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good morning. welcome to the transbay joint powers authority meeting for thursday september 13th. may we do roller coaster, please. >> i would like to announce the record directors metcalf and sartipi will not be.

(roll call) >> madam chair, you do have a quorum. >> thank you. are there any communications from board members today? seeing none, let's move to item four, which is also -- sorry, the board of directors old and new business, which there is none. item five, the executive director's report. >> good morning, directors. good morning, members of the public. we have tremendous news. many of you may have read about this in the paper and the news last night, but one of our construction crew members found a woolly mammoth tooth on our construction site. very exciting news. tremendously amazing. he, as you know for many years, have had an archaeologist on site looking for artifacts and so forth. we have a number of exhibits that have displayed the items, from homes to schools to chinese businesses and so forth. people living in san francisco area at the turn of the last century.

we never expected a find like this. we have a paleontologist who is here who will show you pictures and tell you about it. so jim? >> ready? >> yes. >> i'm jim allen, i'm a registered state of california geologist and a paleontologist. what this picture is of is the mammoth tooth and a fragment of the mammoth tooth that came out of the otter hole, about ten feet from the surface. that is a side view of it. the thing is preserved just

by burial, which means it is not replaced by minerals. it is basically the mammoth tooth, calcium phosphate. it was over laid by sand. the environment changed from a lake to a lagoon to all of a sudden a stream system. so the sediment came in either after the mammoth lost his tooth or passed on. elephants like to lose their teeth. so it is overlaid by capping sand. >> i have a question -- >> question from the director. >> can you tell us what size you are talking about with your fingers? oh really? >> how about showing the picture. we have a picture that will show -- >> it is that big. >> not this? >> no, it is giant. >> jim, if you could

address the board when you speak. >> sorry, board. >> if you could speak into the mic because the meeting is recorded. >> that is me holding the tooth, so that is the relative scale. again, that is the side view. >> pretty big. >> there you go. the grinding surface is at the bottom, where they grind leaves and individual table. it is an exciting find for biological purposes, evolutionary purposes, for kids. it is also great for science. if we can get an age out of this mastadon, a mammoth columbi, we will get an age and plug the data into the paleoclimate graphs we have. we have a lot of sea level

fluctuations already recorded that. gives us information. we can tie this into a sea level curve of sea level lows, which reflect ice cages and global warmings throughout 600 million years. we use those data to project to the future of what the earth has naturally been doing. it is also good for -- age dates are incredibly important for all walks of geology. we use them to figure out how old young units are. if they are cut by a fault, we know the fault happened and the seismicity occurred after the unit was deposited. if we get an age we can say when. everyone is asking when the next big one will be. based on our recurrence interval based on earthquakes from ages of things like this, we can have a potential hypothesis when the next earthquake

will be, based on the fossil finds. it is great for everybody. this is original so we can probably get a carbon 14, a radiometric date we can hang our hat on with confidence. >> what is the likelihood of finding more remains from many mammoth? >> it just went from low potential to high potential. there's a few mammoth localities in a two-mile, three-mile radius. this is the first in the heart of san francisco. the california academy of sciences has collections from the outskirts. hunter's point, columbus, out west where construction of the bay bridge over by angel island. this is from the heart of the city. we are playing catch-up on the tarpits. my guess is there is most likely a high potential for more. all i can say is get back to work, because you found it, then let me know. >> you don't have to stop

or slow down like with tribal remains? >> that would be closer to the surface. more feasible perhaps and safer to study if it is in sort of an open pit. once you get ground water level, we are below sea level so ground water is there. when we do down hole logging for landslides or to figure out the base of something that is moving to figure out the depth excavated out and put in a safe building, you know, things are caged and shored. this thing is so sloppy down there, cave-in is like inevitable. 110 feet down is not feasible for lack of a better word and unsafe. it was found by the construction crew. i'm glad they are getting some attention. they are the heros. they should be grandfathered in as paleontologists. they have an eye for this

stuff. working on caldecot and other things, construction guys -- they have an eye for it. it really lets you know they are paying attention. it is great. the best thing for me for the construction for the project is to get back to work. >> right. so we are going to continue work. one of the thing we are in discussions with is an exhibit for the kids at the california academy of sciences so we are looking to donate the tooth and have them exhibited and also house it. thank you, jim. unless the board has any other questions. thank you, jim. thank you very much. directors, i would like to present our quarterly financial reports. to present that is sarah jalati. >> good morning, directors. sarah jalati. this will be boring after finding a woolly mammoth tooth. these are standard reports. the budget tax reports is

through the end of the previous fiscal year. it shows we were within budget on the capital side. we are right now in the process of getting financial statements ready for year-end. the budget tax report does reflect operating budget is the subject of another item later on in the agenda. i will be happy to answer questions about that now or the time that item is called. the second report is the contract status report. the memo makes reference to another item we will talk about in more detail later on the agenda, which is changes to the dbe and fbe programs. the proposed dbe goal. that shows contract activities are proceeding as planned and shows our payments for the federal fiscal year to dbe is 7.2 million and 36.3 million to sbe through the three-quarters of the federal fiscal year so far.

the third report is our investment report. shows our position in our bank account, the city and county equity pool and our trust account which holds land fill proceeds and the final report is inception, expenditure and revenue for the capital project. i'm happy to answer any questions. >> thank you. directors, our next item is an update on the project labor agreement. bob is going to do the presentation. we also have ma with us from the carpenter's union, who is also going to be reporting on the good work they are doing to get people into apprenticeship programs, specifically women, so they can ultimately work on our project. >> thank you, maria, directors. as maria mentioned we are giving an update on the project labor agreement.

we had our third meeting with leadership from building trades council and labor unions in san francisco this month, just to get an update on where we stood with a number of things and to give them an update on what our upcoming labor needs are going to be. in terms of the labor uses on this job, we haven't had any work stoppages or shortages, something i hope to continue to report throughout the project. this last quarter we had no safety incidents or injuries, something i hope to continue to report. in terms of construction in the field, at our may board meeting the first two trade packages fully covered under the pla, those have not begun filled activity yet. they will be beginning in the november time frame,

the geothermal and electrical grounding work and we will take bids on the substructure package, very large, $77 million is the estimate. very large package. that will be the below-grade concrete of the math slab, rail platform level and bringing the walls of the train box up to grade. in terms of student participation, we did have a total of nine interns this summer. six high school students and three college students between ourselves. the program management team and web core aci. at the end of their internship students came together and gave a presentation on what they had been studying this summer, what they were going to go back and take back to school with them. it was a nice ceremony we had at the end of their time with us this year.

this is something many reported at the pla, the carpenter's union and representatives from the trades have been continuing to work with john oconell high school. they have a new instructor for the tech 21 program, as well as the unions went and toured roosevelt middle school in the richmond district to take a look at what it would take to reactivate the moth ball equipment, the moth ball shop program they have there. hopefully we will be able to report back in the future there are more shop programs coming forward. >> just wanted to speak on the challenges. the team has been working web corp.

ted wang specifically with schwartz plowshares and other agencies, the veteran's administration and other agencies around the region doing outreach to veterans and trying to build an alliance of veteran's groups to really encourage placement of veterans into the trades. one of the big challenges they have seen is not just the collecting of information but then the working actually more closely with veterans to make sure their interests and aptitudes are addressed so the resumes and information gets channeled to the right outlets and right placement for continuing opportunities. they are continuing to work on that. web corp also hosted a booth at an event hosted by the veteran's administration and

military.com on the uss hornet in august. they invited representatives from the pmpc team, as well as from the -- their subcontractors to come and be present and distribute that information there. they did meet a few candidates who were interested in construction industry. more were interested in the administrative and management side, so they are continuing to work and track those interests as well to get them to the right contacts. >> can i ask you something? what do you mean with agencies working in silence. >> silos. >> oh, yeah. there's not enough information.

they are not working collaboratively so that information is being gathered but then it is not being shared and distributed so that the connections can be made to get the information about the veterans to the people who are doing the hiring. >> who are they? when you said they are not sharing the information? >> the agencies that web corp has been working with include the va, the schwartz to plowshares program, then also some of the local employment outreach centers. >> helmets to hard hats. basically there are a lot of different veteran organizations in the bay area and state of california and nationwide. they don't always talk to

each other. that is what bob is saying that. is one of the challenges, they are kind of working independently. what we are doing with web corp's assistant is taking the data, what are the challenges veterans are facing, the issues. we are putting that together so we can share it with the first lady's office on veteran hiring to help, provide suggestions. we are finding with the major infrastructure project as well as proposed solutions. >> are there anymore questions on this item? i just had a quick one. have we been able to place veterans on some of the work projects and tgpa? >> yes. web corp has placed two on contracts. web corp are not themselves self-performing. they have placed veterans through their subcontractors. they have also identified and placed two veterans on ther projects they are working on as direct employees of web corp, where they are doing direct

labor. web corp has really taken this on as an obligation not only of this project but of their company. that is where they have been really i think exceeding our expectations in trying to pull together some of the groups both on the governmental side, as well as the cvo side to form these alliances. >> i assume there is is a training program that comes along with the outreach then hiring. >> yeah. most of the apprenticeship unions have programs for veterans where they get credit for their military experience that would be applicable, so they are not brought in at the lowest level of the apprenticeship program but placed in at a level that would recognize their prior experience.

the other thing that is really important about identifying candidates is one employer knows a candidate by name, they can request that candidate, make a specific referral request to request a veteran and bring them to the job site and place them in the field. >> thank you. >> sure. a few words about apprenticeship. again, web corp has done quit a bit of work in the last quarter, both to improve performance for apprenticeship placement but also improve our ability to monitor and track that. the first thing that they did was work with elations, a company that makes a software program for pay roll, for certified pay roll. they have developed two additional modules for