matter. president farrell: can i ask you a quick question. obviously there have been lots of changes, personnel changes. have you had a chance to interact with the current staff? yes, we have. to your satisfaction in terms of time and so forth? because obviously if we have new staff they may have different ideas, hopefully stronger ideas, perhaps they re going to cure some of the past ills. i want to ask your opinion on that. we have done that. we do find a great deal of hope that the new staff will make great strides. and i think the morale that we have found as a result of that has improved. however, that s not enough to sort of stand on your laurels. the structure of the board is wrong. for the 2012 responsibilities of this commission. and we want to make that clear, that that s our position, based upon everything that we have learned in the past year of investigation. president farrell: thank you. the commission puts a higher priority on matters other than con
we were not watching the celebration of the giants. there was a signing ceremony today for our u. s. transportation secretary announcing a grant to the subway project planned a few weeks ago and we had some miscues but we re ready to go. president farrell: clarification, i was watching the giants. madam clerk, please call items 2 and 3 together. item 2 is a hearing and item 3 is a resolution. president farrell: thank you very much. and from the mayor s office, if you want to come forward. hello. my name is leo chee, budget officer with the mayor. thank you for having this hearing and thanks to the service for the grand jury for your report on the arts commission. on behalf of the mayor s office, i really want to acknowledge that the arts commission has had challenges in the past as we ve seen in the controller s audit in the past, but i also want to say that i m very excited that under the leadership of the new director of cultural affairs, tom i think we have made
it really doesn t take advantage to show off the importance of what it is. and that s something that really should be done. and i think one can say that to some degree, even for me personally, before i joined the grand jury, the arts collection was a great city mystery. the budget for maintaining the art collection is unfortunately minimal. it s budgeted for 75,000 for maintenance of the art collection, and we learned that a good portion of that funding is used for graffiti abatement. which doesn t leave much money to sort of help to maintain the art that the city has. and that really needs to be addressed. most people in the art world have told us that we ve asked, that 1% of the value of the collection is normally set aside for its maintenance. not an unreasonable number. that s $90,000. we recommend that the complete inventory of the collection be done quickly, and that the and that it continue in the future, that this not is a one-time shot. and as a result we have made
however, that s not enough to sort of stand on your laurels. the structure of the board is wrong. for the 2012 responsibilities of this commission. and we want to make that clear, that that s our position, based upon everything that we have learned in the past year of investigation. president farrell: thank you. the commission puts a higher priority on matters other than conserving the articles that are part of the collection, for maintaining the collection, for cataloging the collection, and for exhibiting the collection. the collection, which should be, is not a city attraction. i don t know if you knew about the collection before you walked into this room, or read our report. but it s a big deal. i mean it s $90 million, 4,000 things. they do have mention of it on their website. they do have an iphone app but it s limited and incomplete and it really doesn t take advantage to show off the importance of what it is. and that s something that really should be done. and i
congratulations to them and to all of those of you wearing orange and black in the chambers. i want to thank the members of sfgov tv who are working on this committee meeting. and the clerk, ms. alisa miller. i am joined by board president david chiu and we will be joined by committee vice chair sean elsbernd. do we have any communications? please make sure silence all cell phones and electronic diveess, any document documentse submitted to the clerk. supervisor chiu: i just want to thank the patience and indulgence of the chair as well as members of the public. we were not watching the celebration of the giants. there was a signing ceremony today for our u. s. transportation secretary announcing a grant to the subway project planned a few weeks ago and we had some miscues but we re ready to go. president farrell: clarification, i was watching the giants. madam clerk, please call items 2 and 3 together. item 2 is a hearing and item 3 is a resolution. president farre