Transcripts For SFGTV SF Public Utilities Commission 2024071

[roll call] clerk we have a quorum. Madam president , i want to make a couple of announcements. First, i want to let everybody know that closed session will not be heard today. Due to the covid19 Health Emergency and given the Public Health recommendation issued by the San Francisco department of Public Health and that Governor Newsom and mayor breed have lifted on teleconference, this meeting is being televised on sfgovtv. Please note that there is a delay between live and what is being viewed on sfgtv. If you wish to make Public Comment on an item, dial 14156550001, meeting i. D. 1467101398, pound, pound. To raise your hand to speak, press star, three. Please limit your Public Comment to the item that is under consideration. Im going to ask the commission and staff to mute their microphones if they have not already done so. Madam president , your first order of business is to approve the minutes of the meeting of october 27, 2020. Commissioners, do i have any questions or discussion . May i have a motion and a second to approve . So moved. Second. Madam clerk, will you open Public Comment, please. Clerk members of the public who wish to make two minutes of Public Comment specifically on item 3, the minutes of the meeting of october 27, 2020, dial 4156550001, meeting i. D. 1467101398, pound, pound. To raise your hand to speak, press star, three. Mr. Moderator, do we have any callers . Operator madam secretary, there are no callers in the queue at this time. Clerk thank you. Minutes of the meeting of october 27, 2020, are closed. Thank you. Madam clerk, will you read the roll, please. [roll call] clerk you have four ayes. Its approved. Next item, please. Clerk madam president , your next order of business is item 4, general Public Comment. Members of the public may address the commission for up to two minutes on matters that are win the commissions jurisdiction and not on todays agenda by dialing 14156550001, meeting i. D. 1467101398, pound, pound. To raise your hand to speak, press star, three. Mr. Moderator, do we have any callers . Operator madam secretary, there are multiple callers in the queue. Clerk thank you. Hello. Is it my turn to speak . Operator yes. You have two minutes. Calling in to see how [inaudible] due to social Impact Partnership program. Sfgc funds supports and construction workers Early Childhood clerk excuse me. Speaker, im sorry to interrupt you. Yes. Clerk im sorry to interrupt you, but this is on general Public Comment. The social impact item is later on, on the agenda, on item 8, so if you could please call in at that time . Okay. Clerk thank you. Operator thank you, caller. Queueing the next caller. Good afternoon. This is peter dreickmeyer with the Tuolomne River trust. Back in february, former director viator made a motion that opposed the trump administrations opinion for the delta and opposed the states lawsuit against the biological supported the states lawsuit against the biological report, and nothing came of that. I mentioned this in early october, the turlock and modesto irrigation districts petitioned firc to issue a Water Quality certification. Just last week, ferc noticed the decision and gave people until december 7 to issue comments, and that gives time for the sfpuc to agendize this issue for your next meeting, and i hope you will. We need to support the states authority to control Water Quality, and we need to make sure that the San Francisco p. U. C. Is on the right side of this issue. Thank you very much. Operator thank you, caller. Next caller . Eileen [inaudible] calling on my behalf. A welcome to commissioner harrington. On 19 avenue, there are currently dedicated High Pressure, high volume awas hydrants between urban and ulloa. That being said, the sfmta on 19 avenue rapid project will include water and sewer replacement. The 19 avenue rapid project will be an opportunity to extend awas from the lower to holloway, as there are a number of projects adjacent to this area. Besides that, there is also the el taraval muni forward project. Like the 19 avenue rapid project, the el taraval rapid project includes water and sewer placement. Again, this would be an opportunity to implement High Pressure awas between sunset and west portal to be consistent with the citys dig once policy. Even though the fires are typically in suburban and rural areas, we have highly wooded areas. Dedicated awas on 19 and taraval would allow the city to have a robust Fire Suppression capability on the west side. Taraval has been endorsed by the San Francisco commission for neighborhoods commit, the tarav Taraval Merchant Association operator thank you, caller. Im sorry. Your time has expired. Next caller. So, commissioners and staff, youre having some technical problems. Well see how they go. I think theyre resolved, but they were having some technical problems initially. This is what we want to say. When we have somebody like peter reminding you all again and again, using data and the latest scientific methods as to what is happening to the Tuolomne River, he used to have one of the commissioners understanding the issue, but now, we want to revisit it. That said, the last time the commissioners said that we should have focused meetings so we can given put is because we have the empirical data, okay . We live in a digital world. We happened to go to college. Theres too much opportunity happening to some of the commissioners who just like not to Pay Attention to Public Comment, and thats bad. Now, however, i have a group. Why do we have this woman [inaudible] still on the roads . There was some announcement made about Environmental Justice, giving us 36 hours to respond, until i confronted them, and they delayed it, and now, mickey mouse or whatever, and now, they announce this position again. Who is really in charge of Environmental Justice . Even if you paid me 10 million, i wouldnt work for s. F. Operator thank you, caller. Your time has expired. Madam secretary, there are no more callers in the queue. Clerk thank you. That closes item 4, general Public Comment. Im sorry, madam president. Youre muted. Madam clerk, will you read the next item, please. Clerk yes, madam president. Your next order of business is item 5, communications. Any discussions on communications . I have one question. On item 5e, which is the like merced report, it looks like theres an awful lot going on there. When we entered into the prior m. O. U. , there were a number of requirements, and one of those was there was deferred maintenance where a lot of facilities on our land were not really being kept up. As i said, it looks like theres a lot going on. My question is whether there are still areas on that land where maintenance or other, you know safety or other issues are not being addressed or are not currently funded. Now the report did not address the work unfunded or remaining to be done. Mr. Kelly . Yeah, we will follow up and provide that information to you as part of a followup report. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments, questions . Commissioner i had one quick one on item let me go back to my notes here item h, on the construction change orders on the wsip program, which has been moving, at least according to my watch, quite efficiently, and have you, and just great to see how crazy change orders are. Just like the calaveras dam, there were certain pieces of the landscape that you never know until you start undertaking the pieces. The fact that it was so minimal terms of the change orders should be noted, and so i want to thank whoevers in charge of those monitoring modifications or whatever else did such an efficient job because theres a lot of money at stake during the wsip program, and the fact that there is this minimal, considering how change orders can take, you know, with various orders that happened, as people know, in the development industry, was something that should be commended, so i just wanted to note that for the record on thank you for that observation. Madam clerk, will you open this up for Public Comment, please . Clerk members of the public who wish to make Public Comment specifically on item 5, communications, dial 4156550001, meeting i. D. 146 1467101398, pound, pound. To raise your hand to speak, press star, three. Mr. Moderator, do we have any callers . Operator madam secretary, there is one caller in the queue wishing to be recognized. Clerk thank you. Operator caller, your line is open. Can you hear me now . Operator we can hear you. You have two minutes. Thank you. David pilpell, just in reference to item f. No objection, just a suggestion, if you can spell out n. E. M. , so i would just appreciate if acronyms can be spelled out in the first instance because its not known to me. Thats all. Thank you. Thank you. Good observation. Operator madam secretary, there are no more callers in the queue. Clerk thank you. Public comment on item 5 is now closed. Thank you, madam clerk, will you real estates the next item, please . Clerk madam president , the next order of business is item 6, presentation of the 2019 winners of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Impact awards. Thisll be presented by justine hennerlighter. Madam president , before justine gets up to make the awards, id like to talk about these unprecedented times. We are here to provide with a brief update on the p. U. C. Recognition program and announce the 2019 award winners. We relaunched the program in 2016. P. U. C. Recognition program has became a wonderful tradition in recognizing excellence in service. This year, weve asked our employees to help name our Recognition Program. Weve asked them to suggest a name that represents the entire agency. The name that is inclusive and resonates with our employees from moccasin to San Francisco. We received over 50 names or suggestions from across the agency. Our Recognition Program is now called San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Impact awards, with an appreciation of attack line recognizing excellence in service. The p. U. C. Impact awards is our highest commendation, recognizing the hard work and the commitment of our dedicated employees and partners. Since 2016, we had about 160 employees and partners that weve honored, so now, wed like to turn it over to justine hennerlighter, to do the honor of announcing the 2019 p. U. C. Impact award honorees. Justine, youre up. Hi, everyone. Nice to see everyone again. Thank you very much, harlan. So as you know, there are more than 2300 employees across the p. U. C. , and only six individuals and three teams are awarded this honor annually. This year, we received a Record Number of nominations, 119 in total, and thats a 31 increase from the year prior, which is pretty awesome, and it absolutely confirmed how impactful this program is to our employees and our agency across all of our different functions. In total, 282 individuals were recognized and nominated by 93 different peers, so its wonderful how far this is reaching. With that, im proud to announce our winners for 2019. These honorees exemplify our mission of providing high quality water, power, and Sewer Services in our community. In the individual category, were going to be honoring six nominees in alphabetical order. Julia alman in Community Enterprises for the stakeholder and interest award. Mike brown for Business Services for the Environmental Stewardship award. Scott shanu of water enterprise for the Organizational Excellence award. James hendry of power enterprise for the sustainability award. Kenneth prize, and brian thomas of infrastructure for the effective workforce award. In the team category, we would like to acknowledge three teams, totaling 39 employees, and well be listing the teams in alphabetical order, as well. Number one, Distribution Field services of power enterprise for the Reliable Service and access award, a mighty team of five. Jessie d. Block, david condon, hugh don, brian dunbar, ryan t. Huntington. [please stand by] can you hear me . That caller is nonresponsive. There are no more callers in the queue. Thank you. Public comment on item no. 6. Madam president , your next order of business is item no. 7, report of the general manager. Yeah, the first item is the planning and development for adoption of the puc Asset Management policy. Michael carlin will make his presentation. Good afternoon, commissioners. Michael carlin, deputy general manager. Wanted to discuss with you today the development of an Asset Management policy. This is a draft, and we will be bringing it back for your consideration and adoption in december, but we wanted to present the draft policy to you early so that you could have input on it as we bring it forward. May i have the next slide, please. So the question is what is Asset Management. Its been around for quite a while. It basically is a process that maximizes the life cycle value while consistently meeting levels of service, and it drives decisionmaking and maintenance practices in capital investment. So it has the effect of basically helping us to make budgetary decisions of where we place our money, what Capital Investments we want to make over time. Next slide, please. Why is it important . Its consistent with our strategic plan. Its to drive our Asset Management decisionmaking and its consistent in an effective manner. It is a good utility best practice. And we have in the water supply agreement that we would develop one for the enterprise by december 31, 2020. There has also been discussions with the straits Regional Water board and others making it clear that a waste water enterprise Asset Management program would also be of benefit, and power enterprise has initiated an Asset Management program as well. Can you see that we have all three enterprises initiating programs, and we just want to have an overall policy in place to kind of drive the overall decisionmaking. Next slide, please. Its a highlevel policy that we are asking you to approve in december. We will develop Implementation Plan for each of the enterprises in cooperation with infrastructure and the finance bureaus. And you have to remember also that its not just the enterprises that have assets. 525 golden gate also will have an Asset Management plan, and this will help us guide our discussions to be tied back into what assets we need to replace, what assets we need to maintain and what is going to be the cost associated with that. Next slide, please. Oh, there isnt one. So oop. There are no more slides. Thats it, thank you. Anyways i thought there was a slide that said questions. So i will turn it back over to you, but thats just a brief presentation. You have the draft Asset Management policy in your package. I hope you have a chance to review it, and if you do have questions about it, we can always take those questions from you between now and december when we actually will adopt the or recommend adoption of the policy. I wonder what have we been doing before we decide to do this . Well, we have various Asset Management programs in place in different parts of the organization. What we thought would be good would be to tie it back into finance and infrastructure so that we had an overall guiding policy so that everybody is tiering off of that, so the Implementation Plan comes down through the master Asset Management policy. It also ties in our our finance folks into the process which is really good about how we finance these things, and our Infrastructure Group basically on how we deliver these things that we want to build. So we have all the elements sitting all over in the organization, and we thought it would be best to put the Building Blocks together in one place and have an overall master Asset Management policy that the commission adopts. And is there any policy or something that describes maybe the life cycle of the asset so that we know so that we can look to the future of the asset and, you know, maybe our maintenance will make it last longer, but at least we have an idea of what might be coming up . Yes, so each asset has a different life cycle. So a building like 525 has a