and we went to in terms of completion a 8291. And we were working with a staff that was we have, im going to say we were half mass instead of a fully loaded inspector staff of five, we were averaging. 1 to 2. 5. And the reason i say the 2 to 2. 5 was because we are still somewhat in the recovery mode coming from under the shadow of the pandemic. And we are all adjusting. You know, were adjusting just like americas adjusting. So moving on to the next slide, this is now this is the amount of sidewalks that were repaired and not the amount, but the Square Footage of sidewalks that was repaired from fiscal year 2019. Once again to the current year, 2023. We had this large spike. Im going to get this out of the way just in case someone decides that you want to ask me about this. 2020. We showed this huge spike. Of 96,834ft s of sidewalk that was completed in fiscal year 2020. Well what that was was just at about the time when the pandemic broke loose. We have this thing that spoke about internally about Service Orders that were completed years ago. And with our new Management System and Data Collection system, some of these things didnt get closed out. So we went on this massive hunt and we began to look at all the Service Orders that had not been closed out, but had been completed. We did this not only we didnt just literally sit and look at data, but we had we had we put we put the feet to the pavement to go out and really check these locations and so what we found out was that while theres quite a bit so in some instances we reported, you know, Square Footage of about 150, 250 per service order. And at the end of the day, this is what we came up with. This gigantic 96,834ft s f sidewalk. It was sidewalk that was completed, but it just wasnt in the year of 2020. And so but if you look at the numbers once again, looking at 20, 21, 20, 22 and 23, we did have a spike up in 23 three inches terms of the amount of sidewalk being repaired and actually we did meet prop ks, our prop k gold for the amount of side measures or the square feet of sidewalk completed. And so that was a good thing. Moving over to our last slide, which is the lineal feet of curb and gutter that was replaced throughout the city. Once again, that 2020 number matches this same reason. It was all one basket. A lot of times when we go out to repair the sidewalk, we also have to replace the curb. Its never just we. Were never so lucky that we just replace the sidewalk in and of itself. I mean, if a tree buckles the sidewalk, its going to buckle the curb. If its old, if its damaged, thats what its going to be. So generally, we go back out and we repair both. So once again, we. Completed 2335ft of curb and gutter, lineal feet of curb and gutter. It shows curb, but it is curb and gutter and that is my story and i am sticking with it. Thank you for the thank you for the presentation. Yeah. For the record, our presentation in your presentation werent in sync. In fact, my presentation made you look better. But yeah. So if we can just for the public record, synchronize that. So that way everyone has the access. But thank you very much, commissioner hartwig. Hi um, so lets see. All right, so let me scroll up. So for which part was it the annual count of public requests by shop that area . Yes um, and then the annual count of completed public requests by shop, the completion rates about 50. Yeah and i know that this year we had a lot of stuff with the weather and everything, especially at the beginning of the year. Um but it does seem pretty consistent that only about 50 of the requests that get filled. And i was just kind of wondering why that is. Is there a plan to improve it . How can we improve it . What are the obstacles as why, i guess, uh, some of those counts are duplicates. Okay . And so we have to close them out as singles and we drop them off as duplicates or it will go to another agency as well. Unfortunately, it is on our count, but we have duplicates and a lot that are other agencies or not. Our responsibility. So those thats why the number is like that. Okay fortunately like thats helpful in the future, if we could figure out how to tease that out because that really just gives us bad information. And id like to see all look a little bit better. No problem. Yeah, that definitely doesnt make you guys look good. Sorry. I think particularly when we have a big storm, we will have multiple people who call the same incident in and it actually can take quite a bit of time before we can figure out you know, were there two trees next to each other that both had limbs down or were people calling in the same site . So i think particularly in storm years, thats an impact. One of the other things i did just want to note, though, we before the passage of prop e, we had very limited resources for sidewalk repair annually and we still have a backlog from that time that we are working through. And so there are some requests for both sidewalk repair and also for Tree Planting. We dont have dedicated resources yet for Tree Planting. Passage of prop e really secured resources for tree maintenance. And so we have requests that we may not be able to get to in the year in which theyre called in. And so i think that the duplicate is definitely an issue, especially when we have storms. But you know, as were you can see, there was pretty significant variance in our Tree Planting year by year. And thats because we dont have a dedicated funding source. So weve been very fortunate in some years to get an influx of money from our capital requests for Tree Planting versus other years where were reliant on just our limited sales tax allocation. So were always looking weve been very successful the last several years in getting grants to supplement that. And so thats how were hoping to increase those. But that is also likely a factor in why some requests do stay open longer. Were not able to get them in the same year because its resource dependent. Thank you. Thats really good. Definitely sort it out for duplicates and other agencies as well. Yeah thank you. And if we can differentiate between plantings and arborists, which i presume are maintenance and trimming and pruning. Thank you. Yeah. Also so the number of trees planted by fiscal year, that graph are are these trees, are they replacing trees or are they brand new trees or are they a combination . Just kind of wondering those details. Ill jump in on this one here. They are a combination. So we do try to focus on replanting trees when theyre removed. But if we only did that, we would never actually we improve our equity of tree distribution. So its a combination of replacement trees and new trees. So in the future, could we get a breakdown of which is which . Because i originally saw projection, a thousand trees planted and got super excited that we have 1000 new trees. And then i was like, oh wait, some of them might be replacements. So thats why thats what made me ask the question. I really like trees. Um, so yeah, it would just be really nice to see how many new trees were getting, but also have the full data for future presentations. That would be really great. Thank you. Um, i believe thats my last crush. Jen yeah. Commission simi or harrison . Im sorry. Commissioner harrison. Yeah. Thank you. Um, how do you get bumped after what you said about the proposition to put the trees back into the department of public works in one of your graphs about the numbers of trees that have been maintained and cleaned up, i noticed there was a lot of contractors versus the city doing that. Is it because of the to catch up with the Staffing Levels prior to that proposition happening . Is there is there a thought on at some point all of the trees maybe not in. Well, certainly not in my lifetime. Some younger people side. There will be a final the last tree will be cleaned and pruned. And then it must become easier to maintain them again. Going back and doing it correct . It will be. There is a plan for that. And is there a plan to increase the Staffing Levels of our tree crews . Absolutely. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner i was just. Oh, no. Commissioner harrison, i sincerely hope you are still here and on this commission. When we get to that point. Well, i hope youre right. But, boy, i dont know, rooting for you. I think, to kind of build on my colleagues questions here. I think it would be helpful to have a bit of a to sort of t these especially this one up with more of like a holistic like set of numbers because i heard you, director short, you mentioned that we wanted to plant 50,000, which then became 30,000. And i see were planting about a thousand a year. But to maybe sort of start off this presentation the next time with like what . What is the what is the number were starting from . Because, i mean, were only maintaining a 4000 a year. Im just im having a little bit of trouble and we dont need to answer all of it right now. But i think next time itd be helpful to sort of come in and say here is the number of trees that we have on the streets. Heres the number that we you know, we are how were maintaining, you know, like the Different Things were doing. Each of these trees and then, you know, maybe like a net, you know, we planted this many, but we lost this many type of thing so we could start to see how were making progress towards that goal of getting to that that number. We all settled on back in 2016. I think would be helpful because i kind of forget my tree math. Um, because we only see this about once a year. So thank you. Thank you. Well, also put on there when a tree falls off our maintenance and why. Because as years go by, they fall off our maintenance because they grow up and they become mature. Yeah establishment. Yes. We and then they go into street tree. Right . So on me, you know there are different types, different types of maintenance that we do so young trees typically dont require as much pruning, but we have to be watering them. And i think what Deputy Director durden was saying, once theyre established, we take them off our watering list, but then they get into the bucket of being part of the pruning regular pruning cycle. Right . But i think, yes, we will definitely try to give you better context for the numbers and maybe some definitions to, you know, for us non non tree folk. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes thank you. And wanted to segue on to that too. And also based on prop e, we had all these trees that now become the city obligation and those that were pruning their trees privately did it. And then some trees need to be done every three years, four years, i believe in the last report that superintendent crawford. Yes. Superintendent Nicholas Crawford sent us, he said it would take seven years for a full cycle for all the trees to get done, but my concern is, is that in certain areas, in certain parts of the city, trees need to be addressed sooner than that. Many people are hearing or thinking, well, okay, this is not going to get looked at for 3 or 4 more years. What can we do now . I know theres a way to go with private contractors, but then again, you know, people are saying, well, wait a second, we voted for this. This is the citys obligation. When i was a good hypothetic, when they were good private citizens, there pruning their trees every 3 or 4 years, how do we get to that level where they dont feel like as if theyre getting a diminished level of service . And how do we address the point where someone calls up and says, hey, whats the criteria . If ive got a tree thats banging against my house when its windy or, you know, knocking into my gutters and breaking my gutters or getting caught up in the power lines or not just the power lines, but the communication lines, too. I mean, right now people will be more upset about losing their internet than losing electricity. Um, how do we address that . I mean, i know its a very complex question, but just putting it out there, its not a complex question. When we have an inspector, theres tree inspectors who get these requests, and that is what they do is go out and inspect locations. The tree health entanglement in the wires and tree branches on peoples windows. So thats what they do. They go out and inspect every day and take pictures of problematic locations and address the issues. Okay so we have one Group Section that thats what theyre required to do is go out and check on the. Do we know. So if a tree is banging on a window, keeping people up at night and they put in a request on monday, do we know how long until the inspector is able to come come out and check that one . Because that one is more of a nuisance than, oh, this one has a little too many branches. And its going into the street, but its not touching power lines. Its just it needs pruning like, you know, two different scenarios goes there for the ones that are keeping people up at night. Like are we able to get an inspector out quicker and about how long does it usually take for an inspector to come out . Usually within a week. Okay awesome. Okay thank you. Yes and by and by the way, one of my businesses that i had, we had a problem with a tree and i did a311. And theyre out there. In fact, i was, like, shocked, like, wow, someone came in and took care of it. So hats off to the people for the responsiveness, because i believe if it is banging up against the window, i dont think theyre worried about keeping people at night unless theyre breaking the window. What would be more, my concern and that poses a next question where many people are saying that, well, one one person who addressed the subject with me was they live in a very commercial, restaurant oriented area. And the trees are the highways for the roof rats. And once the trees start touching their property, they get added to the network. So it becomes a vector or or rodent problem. When trees are touching houses. So sometimes we have to be cognitive of that as well. And i dont know if thats part of your profile when people complain because they said they submitted a complaint about with photos apparently about roof rats running down the data lines , hopping onto the trees and then hopping on to the houses and getting into peoples gardens and whatnot. Thats a much better example than begging banking branches. I was just lack of examples, but we do we do our best to get out there a week. Okay. Yeah, we do our best to get out there and address the issues such as that as well. Okay yeah. For like those issues, i just imagine people calling in almost daily at 3 to 1. Hey, i have the roof rats. I have the roof rats. I have the roof rats. You would be surprised if the original Property Owners who had the responsibility of the tree before we took it over. How much they call in. Oh im sure. And so we address those immediately. Okay. Thank you, commissioners. Okay. Questions thank you very much. Thank you. Welcome. And mr. Crawford got off easy. Absolutely thank you. Um hearing no further comment, we will now go to Public Comment or yes, Public Comment, please. Mr. Fuller, members of the public wish to make three minutes of comment on item five. The urban forestry performance measure report may line up against the wall. The wall for this from the door. If you are present with us in the chamber, if you are calling in, please. Dial 415 a6550001 and use the meeting number access code. Of 26262277134. 6 pound pound. And then press star three to be recorded sized. And i believe miss fortier, youre coming up to make comment in person. Youll have three minutes to speak and ill provide you. Youll get a 32nd chime when your time is about to expire. Thank you. Thank you again, commissioners. My name is evelyn and what was just stated in front of you today about from urban forestry is kind of new to me. I live on the street where we have to fairly solid trees in front of our building which is coowned by six of us and the branch is are, you know, trying to go up our walls and theyre starting to bang on a window. So now i had sent many, many months ago in emails to try to have them trimmed and i never had any answer. So right now im just voicing something wrong and i hope to perhaps interface with ms. Williams after the meeting to see what can be done so that do i do a311 or whatever . Yeah. The other thing is still on my street and a toma and on the cross street there were trees planted. I think it was around 2010 by the city. It was a sort of city sponsored beautification thing. And there were very tiny trees. They were never followed up. There were never maintained. We have a lot of people with bad behavior. The half of them were chopped down, down, you name it. Ten of them are gone. And in the tree wells we received instead of trees in the last month or two is mulch, which is flying all over the place. Its totally unacceptable. So what i fail to understand is it seems to me that the city does not follow up on the health of their trees and they dont contact the neighbors to find out either whats going on. So i guess its going to be on us as neighbors to insist on services and as i said, ill try to interface to see how we can get there. But thank you for all the information and thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. It does not appear we have any other commenters in person and govtv is indicating we do not have any callers on this item either. So that concludes Public Comment. Secretary fuller, please call the next item. Please call the next item. Okay. Item six is the Commission Review and planning, and ill present this. And it is an informational item. And let me just. Okay so when this this commission and the Public Works Commission were created just over a year ago, one of the suggestions was to have each commission have a annual review of its own work and everything. And obviously its not quite the same as trimming trees, but the public Public Works Commission and the sanitation and streets commission have a certain number of things that they are are held to in the charter. And then also, as commissioners have have own desires for the commission to fulfill as well. And so i put together some information first, a review, too, of course, of what the commissions mandate is so that that is clear as possible. And all of this information can be found in the San Francisco charter. The biggest things, of course, being that the Commission Holds regular meetings about the department of public works regarding sanitation and regarding sanitation standards and protocols. And i wont read each of these, but of course reviewing data provided by the department as well as in coordination with the Controllers Office of other standards that that the department is fulfilling or what progress they are making. And then the other large part of the mandate is to establish minimum standards of cleanliness for the public right of way. And baselines of service to be administered. And obviously that was a big part of our conversation earlier in the meeting. So thats a reminder of the mandate and then some very basic numbers that we were able to put together is over the past 12 months, despite having to having a couple of cancellations, we were still able to hold 12 meetings since the commission was formed. In july 2022. And our total meeting time that spells out to over 30 hours of meetings and hearing reports and Public Comments as well as commissioner questions and our average meetings are just 2. 5 hours, which is delightfully short compared to some commissions. And during that time have had quite a number of reports by the department as well as weve also heard from the refuse rate board as well during their mandated hearings on the refuse rates as well. And then we have heard 59 Public Comments during that time. And are hearing those from a wider group of people. And then in at the december meeting , the one grant that was approved by this commission before the commissions grant power approval expired at the end of december. We saw that. And so we wanted to see if there ill go through these slides and then we can see if theres any questions or conversation about this as well. Look looking ahead for 2024, we have a proposed calendar of meetings, is looking to have a joint meeting with the Public Works Commission, starting off in january to hear that the public works budget, together with the two commissions that lots of questions can be asked and answers by the department. And then, of course, the sanitation and Streets Department does not approve or commission does not approve the budget, but want to make sure that this commission is able to hear about the budget and plans for the department that we are still working on some dates, but one of the things that we i wanted to let the commission know about is we had initially wanted to have a monthly meeting. The commission is not mandate to have a monthly meeting, but coming out of prop prop b, we wanted to have those as often as possible. And then as you get into it, theres the plan and then theres how how you start feeling about it and receive some feedback that it would be good to have a couple recesses during the year since a monthly meeting for a volunteer body is quite a bit to ask. And it also calls on staff to put in just a ton of work to prepare for these meetings as well. So working out kind of a not necessarily monthly but a very frequent meeting schedule for the commission. And so of course you have these dates and ill be checking in with commissioners in the coming weeks to make sure that they work. We can always see if there are other ones available, but it does seem like our third mondays of the month do seem to work to get commissioners here. And of course we would love to have many more options available. But space is limited and in city hall, so and then also just a quick reminder of everybodys as each of the commissioner terms, we have two members who commissioner harrison and chair magnum, whose terms will expire here at the end of or beginning of july 20th, 24, and then the rest of our commissioners have a terms that that run through the middle of 2026. So thats a reminder of that. I hope everyone can fulfill their full term because it is not easy getting through the process and finding new folks. So and the that is the first, first report on the commissions work. Im happy to take any feedback on it. Questions, conversation. We will certainly have to try to do these on an annual basis, a look back and a look forward for the commission. And lastly, just wanted to thank commissioner for their dedication as volunteers in in this role. So thank you very much. Thank you, bob. And yeah, i can imagine, you know, the 30 hours that we put in in meeting times, how many hours it takes us to prepare and then how many hours and hundreds of hours additionally, it takes you to prepare and everything. So thank you to you, jackie, and everyone else here, because i can imagine if were putting in 30, youre putting in a lot more than that. So thank you for that and thank you for the report. Its kind of nice to review what we have done. And i just want to emphasize to our fellow commissioners, even though we dont approve contracts and whatnot, and sometimes we think we dont have teeth or we dont have any authority, but we do. We have a lot of it, by the way, because ive had more outreach from other commissions about what we do and how we can impact in a positive manner. So we are very influential in extremely important. We are, i call it tiny but mighty and definitely needed. So thank you, commissioner. Questions. Over the past year. Hearing no further questions. Public comment, please. Mr. Fuller members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item six, the Commission Review and planning may line up against the wall for this from the door. If here in the chamber , if youre calling in, please dial. 415 a6550001 and use te meeting number access code. Of 266 a2277134. 6 pound pound. And then press star three to raise your hand to be recognized. Used. And it does not appear we have any members of the public in person wishing to speak on this item and well see if. Sf govtv if we have any callers who have raised their hand to be recognized to speak on this item and they are indicating that we do not have any callers wishing to speak on item six. So that concludes Public Comment hearing no comments or discussion from the commissioners. Mr. Fuller, please call the next item item seven is new business initiated by commissioners and this is an opportunity for commissioners to make announcements and raise topics to be added to future commission agendas. And this is an informational item. Commissioners. Commissioner simi. I dont want to ask for a whole, a whole presentation, but i think it would be good to see a sort of breakout of Staffing Levels, you know, sort of vacancy rate and all that and, and you know, it doesnt have to be at the next presentation. It could be, you know, i dont necessarily want to calendar as an entire thing that could lead to a lot of Public Comment and all that, but it would just be good to get that. Even just a memo sent to commissioners might, i think suffice. Yeah yes, absolutely. We have a memo that we can send you with a high level summary and then happy to take questions. Thank you. Hearing no further questions or new business. Mr. Fuller, please open Public Comment. Members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item six new business initiated by commissioners may line up against the furthest or the wall furthest from the door. If present in the chamber. If youre calling in again, dial 415 a6550001. Use the meeting access. Code 266 a2277134 6 pound pound. And then press star three to raise your hand. And no members of the public have approached to speak on this item in person and as africa is indicating that we do not have any callers. So that concludes Public Comment on this item. Um, hearing no further discussion, mr. Fuller, please call the next item. Mr. Fuller is the second round of general Public Comment needed and it is not necessary if general. Lets see. Mr. Secretary, is there any further business . There is no further business on this agenda. Hearing no objections, i adjourn this meeting. This commission will meet again october 16th, 2023, the time is 1159. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Good afternoon. This meeting will come to order. Welcome to the september 18, regular meeting of the land use and Transportation Committee of the board of supervisors im supervisor melgar chair of the committee. Joined by supervisor dean preston and board of supervisors aaron supervispe