public works commission, even today, is monday, february 12th, 2024. our meeting began at 9:01 a.m. secretary fuller, please call the roll. good morning. please respond with here or present. lynn newhouse. siegel, present. commissioner newhouse siegel is present. warren post here. warren. chair post is present. gerald turner present. commissioner turner is present. paul wolford present. commissioner wolford is present. fadi zabi present. vice chair zabi is present with five members present. we do have quorum for the public works commission. public comment is taken for all informational and action items on today's agenda. to comment in person, you will please line up against the wall

near the screen to the audience left when public comment is called, and for members of the public wishing to make comment on an item from outside the hearing room, you may do so by joining via webinar through the link shown on page two of today's agenda and to be recognized, select raise your hand. the raise your hand icon in the webinar. you may also comment from outside the chamber by. dialing (415) 655-0001 and using the meeting id. of 26602541430, followed by pound, pound, and then to raise your hand to speak, press star three. the telephone login information is available on pages one and two of today's agenda. commenters may speak for up to three minutes per item, and you will receive a 32nd notice when you're speaking. time is about to expire. in the event we have many commenters on an item, they

chair may reduce the public comment time to less than three minutes per person, unless you are speaking under general public comment, please note that you must limit your comments to the topic of the agenda item being discussed. if commenters do not stay on topic, the chair may interrupt and ask you to limit your comment to the agenda item at hand. we ask that public comment be made in a civil and respectful manner, and that you refrain from the use of profanity, abusive or hate speech will not be tolerated. uh, please address your remarks to the commission as a whole, not to individual commissioners or staff. and the public is always welcome to submit comments in writing via our email address. public works dot commission at sfdp .org or by mail. to 49 south van ness, suite 1600, san francisco, california 94103. on behalf of the commission, we extend our

thanks to sf gov tv building management and media services staff for helping make this meeting possible. chair post, thank you. before calling the next item, are there any requests from the commission to change the order of today's agenda. to hearing none. secretary fuller, please call the next item. item one is the announcements by the chair, commissioners and secretary. and this is an informational item. thank you. i have a few announcements. i was very pleased to see positive press coverage of the public works departments preparedness efforts for our recent rain and wind storms, including the public service we provide of distributing sandbags and public works operations crews out in the storm, knee deep in water as they were clearing drains on flooded streets. director short, do you have any comments on the

recent storm response by the department? uh, good morning, carla short, director of public works. thank you. chair post. um, yes, we i will share the comments. i had in my director's report on this item. um, as you note, we've had some of the stormiest days of the rainy season, and once again, we've been front and center in our storm response. fortunately, this year has not been as bad as last year's torrential downpours and gusty winds. at least not so far. so i'll take a moment to knock on wood. but our crews have been kept very busy. um, we repaired 97 potholes, cleared 95, 95 storm drains and responded to 389 incidents related to damaged or fallen limbs and trees all winter long as you note, our operations staff has been handing out hundreds of free sandbags to allow san francisco residents and businesses to prepare for potential flooding impacts. additional our engineers have

been keeping a close watch on known slide hotspots and responding to problem areas such as the mudslide along and upper market hillside on february 4th that brought down a towering redwood tree blocking all westbound lanes on market street near 18th. also, the parking lot at the south end of ocean beach, which is a known problem area, saw some additional storm related damage. so thank you for the opportunity to give a shout out to our frontline employees braving some really harsh winter weather at all hours of the day and night, and helping to keep our city safe. great. thank you. and again, it's nice to see some positive press coverage of this work as well. yes um, turning to negative press coverage, not of the department per se. um, recently there was an article about sfmta's l taraval project. it was in the news regarding the projects extremely adverse impact on businesses along that corridor, along with a five year construction schedule that was

supposed to be completed in two years. director short does public works have a role in this project, and if so, are we part of the problem and or can we be part of the solution? thank you. um, public works has a very modest role in this project. we are limited to inspecting the sewer upgrades. um, as you mentioned, and the this is an sfmta led project. the intent is to improve transit, reliable city with new transit priority traffic signals, new rails and overhead wires, improving pedestrian safety with bulb outs , high visibility crosswalks, and also to rehabilitate under underground water and sewer utilities. um, along with some new landscaping. so our role is really limited to just inspecting those sewer upgrades. um, we are told that the project is expected to wrap up this fall . great. thank you. i know deputy director coe is in the audience, and perhaps in the

future, public works can lend its expertise as to some of our client agencies when they run into problems like sfmta, we could help help them along if that's what's required. but thank you very much for that clarification. um, and one more question for you, director short , if i may. can you please comment on how the mission street vending ban has affected our staff, in particular, since it went into effect, have their working conditions improved materially and does our staff share what i understand as a broad opinion that the vending ban has been successful? i presume we are pleased to see it extended for six months. yes. um, thank you chair post and i can give. i'll i'll answer your question. i'll go into a little more detail in my director's report. um i do think that our staff supports the extension of the moratorium. um, um, i it's clear that there's been improved in the conditions on the street. um, there's been a 22% decrease. decrease in assaults and a 46%

decrease in robberies in the area, as well as a 23% decrease in 311 service requests for street cleaning. so i think it's pretty clear that the moratorium has had a positive impact on conditions in the mission. and i , um, do believe that our staff feel that. and, um, we've seen improvements in willingness to take on additional shifts. um, so i think that's a good indicator that our staff feels like the conditions are much better. good. thank you. and you said you might be offering some more comments in your report, too. great. thank you very much. last shortly, i'd like to point out the january issue of in the works, the department's newsletter. uh as always, a lot of very interesting information. i always learn a lot. uh, in particular, there was a very educational article on mass timber construction on commissioner walford may be familiar with that, i imagine. and the social and environmental benefits of its use, and

particularly how public works is featuring this material in several new capital projects. we are managing for the recreation and park department and the puc in the works also had a summary of the city's improved street paving pci score that measure of street quality that we have talked about at prior meetings, and the higher score that public works achieved through its hard work, and that we've congratulated them for and congratulate them on again on all soon in the works. the department's successful love our city neighborhood volunteer cleanup and greening event that took place in january in the richmond and the public works hosting of the sixth annual city collaborative partnering awards. when two public works managed projects were recognized, the southeast community center and the venice improvement project. the commission congratulates the public works professionals who earn these awards in recognition of their collaborative capital, project management for the city that concludes my announcements. do any of my colleagues have announcements today? secretary fuller, do you have any announcements? i only have one

brief announcement, and that is a reminder to, uh, commissioners that we are fully in, uh, the form 700 ethics compliance season. um, and the ethics commission has sent out a message providing, uh, uh, instructions on completing that form and taking any necessary training and i will be sure to help any commissioners who need access to the. net file system or haven't received that email yet, but it is a crucial part of your of your job is making sure that you're in compliance with this requirement. great. thank you, commissioner newhouse. siegel yes. uh this is my mic. okay so i would like to request to my colleagues that if you. need to leave a meeting, our last meeting was quite long and some of us made requests to the chair to leave. and, uh, others,

i don't know if they had requested to the chair or not, but others left without us knowing how many people were going to need to stay here. and in what order. and i would hope that we would understand that our presence here is official and that we just, unless it's an emergency, do not come and go at will and that we do it through the chair or through the commission secretary, so that they're aware that we need to leave and if and that you, chair post, do not grant anyone permission to leave. if you know that somebody else is going, has priority for that. so that we do retain a quorum when we need one for voting, but not just for voting also, so that the commission does not have to, uh, end our meeting early, even if there's no vote. so it was confusing and, uh, it it it

doesn't function well that way. i concur, uh, but i but please rest assured that when commissioner was can't stay until our 1:00, uh, meeting time, they do let me know in advance. yes, and i try to accommodate everybody. it does get tough when, um, if we start with fewer than five people to begin with. of course. but i appreciate your comments. i will make a more rigorous effort. and i do know today that one commissioner has a hard stop at noon, so we will be sure to have all voting items completed by noon. leaving, uh, for others to hear the informational items. if needed. if we go that late, that's great. so announcing as you did today ahead of time that we do have and saying that commissioner's name isn't. there's nothing wrong with saying who that commissioner is. who needs to leave at noon so that if somebody else gets up to leave before noon, they would have to explain to the person who has to leave or somebody

else so that we understand that our presence here is official, is official. i was going to say officious. it's not officious, it's official. and it is important. and we should take it seriously. so thank you so much. yes. and it is. it's commissioner wolford. and as you know, i feel very strongly that that commissioners who work full time, which is not all of us, that we try to accommodate them as much as possible for their work obligations outside of the commission. and i would like to say that i think that that is somewhat ageist, and i think that that is a inappropriate to state that as a reason. i'm sorry that many older people have medical issues or family issues and, um, i don't think that work. i worked full time, plus had a family and often family with medical issues, all kinds of things. working full time is not does not provide someone and perhaps i shouldn't

have taken the appointment to this commission. i'm sorry that you disagree with me on that, commissioner zogby. um, yeah. good good morning everyone. good to see everyone this morning. have, um, i wanted i was going to wait till for the director's report on this, but since we mentioned the, uh, the storm, uh, i wanted to kind gratulate, uh, director short and her entire team about on the attitude of the of the staff that is on the streets. i actually witnessed, um, one of the staff member on the on a sunday when it was pouring rain and nothing but a smile was on his face and i had i stood out and i said, you know, good morning and thank you for your work. even offered him a bottle of water. but he said no. and, uh, it was, it was the it was a great attitude working in such terrible conditions. so

congratulations on on on that. and i also want to wish our asian community, um, a happy lunar new year, a year of the dragon. um, and hope to see everyone at the parade. thank you. thank you, secretary fuller , please call public comment on this item. members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item one. uh the announcements by the chair, commissioners and secretary may line up against the wall for this from the door. if you are here in the chamber for your comments from outside the chamber, please press the raise your hand button in the webinar or star three on your phone to be recognized. and it appears we do not have any in-person commenters and sf govtv is indicating we do not have any callers either. so that concludes public comment for the

announcement. yes. thank you. commissioner, did you have any further comments? no, no. okay that's all right. secretary fuller, please call the next item. item two is the director's report and communications and public works director carla short is here to present and this is an informational item. thank you. commissioner fuller. uh, good morning again, commissioners. carla short, director of public works. there are several topics i want to let you know about today, but i'd like to start by also wishing you a happy lunar new year. kung hei, fat choy. and i'd like if we can share a brief video that we made, um, to kick off the lunar new year. uh, thank you, sf tv, for start for bringing it to the clerk. pc. san francisco. shock jock dygat standing pillock. sonthi jinhong jock yap

ping pong, the daily. munsi you'ii shanghai anglo back you hang wong lunging, fuming long man ginseng tai fook peng moon boxing godzilla. nin yaoyu popo go sing long lin hongyuan. thank you. thank you. uh, thanks, bob, for sharing that. i do want to publicly recognize crystal liang and julian pham for their work on producing that little video and of course, deputy director ko put us all to shame with his fluent cantonese. but um, okay, so we already covered storm response. um, i'll just share a little bit more information about the sidewalk vending

moratorium. as you noted, chair post, it was announced by mayor breed and supervisor ronen last week that the city will be extending the temporary moratorium on street vending along the mission street corridor for an additional six months. the city issued a 90 day moratorium on mission street last november as the result of unprecedented safety concerns due to unauthorized vending and illegal activities that have been negatively impacting small business owners. permitted vendors mission residents and visitors in this busy corridor, which stretches from 14th street to cesar chavez street. since the moratorium went into effect, we've seen positive improvements, including reductions in calls for service to both police and our street cleaning requests. i mentioned those statistics. additionally, a survey of nearly 200 merchants located in the mission street corridor found overwhelming support for the moratorium to continue, with 76% in favor. they say that business is up in the brick and mortar establishments, and that their customers and employees feel safer, so we will add another

six months to the 90 day moratorium to build on the momentum, further enhancing public safety and cleanliness in the mission neighborhood. public works street inspectors will continue to run an enforcement operation in the mission seven days a week, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. through the extended moratorium period. meanwhile, the office of economic and workforce development, in partnership with community organizations, will continue to offer support services and resources to the affected permitted vendors who had been selling on mission street. all right. we started with lunar new year a little bit more on that last week we joined mayor breed, board president peskin and a large contingent of other department representatives and community leaders at a press conference in chinatown to highlight the city's efforts to keep the historic neighborhood clean, safe and beautiful during the lunar new year festivities. the year of the dragon officially kicked off this past saturday, and chinatown is.

naturally at the heart of celebrations in san francisco. public works operation. crews have been out in force over the past two weeks, providing enhanced power washing along the commercial corridors and alleyways. deep cleaning the iconic dragon gate at bush and grant streets, sweeping up litter and wiping out graffiti, including a courtesy removal of tags on on storefront roll up windows, roll up doors. in addition, our painters have been touching up the decorative dragon light poles along grant avenue and annual undertaking that keeps these delightful features looking good. later this month, our street repair team will make a proactive run along the chinese new year parade route to fill any potholes. we will also deploy a large contingent of street cleaners on the route before and after the parade. always one of our biggest operations of the year. as you know, february marks black history month, an annual observance to celebrate and highlight the contributions of black americans. public works began the tradition of celebrating black history month

in 2016 as a means of promoting cultural understanding and black heritage. over the past eight years, we have featured significant contributions of black people in the development and advancement of the of the global community through various sectors such as engineering, architecture and creative invention that have changed our world. the department's staff led black history month committee has been producing a wonderful roster of events this year, with the theme african americans and the arts a highlight has been the daily. did you know email that lands in employee inboxes first thing in the morning, where we get to learn more about josephine baker , melvin simmons, alvin ailey, and this morning, kehinde wiley, among others. there's also an offering of joint in person and virtual talks throughout the month featuring special guests. the first, held last week with civil rights leader the reverend arnold townsend among the upcoming guests are jazz musician sam peeples, junior artist and curator karen

seneferu, and actor danny glover. black history month is just one of our many heritage month initiatives organized by public works staff that lifts us up individually and collectively and in advance, a broader understanding of our diverse communities. this coming friday, we will be celebrating the grand opening of the new golden gate park golf course clubhouse. this 1800 and 50 square foot single story structure replaces the old clubhouse that was badly damaged in a fire five years ago. i don't think many people outside of the city's golfing community even know about this public course. it's tucked, tucked amongst aged cypress trees on the west side of the park, just off fulton street, and gets a lot of play by both newcomer was just learning the game and veterans who want to get a quick to want to get a in a quick nine holes. the new clubhouse fits in beautifully with the park setting. public works team handled design, architecture and landscape architecture in

engineering and construction management on behalf of rec park. if you get a chance, grab your four iron and putter and check it out. i will stay away because i am dangerous. dangerous with a golf club also coming up is arbor day. the best day of the year? this year's arbor day event will take place on saturday, march 9th in district five. neighborhoods the haight, hayes valley and the tenderloin, in addition to planting trees, will be hosting our annual arbor day fair, a fun packed event with lots of free family fun activities including bucket truck rides and building and planting planter boxes. the fair will be held at new traditions elementary school, which is at 2050 hayes street and runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. we'll also be hosting a street tree id walk and a tour of our new street tree nursery in the south of market. more information can be found on our website at sf public works. org and i hope you can join us and spread the word. and that

concludes my report. thank you. thank you. um, i had a question when you were made me think of it when you were talking about the lunar new year celebrations beginning on saturday, when something like the waymo taxi that was destroyed in a fire happens in a neighborhood. and, um, are we involved in the cleanup of that site and do we take precautions if there is hazardous material in the debris left from a fire like that? um, yes and yes. we were involved in the cleanup of that site, but we generally will defer to our hazmat, um, specialists if there is something like a fire, and then we will only do the cleanup following it being cleared for cleanup. but we did, in fact, respond to that on sunday morning. thank you. are there any questions or comments for director short before we open public comment? please open public comment on her report. members of the public wish to

make three minutes of comment on item two. the director's report may line up against the wall for this from the door. if you're in the chamber. if you're commenting from outside the chamber, please press the raise your hand button in the webinar or star three on your phone to be recognized. okay it appears we do not have any in person speakers at. and as if govtv is indicating we don't have any call callers either. so that concludes public comment on the director's report. thank you. please call the next item on the agenda. item three is general public comment, which is for topics under the commission's mandate but not related to a specific item on today's agenda. members of the public who wish to make three minutes of general

public comment again may line up against the wall for this from the door here in the chamber, if you're commenting from outside, press the raise your hand button in the webinar or star three on your phone to be recognized. and as a reminder, general public comment is limited to a total of 15 minutes for all commenters and can be continued to the end of the agenda. item 1212 if we exceed that limit and the time now is 928. we do not have any members in person, uh, wishing to speak on this item. and if govtv is letting me know, we do not have any callers for general public comment either. so that concludes general public comment . thank you. please call the next item. eight four is the consent calendar of routine matters includes the draft minutes from both the january 22nd, 2024 special meeting of

just the public works commission meeting as well as the draft minutes from the january 22nd, 2024 special joint session with the sanitation and streets commission. uh, the consent calendar also includes five contract modifications options and one contract award. please note that corrections for clarity have been made in the draft minutes for the january 22nd public works commission meeting, and for the draft minutes of the joint session with sanitation and streets, and these corrections are reflected in the documents posted to the commission's website. consent calendar items can be heard individually, orally, upon request by a commissioner, staff or the public, and adoption of the consent calendar and all resolutions contained in it is an action item before a motion is made. i'm happy to take any further corrections to the minutes or any questions. thank you. i submitted some earlier

cleanup items to the minutes, so i think i'm fine. i have no questions or comments on the consent calendar today. uh, with the cleaner minutes, commissioner newhouser yes. so perhaps this has already been corrected for clarity, but it was not clear to me. so if it's already been addressed, just let me know. uh, so in the minutes for the. january 22nd joint session, it says in item, uh, let's see, under in public comment. okay. it's item four. uh it says that commissioner semi departed at 12:03 p.m, then later in item five it says that members present and voting were. and then it lists commissioner semi as one of them. was that

because item five was taken earlier than item four that. that's correct commissioner. um, and i think i could probably make some type of editorial comment to clarify that for, for everyone. okay. that's great. and, and uh, just to reiterate my comments earlier that it is unusual for us to say that a commissioner left at that hour. and i think it's a very good one. i saw that that's one of the things that drove my earlier comments for us to say, when a commissioner has left. so i think that would be a very good practice for our commission to adopt. thank you. i'm finished. commissioner zarb. yeah. just a quick question on one of the one of the items. uh, and i wasn't going to ask any questions about it until i got in the elevator this morning. and, uh, some of the workers were complaining. were, like, already complaining about as one elevator. so is it

is it going to take four years? almost four years to do to do the upgrade and. i don't have the exact time. we can get back to you with that. um 100 days. yeah, but i don't know that that necessarily means the elevators will be out for that whole time, so we can give you some more details on kind of the scheduling for that project. sounds, sounds, perhaps deputy director alameda is ready to answer that question. yeah. good morning commissioners. um, i haven't studied the schedule in a while. whether it's the full four hours or for four years. but i do know that it's quite a number of elevators that are being rotate out. so there's always elevators that are available. um, so, so part of it is just the complexity of schedule. not so much. um, the fact that all of them are going to take that long. so just a point of clarity, i thought would help. thank you. thank you

so, so in an email i received from from building management, i believe they said the impact in the short time would be six months. that's that's the explanation that they had provided. if there are no other questions or comments on the consent calendar, is there a motion and a second to adopt the consent calendar today? so moved wolford i second thank you. please open the motion to public comment. members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item for the adoption of the consent calendar and all resolutions contained with it within it. if you are in the chamber, please line up against the wall for this from the door to speak. and if you are calling from outside the room, please press the raise your hand button in the webinar or press star three on your phone to be recognized and. and

we do not have any in-person commenters on this item. and sf gov tv is also indicating we do not have any callers on this either, so that concludes public comment. thank you. if there are no other questions or comments, all in favor of passing the consent calendar and it's, uh, pertinent resolutions, please say i or yes, i, i, i believe the vote was unanimous. yes. um, uh, secretary fuller will post the resolutions to the commission's website. commissioner wolford. oh sorry. oh, okay. thank you. all right. secretary fuller, please call the next item. uh, moving to the regular. agenda. item five is the geary rapid east of van nest. contract modification and project manager ellen ly will present this modification. an and this is an action item. good

morning. commissioners uh, deputy director albert co. um our project manager is running a little behind currently and is held up, and she's on her way. uh, i would like to request that we skip this item momentarily until she gets here. that's fine . uh, deputy city attorney tom, please remind me. may i make this decision unilaterally to, um. here? item six now. and item five afterward? or does the commission need to vote on that? good morning. commissioners. uh, a vote is not required if unless there is any concern, uh, any objections among the commissioners? thank you. commissioners, if there are no objections to switch, fine. we'll hear item six now, please, if the staff is ready for six and go to five afterward. great. thank you. thank you.

okay, so, uh, given the change in order, item six. um is the furniture fixtures and equipment management services for the 2016 public health and safety bond program. and it's a contract modification and project manager joe chen will present this modification. and this is an action item. ready. good morning commissioners i'm sorry. good morning chair pose. and good morning commissioners. my name is joe chen, public works program manager for the 2016 public health and safety bond program. i'm here this morning to present on the furniture, fixtures and equipment management services fee for short professional service contract for the 2016 public health and safety bond program.

public works is requesting commission consideration and approval of modification number two to increase the contract duration by 762 calendar days for a new contract duration of 2952 calendar days. the consultant is radius llc. public works is requesting commission approval of mod two in order to allow the fmd consultant to continue providing services related to the furniture, fixtures and equipment management for all projects included under the 2016 phs progm. the ffa contract has supported projects at the following locations. kaiser mission health center in district eight maxine hall health center in district five. southeast family health center in district ten, and zuckerberg san francisco general building five in district ten. let me now

provide a quick overview of the purpose and significance of this contract. this contract was set up to provide ffa management services to support not one project, but all projects included under the 2016 phs program. to date, this contract has been providing services only to projects of which the department of public health is declining. these projects include the community health centers and the zuckerberg building. five projects funding for this contract has been through the 2016 phs jail bond program. this is a professional service contract and not a construction contract. the ffa contract was awarded to radius llc. the consultant scope includes the following. it provides specialty consulting related to the procurement coordination and installation of new and existing ffa and relocation and or disposal of existing ffa for various projects. the specialty consultant works closely with the architectural and engineering design team throughout the project life

cycle to ensure that all furnitures, fixtures and medical equipment are purchased directly by the client and are typically outside the scope of the general contractor, are coordinated with the final design documents. during design phase, the consultant's primary role is to provide coordination between the design team and the end users to make sure the space and utility requirements, such as electrical power, drain connections, water connections for furniture, and all medical equipment that are part of the clinical operational plan have been coordinated in the design documents to meet the state licensing requirements for many renovation projects, the ffa consultant also works closely with the client department to help prepare a complete inventory of existing ffa and to help the client decide whether to reuse, replace or relocate existing ffa. the decision to replace or replace has a significant impact on the final design documents for projects under the state jurisdiction, which all are all

projects at the zuckerberg building. five all furniture and heavy medical equipment must be physically anchored to the building. this task requires a significant amount of coordination between the design team, the medical equipment vendors, the furniture vendors, and the general contractor. this consultant continues the coordination effort throughout the construction phase as well as the transition occupational phase until the project is fully occupied by the end users. as i mentioned previously, ffa are typically not provided by the contractor, but purchased outside of the construction contract. therefore, this consultant plays an important role during the construction phase to ensure the time and delivery of the ffa to the project and must make regular adjustments to the delivery schedule depending on the contractor's construction schedule. the next two slides highlight the roles and responsibilities of the ffa consultant. the first slide provides photos of recently completed community health center projects and what the

building looks like before and after the completion of the ffa installation. the upper left photo shows the typical exam room at the castro mission health center as completed by the contractor. the ffa consultant helped coordinate, manage the exam chair, wall mounted medical equipment, wall mounted computer workstation, etc. that needed to be installed to ensure that the workspace can be used as intended. the upper right photo shows the staff space at the maxine hall health center as completed by the contractor, and the space after the installation of the client provided modular furniture. the bottom photo shows the front lobby and staff working space at the southeast health center before and after the ffa installation. this next slide shows photos of recently completed xsg building, five projects and the associated ffa installation. the upper photo shows the office space at ward six h before and after the installation of the ffa modular office partitions. staff modular office furniture and conference room table, a wall mounted

computer monitor. the lower photo shows the main clinical workspace at the rehabilitation department before and after the ffa installation. this project is a very good illustration of the importance of the fmv consultant in health care settings to ensure that all physical therapy and other medical equipment, exam tables and furniture are accounted for. the timely delivered, installed correctly to support the final clinical workflow. this slide provides a summary of the contract amount and contract duration for the professional service ffa contract. the original contract award amount is $3 million. there has been no change to this contract amount. the original contract duration is for 2190. calendar days. the current proposed modification two if approved by the commission, will increase the contract duration by 762. calendar days, resulting in the final construction. a final contract duration of 2952 calendar days, and an end date

of march 31st, 2026. the next slide provides a graphical illustration of why the ffa contract duration needs to be extended by 70 to 62 calendar days. the top bar shows the ffa contract durations. the green colored bar represents the original contract duration of 2190. calendar days. the red colored bar represents the current request to increase the contract duration by 762 calendar days. the bottom two yellow bars represents a high level schedule of the community health centers and the csg building. five projects the last community health center project was completed at the end of 2022. the csg building five component includes ten plus construction projects and the last project we are currently tracking is targeting to be completed by the end of 2025. the additional duration is needed so that fmv consultant can continue supporting the csg building. five projects until project completion, which is

represented by the blue colored bar. okay, sorry for not advancing the slide. to reiterate, public works is here today requesting commission consideration and approval of modification number two to increase the contract duration by 762 calendar days for a new contract duration of 2952 calendar days. this concludes my presentation for today. i'm available to answer any questions that you may have. thank you. thank you very much, mr. chen. it's always nice to see you. and i found your presentation to be very informative, particularly your verbal comments. it's always so helpful to have the verbal comments that go along with the slides. even though we do review the slides prior to the meetings . uh, often the verbal comments answer the questions i bring with me. so thank you very much. i have no questions or comments for mr. chen. uh, commissioner wolford. yes. mr. chen, thank

you for the presentation. um, it is curious that the sub, the contractor, the vendor would need to extend their services in essentially two years and not ask for any kind of differentiation in the cost of their services because as labor goes up annually and of course, we know that happened. can you explain why they didn't ask for any increase? sure um, thank you, commissioner, for the question. very good question. uh, this contract was set up as a time materials contract. so this allows public works bill to manage the consultant fees based on the a monthly basis. the city the project team will review the services that are provided for each of the project. we have a very detailed, uh, invoicing process where we allows us to review what services have provided for the previous month, be able to assess kind of where we are today, and then be able to anticipate what are the future, uh, costs for the consultant to manage the project till the very end. so this project was set up to, you know,

obviously, to have at least ten plus projects that we're tracking. so we found that the best way to manage a project, a contract with so many projects is to track it under a time materials basis that was with race or previous negotiated into the contract. commissioner zogby , thank you for your presentation, mr. chen. and you actually answered half my question because i wanted to ask. so it's a set amount. what? so in the past six years, what, um, percentage of that that budget has been utilized? um, thank you, commissioner, for the question. i don't have the exact number. uh memorized, but i believe we are about maybe be less than 50% expended. so about 1.5 million, uh, to date, um, for past, uh, six years. and uh, for, for your, uh, you know, with your experience and, uh,

what do you think do you think that those 762 days are going to be covered by the same budget or should we expect you to visit us again about, um, thank you for the question. um, i think at this rate, we believe that the remaining, uh, balance of this contract will be sufficient to support all the services through the next 7 to 62 calendar days. uh, that's one reason why we did our assessment and kind of did a cost forecast based on the remaining scope and that's why we didn't come to the commission asking for increase to the contract amount. we just asked for a duration increase, knowing that there's enough balance to cover for the 762 calendar days. thank you. if there are no further questions or comments, we'll open this item to public comment. members of the public who wish to make comment on item six, the furniture fixtures and equipment management survey, contract modification may line

up against the wall for this. from the door here in the chamber. if you're commenting from outside the room, please press the raise your hand button in the webinar or press star three on your phone to be recognized. and it appears we do not have any in-person callers on this item. and sf gov tv is also indicating we do not have any public commenters calling in about this item either. so that concludes public comment. thank you. if there are no other comments or questions from the commission, is there a motion and a second to adopt this contract modification? so moved second, wolford, thank you. all in favor of adopting the contract modification. please say i or yes i. the vote is unanimous and the resolution will be posted to the commission's website. thank you, mr. chen for your presentation today. deputy director coe, are you ready for item five or

should we move to item seven? ready we're ready. great great. we'll have item five now. thank you. okay uh, so once again, uh, item five is the geary rapid east of van nest. contract modification and project manager ellen lee, uh, will present this modification. hi. good morning. my name is ellen lee. i'm the muni forward project manager at public works with idc. i'm here to present to you about the time extension request for geary rapid east of venice project. do i.

do i control it? yeah, just okay . great okay. so with this agenda item, we are seeking contract modification approval to increase the original contract duration date by 434 days. that's roughly 14 months to the total contract creation day, bringing the total contract duration day up to 1361 consecutive calendar days. and the contract modification approval asks is due to unforeseen utility. coronation action, and i could go more in detail with that as the presentation goes on. the project limit for the geary east um geary rapid east of venice project is along the geary street corridor between van ness and kearney street within

district three and district five of. capital improvements include curb ramp upgrades. all curb ramps were constructed to be ada compliant. sidewalk widening and bulb outs to help shorten the crossing distance for pedestrians. there was 1.5 miles of new roadway repaving within this project. traffic signal modifications to increase accessibility for pedestrians. roughly two miles of water lines were replaced and relocated. so some of the project background that geary rapid east project, along with two other geary projects, aimed to improve one of san francisco's busiest bus corridors, the 38 geary and the

38 ah geary rapid transit constructions. construction started in july 2019, and due to unforeseen utility coronations, the project was impacted by roughly 14 months. so during um, during construction, after we started, uh, we initiated notice to proceed. we learned of a private utility company. verizon intended to install underground conduits along the corridor and their limits over lapped. the geary east project limits. and so in order to minimize the impact to the community, geary being very busy with the bus rapid um, the 38 bus and the 38 ah bus, along with merchants, uh, japan and japantown in that area. we decided it was best to

coordinate with verizon so that we put our project on hold. essentially while verizon installed their conduit work and it did take 14 months because because their conduit work, um, had to get permitted by bsm and the curb ramps that the conduit is crossed. they had to get designed. and also, um, accessible have the disability coordinator review them for the accessibility of the curb ramps. and finally, they had to coordinate with mta's overhead support team to de-energize overhead lines. um, during their construct work. and so that took roughly 14 months. and so when that work was completed, um, our project, the geary east project, was able to resume and pave the street. um, so that's. so here

are the dates. uh, the original contract started in july 2019. the original substantial completion was supposed. to be september 2021. one, however, with the 14 months of covid work we did, the substantial completion date is november 19th, 2022. so just to reiterate, we are seeking contract approval to increase the original contract duration by 434 days. this brings her substantial completion. to november 2022. uh, this will allow us to address the unforeseen utility coordination, allow the project to process a final change order. um that increases the duration and allows accounting to close out the project with a final payment . with that, i'm happy to answer

any questions. that's the end of my presentation. thank you. thank you very much, miss lee. i still have some confusion over this with the timing i don't understand is this was this project completed? uh, in late 2022? yes. this project is completed. substantially completed. what's substantially completed? it means all the contract work has been completed. uh has been completed, and we are, uh, we just need to, uh, just paperwork wise, administration wise, have to process a change order that brings, um, the duration to match what the substantial completion is. so. so if i stroll along geary from market to venice, any construction i see is not related to this project. no, this project is completed. all the improvement work um, shown is completed work. thank you. and i have a question, actually, for, uh, commissioner wolford. um, the 14 months that miss lee outlined for sfmta or verizon to get all

these permit clearances, is that a reasonable amount of time, given all the different agencies verizon had to deal with, in your opinion? yes. yeah that's completely reasonable. the only i was wondering, just to kind of tag on to, uh, president posts, uh, question is they didn't ask for any increase in general conditions to add 14 months to their contract. can you clarify by general conditions? well, when a contractor, you know, a contractor mobilizes and they assign to a contract general conditions. and so if the contract is increased, usually a contractor asks for additional funds, funds to service the general condition. so their mobilization and insurance and bonding and everything. and they did not request this. no. in this case actually it's the same contractor for mitchell engineering that was doing that got we awarded the contract to and that verizon also hired to do the conduit work. and so they yeah we didn't it's

non-compensable we didn't have to it's a non-compensable contract duration increase. understood commissioner turner. thanks. i um director short i too initially was a slightly confused by this, but then it dawned on me. this is really an administrative cleanup, is it not? but it's because of the duration of time. it's come to us to approve. but this is truly just an administrative thing. is it not? i think that's a fair characterization. and yes, this, um, you know, the i had the same question because you you all didn't exist when this contract was initially awarded. i mean, sorry, you, of course, existed. the commission didn't exist. so um, this allows us. yes now we have to formally come to you in order to get that extension so that we can do all the project closeout commissioner newhouse. siegel. yes. so this is, um, i

guess basically, uh, we're cleaning house. this is retroactive. we're approving what's already been done. and, um, i do want to note you, is verizon the only private, uh, the only private, uh, entity that owns these conduits? are there others? is verizon just the biggest? oh, i'm not sure if they're the biggest. um well, they're the only one that's mentioned. i'm sorry. can you repeat your question? okay at the beginning of your presentation, it was mentioned that there was that there was an issue with private owners of the con, that there is a problem with owners of private owners of the conduits and i was wondering who these private owners were. and then it was clarified later in the presentation that it is verizon. is it only verizon or are there others? yes it's

verizon, it is only verizon and they i think they did it through another company mce utility. so verizon mce. but essentially verizon being the sponsor of the conduit work. okay. thank you. commissioners. thank you for your presentation. um, my question my question is about the permits that verizon had to do who were they? who were these permits from? um, and is there anything we could have done to like, minimize that 14 month, uh, process with, with everything just on, on pause? uh, so they got their permitting through public works as well. the bsm, uh, bureau of street use and mapping. uh, they do the permitting work for construction work in general when it's in the public right of way. uh, so, um,

that's how we found they found out about our projects, like, they got the permits in the same location, and so how was how could they have sped up the process? um i'm not entirely sure, but there is there is a lot of work. if i can clear it up. usually within the planning and design part of a of a contract and a project, that's when public works reaches out to all the partners. uh, and whether, you know, private and uh, municipal, municipal and, and uh, then they, you know, these would come and they would start saying, hey, we're going to we're going to work under this street is going to take us this long. verizon. so i understand that there of course, verizon wireless and public works and mta has you know, they had to partner up on on getting

that. but what what caused verizon wireless. to take 14 months. in addition in to that period of time that we asked them come look at your stuff. yeah. so we during gary's project design, we do follow that process where we send out notifications at the beginning of the design and at the end of design, and verizon was a recipient being a utility company of our drawings and plans and just looking from our records, they didn't provide a response. so we did not know of their intent to install conduit work within our same corridor limits until after we awarded the contract. after we issued notice to proceed. and so, um, i have a timeline here. let me see. so we issued ndp in july and it wasn't until the following year in may that, um,

verizon, in being the owner of the conduits, they submitted an excavation permit application at that time. um, and that's when we were learned almost a year later that we should, should coordinate with them when we were already well into construction on. is there any like, certain dates where it's take it or leave it to partners, or are we limited on on that any cut off dates like um, verizon, at&t, xfinity, whatever you have until. yeah, may um and afterwards. so sorry, we're just going to do the work and you're going to have to wait five years. is there any way that can happen? i think in this case, we were trying to be good partners, and we really wanted to not disrupt the gary community too much. like we said, there's a bus that runs there that's a super busy. there's the japan town community. there's all all, you know, it's between district

five and district three, which is almost union square market like. we just wanted to be good partners. let's let them allow them to do the work. and then we , um, pave over so then we didn't have to pave. and then they come and mobilize and open up the same street five years later and disrupt the corridor again. um but we're saying that they it did get disrupted because of the length of time that verizon took to reply back to the city, to public works. it did in, um, it did. there was a lot of construction that was paused and that it's not definitely not good for community. we did extend our the construction in the gary area by 14 months. um, allowed verizon to come come in the middle of the project to do their conduit work before we repaid, we paved over. but but if it was two separate projects, it possibly would take longer than 14

months. uh, just because we were already there, we, um, shared the same contractor there. um, they had, you know, the city's contract act, uh, helping push the overhead support lines to prioritize this project. we were already we already have a mou like, signed with mta. and these are the dates that we wanted them to commit to help us de-energize. and so we had all the negotiations already settled. so for verizon to really benefit off our project, you know, with the timeline, um, i, i think 14 months is quicker than if it was two separate projects and definitely it would impact the, um, the corridor and the community. uh, twice as. yeah i think we all understand what you're saying, commissioner zogby. the problem is, is dance. we do with utilities. and my concern would be if public works had said, hey, hey, we asked you once. we asked you twice. we asked you three times to the

dance. you said no, no, no. now you're late. the city would get blamed for verizon customers not getting their service. that would be my fear. public works said. we can't. we couldn't join them in the you know what i'm saying? it's a it's a tough position for public works. so i could see why they said, oh, they accommodate verizon. commissioner wolford, uh, thank you for your presentation. uh, project manager light. and so, commissioners, i'll be everything that ellen walked us through is completely logical and makes sense. you know, there are unforeseen circumstances. it was very prudent. i believe what public works did is bringing them in and having the project roll in 14 months is a completely credible time period to get the work permitted by verizon, to get it installed by verizon. the fact that our contractor didn't come back and ask for additional general conditions fees, frankly, is a win for the community of san francisco. so so and as you said, this is really, i think, as commissioner newhouser segal asked, this is really a kind of cleanup to everything, really, all we're doing is acknowledging

the fact that the work is done. so thank you for your public service. okay. thank you, commissioner turner. yeah, i want to concur with, uh, commissioner wolford's statement on this. and i'm also going to ask director short. i think there's this the second time i've seen kind of something more administrative come up that comes almost off as a project. and so we get down into projects, we want to understand them, but i do wonder if this probably could have been presented differently. um, just very simply, this is an administrative cleanup versus really i think this back and forth and the reason for that is you all should be very proud of this project. i think being able to have the bureau of street mapping and others recognize there needs to be coordination. uh, this could have been a pga issue. so i want to say that i think that it's maybe the format of how this one was presented. when we have more just kind of administrative things, maybe it's a different format so it doesn't trigger us to think and prompt some of these other things. this project has been well done. i think, uh, and more importantly, we just needed to get more time on the contract,

not necessarily these other things. and paul, i want to agree with you having dealing with an underground vault right now for 18 months is fast. uh, so i do appreciate the team for coordinating that. commissioner newhall. siegel. so so, uh, this is slightly different question. what is it? ever since this has gone on for so long, was it ever reevaluated whether these conduits are necessary and whether with new technology that there are different ways for getting this kind of, uh, this kind of access or is information that technology is that do not use conduits that that we get our, our signals from in another way. maybe this is kind of old fashioned and we're tied to something that's a really good, uh, comment and question. i this was in 2020. so i think now

moving forward we could definitely ask those questions when we have projects that are already in motion. an and then another utility company wants to install conduits. we could really, um, you know, challenge them like, can you do this another way without impacting our project? um and if you have to, can you not impact the schedule? yes this happens a lot with with, uh, with public government, where you're in a habit of working with particular very large suppliers and, um. i really wonder whether, uh, notices went out, uh, to other organizations or rfp or this is really thinking out of the box about what communications are going to be in san francisco now, in the future. so that we're not giving wasting public

resources on antiquated technology. and that's s i really don't expect you to answer that. it's pretty complicated. but, you know, we're making all kinds of changes for sea level rises for things that are going to be 75, 100 years out and to hold up projects and to expend money for antiquated, uh, technology is something that we should be looking at really carefully because things are changing as we speak. thank you. uh, director short, did you have a comment? just one. um. thank you . chair post. one clarifying comment. the work that was done by verizon was not not city funded work, so they may still be using antiquated technology. i'm not an expert in that, but just to clarify that point. so we did coordinate with them as

as ellen said, to really minimize the impacts. but um, utilities do have have some rights under the california, the um, the state public utilities commission to install their facilities in the public right of way. we can require and control sort of when and how they do that. um, but i think i think ellen's team made the right decision here that, you know, the delay up front is hopefully it'll be longer than five years, that they will not have any impacts to that beautiful new pavement. so i think it was the right decision. but i just wanted to clarify that that portion was not part of the city's project, and we weren't paying for that. i want a motion to yes, i was going to say if there are no other questions or comments, is there a motion, a motion? is there a second? second? thank you. please open the motion to public comment. i'm sorry, who had the

second on that? it was it commissioner darby. thank you. members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item five, the geary east. uh, geary rapid east of van ness contract modification may line up against the wall for this from the door. if here in the chamber. if you're commenting from outside the room, please press the raise your hand button in the webinar or star three on your phone to be recognized. and no members have joined us in person to speak on this item. and as if govtv is also indicating we do not have any public commenters calling in. so that concludes public comment on this motion. thank you. if there are no other comments or questions, all in favor of approving this contract modification. please say yes or i. i i the vote is unanimous and it is approved. thank you very

much miss live for your presentation today. it was very helpful as you can see. okay thank you. secretary fuller, please call the next item, which i believe is item seven. that that is correct. given the change in order that we took. item six, we are now moving on to item seven and item seven is the division of building design and construction presentation. uh, by my deputy director ron alameda. and this is a, a continuous of a presentation that took place at the joint, uh, session held with the sanitation and streets commission. and it is an informational item. uh, good morning, commissioners. deputy director, alameda and city architect. um, i appreciate the opportunity to return and present my segment of this presentation. and was, uh, straddling a couple committee

and commission meetings last time. and, uh, again today. but we've got the bandwidth to present our segment. so with that, i'll commence. uh, first of all, here's the update at um, org chart. i think you're all pretty familiar with the structure of public works. i do want to point out that our previously vacant, um, director or manager of project management is now filled with, uh, magdalena ryer. um, so that's been a recent update to the org chart. um, over all structure for building design and construction is comprised of bureaus, uh, under architecture, uh, construction management and landscape architecture. um and uh, project, uh, controls and

services. um, overall, the um, the building, uh, the design and construction, we provide a comprehensive, um, building and design services, pretty much the full spectrum of, um, of project , um, uh services, including, uh, project planning, project delivery strategies, overall project management, uh, resilient and sustainable architecture and landscape architecture. um, and um construction management as well as the specialized areas including hazardous materials, uh investigation and abatement and uh material testing. we have our own lab. um, i'll touch on that later. um, and then detailed budget, uh, management and planning is included, uh,

under our bureau. um, and overall, we're providing the development of new buildings and the modernized ation of existing buildings, facilities and public , uh, urban landscapes, including parks and plazas. so the whole spectrum of, uh, project types, uh, for the city and county of san francisco. deputy director alameda, what are the two, uh, buildings projects? the two smaller photo is on this slide. um i believe it was, um, maybe director shortnose. i'm just curious. yeah. no, i'm just. when is a, um, uh, navigation center in the bay view? that was done. uh a couple a few years ago. that's the top one. the top one? um, that was exciting because we were able to introduce the notion of putting in a durable

building that with future, uh, thinking of reuse rather than having the, uh, somewhat throwaway or, you know, having a temporary structure that would have to be, uh, done again. so that was, um, uh, innovative approach, um, with future thinking. um, below that, i believe that is the, um, margaret hayward, uh, park, um, center. um, again, that one completed, uh, a couple of years ago as well. and i highly successful and awarded projects. so two good examples of what i'll be, uh, touching on and that we've kind of touched on the whole, uh, spectrum of, of project types. um, beginning with bureau of architecture, uh, which has been serving the city for over 100 years as the principal architects leading city development and renewal of

the city owned facilities. uh bureau of architecture is responsible to ensure city building meet the needs and operational for operational departments, uh, addresses to community uh constituents while delivering durable structures and enriching the environment. um, really just thinking about the whole city, uh, and all the different, uh, elements within and without the outside, the city family. um our bureau of construction management, um. is comprised of accomplished architects, engineers and technical staff focused on the implementation of project plans overseen by project management, architecture and landscape architectural bureau. so our technical staff ensure compliance of building specific and quality standards. uh, the

construction management is, uh, instrumental in providing contract administration, pre-construction services and ensuring adherence to the environmental and building codes. so pretty much from, you know, bigger inning to end, they are at the table to, uh, inform and coordinate with the entire team. uh, the next bureau to highlight is the landscape architecture, bureau of landscape architecture provides design and construction services for city owned building sites, street scapes, plazas, green infrastructure for inclusive of park designs, store stormwater management, and long range planning for climate change and resilience. see um, it's i like to underscore that the bureau of landscape architecture really embraces the larger thinking of

climate change, biodiversity city. um and dovetails that into their day in and day out advancement of design. the bureau of management, uh, project management delivers building major building capital projects from planning, design and regulatory approval through construction, often in concert with project management. we have embedded a team of analysts for capital project and program controls who are principally responsible for providing financial manage, reporting and strategic support to the project management bureau. uh and also some of the other project delivery bureaus, as, uh, the team delivers a variety of major , uh, building projects on behalf of the city agencies and oversees major standalone capital building projects, as well as overarching building uh,

programs addressing emergency services and public safety. general city service sectors, and facility renewal. um a couple examples. uh, the bureau of project management oversees the capital bond programs, uh, including the earthquake safety and emergency response esser bond program. um, the public health and safety bond, which was presented earlier on on another agenda item. uh, and we're also engaged in certificate of particip funding funded facility renewal projects . uh, tightly uh, code it with capital planning to address the multitude of routine roofing, mechanical systems and elevator renewals. uh, and one more example, uh, noteworthy is our ongoing, uh, partnership with mta on delivering innovative project delivery, inclusive of transportation, housing and

fleet electric station infrastructure. so so quite a array of services through that bureau. project controls and services provides specialized services supporting the overall design, construction and delivery of buildings in infrastructure, institutional and transportation projects. uh, it is under project control and services. uh, the before mentioned material testing occurs with the hazmat um support in terms of testing and analysis, uh, we have a full, uh, material testing lab as part of this bureau. so, uh, as well, um, this bureau does also conduct a contract preparation with respect to specified development. uh, for contract. contract general conditions and contract administration. so a real integral component, uh,

working hand in hand with the other, uh, bureaus to round out the project development and delivery. as for, uh, measurements, uh, there's a there's an array of measurements that are taken, um, throughout the life of the, the project. um, i cite a couple examples here in terms of monitoring the volume of activity, uh, of capital projects by phase, service type and size. uh, we, we track, um, capital projects by client. um, generally measure, uh, along the way are performance along budget, schedule and scope. um, and try to, um, you know what the main thing we're trying to do is we strive to leverage this data into continuous improvement by infusing these practices in normal workflow of project

development and delivery. as well as report development. uh, a good example is the isa bond reports as well as project specific monthly financial reports produced by capital project and program control staff. i could probably have 100 slides on accomplishment. s um, it's been, you know, always a busy year and we've got a lot of, uh, activity. but just to highlight a few, um, milestones we've recently, uh, uh, completed the design, permitting and bidding for japan town peace plaza mission and library renovation has started and is well underway. and we're in the thick of it with pg and e, but we're we're getting it going on. um, we ushered through emergency declaration and started construction on must do emergency declaration driven

projects at laguna honda. uh, plus or minus ten projects that are all, um, being fast tracked and fast tracked in the sense of developing or recognizing what the scope is. put some schedules and timing around it, and, and, uh, may, you know, try to stay in pace with the state agencies and federal agencies, for that matter, uh, to maintain the accreditation that laguna honda um, we also achieved, uh, project closeout on multiple projects, including the animal care and control renovation, which i'd like to underscore that we achieved $7.9 million worth of savings, uh, as we actively managed through that some early budget concerns really representing 10% of the. $76.4 million budget. um i can go on, but i'll just two more.

uh, so southeast community center, one for design and construction, industrial awards, industry awards. um, it's active and it's just a wonderful space. uh, um, that has been activated. and last but not least, we're getting more and more engaged in homelessness and housing, uh, projects. um, one to underscore is the tiny cabins project in the mission district, which is well underway as well. that brings me to challenges. and there is no shortage of challenges and complexities. when you talk about the projects that we undertake and the programs, um, generally, the challenges of late have been, um, centered around staffing, capacity, sponsor and department funding availability or fund flow, as well as inter-departmental coordination and communication. typical challenges. um. to underscore

that, we've uh, over the last year, we've been filling multiple vacancies while still providing the highest levels of service to our sponsor. sponsor agencies and the public. we're meeting staffing needs with recent and upcoming retirements, uh, adding to the complexity, um, we're advancing projects with sponsor and agency forces. uh, represents an um is impacted by their own staffing challenges . so it's compounded, um, maintaining project momentum while securing necessary funding for project demands has been particularly challenging. and i mentioned laguna honda, where, you know, as we as the project scope matures and we start defining what the necessary need is, um, it's always a challenge for dpr and others to identify the funding and get the funding

flow in sequence with the demand to keep projects going. um, and then finalizing negotiations with multiple sponsoring agencies on mous, you know, sorting out jurisdictional responsibilities and authorities is always a longer conversation than i'd care for. and i always try to work through, uh, through those. um, but in general, i will conclude that we have made good strides in addressing these challenges over the last year, but they remain areas requiring vigil attention and that concludes my presentation, and i'll take any questions you may have. thank you very much, deputy director. almeida. i should have said at the outset, um, as you will recall, we heard , uh, i got an overview of each division prior to our last meetings. budget uh, discussion this. unfortunately, we had to postpone to this meeting because we didn't have time. so it was the same presentation that

deputy director almeida would have made to us a couple of weeks ago. but. but we had it today. thank you. thank you. um, i just had a couple comments when you mentioned pg and e in regard to the mission library renovation. it sent a chill down my spine. but of course we will be having an update, a formal update on that project in a couple of months, so we'll look forward to some good news and more detail in a couple of months. when you do update us on that capital project. um, the only other thing i wanted to mention is that linkedin at uh, with today's directors report agenda item is one of the quarterly earthquake safety and emergency response bond reports, uh, reports that this department puts out and i just want to call the public and the commission's attention to it, because it's always a very helpful over view on capital projects, a large capital projects that that public works is overseeing. i want to thank you, deputy director almeida and magdalena and the entire easter bond team for this latest report. um, it

summarizes how bond proceeds from 2010, 2014 and 2020 easter bonds voted on by voters are being used. and we're talking about a par amount of close to $1.5 billion. so this is this is a big part of what public works does. serious taxpayer money is involved. and thus we ask the tough questions on on capital projects. which then leads me to my comment, which is even though these quarterly reports are are prepared for the geo bond citizens oversight committee, they're so informative and useful for the public and for the commission on that. i'd like to request that going forward, if you would, that in these reports you adopt something that you're that public works is doing for the public works commission, but that you modify some of the graphics in these reports to reflect what was the story at, uh, when the project began and what the story is when this report, when the updates generated and in other words,

um, modify the graphic about the timeline to include the original timeline estimate when the project began. and same with the cost charts. the original cost estimates when it began, and then give the update that you give at that point as to how things are going. so so do you think in in the future the easter bond group could include that tracking information in these quarterly reports, even though they're not specifically for the commission? we are asking you for the same information. and i think anyone at go back in, in the public would find the information helpful on scope, cost and timing of each project. but, uh, yes, chair post. um, yeah, we're in alignment. and we we've always strived to, um, establish clarity with baseline and kind of the progression of projects. and as examples, the last few projects that were presented, some of them can get a little, um, convoluted because scope schedule and, and budget don't always aren't quite synchronized neatly and it's hard to

communicate some of the nuances, but we always strive to kind of lend clarity to where do we start, where are we and where are we going with the projects? um there are slight variations that, for instance, the report that that you were citing, um, its primary focus was fund flow of bond funding, even though it spoke to a few individual projects and a collection of projects. um, it's kind of hard to kind of hit every project out and kind of give its story. um, because the, the antenna communication is slightly different on that one report. it, uh, but in general, most reports are trying to strive clarity on where did we start, where are we and where are we going with this and articulate the strategies and history behind that. that'd be great. thank you, commissioner wolford. i don't have a question, but i

just had a comment. firstly i've known, uh, city architect ron alameda in many incarnations of his public service, and i just wanted to first of all, thank you for your extended public service to the city and county of san francisco. and a little like the grammys, i know. so many people at public works, and in my prior act of public service, sitting on the design review committee for the arts commission for about a decade, i worked very closely with the architects and landscape architects and people in construction and project management, and we have an incredibly talented and, um, dynamic group of people in city service. and so for all of those of you out there, thank you for your service. thank you much. appreciate it. commissioner wolford, i had a question for you, actually, um, something i read in the in the bond report is there's still no public art at the forensic lab and traffic company. new building, and i apparently it's a, um, it's they're having trouble making it. it's a fabricator issue.

according to the ester bond report. and this project has now been done a couple of years. my question is for you, as your prior experience on the arts commission, at what point do you throw in the towel on a public art project and say, this just isn't happening? there's no public art for the public to enjoy or the employees in that building to enjoy. let's find a different piece of public art that where there won't be a fabrication problem. does that ever happen? in your experience? uh, it it has happened. it's really up to, um, there's a there's a committee, an arts committee in the public, um, in the arts commission and they actually both initiate the art and manage the process. so i'm not really sure i know what the art was originally, but i'm not sure what the issues are today. but maybe we could have a report out. it just it precludes, i believe, the department from closing out the project, doesn't it, director short, if the public art isn't completed, we can't really close the project out. that one's been a been a bit of a struggle. um, and i hadn't heard the recent, uh,

fabrication issues. i know we try to get ahead of the curve and, um, help out, um, the lineate with the foundation and supporting structure needed to be so that is in the ground waiting to receive leave. uh, the artwork. i was not aware of that. um and i know there was some kind of close out of funding associated with the art. uh, that was a bit of a drag point on us closing out, but, um, i'll have to double back and hear what's going on with the fabrication, because, um, i learned something today. okay, good. thank you. any questions or comments for doctor almeida before we open this to public comment, i guess we'll excuse me. no, this is just informational. no motion. so. all right, let's please open this to public comment. okay. thank you. members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item seven, the division of building design and construction. an presentation may line up against the wall for

this from the door here in the chamber from outside the chamber. please press the raise your hand button in the webinar or press star three on your phone to be recognized. i'd. and it does not appear we have any in-person commenters on this item. and sfc tv is also indicating we do not have any callers. so that concludes public comment on item seven. thank you. our next item regards the budget. i'd like to ask my commissioners if they would like to take a ten minute break till 1045, knowing i would like to conclude this item by noon, or if you'd like to keep going, break. yes i think so. uh, deputy director robertson, we will take a short break till 1045. and then go as long as we need to. concession. and, secretary

fuller, please call the next item. item seven is the department of public works fiscal year 2024 2025 and fiscal year 2025 2026. operating and capital budget and priorities. uh, the public works commission held a hearing of the department's budget in a joint session with the sanitation and streets commission on january 22nd, 2024. this meeting that we're holding today is at least 15 days after that hearing. so the commission is empowered to approve the to consider the department's budget for approval. and deputy director of financial management and administration bruce robertson will present this report. and it is an action item. thank you. deputy director robertson, before you begin and welcome, um , when you were here before, you gave us a very thorough walkthrough of the budget and

took a lot of questions, which we appreciate. in addition, we all had, um, smaller meetings with you and some of your senior staff to understand the budget. so i think we all have taken a careful look. and so today, perhaps it would be most helpful for you to just focus on the changes that to the budget since you last spoke to us on january 22nd, does that seem i think that might be more helpful to the commission than going over material. we've already gone over? commissioners that sounds perfect. that's exactly what we plan to do. and we'll do that. so, um, commissioners bruce robertson, cfo for san francisco public works, as i did last time, i really want to take a moment to thank the budget team. they've been the ones working grueling hours, staying up late, waking up early on the weekend, sending emails on sunday afternoons when there may be a football game going on. so i really want to commend them and thank them for all of their work. they're really have put in the effort to get to where we are today. so with that, i'm happy to be here presenting for

the second time. we're here to seek approval of the budget as well as we are going to propose some modest fee increases that i'll go through in some more detail, as well as, um, seek approval for the public works director to make some changes, really based on a couple items. one is the process goes forward through the mayor's office. um and if revenues change or if there's impact from the labor negotiations that are going on, you would authorize her and her team to make those changes going forward. and then, as we did last time, we will absolutely report back with a memo. or we can certainly even do a presentation and provide an in detail all of the changes that happened from today. um, february 12th through when the mayor's office, the mayor herself will sign it in early august. so we still have a six month process and we're still in the early stages of that process . so with that, i'll go through the presentation. um. i am going

to jump to this slide. it is slide five because it does talk about the future risks and uncertainties. um, the city's economist gave an overview to departmental finance staff and cfos. a few weeks ago. and really highlighted a slide in his presentation that i thought is worth repeating here today because he outlined five questions that we should all be asking ourselves. and i think they're really good, really important questions to think through, not just the budget and this year, but the budgets in the out years. so are we at the end of tech layoffs when. is there going to be a reboot of venture capital funds? does the office market finally adjust, or are there going to be new projects and activities downtown ? and then who moves back to san francisco? so we really put it in context that these are five questions that are going to have a significant impact on the city's future going forward that will then therefore have a significant impact on not just

the public works budget, but the city budget in general. i thought very interesting. and some elements that as we were talking about it internally, we hadn't fully considered. so just wanted to take a moment to highlight that. uh, commissioners, now i'm going to jump ahead to slide 11. this is really the significant change that i'll spend most of my presentation on because as i've stated previously, it is unfortunate we do have to make a 10% reduction, which which equals about $9.66 million for public works. in a perfect world, we wouldn't have to make any, but we have to do so to comply with her instructions. so we've really been surgical, and i'm going to repeat that word many times throughout the coming minutes as i present. if we didn't make this reduction, it's very likely that the mayor's office would just go in and make a $9.7 million reduction and it wouldn't be in the areas where we would want it to be. and there may be more impact. so

there's really two elements of our goals and efforts to meet the target. the first is to increase revenue by approximately $1 million. and that's really coming from two main areas. as many of you know, we have a revenue contract with jcdecaux for advertising and you see the green toilets throughout the city. we get additional revenue from that. that really does two things. one is it helps fund some of the pit stop program, but it also gives us an administrative fee to manage and implement the program. so there's an annual ongoing and incremental increases from that contract that comes directly to public works. that's part of the revenue. the other part of that revenue is about $600,000 in proposed fee increases. and i've got a couple slides coming up later in the presentation. so i'll spend much more time talking about that. so that's to the good. increased revenue means we have to make less expenditure reduction. so we have six items that make up the

revenue that that make up expenditure reductions. and that those total to the $9.7 million, the first one is the $2 million in both fiscal year 25 and fiscal year 26. you've seen both of those before. no changes in those. so i'm not going to really spend too much time on it. they're also on a previous slide in more detail in this presentation. the second item is really the one that has a largest impact of about 2.26. and then $2.41 million at the previous presentation, we mentioned that we were thinking of using approximately $3 million of fund balance from the refuse rates to fund staff. we've reduced that to about $1 million. and there's a couple of reasons why. for that one, one is if we increased it by a lot, we ran into proposition 218 eligibility concerns. so at the previous meeting, i talked about the state law proposition 218, that really restricts that fee. revenue has to be exactly for what it's collected for. so we

wanted to be conservative here and make sure that we were in complete compliance and in accordance with proposition 218, the other amount comes from ongoing slowing of hiring within operations. so we have, um, a large amount of temporary staff that go out and do the corridor cleaning, and you see the corridor cleaning throughout the city on, you know, clement street or irving or throughout the city. we have the ability to make a minor reduction there. and i think really not limit our staffing capability in that program. um, and then we went back and we looked at the timeline it takes to hire while miss hill and her team have done a tremendous job in terms of expediting the hiring, being creative in how they go about finding staff, in terms of having meetings at local hiring halls. it's still a slow process. and so we could do a nominal increase of what we call attrition savings. a lot of other places call it salary

savings, where you just don't fund all of your positions. i think we can do that and have very limited, if any, impact without discouraging miss hill and her team from continuing to move full steam ahead. yes, without. without. i say unequivocally. 1045 full steam ahead. unless we get different directions from the controller's office or the mayor's office if revenues decrease further. but as of now, we are still proceeding. i mean, that's such a bright spot in the department the past year. how you've turned around hiring. it'd be such a shame to slow that down. excuse me for interrupting, please. go on. no we are very. she's done a wonderful job, and we're very happy to have our own human resources section within public works. um, the third item. apologies for using acronyms. our reductions to two programs called serp and asap. serp is the sidewalk inspection repair program. and that is proactive inspection and repair of

sidewalks that need that may present may present a tripping hazard asap. is the accelerated sidewalk abatement program that's a little bit more reactive and prevents, you know, sidewalk. if there was an incident. so in the budget for fiscal year 25, there's about $1.28 million. we are proposing to zero. both of those programs out. we are not proposing to eliminate those programs. however, we do have some available fund balance from prior year savings during the pandemic. this is about the last of the savings that we have from the pandemic that we can use. so that's what we're proposing to do here. we have sufficient funding to continue those programs as they would if we still had this funding. so we're doing our due diligence, looking under rocks and everywhere we can find resources to make reductions again, with the goal of minimizing operational impact . uh, the fourth item is really

twofold. and all credit here goes to the budget team, because a lot of this is both technical and then cutting up behind the house operations. so the indirect cost planned savings is really looking at how we do our indirect cost plan and being creative to identify savings. and that's a large portion of this. the other component of it is just broadly called various reductions. and i would call it death by a thousand paper cuts because it's de minimis amounts throughout the whole department. and if all elements of all aspects are going to take reductions, the back of the house operations should take even more reductions because the front line service is really what's most critical. so in our indirect cost plan, roughly. 75% of the funding comes from outside of the general fund. about 25% of it comes from the general fund. in terms of the recoveries that funds all of the non direct services, the

indirect services. so to put it in some context, to cut $250,000, we have to cut $1 million. so it's about a 25% general fund savings. and as you can see by those amounts, we're making about a $3 million reduction in the first year and about a $2 million reduction in the second year. so we are certainly looking to trim our operations in the indirect services we provide. mostly my team accounting budget. it we're trying to just i don't love this expression, but we're trying to do more with less. but we understand that we want to make sure the front line services that we provide, that you all care about, that the residents of the city care about can be preserved and maintained to the greatest extent possible. deputy director robertson. but what it'd be nice to also hear you say is that the department perhaps has discovered some efficiencies in this unpleasant process, right, that we're always using doing more with less. but oh, gee, here's a process that maybe we could streamline this a little bit, do

this more efficiently. we've been doing it this way for a while, but some technologies changed. some new hire came in with an idea that said, well, you know, whatever, you know what i mean? have you been successful overall in finding some efficiencies in the department that you perhaps hadn't focused on quite as much in the past? so, commissioner, yes and no. so, yes, we've certainly identified some efficiencies. we're always looking to do process improvements, and many of our staff have been yellow belt certified and lean six sigma training. so they're looking at ways to improve things, constant process improvements. you'll hear from miss hill and air kaisen's. they're always looking to make improvements. that's the yes part. so we have found some efficiencies. the no part is we continually get additional work imposed upon us. and it's not just public works, it's throughout the city. so we have additional security requirements for our information technology department. that just takes more time and makes us less efficient . we have some changes in some

of the rules around the financial system and some of the reporting requirements. we have to do that just is an additional burden and things we need to do. so we are indeed always looking for improvements and have found some, but we have found that we've got some additional burdens that actually make the city and public works in particular less efficient, i understand, thank you. um, moving on to item five, grant programs and cleaning. this one also, we talked about at the last time, um, alexander bardo's team and performance and planning, along with the budget team was very surgical and looking at pit stop usage and where we could potentially make some reductions there, we originally had that placed at about a million dollars. i think we'll probably come in a little under that because we found some additional grant savings elsewhere as we've entered into some of the contracts and negotiated, we were able to identify some savings and some other grant programs. so those cuts are great because the contracts are agreed, amended to and they came in below budget. so that was really a benefit. so

there's some savings there. and then finally the last one is what's called add back funding and projects. so every june on june 1st, the mayor submits her budget to the board of supervisors. and then the budget and finance committee of the board of supervisors, working with the budget and legislative analyst's office reviews the mayor's budget as proposed, and then identifies savings and reductions. and then that comes into a big pot of money that members of the board are able to reallocate, either for citywide initiatives or for department specific initiatives. and as part of those, we have some savings for about half $1 million. and the first year and $400,000 in the second year. um, a lot of these are old and are just uses that we no longer provide to the level. we certainly do. and i will say there's a lot of little items that make up that half million dollars. it's not just elimination or cutting of 1 or 2 add backs. there's many, many, many in there. so it's de minimis amounts of reductions

here and there. so that's how we met the $9.7 million reduction. not something that we like to do, not something that we want to do, but we think these are probably about as good as it's going to get in terms of doing two things. one, minimize losing the operational impact of the department and two, setting us up that if we have future cuts, we will have we are in a place where we can continue some of these cuts that really do minimize the operational impact. so it's both in the near terms and in the mid and long terme. so i can take questions now or i can just continue and go into some of the fy increases. if you don't mind, commissioner turner i was just intrigued. director short, how the capital planning committee responded to our letter, uh, in regards to maintaining, if not expanding, uh, their ability to increase their pipeline. uh, we haven't

gotten any, uh, formal response to the letter. they have acknowledged receipt of it. um, i think there's as we've also informally, many people have expressed a desire to try to keep the paving program, um, as whole as possible. so i think that is, um, the letter was well received from that perspective. um, there is a meeting right now that, uh, deputy director almeida has run down to attend. so i don't know if we'll hear more. we are giving a presentation today at capital planning about the paving program. and i think, um, you know, we'll probably get feedback from them, um, today on that, perhaps at our next meeting, you'll be able to answer commissioner turner's question, then certainly i will. i mean, i know you can't right now, but yeah. please, let's make a note to thank you very

much. will do. uh, commissioner also, um, per the administrative code, since the capital plan is submitted in early march, we can also in the director's report, provide an update there. i think we could also provide the presentation that the paving program staff are giving it capital planning committee today. it really shows what the impact of the pci score is based on various funding scenarios. that's pretty, um, illuminating in terms of if there's no funding, if there's you know, 40, 50, 60, 70, $80 million. so i think we could certainly provide that as well. okay um, moving on to fees a couple slides on fees. so as part of the overall reduction of the $9.7 million, one of the options that was included in the mayor's instructions was additional fee revenue and increasing fees is acceptable. all but one of her key points is do not impact the economic recovery of the city or

the city vitality. so that is a key element that, as we think through the fees we've kept it front of mind. and i'll go through how we try to make sure we didn't do that. so we do have growing demand and rising costs for fee adjustments, as most of our fees have not been increased outside of annual cpi adjustments. since 2002 or 2005. so we are almost two decades, in some cases over. we are proposing very modest increases to ensure sustainable funding for essential services. and i'll talk about what that means, because under the state constitution, we cannot make a profit on the services we provide. we can only be full cost recovery at 100. so i know last time we talked about the fee study that was ongoing. it's in draft. we're finalizing it as we speak. and in many instances there are fees that we could have increased by significant

amounts to do cost recovery. we're not doing that. we are doing very, very modest fee increases. public works is not alone. there are other departments doing fee increases as far higher than we are. so what fees are we? are we thinking about proposing? i want to reiterate again, they're modest and reasonable and they're selected and so we are well below other department increases. i don't really know where all of the departments are going to land so publicly. i don't think i want to outline, but just informally conversations with my fellow cfos and other departments. i've heard what they're thinking and or what they've made some of their thoughts and prayers stations to the to the commission. so one thing that i also want to make sure very clear is public works is only looking at the silo of the public works fee increases. i can't come up here and say, i know exactly what building inspection or planning or mta or some of these other departments are going to increase in terms

of fees. that's the holistic discussion that's going to happen during the mayor's phase, because again, the mayor wants to make sure that any of the fee increases don't impact economic recovery, recovery or the vitality of the city. and maybe the public works component doesn't. but we're then increasing just as an illustrative example, fees for construction project, as are our colleagues in dbi or planning or the mta. then it starts to impact and add up. so there will be a holistic discussion citywide with the mayor's office and the comptroller's office in the coming months. so some of the fees we are thinking of increasing again at about 10. so well below the 15 to 20% that some of the other department are proposing, or the vault encroachment. the major and minor encroachment for the minor. we're thinking of doing a sliding scale. so some residents may be paying a little more, while some actually may get a reduction. we're looking at

street spaces and a few others. most fees are not increase singh. and with that, that will generate about $600,000 of additional revenue of what we're thinking as of today, that's roughly a net increase of only 4. so kind of right in line with with cpi. so i know, uh, commissioner, secretary fuller handed out a hand. uh, just a quick overview, and it really highlights some of the ones we're thinking, but i think more importantly, highlights the ones that were not thinking of touching cafes, table cafe tables and chairs. if you've got them in the public right away, no touching those that could impact the restaurant industry and the vitality of the city. shared spaces, parklets not touching any of those fees. again want to make sure that restaurants and bars and other establishments have the ability to continue that program. flower market, you know, small, small flower shops not impacting any of those. so the big ones that

we are looking to again would be like a vault encroachment that if you've got a big vault in a public right of way, you would have to have a slight increase for that. so i think, again, i want to thank the folks behind me because they really are the ones that got out the surgical knife and really thought through which ones we could do that would have limited impact on the economic vitality and would not hurt or impact any businesses. so finally, i have one slide left that's new. so one of the things we often do in the department note is we highlight departmental initiatives. so during the mayor's phase, as the revenue projections become a little clearer, as as the state does, the may revise of their budget, there may be additional revenue or or the mayor's office may make additional reductions above the 10% from other departments that then actually give her a bigger pot of money to allocate to other departments

. and as commissioners, you all know, i think public works is one of the most core services departments. street cleanliness is critical, and all of the other great work we do. so we have four initiatives that we just let the mayor's office know if there is additional revenue or if you have larger than expected expenditure reductions elsewhere. here's what we would like. you know, maybe reduce our $9.7 million reduction or or here are some of the programs that if there were funding, we'd like to do so. the first one is a street inspection safety program. this is one public works is partnering with rec and park. so at the last weather event, you know, there were a lot of trees that fell and it would be nice to get some additional resources, both in terms of a few fte three, we're thinking to get some more tree inspectors. so then we could be a little bit more proactive in identifying the trees in advance. that may be susceptible to falling or or damage during a

significant weather event. the second would be graffiti abatement program. an expansion of it really working on private property just over $2 million in each of the two fiscal years. you know, graffiti continues to be a challenge throughout the city. and this would just give us more staff to help reduce the impact of graffiti throughout the city. it would help us by a paint matching machine that if the wall is a certain color, we could match the color and paint over that. um, expanded street vending. so this would allow us to expand into nighttime hours. and on the weekend, really, that program has been highly successful, highly visible. um, you know, director shaw highlighted the impact of it over the weekend with the moratorium. so a successful program that would be nice to give us, um, additional resources to do it after hours and on the weekend. right now, we want to make sure that we're not using so much overtime that both impacts our budget, our overtime limits, but also really impacts the staff, you know, staff burnout is a is a big concern here. and then finally,

an expansion of the citywide street cleaning program. um, last year we had something similar to what we're proposing here. we got a $16.9 million supplemental appropriation. and we were able we were able to expand that. i think, you know, it was originally $25 million and then scaled down this really represents that delta. so that's what we would ask for. if there is you know, future funding and the mayor's phase or in the board phase, this is, you know, our initiatives that we would love to either get fully funded or partially funded with the full awareness that we're likely not going to get all four of these or, you know, maybe even any of them in this tight budget year. so with that, those are the elements that has changed. um, here you have the tables. these numbers do reflect the $9.71 million reduction. i can go through these, but it's basically, um, the reduction from the elements we talked about. i can certainly highlight where the changes were, but when

you've got a $450 million budget, you know, a roughly $10 million, $8 million because we have some revenue reduction is not going to be too highly visible. again the same thing here with the uses. and then the general fund, which is really where most of the $9.7 million needs to come from. so with that, um, i'll stop talking and happy to answer any questions you may have. and again, i've got the budget team here with me. if there's any specific or detailed questions that i'm unable to answer. thank you for your time. thank you very much. that was very helpful. as always. i did have a couple questions on fees and then a couple on general. the budget topics on the fees. you mentioned that there were a number of fees that were either not increasing or we are perhaps increasing, but that don't nearly cover our costs. that aren't nearly equal to cost recovery. can you give us an example of what some of those fees are, that we are basically subsidizing, because we're not

recovering our costs in a material way? um tables and chairs are a good one. tables and chairs are a good one. um subdivision fees when we're doing maps, um, some of those don't aren't cost recovery. um um, i'm looking at my cheat sheet right here. um, some of the encroachment fees. um, there's quite a few of them. the parklet fees don't recover some of our costs for the inspection. done. so there are there are quite a quite a few mobile, um, food facility permits also. one, we didn't recommend increase because we didn't want to impact the fees. a majority of them do not fully recover cost. thank you. and um, regarding the minor sidewalk encroachment permits, um, that that's a proposed new fee was a tbd on your in the detail. um, and it's a sliding

scale, depending on who's applying for it. what does that mean? um carl schalk, director, i will take that one because it, um, it was kind of my suggestion that we move to a sliding scale. so what we would propose is that, um, for example, if someone has. a requirement for a minor sidewalk encroachment due to their driveway warp, that's a relatively minor impact to the public right of way. we don't want that property owner to pay a huge fee for that. um, versus somebody wanting to, you know, um, use some of the, say, put in a retaining wall. that kind of expands their, uh, what seems like their front yard area. um, i think those fees could be increased. so what we're looking at is kind of whether it's something that is significant impact to the right of way and or is it a required that we're

sort of saying in order to do this, we you have to get this permit associated with it. and we would look to minimize the fees in those cases. and then again, if it's a benefit to the property owner or to their property to have the encroachment, then that's where we feel like we could increase the fees modestly. even in those cases, they would be quite modest. thank you, thank you. now i understand, um, in the slide presentation given, uh, deputy director robertson, um, darn. i didn't write the number, but it's the head counts. the changes, the slide with the changes to head count in the department. right. i'm sorry. slide 22. thank you very much. um, and my question and i know you went over this before, but when i was reviewing, i seem to have forgotten. and i apologize. so in the prior slide, can you just again explain in bdc and idc, the significant budget decreases that are shown, yet no

change in head count. can you explain again how that makes sense? so on slide 21, it does show the overall departmental amounts by bureaus and the main decrease for bdc and idc is entirely driven by the capital budget, because the capital budget is still not finalized. they run on slightly staggered timelines. that's where the decrease comes from. so for instance, the paving program that we've talked about in the current year budget, there's, you know, an $80 million number right now, there's about $42 million. so that's a, you know, a $38 million reduction right there. so that's not showing up. we fully anticipate hope i'll knock on wood that some of that gets it gets filled in. and then you've got all of the other programs curb ramps and all of the various other funding sources that that funding goes to idc, infrastructure design and construction and building design and construction, bdc, i see, so we're presuming that we'll have we can maintain our

full staffing is basically what you're saying we do and known right now. and if for some reason we don't, we'll just have to not fill those vacancies. and if you look at this slide in particular, it's what's called operating positions versus project positions. it's those project positions that the funding is external to the department. and it may be esser or it may be coming directly from the capital plan through other sources or other departments. right. thank you. exactly. and then on slide 19. can you tell us what do the percentages apply to? what are they percentages of? i just saw on the gray line. so the percentages tied to the overall capital budget and how much of the capital budget comes to public works. so you can see in the first year, public works got over half of the capital budget directly given to public works. we may get some of the money from other departments. so so, um, as mr. almeida said earlier,

the tiny homes project that was recently done that may go to the department of homelessness and supportive housing, and then they send the money to public works, and we provide those services. the percentages show how much of it comes directly to public works, and really it's just illustrative to show that there's been a decrease in time. the there was that increase in fiscal year 23, but if you were to overlay that with the trend line, you would see it decreasing. and this gives me the opportunity to say one of my favorite talking points, the more work public works does, the more direct labor our staff perform, the cheaper we become for the for all of our clients in the whole city. because of that indirect cost model, if we have more direct services being provided by our staff, we can become cheaper. thank you very much that refreshes my memory. um, that concludes my questions. i will have a typo correction to

the resolution when we get time for a motion. meanwhile, commissioner turner. uh, first and foremost, what an amazing job. i know the last week has been very, very heavy. um, i also want to thank our commissioner. secretary, uh, for making sure to coordinate and support this work. um, this really quickly, i guess two things. one, we are approving, um, our current budget and the forecast for the next year, 2526. is that correct? okay, great. and then i guess on the fee increase, it seemed like we are we approving this now or is it going to be subject to that broader conversation on fees? i wasn't sure the sequence of what we're approving, how we're approving the fee increases. um commissioner turner, i would say that you are approving the fees now and then we would report back to any of the report, back to this commission, any of the fee changes where we land as i said, there really is a lot of

moving parts within the whole citywide increase of fees or remaining staying with the remaining fees at the same level. again, we don't really know what our other colleagues in their departments are doing. that's really going to come from the mayor's office. and then the other thing that that i didn't mention is the controller's office then gets involved, and they really check our revenue assumptions. so just to give you an an example, if we increase fees by a dollar, but yet we said we have $100 million of new revenue, they would come in and not certify that as what it's called under their authority. so they review the logic and the analytical rigor that we've done in terms of any revenue projections. are there any other questions or comments for deputy director robertson before we entertain a motion on approving this item? if not, i will move to adopt or to excuse me, approve the proposed 2425 operating budget and capital

budget and the proposed fee increases that are part of it, as well as the fiscal year 2526 operating budget. is there a second to my motion? thank you. uh, as and i sorry, i should have my motion is in the resolution often in the last whereas that mentions the word fee. it just should be fees plural. it was a typo. it talks about fees, but it's just adding an s. so my motion with that word fee being plural in the last. whereas of the resolution. all right. please open the motion to public comment. members of the public wish to make three minutes of comment on item seven. the department of public works fiscal year 2024 2025 and fiscal year 2025 2026 operating and capital budget and priorities may line up against the wall furthest from the door. if you are here in the chamber,

if you are commenting from outside the chamber, please press the raise your hand button in the webinar or the star three, or press star three on your phone to be recognized and. it appears we do not have any members of the public in person wishing to speak on this item. and sf gov tv is also indicating we do not have any callers. uh, wish to speak on the budget approval. so that concludes public comment. thank you. uh, if there's no more questions or comments, um, commissioner turner, are you prepared to support today's motion? oh, yeah. i i'm completely excited.

um, i this was very hard to go through this process to learn this process, but also to face the reality of this process, which is we're a city that's still very much evolving. and with that evolution, i'm just really glad, one, to have director shaw at the helm. but as, um, bruce, sorry, director, deputy director robertson has said, he also has an amazing team that surrounded us doing, i think really surgical work to make sure that we are taking the concerted steps necessary to support the work we civically have an obligation to make sure we get through. so yes, ma'am, here, here. thank you. uh, secretary fuller, please call the roll on this vote. it's very important. vote. on the motion to adopt the, uh, departments budget. uh, please respond with either yes or no. so

commissioner newhouse. segal yes, commissioner. turner. yes, commissioner. wolford. yes commissioner. zogby yes. commissioner. post yes. so the, uh, result motions or the motions passed unanimously. congratulations. deputy director robertson. director short, uh, your staff and your staff for those weekend emails and spreadsheet runs. commissioner, thank you so much for your support, guidance and advocacy during this process. it really is a better budget submittal because of that. very much appreciated. thank you. good. thank you. and i must say, while nobody likes to see fees increase, i. i hope the public will appreciate the work that went into this. and really what our modest fees increase increases. i think we all can agree to that. so i'm hopeful that the public would also be very supportive of the budget. so thank you for your efforts.

please call the next item item nine is the racial equity action plan update and the commission was last updated on the action plan in may 2023. and deputy director of policy and communications beth rubenstein will present this report. and it is an informational item. could you help me with the powerpoint? oh, hey, beth, before you begin, i had alerted the commission that i have to depart for a to travel to a client meeting exactly at noon. so if you're still presenting, i don't want to be rude. and have you think i'm just walking out? okay i think you'll hear all of it. thank you for letting me know. yeah, just. excuse me. good morning. commissioners i think

it's still morning. um, i'm beth rubenstein, and i'm the lead for our racial equity initiative. and i'm also deputy director of policy and communication. i'm here to give you an update on our work with me. is our racial equity team. uh actually, guillermo perez, that's top left next to me, but he's actually out sick today. but want to introduce you to our two new, uh, racial equity specialists, meklit billiard and yuvia hernandez, who are sitting in the back row. so they're really excited to have them on board. there are two of the hundreds of new hires from last year. they started about december first, so they're about two and a half months in. so really excited to have them on board. and guillermo, as you know, who you've met, he also came on board to the racial equity team, um, last year. and he's the leadership and racial equity manager at operations. um, on this slide, you'll see the whole 12 person team for the racial equity initiative. the eight

leaders who i haven't mentioned, um, they lead the addition. they lead the initiative in addition to their core work. um, and they bring needed expertise from across our divisions at public works. and, you know, some of them from other presentations. so just want to start by just saying the racial equity initiative does not work in a silo. and in fact, it's part of actually our job to break apart the silos and create kind of a web of process improvements across our divisions. so i want to highlight our key collaborators and our key collaborations within the department that it makes our work possible. so the first is actually the hr team, and it's been a huge, uh, benefit having our own hr team. um, this is something we could not do. 2022. and before. we also work very closely with planning and performance team, which leads multiple department wide initiatives. we work really closely with the university. and

finally, we work very closely with the executive team and our deputies who have their own division specific initiatives. so we're, um, we we're helping all of these teams embed racial equity thinking within their work. so i want to just start with a couple of slides of data. um, as, as you remember from our past conversations, our work at the initiative is guided by our quality of and our quantitative data. so both the voices of our staff and also our workplace demographic information. uh, recently, we're proud to say that we updated the data from our action plan, which was fiscal year 2021. so it's a couple years old. so our new data now is 2324. this chart is from 2324. and we're we're also comparing our data to our departmental data to our citywide data. so what um, what mr. fuller just handed out is the dr. it's a section of the

dr. 2023 workplace data. um, i have the full report here if you want to take a look at it. and i know that mr. fuller sent you the link as well. so, um. so a few, a few notes on this before we go on. so the graph shows the graph showing the average hourly rate of public works staffed by race, quantifies the disparity between white staff, who make an average of $69.09, and black staff who make an average of $46.87. the $46.87 is approximately 70% of the $67. this disparity hasn't changed since fiscal year 2021. i haven't i don't have that slide, but you'll see it in the action plan. the disparity is still the same. um, although the average hourly rate is higher across the board in the new fiscal year, the disparity continues us. but i want to point out and this is why i brought that dr. data that public works is not alone here.

i don't know if that's good or bad. i think it's both probably or it's mostly bad for all of us . the disparity is citywide drs numbers present a similar outlook and um, on page 22, in the handout you'll see they have there's a similar dispatch city by race. um in hourly salary. so what are the root causes of this disparity. there are many that are out of the control of our department. so that's important to understand. there are historical and legal inequities that go back 400 years and have made access to financial wealth, education and health care and equitable, uh, they're more recent and local laws, racist laws like redlining that affected our our specific communities of color and undermined their stability and their cohesion and also, there's a history of job segregation by race that has to do with discrimination in and access to education. so we're kind of swimming in this like history and culture. um, that, that, uh,

under, under sort of is the foundation of this disparity. um, it does remind me as, as, as a woman, i know these numbers are like the ongoing campaign for equal wages for women. i think probably starting in the 70s. i don't know, we started having a national discussion about sort of what women make in relationship to men. very important to start quantifying that. i don't know, i think when people start talking about it, it was like around $0.70 to the dollar. um, in terms of the disparity between women and men, i think now it's closer to $0.82 on the dollar. and i'd first of all, it's important you know, what's important about data is if we don't see it, we can't deal with it. we can't change it. so i want to remind you on that. and then in terms of like the argument around equal pay for women, like we've been talking about this for decades, there's sort of two major points. one is making sure that women get equal pay for equal work. but the other thing is about breaking that glass ceiling. and so i would use that

analogy very much here. that like we need to talk about the disparity of race. we need to look at it. we need to identify it. and then we need to figure out what can we at public works do about it. so uh, last data slide before we dive in. but i think it really sets the stage. um, so these charts look at the racial diversity of staff in management and non-management position positions. the top part, um, well, it compares data from um 2021 to recent data from 2324. so the top the top three bars are 2021 and the bottom three are 2324. so in 2021, though, public works was 24% white, 52% of the managers were white. um, in fiscal year 23, 24, 20% of staff were white or are white, while 39% of managers are white and drs citywide numbers show a similar trend,

and i would look at the charts that i sent you, uh, that we handed out. um, at this point, we don't know what's at work here. why, there's there seems to be an increase of managers of color. um and perhaps it has to do with covid or something to do with covid, something to do with recent recent hiring initiatives . and perhaps it has to do with the retirement of maybe a more predominantly white staff, older white staff. um, we do believe that our goal at public works should be proportional representation of staff at the manager level. that managers should represent the racial diversity of the staff. um, and this is important for a couple reasons. a diversity of viewpoints makes our department stronger. there's actually statistical evidence about this that racial diversity makes organized nations work better, perform higher. the second is that greater racial diversity points to more equitable promotional opportunities for all. and we'll talk about promotions. a lot of our work has to do with promotional opportunities. and then obviously, in super importantly,

managers have higher salaries and that brings greater stability to their families. so you've seen this slide before and i'm not going to go into it really. um, it presents our five priorities for our racial equity action plan. but i do want to point do want to point out a couple of things that connects the data that we were just looking at. so in order to push back on historic and ongoing job segregation that i mentioned earlier, we must help staff with their career paths. so this is a huge priority. the second is that in relationship to that, we need to be sure that we change. we train managers to better support all staff, particularly staff of color and then we need to create a culture that supports each member to thrive and reach their potential. for instance, i'm an architect, so i'm going to use the architecture sector as an example. the architecture sector nationally, black architects are underrepresented. we know that statistical, um, but at public

works we can work hard to connect and recruit black architects to apply for our positions. we actually know how to do that. we know how to do that recruitment. but we also need to be sure that we're creating an environment that's healthy and supportive for them. so they want to stay so what are we working on? so i'm going to give you a high. so highlights of what we're working on. and happy to give you more detail in questions. but um so as i mentioned at the beginning, 2023 was like a boom in terms of boom in terms of staffing. we're super grateful because now we actually have capacity to carry out really necessary, necessary projects. um, one of those projects that we're finally kicking off is a mentoring program for two of our divisions for bdc and idc. this has been, um, a grassroots effort. a couple of teams at both divisions have been working on this, and is working on developing a mentoring program with the racial equity lens. so and our staff will be able to

help implement it. um, we've also embedded racial equity thinking in a number of our key supervisor trainings. like as you may know, we have a couple of different trainings that all supervisors have to take. supervisor essentials. and the 24 hour long supervisor academy. so that's a huge investment of time. we as a department are really invested in training our managers because we know that they are at the core of what makes us work. um, and now we have racial equity modules that are embedded in those trainings, um, that help that help our supervisors think about facilitation given feedback, workload distribution from a racial equity lens. i'm also in 2023, we be in collaboration with hr, the hr team. we initiated a mandatory racial equity question on every interview panel. so every job applicant who has an interview panel, one of the interview questions is about racial equity. and um, the racial

equity team, uh, did research, figured out 15 like 15 sample questions, five for entry level positions, five for mid-level positions, and five for manager level positions, and gave a uh, scoring guideline for each of those 15 questions. and then we have we had one training for 80 hiring managers. and we are continuing to present and basically work with hiring managers to understand like why are these questions important? how can you use these questions in a kind of sector specific way? so if you're hiring for an inspector, like what questions make the most sense? if you're if you're hiring for an entry level inspector, what makes the most sense? if you're hiring for a senior architect, what makes the most sense? if you're hiring for an arborist? um, again, hiring managers are super key in this whole work. um, let's see. so and also another example of our work is broadening recruitment. when i was talking about black architects and that

we know how to do it, we created a what we're calling a wiki recruitment resource wiki, meaning that like everybody, it's a shared document. so everybody can looks like wikipedia, everybody can add information and keep it updated. and we looked at sort of the top 12% professions that have the least racial diversity and are high paying. um, so typically positions that pay over 100 k a year, like landscape architects, accountants, project managers, construction managers and outlined professional societies, college, society, rs, even high school youth um in terms of outreach related last summer, we bureau of architecture and landscape architecture piloted our first, uh, high school uh internship program with the mayor's opportunities for all program. um and that the idea there being is that we need to encourage youth of color to think about careers in architecture and landscape architecture and working for the city. uh lastly, we've been

doing a lot to create a culture of respect and learning and fun. um, our racial equity program is incredibly diverse, from discussion panels to potluck lunches to, um, robust heritage month celebrations and probably every single person in our department has been involved. we've had attendance like 1500 to 2000 people over the course of the year, with about 100 peer leaders. this is all peer led. this is not. and we and with no budget, as you know. so this is all like a groundswell of interest. um so these are the operations specific work items we're working on, like as, as you all know, the strength of our department is that we're soup to nuts. we touch every block in san francisco in multiple ways, and our staff work in multiple ways. approximately half have desk jobs. um, we work primarily at our computers and primarily inside. and the other half

mostly based at operations, um, work out in the community. their day to day is quite different. they're more public facing. they're on the move. they're not tethered to computers. um, and operations has a greater proportion of black and latinx staff. about 60, as opposed to 40% on average, department wide. so from our research, it's clear that operations staff, they're telling us they need greater access to information, information about job opportunities, information about training, information about hr related stuff, about vacation time leaves what's what, um, what are their opportunities. so we have specific projects that address those operational needs. the one that i really want to highlight is an operations racial equity working group that we kicked off last quarter that has about 25 frontline workers with a huge support of deputy director durden. um, and this this group is receiving leadership training and also will be the thought partner for deputy director durden and her

executive team in terms of developing operations specific process improvement. uh, we're also working to increase access to information in all sorts of ways. we've heard loud and clear from our communication surveys with operations staff. they like to hear information person to person. so we're developing morning huddles that are sort of an expanded safety tailgate so that there's more there's more chance for conversation with your supervisor. for uh, and we're also working with, uh, i guess the last item we're also working with, uh, deputy director durden on a facilities facelift, which i think is really important. you know, you where you work, um, affects your sense of pride. so last slide. lastly. so what's what's coming up? what are we working on now. so with our new staff and our new data we're going to develop some smart goals some like specific and measurable goals that are like um where do we

want to be in terms of um, uh, whether it's number of operations staff who are taking trainings, number of staff who have access to um, career pathway information, maybe percentage of managers of color. so we'll be developing specific goals this year. um, another major priority that we really haven't addressed, that's part of the hammer graphic, is rethinking disciplinary processes. it really wasn't possible to do before we had a strong hr team. so now we're working with hr to develop it. and we talk about rethinking disciplinary processes. it's not just the legal aspects but are what are ways we can de-escalate problems before they they become , um, legal. uh, we're also relooking at our language access program. um, we're developing new grassroots racial equity committees in our divisions to further process improvement points. um, and we're. yep and then the last thing i just i'm

not going to go through the list. the last thing is there are phase two, which is the phase two. so i've been talking primarily all about phase one, which is looking at our workforce. but phase two is about how we do our services in the community. and we've already begun to gather information about that. the office of racial equity, the city wide office, has not yet, uh, um, required us to do an action plan. i'm we're thinking that it will be due at the end of the year. so we're just we're doing the work now to prepare. so that's that's it. and happy to answer any questions. thank you very much, miss rubenstein. nice to see you again. thank you for coming. i do have some questions. um, and, um, i did send them ahead as you know, this regards. slide four. and my question had been about what the reason behind, um, the difference in, uh, pay for white employees and americans of asian

descent versus other minority groups. and, of course, you answered it a little later in the presentation, which is that most minority groups are concentrated in lower paying jobs at public works, which we all know. and so i guess the question is, what can we do to change it now? you spent a lot of a long portion of the presentation telling us what you are thinking of and what could work great. uh, but then on the next slide, slide five, we you you, we see that there has been some improvement in management of more diversity in those ranks , but you weren't sure why. i'd like to request when we see you again in six months, if you tell us why. because maybe something is working and we need to know what that is. if the management is starting to become more racially diverse than department i, we would we'd like to know why, what's working and keep rolling that out. lean into it. right. so um, i guess, um, i also what i'd like also please to request, i would like to know what the specific hiring questions are. i understand and other professions, not public

works. some people do not get jobs when they answer those questions incorrectly. i would like to know what we're asking people about this and so we can see if that's not going to pertain to us. um, would you like me to respond to that? yes yeah. so i can't tell you the exact, um, interview questions because we can't share them because they're confidential. because if someone's applying for a job, they can't know the question in advance. so i can't, but i can give you a sense of them. um, a lot of, i would say generally they're they're asking questions that we would say are kind of about soft skills. so it's about like how you work with other people. how do you work with other people who are different from yourself, whether they're racially different or whether they just think differently? like we all think differently. so it's so a lot, especially the entry level positions, the entry level questions are around that, like how do you how do you work with people who are different than yourself and give examples of what? of what you've done? um, maybe a higher level question is

asking for an a specific example that was challenging, you know, where you, um, you had to give feedback or you were in a conversation and there was a disagreement. and how did you you know, how did you deal with that? and then i would say the management level positions are more specifically with like a race, a racial equity lens. but but generally they're generally they're kind of soft skill questions. so like one of our messages to hiring managers was these are questions that are really going to help you understand how this person would work with your team. you know, obviously, you want them to be like the best accountant or the best graffiti removal person. whatever the job skills. but you also need to know, like are they a team player? you know, how do they respond to feedback? how do they give feedback? things like that. hope that's helpful. yes it is, and i understand the confidentiality. um okay. i guess, um. all right. that that

pretty much summarizes my questions. i guess i would just add, going forward, i am ready for the action. part of the racial equity action plan. and i'm really pleased you have to welcome our two new staff members. but we did just hear presentation from deputy director robertson on a very dire budget situation. and i just want to be sure that you, who are spending tons of time on this and your whole team that's spending a lot of time, as you pointed out, outside of their quote, everyday jobs that that that we are really getting results. and i know it takes time, but with karen hill and her staff and you and your fully fleshed out team now, i really hope we'll get to the action of seeing material improvement in in the pay and managerial opportunities for all people, for all people. and so we look forward as a commission, i'm sure, to hearing about specific kicks on recruiting and as you said, retaining ensuring that even when people get in the door, they're happy and they stay often, you know, the numbers look good getting people here. but then if you look five years out, half of them have

left. why is that? so that's the type of information we really want. we don't we know the reasons. we all we get it. we understand. we understand the city's commitment to, uh, a very strong, diverse, talented workforce where everybody's potential is reached. but people take this is a big effort on our department's part. it uses time and resources. and i would just really, really want to start seeing results because i know this has been going on now for 2 or 3 years. i think when you first launched this. and so now you have the staffing, we can start getting some specifics on results, i hope. yeah, i agree, i do want to make clear that we're taking a lot of action right now. i mean, we have a, a um, a working group that, you know, we're starting a working group with operations, which is huge in terms of front line workers having a voice. we're we've got a we've got methods for recruitment that we didn't have before. that was in people's heads. right. so we're developing those skills. we're having a mentor program which makes a huge difference in terms

of people's very individual career pathing, as well as creating a, an environment of inclusion. so i would say we're doing a lot of very specific actions. we don't have the measurements yet. i would agree with that. i would say best practices is in the field. say you don't see see a change in numbers for five years and like we work with for instance, seattle, which. seattle city government is like ahead of us by about ten years. and so we've been sort of tracking their change and tracking their advice. so yeah. do you want to say we're taking very specific actions? um, and i also know you want to see results and we want to see results too. we have a lot of anecdotal results, but i think it's going to take another year or so before we see number results, because even, um, like just as a caveat, even that change in in management numbers, we don't really know if that's just a blip, you know. so we need to see it over the course of five years. and then i think as a citywide like dr. has to

help us unpack it too, not just because it is the same citywide as it is departmental. so i agree with you. we want to see results. we actually feel like we already are seeing results, but they're anecdotal. great well, we'll look forward to every six months to hearing how we're doing, understanding it. it does take time. thank you. yeah. commissioner turner. um, director shaw, just to be clear, the asia a racial equity work. it is directly tied to the department of human resources, but also the city. its mandated. is that not correct? yeah um, that is correct. so the, um, uh, human rights commission hosts the racial equity initiative for the city, and they did put out some mandates for department to, um, create our plans. and then the first phase was really looking at it internally, and this was all prescribed by them. um, and then the second phase is looking at how we provide our services. so it is a mandate. i

think we have, um, achieved a lot of that before we were staffed up to do the work. so very proud of the results that we have. um, working with really volunteers from within the organization. but we are eager to have the positive impact of our new staff as well. and i guess my second question is, and i, i guess i looked at all of the charts and i've looked at the changes and i think they're all great, but i always come back to the reality of where we live and to me, the racial makeups that we reflect also reflect the city. and so i guess where i'm struggling to your question or your point about what action is going to look like, it, it's hard for me to get my hands around things that we're measuring when they just seem so, um, um, insurmountable. we can't, you know, we are a city with, you know, 70% white

folks. so i mean, what i guess for me, i don't this work is really nebulous in some ways, and i guess i'm to trying to understand, like where are we going? what what are we really trying to accomplish? because to me, what you guys are doing every single day, how people show up to work, getting mentored and supported. i think that is the work. um, but then i look at some of these other measurements. i'm just not sure how you would ever achieve them. um, yeah. it's a really good question. first of all, i, i think i don't have it off the top of my head, but the demographics for the city, i think it's closer to 55% white. um, but we can check on that. but like in terms of demographics of the city, i think it's a really interesting point because, um, like, for instance, i don't think we would agree with having a goal that we want our staff to look like the racial makeup of the city, because the racial makeup of the city is the result of a whole lot of things like redlining and historical discrimination. so i know that, like a lot of our

guideposts end up being like bay area, um, data sets, you know, um, the other thing that that comes to mind, too, is that, um, when i was out on saturday with our, our neighborhood beautification days and talking to staff, i'm constantly aware that we have tons of staff that are born in san francisco, but they don't live in san francisco anymore, and they talk a lot about their pride in san francisco. so i think when we're looking at, um, when we're looking at statistics and deciding like, you know, how how racially diverse, what is our racial diversity goal? what is our racial diversity goal in management? we have?9 to look le at a broader regional level in terms of like, what are we after? i think what we're after is, is equity. so that each person coming into our department, whether they're black or white or asian or latinx or multiracial, all, um, etc, have this same opportunity to promotions to be, um, thriving, to reaching their full potential. um and when we look across, when we look across the board, we see it. it's not

equitable right now that there are certain people that have an easier time getting promotions. there are certain people that have an easier time getting into certain jobs because they have more information, and because their biases and their microaggressions and so on. so i think our our goal is to like, raise all ships so that everyone has that equal opportunity to, to thrive. i, i guess i, i hear it, um, i think i'm just going to echo chair post's point and i think it needs to be much more defined because i don't understand actually where any of this work is going. um, outside of some of the things that are listed as measurements, i do understand the in between. i do understand microaggressions. i understand being able to be at the table. all those things, i think are a part of the city's broader kind of, uh, racial equity work. the mandate i got that. but you've mentioned a lot

of things outside of that. i just maybe we just need to spend more time because i just truly don't understand where this is going. okay. let me give you like for me, at least one tangible example, perhaps it will be helpful. so our operations staff who work out in the field mostly and are not at the computer, they don't get a lot of information that our desk based staff do like. we get tons of emails daily about, like training opportunities and so on. and so that lack of access, um, makes them feel isolated. and also makes it that they don't know, like they didn't like they might really be interested in a promotion. and there might be a training available and they don't know about it. um, or that's a management weakness. that's a management weakness. well, that's well that's one of the i mean, so that's one of the things we're trying to address is like how do we educate and support our managers so that they have time to get that information and then share it. so it's i would say it's not rocket science, but it takes a lot of intention and a lot of work because you're sort of

changing the way we do things like our staff across the board there, so used to direct services, we are a doo doo doo, uh, department, you know, we are super responsive. so when we say , hey, can you spend 20 minutes in the morning checking in with your staff before you go out into the community and just go over these? like, these are the three job opportunities coming up. there's a leadership training that like, if you think you might be in leadership, you might want to go to this is how you do it, you know? so we're trying to change the culture around that. to me, that's a very tangible outcome. because if that person who's a general laborer knows like, oh, my path to becoming an arborist, which might be my dream, maybe. i've always dreamed of working with trees, but i don't know how to get there, you know? so we need to help them see. and we also need to support the managers and helping give them the information. so. so to be clear, with this example, what we would expect is our managers to give staff ten 15 minutes a day to be

able to review emails, understand what trainings are going on and then the managers are then supposed to create the space for them to follow up, do those trainings while managing their core responsibilities. not quite, but i see where your question's going. it's sort of like how do you have time to do all this? right so it's not about just that. it's also the resources. and again, this is somewhat of how much it costs. yeah. it's unfunded mandate. so it does have direct impact on a complete. and we're thinking about that. know that can't happen. like every staff can't take an hour out of their day you know to do all these things. no. so we're thinking about, for instance, like the morning huddles happen like two times a week. so twice a week you have that. but there are also other modes of, of communication that we're using. we're trying to be i mean, it sounds again, it doesn't sound like rocket science. it's not. but we're trying to be much better with our bulletin boards and our facilities and sort of how are we communicating? how are we communicating visually. so it's multimodal. it's not like it can't all rest on one manager, though we do know as i said earlier, we do know from our

communication survey that people want to hear the information from their supervisors. so it's got to be a balance. but it is a there's a cost involved. you know, and i have to say that deputy director jordan, like this is really important to her. the culture at operations. and she's like, we're supporting her and sort of carrying this out. she she wants to be sure everyone's in the know, and we have to do it in an efficient way. but like a thoughtful and intentional way. thank you, commissioner zogby. uh, thank you for the presentation. i just have, um, two questions. uh, currently, is there a process of annual reviews for all staff? if in public works? yes. in fact, it's a city mandated thing. we every employee has a performance plan. um, and we're like, the way public works is set it up and it's been it was revised about four years ago. given employee survey results, which

is really and this is a great example of how things change and get better because of employee input. so we have an annual performance plan actually. and on that performance plan there is a racial equity goal that was put in place by our previous director, um degraffenried. and and, um, you are supposed to check in with your supervisor quarterly around that, around the whole performance plan, which has 3 to 5 goals and then a training goal and a racial equity goal on it. and is there is there a career development portion of that? yes. yeah. very important. which it's we call it career development or training goal. yeah. and so our performance plan and i'm going to defer to director short is actually a very important part of this whole process we're talking about. and like honestly like in any big organization, often there are areas where and with certain managers that it works really well. and in other in other places in the department, we could we could step it up. we could better support folks to do it better. i

don't know if you want to. is there like a way to everything is documented, right. and systems. yeah. so one of the things that we did take that feedback the performance plan is done at the beginning of the fiscal year. and then that same document basically becomes your performance appraisal. so you work with your manager. here are your goals for the year. and then how did we do to try to meet those goals. what we added was this. the idea of the quarterly check in. um, basically we have some managers and supervisors who intuitively or through their own training, they're really good at checking in regularly with their staff. and, you know, a lot of their staff are like, we ta quarterly check in. we hear from them all the time, but we part of the goals for this plan and some of the actions that we're taking is to ensure that there's kind of a minimum level of checking in that supervisors and managers are doing similarly with the morning huddles. it wasn't that no one was sharing information well, but it was inconsistent. it was relying on

sort of the, um, the talent of that particular supervisor or manager. so the morning huddles is ensuring that, you know, we are sharing the same information to everybody that needs to get this information in consistently . and so the quarterly check in was something we added because some folks weren't they expressed they weren't really getting that periodic connection with their supervisor. so they sort of felt like i thought everything was going fine. and then at the end of the year, you're telling me i need to work on things by meeting quarterly, they should be hearing, how are things going? what you know, what can i do to support you? and they're getting that along the way. so nothing is a surprise at the end of the year. and one question about slide number four, what are what are those numbers in the circles. oh yeah. um, that's the that's the number of people in that racial category. and so it's throughout the whole agency, the whole. so for instance, uh, there's. 295

white staff and. 472 asian staff. is that are those the numbers you're looking at? yeah yeah. so it gives you a. yeah it's does that make sense. just to note that these are uh self identified and some folks don't necessarily identify why or in some cases they're it might be that they didn't feel sort of reflected in the category options. so um, you know, i've raised this question before as well because the data is better now. but but, you know, in the past there was um, i think the i don't have it in front of me, but pacific islander was one of the and, you know, we had a very low number. and i was like, we have more pacific islanders on the tree crew alone than we see in this circle. so it does require that the employees are self identifying. and also over

time, we've broadened we the city not the department, have broadened, um, the categories. so you know, when one of those pacific islanders may have been hired years and years ago, that wasn't a category they could choose. so they may have ended up as some other category. um, so it's not a perfect reflection necessarily of, um, what you might expect to see from the department, because it does rely on, you know, when people were hired, what were the categories available to them? and that sort of thank you. are there any more questions or comments for miss rubenstein about this? all right. well, thank you very much. and we'll look forward to seeing you in six months. and please keep up the good work and welcome again to your team. we're excited to see results. secretary fuller, please call the next item. we do need to take public comment on on the report. i beg your pardon. thank you very much. members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item nine,

the racial equity action plan update may line up against the wall for this from the door here in the chamber. if you're commenting from outside the room, please press the raise your hand button in the webinar bar or star three on your phone to be recognized and we do not have any members of the public in person who have come forward on this item. and sfc of tv has just informed me we do not have any callers either. so we have no, uh, public comment on this item. great. thank you. now please call the next item. item ten is the capital project update on the upper market corridor safety improvement project. and uh, project manager carol huang is here to present this update. i'd like to thank her, uh, as well as the, uh, policy and communications team, rachel gordon and patrick riley

in particular, as well as, uh, chair post for helping us formulate what these capital project updates look like. and this is our first one that will be heard. and, uh, so, uh, please bear that in mind if you do have any feedback on what else you would like to hear. uh with these updates. sorry okay. i'll move. thank you. hi good afternoon, commissioners director short. uh, deputy city attorney chris, tom and secretary fuller. my name is carol huang. uh,

streetscape program project manager. good to see you again. um, first of all, happy new. the new year of jargon and really enjoy the video that was made to celebrate new year for choi jin hong. wishing you good luck and good wealth and good health. um, along with me today here is sfmta project manager casey hildreth. um, again, i'm here to provide capital project updates on the upper market corridor safety improvement project. the project was awarded. in january 2021, in the amount. of $7,540,493.20, with a duration of 450 calendar days. we came to the commission on november 14, 2022 to obtain time extension approval of 169 calendar days to

accommodate delays due to materials shortages. supply chain issues during covid 19, as well as as well as unforeseen conditions encountered during construction. um also, additional time to allow, um, you know, during the holiday moratorium observance. um, as grading and paving inc. is the city contractor on this project. we had, uh, substantial completion in, uh, last year. it was february 2023. um, the streetscape improvements overall project scope. we include civil roadway scope, curb ramp upgrades, sidewalk widenings, landscaping improvements, new such as like new trees, median landscaping, traffic signal modification signs, placemaking improvements, as well as drainage improvements. the project is within district eight along market street between octavia street and castro street

. in the next six slides, i'm going to show you some before and after photos and hope that we can demonstrate the transformation along the project limits. um, the first photo of the first slide is basically showing the brick paver median that was added. um, added near market and octavia intersection, which we use to separate the bikeway and vehicular traffic to protect the bicyclist. um, this coming this, uh, this particular slide is showing four pictures with the before condition on top and after condition at the bottom, which as part of the project, we installed decorative stomp stamp, asphalt on market um, at sanchez and 15th street intersection, as well as laguna and herman intersection. on this slide. um which is demonstrating the inter section reconfiguration. reconfiguration on as well as leaning rails that we install near the market. octavia intersection. and on

this one, which on the left you can see what it was before on guerrero between market and dubose. and on the right is what we added, which is the landscape median. um, on guerrero between market and dubose. and on this slide, um, it's basically an example of car custom boarding island that we added at various locations. we basically added all these custom orange like style, um, custom bike, uh, custom railing that, you know, added on the bus shelters throughout the entire limit. and lastly, we also added some palm trees uplighting along the project limit in the future. slide, i'm going to demonstrate and show you some of the achievements and which we actually kind of have some quantities and numbers of the achievements of these custom elements that were added as part of the project. um, so kind of

summarize, uh, you know, some of the improvement that i demonstrated earlier as part of this project, we added 31 new curb ramps, which is like, you know, upgraded. um, they were there before, but we as part of the project, we upgraded them so that they are in compliance. right now. um, we also replaced about 18,000ft!s of sidewalks throughout the project limit. um, there are also multiple full intersection traffic signal modifications, such as mark market and 15 market and 16 market in laguna intersections as well as minor traffic signal modification at the other intersections. we also added 8000ft!s of stamped asphalt. and um, there is about 50 new bike racks that were added there are some that are custom and there are some that are actually standard. we also added custom railings at which i showed earlier at about 12 muni boarding islands. um, additionally, we added ten custom bicycle leaning rails,

um, and also ada palm tree uplighting on. throughout the project, um, we have a lot of successes, uh, overcome. um, there are also some lessons learned, a lot of the successes include incorporation of nonstandard and custom elements because that require a lot of outreach with the public, with the stakeholders, um, as well as like kind of working through with the designers and also, you know, operations team to kind of talk about the nonstandard element. um, so, you know, being able to incorporate those custom elements as part of this project is one of the great success. um, and we also during because this project kind of happened and started during covid, we encountered some supply chain issues on some of the materials, which some of the additional time that we requested, requested previously was kind of related to those supply chain issues. um, as part of the project, we also encountered some utility conflict, um, which , you know, we were we were

aware. we were aware, but then they were they appear to be at different locations during construction. so the team was able to kind of resolve it during construction. but those also kind of added some additional time. um, but i added there as a success because the project team was able to collaborate together as well as the contractor to resolve these during construction. um, lastly, we also implemented some night work at market and octavia because it's near a caltrans freeway on ramp and off ramp. um, so that also is one big effort that the whole team worked together, um, you know, be able to implement at night time. um, which happened we were able to shorten the duration for the night work. um, you know, because of really successful planning before we start the work, um, some of the lessons learned, obviously, like, you know, would be some improvement for future, which is like setting milestones for work zone. you know, if we in the future, during early construction stage, we can do that. it would probably help, um, foresee whether there's

going to be some potential impacts to the project and project schedule overall. um, also, you know, we're thinking maybe in the future we can start conversation with caltrans earlier to start planning during early construction so that we don't need to pack up our time to kind of, you know, schedule for the work. um, you know, and also the night work and, you know, more to it. i want to add that originally we the project already obtained a encroachment permit with from caltrans. um, at that time, we, we were told that we can actually proceed the work during daytime because it was during covid, but later on, the traffic and the volumes picked back up. and caltrans, you know, basically changed their requirement and ended up requiring us to proceed with the work at night time instead of daytime. so that's why, you know, it was kind of like something that we think in the future it would be great to kind of communicate with caltrans early on to understand their concerns or potential impacts. um, and also lastly, you know,

as part of the lessons learned, we also thinking in the future, if we can start utility investigation in during early construction, for example, potholing during early construction, then we may be able to avoid, you know, running into the unforeseen utilities at a later time. and then we can kind of have a little bit more time to plan for those unforeseen. um, with that, i also want to summarize the overall project schedule to kind of give you a break, a quick overview, um, you know, back in november, back in july 6th, 2021, we issued np and that's when the contractor started construction on, um, the regional final completion was supposed to be in september 20th 22nd. sorry, september 2022. um, and, you know, we came to the commission back in november 2022 to request for the time extension. um, however, we did reach substantial completion in february 2023, and we are today now trying to provide some

updates to you. um, at the moment, we're still kind of closing the project out. um, but there's, you know, just some minor remaining stuff that we just need to do to close out the project with that. this is my last slide. i'm happy to take any questions you may have. thank you for your time. thank you very much. miss wong, it is nice to see you again and thank you for this update. before i ask my, um, commissioners to comment on it, i was hoping that that our client from sfmta could come to the podium if he wouldn't mind. how do you do if you could say your name again? i'm sorry i didn't catch. sure. my name is casey hildreth. i'm a product manager team leader in livable streets at the sfmta. great. thank you. glad to be coming and thank you for patiently awaiting this agenda item to be called. um, from your point of view as our client was, this project a success? uh, yes. yes. i mean, so just to provide some context, i've been working on this project since i started a decade ago, and it has involved a lot more than just the contract. so i will add, you

know, we did a number of improvements back in 2018 to add a protected bikeway for a short stretch of the project area that was outside of the contract. but we worked collaboratively with public works shops. you know, the cement shop, the bcer to do some spot repairs. you know, by city forces. and so that was sort of pre our quick build program, but was essentially part of what we do now is a more day to day or project to project coordination on that was also a part of this project and just want to acknowledge that that is additional work that's not captured by the contractor. yeah thank you. and would you concur that that some of the challenges that the project faced, that with what miss wong pointed out, were there any other challenges that from your point of view? yeah. i mean, i think it's hard to not to point out some. there's a lot of staffing changes over the years, both at our side of the shop. you know, i think i was the fifth project manager there. um, as well as on

the public works side, the project management group. and, you know, i didn't have carol for the whole project. so pre carol, it wasn't you know, there was some challenges just with sort of staying on coordination. um, but that's just part of the nature of, of what happens in city government and when things take a long time. so i think staffing changes, i would i hard not to point that out, but um, we've been over that hump for a while now. yeah. thank you. i just so my question was and then what could public works do better next time? we always like to learn from projects. any any suggestion for us. we are very important client. we do a lot of work for you. yeah i think it's a learning curve on both sides. so i don't you know, i think beyond things that were out of the control, i, you know, i think i don't have much to offer . i think it was a great collaboration from the start. and i think, you know, particularly around funding, this could have been a lot messier because it was sort of a joint effort from the beginning, and there was money from different pots that were already

at public works and at the mta. and i think by and large, we handled that very professionally. and i think, uh, minimizing sort of unnecessary discussions and delays around funding. and i think that was something i really appreciated. uh, public works staff in particular. yeah. great. that's great to hear. uh, earlier, i don't know if you were here. i was commenting on the l taraval project. maybe you'll hire us to do do it next time. but anyway, never easy to do anything in this. best of luck with that project. well, do you have any other comments for us as our client on this? um no. no comments. just. yeah. gratitude for the team and i'm happy to answer other questions. if they pop up during q&a. yeah, thank you very much. do my colleagues have any questions for our guests or for miss wong on this project? well, thank you very much again for coming. thank you. please open the sign up for public comment. members of the public wish to make three minutes of comment on this item. number ten, the capital project update of the upper market

corridor safety improvement project may line up against the wall for this. from the door here in the room. if you're commenting from outside the chamber, please press the raise your hand button on the webinar or star three on your phone to be recognized and. we do not have any members of the public in person wishing to speak on this item. and sf, tv is also indicating we do not have any callers wishing to comment on this item. so that concludes public comment. great. thank you. i probably should have said this before the public comment. i just want to make sure my colleagues like this format. as you know, with large capital projects, which i'm calling 5 million and over, i would like to hear annually an update. is it on scope? is it on budget? is it on time? um, the before and after photos, that type of thing . so this template that we had

in our slides, if, if you like it, we'll continue it. obviously along the way we can always make changes, but i thought it captured some of the key points about the project. again, it's an update. it's not a full presentation. it presumes we already are familiar with the project since we've approved a contract for it, and it's just to let us know how it's going so that we can, uh, let taxpayers know that that things are going smoothly and not overly delayed or over budget. so that was the purpose. great thank you very much, miss wall. thank you, thank you, thank you for your time. please call the next item. item 11 is the is new business. initiate by commissioners. and this is an opportunity for commissioners to suggest business for a future agenda. and it is an informational item. thank you. i just have one suggestion for new business. i'd like my colleagues to think about, uh, the importance or value to them of having what i would call a retreat for lack of a better word. and when i say that, i mean a morning meeting off site, perhaps in a in a

conference room, it would be a public meeting, of course, for us to review. now that we've been doing this for a year and a half, review our charter mandate, what it means. are we fulfilling it? could we do better? should we streamline things? do we need to beef things up? what what are what is our purpose, our role? are we being of use to the department? uh, net net and hear from some of the senior staff and have a discussion. uh, my proposal would be to have a professional facilitator, uh, facility date our conversation. so it wouldn't be as formal a meeting, but i will work with deputy city attorney tom on the guidelines for public participation in. to the extent that that we must have them, of course. and and, um, uh, make sure that that it's even though it's a quote retreat it is done proper. ali, any comments or thoughts? what i would suggest is, as i work with secretary fuller on getting a location, will pull you for some

dates and ask what you'd like to see accomplished at such a meeting, and your ideas and your thoughts so that ahead of time, once we do post an agenda, we know what will be addressing. we all could have given it some thought prior to coming to that. that confab. any questions or comment on on that idea? okay well then i'll work with deputy city attorney tom and secretary fuller and director short on pulling this together for us. and making sure it's convenient for everybody. thank you. any other new business or topics from my colleagues? all right. please open this item to public comment. members of the public wish to make three minutes of comment on item 11. new business initiated by commissioners may once again line up against the wall for this from the door here in the chamber. if you're commenting from outside the chamber, please press raise your hand. the raise your hand button in the webinar or star three on your phone to be recognized and.

and no one has come forth to speak on this item. and s.f. gov tv also indicated we do not have any, uh, comments from outside the room. so that concludes public comment on this item. thank you. and i believe we do not need item 12. general public comment. therefore our next meeting will be on monday, february 26th at 9:00 in this room room 408. and we are now adjourned. thank you

>> first it's always the hardest and when they look back they really won't see you, but it's the path that you're paving forward for the next one behind you that counts. (♪♪♪)

hi, my name is jajaida durden and i'm the acting superintendent for the bureau of forestry and i work for public works operations. and i'm over the landscaping, the shop and also the arborist crew. and some tree inspectors as well. i have been with the city and county of san francisco for 17 years. and i was a cement mason, that was my first job. when i got here i thought that it was too easy. so i said one day i'll be a supervisor. and when i run this place it will be ran different. and i didn't think that it would happen as fast as it did, but it did. and i came in 2002 and became a supervisor in 2006. and six months later i became the permanent supervisor over the shop. >> with all of those responsibilities and the staff you're also dealing with different attitudes and you have to take off one hat and put on another hat and put on another

hat. and she's able -- she's displayed that she can carry the weight with all of these different hats and still maintain the respect of the director, the deputy director and all of the other people that she has to come in contact with. >> she's a natural leader. i mean with her staff, her staff thinks highly of her. and the most important thing is when we have things that happen, a lot of emergencies, she's right by me and helps me out every time that i have asked. >> my inspiration is when i was a young adult was to become a fire woman. well, i made some wrong decisions and i ended up being incarcerated, starting young and all the way up to an adult. when i was in jail they had a little program called suppers program and i -- supers program, and i met strong women in there and they introduced me to construction. i thought that the fire department would turn me down because i had a criminal history. so i looked into options of what

kind of construction i could do. while i was in jail. and the program that i was in, they re-trained us on living and how to make the right decisions and i chose construction. and cement mason didn't require a high school diploma at that time so i figured i could do that. when i got out of jail they had a program in the philmore area and i went there. my first day out i signed up and four days later i started to work and i never looked back. i was an apprentice pouring concrete. and my first job was mount zion emergency hospital which is now ucsf. and every day that i drive by ucsf and i look at the old mount zion emergency, i have a sense of pride knowing that i had a part of building that place.

yeah, i did. i graduated as an apprentice and worked on a retrofit for city hall. i loved looking at that building and i take big pride in knowing that i was a part of that retrofit. my first formen job was a 40 story building from the ground up. and it's a predominantly male industry and most of the times people underestimate women. i'm used to it though, it's a challenge for me. >> as a female you're working with a lot of guys. so when they see a woman, first they don't think that the woman is in charge and to know that she's a person that is in charge with operations, i think that it's great, because it's different. it's not something -- i mean, not only a female but the only female of color. >> i was the first female finisher in the cement shop and i was the first crew supervisor,

in the shop as a woman. when i became a two, the supervisors would not help me. in the middle, they'd call me a rookie, an apprentice and a female trying to get somewhere that she don't belong. oh, it was terrible. it was terrible. i didn't have any support from the shop. the ones who said they supported me, they didn't, they talked about me behind my back. sometimes i had some crying, a lot of crying behind doors, not in public. but i had a lot of mentors. my mentor i will call and would pick up the phone and just talk, talk, talk, please help me. what am i going to do? hang in there. it was frustrating and disheartening, it really was. but what they didn't understand is that because they didn't help me i had to learn it. and then probably about a year later, that's when i started to

lay down the rules because i had studied them and i learned them and it made me a good supervisor and i started to run the ship the way that i wanted to. it was scary. but the more i saw women coming through the shop, i saw change coming. i knew that it was going to come, but i didn't know how long it would take. it was coming. in the beginning when i first came here and i was the first woman here as a finisher, to see the change as it progressed and for me to become a permanent assistant superintendent over the cement shop right now, that's my highlight. i can look down at my staff and see the diversity from the women to the different coaches in here and know that no one has to ever go through what i went through coming up. and i foster and help everyone instead of pushing them away. i'll talk to women and tell them

they can make it and if they need any help, come talk to me. and they knock on my door and ask how i move up and how i get training. i'm always encouraging to go to school and encourage them to take up some of the training with d.p.w. and i would tell them to hold strong and understand that things that we go through today that are tough makes you stronger for tomorrow. although we don't like hearing it at the time that we're going through all of this stuff, it helps you in the long run to become a better woman and a person >> (music). >> hi, i'm emmy the owner of emmy's spaghetti i offers working that with some kind of

fine dining and apron and feeling stuffy and in the 90s in san francisco it was pretty pretense in a restaurant in the restaurant scene i want to it have a place to have a place for my friends to guess i started the restaurant a no better place the outer mission spaces were available that's when i opt in two 10 he start with all people and work with them and the events they create one of the events we do every year and backpack give away and give piaget away and a christmas part with a santa and bring 5 hundred

meatballs and pa get and we're like in the mission not about them knowing where the food comes from but a part of the community. and my restaurant emmy's spaghetti and fun banquet and san francisco not the thing that everybody knows about we stay under the radar we show the showcase i take it food and we started to eat we wanted to have comfort food and that a claims friend from i take it and helped me create meatballs and dealing evolved over the years in the beginning one plate of spaghetti and a meatball we tried to make the portions as big as they

could be. and now we have quite a few types pasta dishes with a la begin and meat sauce or have a partition to a lot of food we are at a point with all the favorites i don't change the menu often 0 i eat here so much but everything is fresh your cocktail menu is the best it's ever been one thing on the menu our magazine ghetto we change the flavor one of the fun things it is served in the historically we're known emmy's spaghetti as a friendly place and when i opened i wanted my friend to be welcome and other parents to be welcomed and it is very for this

is a place for families especially in san francisco and this is where though hold their celebration important i mean you're coming to a family restaurant and you're coming for o to a fun place i love being the owner and pretty sure my life i enjoy running the psta spaghetti place i hope to be here a while we'll see how it goes we everyone is a friend we're hoping you'll be a i'm currently an h2 firefighter for the san francisco fire department. i served active duty in the navy. i wanted something that was

going to be in the medical field, but not necessarily stay in a hospital setting and i didn't want to stay in an office and this job kind of combines everything i was looking for. everyday's different. there's always something new and to learn. and my first introduction to the department was being surrounded by people of the lgbtq community. and so we were able to get, you know, it just made things a little more comfortable that you could talk to people about things that people necessarily wouldn't understand. i've had to hide myself. able to come out. being able to understand many his and being able to do things in had that sense, it's very liberating to be able to speak like this, this city in particular, it's a mecca for the lgbtq+ community. you know, there's so much history behind it and being part of this community that now accepting us for who we are and

what we do, we're able to just be ourselves. any time somebody finds out i am a member of the gay community, i don't get anybody talking about me, nothing at all. it's just oh, cool. you have a partner? like yes, i do. they start asking about that and how my life is. you become part of the family and here in the san francisco fire department it really is just one big family. you know, it was my dream to be a san francisco fire department member and i'm here.