. [ pledge of allegiance ] >> this is a reminder to silence all electronic devices. fire commission regular meeting wednesday, january 24th, 2018, and the time is 5:01. item one, roll call. [ roll call. ] >> clerk: item 2, general public comment. members of the public may address the commission for up to three minutes on any matter within the commission's jurisdiction and does not appear on the agenda. speakers shall address their remarks to the commission as a whole and not to individual commissioners or department personnel. commissioners are not to enter into debate or discussion with the speaker. the lack of a response by the commissioners or department personnel does not necessarily constitute agreement with or support statements made during public comment. >> is there any public comment? please step forward. and identify yourself, please. >> hi. good evening. my name is tracey thompson, and i came to this fire commission meeting for the first time on january 10th to express my concern over the lack of an adequate way to fight a big fire in the western and southern neighborhoods of the city. what i heard in response at that meeting was, quote, the pc is handling it, unquote. and another question arose, is there any of this $33 million requested by the sffd for awfs, and the answer was no, by the way. not any of the minutes from the puc website address from october 24th to january 18, 2018 addressed or update the status of the optioned analysis that was presented in the city response in the local papers. in fact, the report could not be found on the website. it had to be requested. what was further disconcerting and in that january 10th meeting, all of you approved $33 million, a 10% increase from last year, when it appears from the fire commission minutes, it wasn't even on the agenda. basically, it took less than a month for the kmition to approve this amount of money. and further. few of you had requested additional information but somehow were forced to vote. there was confusion in this approval. needless to say it was noted. in addition, none of the $33 million is for any part of the awfs. so the facts are the puc is not handling it, and if they are, they're spending a lot of money that it will take to install an awsf and spending it on independent consultants and third party reviewers of the consultant's work. not to mention selling off their work by the awsf. and now, we are not informed -- the public is not informed and you're not keeping us informed on this progress, or you guys have yet to supply a timeline. and we just had an earthquake last night at 10:00 p.m., and i don't know if you felt it, but i did. we need an adequate firefighting system in place as of yesterday, and the bonds were approved up to seven years ago, and it hasn't even begun. it's begun in some ways. yes. i'm really trying to understand the lackadaisical timelines of ensuring this protection in the city. in the january 10th meeting more time was spent discussing 870 bush street and its maintenance. we're running out of time. i don't think that because this falls under the puc umbrella, it precludes the fire department from doing things about it. thank you. >> thank you very much. any further public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. madam secretary? >> clerk: item three, approval of the minutes, discussion and possible action to approve meeting minutes of january 10th, 2018. >> is there any public comment on the minutes? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioners, your pleasure. >> move the minutes, mr. president. >> do i have a second? >> second, mr. president. >> all in favor? minutes are approved. >> clerk: and i believe we have an agenda change. >> correct. i'm going to go into closed session -- we're not going to clear the room, we're going to have a quick ten-minute conversation on a legal matter in the conference room behind this podium here, so we're going to -- have a motion from the commission here to go into closed session, we will do so, but we'll be back in about ten minutes, so we'll hope that each of you will stay here. so do i have a motion? [ inaudible ] >> it's item number -- >> clerk: nine. >> nine that we are moving up so that the counsel can get in and get out, basically. >> so the motion would be to -- >> move item nine to now. >> so moved. >> do i have a second? >> second. >> all in favor? all right. we will go into closed session for about ten minutes. >> we need to go into public comment ongoing into closed session for existing litigation. >> thank you, madam clerk. is there any public comment? >> thank you. >> clerk: government section 549569, administrative code section 6710(d). >> any public comment on this? seeing none, public comment is closed. okay. we have to do the motion again, i suppose. >> i move. >> second. >> all in favor? it's unanimous. thank you. >> item b, conference with counsel, existing litigation. we are now going into closed session. >> we will adjourn. >> okay. we are back in any session. >> clerk: item 10, discussion on any item in closed session -- vote to elect -- oh, no. >> i'll go ahead and report that we did agree to the settlement, and we'll pass that final onto the board of supervisors for approval. do i have a motion not to disclose what we discussed in closed session? >> motion. >> i'm sorry. who seconded that? >> i'll second. >> all in favor of not disclosing our closed session? all right. we're going back to item four. >> fire department operating budget fiscal years 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. presentation from mark corso, deputy director finance and planning, to the fire commission, presentation and discussion. >> good evening, mr. corso. >> good evening, fire department and chief. here to give kind of a follow up from last meeting which was strictly regarding capital and i.t. requests, and so i have a brief presentation and then open it up for any questions. just a number of items wanted to highlight briefly. just a review of a lot of the timelines and previoinstructiot we briefly discussed at meetings. we have just a brief technical on the financial systems conversion, a review of the base budget, some of the updates to the budget so far, challenges we face, and any questions or discussion that we may want to have. just highlighting some of the previous instructions that have been relayed to the commission. the city's looking at approximately a $260 million deficit over the next two years, and that is anticipated to increase in the out years from there. all departments have been requested to make a 2.5% decrease in their general fund, and that relates to about $1.5 million in each of the next twoers i can't, for a $3 million overall. here is an overview of the timeline, meeting today to have a budget discussion, potential approval at the meeting on the 14th of february . the department's budget submittal is due on the 21st. june 1st is when the mayor's office submits a balanced budget to the board. budget hearings in june and july at the board. and then briefly, i wanted to touch on the conversion, just highlighting some of the documentation i provided to you. back earlier the city converted from the legacy system, so that's been a big adjustment for everybody. we're completely on the new system but there's been some issue with reporting and coding, and as the budget was transferred over, there's been no document changes, but you'll notice a lot of the coding and information has changed. there has been a complete overhaul of the coding and reporting system. the initial documentation to the commission is reduced from what's been provided in previous years, but i anticipate that being resolved by the second meeting that we have. and then just kind of highlighting the overview of what has been provided to you in your packets. it's just the overview of the base budget. so last year's process, the department had a budget that was approved for the second year, and that rolled over to be the approval for the first year. one time revenues, expenditures, they're extracted out, and any target reductions are summed up in that base document amount, and those are in the documents that were provided to you. operations, the assumptions include what's been funded is the hiring plan for the department, the graduation of the march 26th academy. that starts the hiring over the two years, and there would be an additional graduation of three additional academies over those two years. the base budget includes backfill for academies from ambulances, any atrition and any adds into the fire department from there, and any adds to the fleet plan. these years coming up with years three and four of the fire equipme fire -- five year fire equipment plan, and they're included in the budget. paragra the airport has requested some additional staffing through the department for training, for fire prevention and for operations, the incorporation of a bike medic down there, and in addition the port has requested -- actually filled this year through a work order but has requested to fill permanently into your budget an additional fire inspector down there. fire prevention and investigation, maintains consistent staffing currently there at the bureau. we transitioned a couple vacant civilian positions to fire engineer, and those will be incorporated into the department's base budget, and two years ago the department funded some education and outreach positions, over $1 million worth of funding, and discussions with the mayor's office that is anticipated to continue over the next two years, as well. additional budget updates, as discussed and approved at the last commission meeting, the department submitted the capital i.t. and fleet budgets by the january 12th deadline. that was submitted on time. overall we're continuing to meet with budget heads on budget means and needs assessment. we -- our next meeting's on friday morning, and we'll be discussing the issues pertaining to budget and also prioritization of departmental needs and we are working on updating staffing models for fire prevention and ems and also looking at fee and revenue projections. just highlighting some of the basic budget challenges. these are no different, definitely from last year, considering the process is very similar. our main goal is to maintain a lot of the currently funded initiatives. that includes the outreach and hiring program, as well as the equipment and fleet allocations. the other challenge we have is a lack of budgetary flexible. the last majority of over 90% of our salaries -- is allocated to salaries for front line and personnel of the department for minimum staffing requirements. and we're also trying to balance departmental requests for service. just wanted to highlight that briefly. over the next slide, you'll see since 2010, you'll see a continued increase in overall chart volume, and that's the chart on the left showing the last fiscal year call volume. we finished last year with a little under 150,000 incidents. as you can see that's a dramatic increase from fiscal year 10, which was just over 100,000. and then, the daily incidents that the department responds to. you can see that's been increasing as well -- monthly, pardon me, to over 10,000 incidents in it a month, and so that has gradually increased, and thus, the need for increase for services has come along with that. one of the discussions with the committee has been how do you balance budget requests with these increasing demands for service and that's something we're discussing ongoing and definitely struggle with. so with that, i wanted to open it up to any questions or discussions. >> thank you, mr. corso. do we have any public comment on mr. corso's report? seeing none, public comment's closed. commissioner veronese? >> i saw the 30% increase. i think it was over the last seven years in medical calls. have we looked at how that is compared with the amount of calls for a nonmedical related? >> medical calls, just you mean as compared as part of our total call volume increase? >> right. >> so medical call has been the main driver of those -- the overall departmental call increase. >> and so i'm wondering if the -- i know that the department has spent years coming up with a plan on atrition for materials and vehicles, and i'm wondering if that plan is flexible enough to -- well, that plan probably only addresses old rigs going out and being replaced by new rigs, but it doesn't address the new rigs coming in. >> correct. we had requested last year or the year before that was a request to increase overall the fleet. it's more of a -- it's a little different on the fire side because we have a fixed number of station locations, but on the ambulance side we've increased the fleet and the total number of vehicles we have in our fleet and that came along with personnel increases, as well. >> okay. so that came along on the ems side of it. >> that's correct. >> and has it been 30% or do you know what that number is? >> not off the top of my head. i do know that we increased -- i believe it was two years ago, there was an analysis with the mayor office, and i believe we increased by -- i believe it was close to 20% at the time. >> very good. >> additional personnel and fleet as well. >> okay. i would only comment that i think that chart that you provided that showed the 30% increase, it doesn't seem to be going -- it doesn't go down in any year. it just needs to go straight up. yeah. i guess with the exception of 2014, theirs looks like it's a slight dip, but otherwise, it's an upward trajectory. i think this makes a pretty good case -- since it's medical related, a pretty good case for the medical response vehicles. you've got the airport, pursuant to what you just said, talking about putting people on bikes. i think that would be the equivalent of quick response vehicles in san francisco to be able to get to people quicker and not necessarily have engines responding to purely medical calls when they're not required to. so that's just a comment i've noticed from this. my second question and final question is what -- if you could brief me quickly on what the process is, are we voting on this item today? >> no. this is just initial discussion. there's a lot of work to be done over the next few weeks, and then potentially on the first meeting in february , there would be a budget for your approval. if there's still following issues, we put a hold for the following week on those issues for a following submission if needed. but this is just for initial discussion. >> i would only say i hope the department doesn't come to us with a budget request that doesn't give us any time or input to -- to -- to comment on it only because just by way of example, the san francisco police department, i learned this just the other day, has a new sub station down at the whafsh, a wharf. it's a beautiful sub station, and all of that was paid for by homeland security grants, which to me speaks to the fact that we really need a grant writer. i know that members of this commission have been talking about grant writers. i would hate to see a budget in front of me that doesn't include a grant writer. >> absolutely. so included in your documentation we've done every year as part of the department, we collect data from division heads and members in the field. and that's discussed with the budget chief. we included it last year. and included in that is a grant writer and other additional equipment and other personnel needs for the department, and that has been discussed and is incorporated and turned over generally to the mayor's office, along with our budget proposal. >> i know you say that, and i think i was around for last year's budget. i was here in april -- beginning of april last year, so i was here for the tail end of that. >> right. so we submit in february , so that was probably when the documentation was submitted to the mayor's office and approved by the commission. >> got it. my -- my message to you is i would hate to see a budget in front of me that didn't have something like that because i would not be able to support it. >> understood. >> thank you. >> thank you, commissioner. commissioner hardeman. >> thank you, mr. president. as usual, very good report, mr. corso. thank you. >> thank you. >> on sfo, you described all these items -- training, the bikes, the inspector. all that is not -- that's a separate item that will not have any negative effect on the overall budget back up in the city. that just deals with the airport, they are paying for it, and it just happens to be we have to review it and that process has to be approved, right? >> absolutely. so we work very closely with the airport and their budget staff and obviously with the chief and their operation staff there. they are 100 is fund t% fund t and the department with the airport. it is incorporated into our budget, but it is funded 100% by the airport, and similar to the port, they pay for the port fire marshall, some fire prevention personnel, as well, as well as the boat and the pilot, so that's 100% funded by the port. >> i've seen sfpd on bicycles at the airport, and we have no one in the fire department right now using the bicycle or is that -- are we -- do we have some of that happening already? >> we have in the past, commissioner -- we have in the past used the h-3 level 3's on an over time basis, but right now, we don't do it as much because we have limited personnel and over time opportunities. but we will have eight street level 2's, which are medics off the ambulances. they are volunteering since the general order went out, so hopefully we can implement that up here when ems staffing levels permit. >> so the bicycles, are they similar to or the same bicycles as sfpd uses in san francisco, chief ali? >> commissioner, chief ali. yes, they are trek bicycles that we are using, and we've already purchased three. >> okay. i think it's wonderful. not to make a big deal out of it, but i think it's very bright and easy to get around. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. corso. >> thank you, commissioner hardeman. vice president nakajo. >> thank you, president cleaveland. good evening, director corso. >> good evening. >> on page four, i know we have this calendar of submittals. on june the 1st, we submit to the mayor's budget -- or the mayor's budget is submitted to the board of supervisors. so with this change as of late last night with a new mayor of san francisco for this period of time between now and june, i was curious as to how this is -- or does it affect our budget process departmentally or do we adhere to these timelines and -- go ahead, mr. corso. >> so the timelines themselves are fixed. i know the june 1st 1 fixed in the charter, so there's no real flexib flexiblity there. for department submissions, everything is consistent there. i'm sure there'll be numerous discussions. even though we submit in february , we're still in conversation with the mayor kazz office until their submittal, so any changing priorities, for example, at the mayor's office will be dealt request in the next few months after the departments have submitted, but everything we've communicated, departmental instructions, timelines are still what they were previously. >> okay. thank you. chief hayes-white, did you want to say anything at this particular point? >> certainly, just to add and echo deputy director corso, we had our budget directions given to us on december 6th, and then, obviously the untimely passing of mayor lee. during acting mayor breed's time, it was articulated we would march to the same budget instructions, so i would anticipate the same would be coming under mayor farrell. >> okay. thank you for that, and at this point, i should also, out of respect to interim mayor, mayor farrell, acknowledge that mr. corso, in terms of page six, second paragraph, bottom, one-time revenues and expenditures are stripped out and any new positions are analyzed. i thought that we did not have any new positions that we were instructed to. clarification, please. >> correct. so that's the instructions for that. in the case of -- this is just general, but some departments have nongeneral fund positions or if they were allocated, in some case, in the general fund, any new positions from a technical budget perspective, they're not budgeted as a full position because they anticipate by the time you hire and the budget passes, it's not a full year of that position, so the following year, they would become annualized. >> okay. director corso, first paragraph, page seven, it caulks about budget currently calling for the graduation of four fire academies over the three years, including the up coming academy beginning on march 26th. so this year, calendar year, there's two classes that are scheduled, march and the latter part in fall? >> correct. iib i believe it's september, october. i don't have the date in front of me. the one that's scheduled to start on the 26th would graduate in july, and then, the later would graduate in fiscal year 19-20. >> is there projection on any classes beyond year 20? '21-'22. >> no. at this time we will continue discussions with the mayor office itself only because the budget doesn't extend that far. >> only just for me to be clear because everything's happening quite rapidly, the interim mayor is in the mayor's office until june of this year, when there's a selection election. >> correct. >> and whoever is elected will be mayor for the next two years. >> for the next year, year and a half, but i believe the next year would be a general election for a full, four year term. >> all of our calendars are part of that projection, as well. >> absolutely. >> thank you for that clarification. page eight, at the bottom, it says fire inspector to be incorporated. i think you said that board paid for that position. is that correct? are we talking about the port fire inspector? >> correct. they had given some fire prevention workload that they had. they had requested if we could fund additional fire inspector position at the port starting essentially immediately a few months ago, so working with the chief and his staff, we were able to assign an additional person to the port via a work order, and with our last discussions with them, their plan was to permanently implement that in their budget, but yes, that's currently funded by the port of san francisco. >> and there's currently a person in that position. >> yes. >> and where is this person located? >> pier one. >> pier one. >> thank you very much, chief. >> director corso, page 11. i understand the lack of budget flexiblity, the balance reduction with increasing requests or demands for service. prop f is always in our budget? >> correct. >> all the mayors since prop f have passed have completely supported funding it fully. >> and i as well as a commissioner. page 12, i think that graph is a good graph. i think it justifies the request that we made in terms of both operation and in medical. did you say we are running 10,000 cases a month? is that what you said? >> correct. so effective probably the end of -- fall of last year, we were looking at regular months of over $10,000 -- 10,000 medical calls in a month. >> 10,000 medical calls a month? >> right. >> okay. thank you very much, director corso. thank you very much, mr. president. >> thank you, mr. vice president. commissioner hardeman, you had an additional question? >> did you want to -- yeah. well, i wasn't going to comment, but on this grant writing, we talk about it on and off the last few years, but is there a possibility that we can look into how other departments have their grant writing done, how many grant writers are employed by the city and who they work for in the city and how many grant writers are being paid by some grant, so that kind of information and how many of them are pull time, etcetera, there's no immediate hurry on that, but i think if we're going to talk about it, we should know what we're talking about. and just throwing out that we'd like to have a grant writer, i think we had know if they're apples to apples with the rest of the city, how that's working, and then, we can have some basis of -- i hear a few meetings ago that there's three grant writers for the police department. i don't know if that's accurate or not, but if that's a fact, then, that's quite interesting, being we don't have any. and i don't want to put you through a whole bunch of work or whoever the chief assigns to do this, but i think we can't really discuss it unless we know as much as possible -- i mean, we can discuss it, but we don't know what we're talking about. so i think if we could know what we're talking about by having the details -- and i think we've been lucky since i've been on the discussion by getting some grants through you and chief guzman, by hitting it just right and very fortunate. fema, and i think others have come forward with wonderful things for us in this department. but i agree with the particular commissioner covington who always brings it up that we might need our -- some access to our own permanent or whatever -- permanent or part-time or whatever, but somebody that does this quite regularly and not just on a hit-and-miss basis like we do. i know you do some grant writin writings every year. certain time of the year, you always send out a boiler plate one. hopefully, i'm not creating a burden. >> we could absolutely do some research on that. >> okay. thank you. >> thank you, commissioner hardeman. commissioner covington. >> thank you, mr. president. i guess i'll start with grant writer question. the president finds that humorous. i spoke briefly with chief scott with the police department, and he did say to me that they do have what i would call a raft of grant writers since we have zero. and at that time, i did ask him if it would be okay for me to come and see him and have a conversation regarding what the police department is doing since they are, you know brother-sister department to the fire department. i have been so, so busy that i haven't had a chance to give him a call, but i will give him a call tomorrow, and i will go there, and there can only be two commissioners going anywhere together at any one time to discuss the business of the department, so i do invite another commissioner to come with me, and we will get the details, and i will report back at our next meeting, that is if chief scott is not traveling. i think the grant writer positions are very important because our staff at the fire department are doing double duties. they're handling everything that falls under their administrative umbrellas, and i have to add, too, that they have been very successful. so we need to even be more successful when we're told that the city is going to have a $260 million deficit just segueing from the grant writers to this deficit,. just segueing from the grant writers to this deficit, can you explain to me how we could be running such a huge deficit because there's a crane on, like, every other roof in this city. >> sure. so it's not to say that the city is in a recession, by any means. i think the issues that the city have had have been great, but i think over the last few years, the growth that the city has seen from year to year on the revenue side has kind of tapered off. it's not to say that revenue is going down, but that has slowed dramatically. overall, the expenses for the city are far out weighing those revenues coming in, particularly surrounding pensions, retirement, health benefits and salary costs, and that's been the communicated as the main driver's of that deficit long-term. so there are definitely concerns citywide that a fire department budget is not going to solve, but that's been the messaging and root causes of that, mainly from personnel costs far out pacing that growth that we have seen in previous years that revenue has tapered off. >> at least we do have two new academies coming up, so hopefully when the chief of the department gives her report, she will touch upon how we're he doing in terms of getting ahead of the gray tsunami with all of these retirements coming up soon will people that have been on the department for many years and will be going to sit on a beach someplace. all right. i am looking at this additional funds for recruitment, this sheet. are we maintaining the recruiting initiative? >> current -- yes. currently, it's done quite a bit of crossover with a lot of our outreach work, but this would be some additional funding for either members attending different fair 1ed or other events where they could be representing the department and working very closely with the outreach portion of the department ea department's efforts. >> and are we maintaining a recruiter position. >> yes. we still have a recruitment position that was funded a couple years ago, i believe. >> and that's included in the current budget submittal? >> absolutely. >> okay. very good. and there was another question that i had. oh, i was surprised to learn in your comments and in chief ali's comments that we no longer have bike medics at the airport. how long have we not had them? >> i'll let chief answer. i believe -- >> they got quite a bit of very good press. >> good afternoon, commissioners, again. assistant deputy chief ali from the airport. the position originally was funded through over time, so we wanted to continue the program, and we wanted to put it in the budget and fund it through the budget. so we have -- we were able to do that. we asked for two -- we asked for originally five positioned, and we were approved for two to three positions. so because of short staffing at the airport, and we were short on medics, we were not able to offer or have the positions filled for over time this last season. >> so were moneys allocated for this position? >> they were on over time because we were just using the staff that was assigned to the airport. >> okay. all right. it was a pilot program initially? >> it was a two year program or how long was it -- [ inaudible ] >> it was more like -- it was more like a year program. >> oh, i didn't realize it was such a remedy, this year. i -- it's news to me that it was ever discontinued. >> it wasn't that it was discontinued. we didn't have the staff to keep it running. >> we had the staff for a year and then we didn't have the staff? >> what happened was we had personnel that are assigned to the airport that are medics. >> yes. >> they were able to perform as bike medics on over time only, and due to atrition, there was some promotions and also there was one reassignment back to the city of one of the medics. we were short staffed on medics that were assigned to the airport. as a result, we didn't have enough to staff the airport medic units and provide bike medics at the same time, 'cause we had limited staffing of the airport apparatus. normally, our staffing, we have two medics a day, so we wanted to maintain that staffing of medics on the apparatus to respond to our normal calls. so if we didn't have the staff to respond or to volunteer to do the bike medic program on over time, then we didn't have enough staff. >> so were you only taking medics for the bike medic program from the airport and not from the larger pool of medics? >> right. >> don't they know how to ride a bike? >> it's not that they didn't know how to ride a bike; that we just can't transfer members from the city to be a bike medic at the airport. >> okay. okay. chief gonzalez? >> i was just here for support. that's all. >> oh. >> chief ali is absolutely correct. it's not just staffing at the airport, it's staffing up here. and down there -- they have different