welcome everyone back to san francisco's planning commission regular hearing for thursday, january 17, 2013. we left off just before your regular calendar, so we will proceed to item 10. fiscal year 2012-13 supplemental budget appropriation. this is a non-action item and it's only informational. >> thank you opinion good afternoon, commissioners. john rahaim, planning department. we are here today with the first of two budget items this week. this item is actually for this fiscal year, and then we are proposing a supplemental budget

request for this year. we are in an unusual situation this year, where our revenues have exceeded expectations because of the increased numbers of applications. as you know, the vast majority of the revenues of the department come from fee revenues from proposed projects. so we are proposing this year to go back to the board, before the end of the fiscal year, and propose the use of some supplemental funds. the next item is the first of several discussions on the work plan and budget for the coming fiscal year. but this item is for the supplemental are this year and we are having an informational hearing and we hope to have an item in it front of you for action next week to continue on with the board. with that i'll introduce keith demartini martin irntioi who abo over the details. >> thank you. good afternoon. keith demartini martini, it's my pleasure to present an overview of this fiscal year's

supplemental appropriation for our department and secretary iowna and i have copies. as director rahaim mentioned this is a supplemental budget appropriation for this currently four. under charter section 4.1024.3 the department is requesting -- will be requesting the planning commission's approval of our request, when we come back next week. they a an agenda idea for next week's agenda on this. so just before i get started with the details of the supplemental appropriation request i will have an overview of what we are projecting as far as revenues and expenditures which is the basis for our request. in this current year fiscal year budget we did assume overall

volume projected growth of approximately 3% from last fiscal year and through about six months of actual data that we've been able to analyze so far through december, we are experiencing that 3% growth approximately, with some variation among some of the different application and building permit types. the majority of those increase in cases, however, are coming from much larger projects. and you'll note from our fee schedule that a lot of our fees are based on the estimated construction cost of the proposed project. so when a larger project comes in the door, whether they're filing an eir, or they're filing larger scale project, we do see an increase in our fee revenue. so together, with an increase in volume and with an increase in the mix of the larger scale projects, at this time we are projecting over a $6 million revenue surplus in our fee revenues at this time.

on our general fund support, in our operating fund, we have about a $2 million appropriation from the city's general fund. and at this time we aren't expecting to utilize it fully pending the outcome of the supplemental request and how the rest of the year pans out. moving on to the expenditure side we are expecting very little variation in our salaries and fringe expenditures and our other expenditures whether it be from materials and supplies, capital, work orders that we have with other city agencies that perform services for us, such as the city attorney. so we're expecting very little variation. so over all, we are expecting a surplus in our budget of over $6 million. that being said, we are coming forward with a supplemental appropriation request of approximately $3 million. i want to walk you through what the details of that request is.

and is is broken down into two pieces. let me first say that once this -- once this appropriation request is allocated, it will prove resources to reducing the backlog of cases that is requiring review, and funding some currently underfunded commitments. these resources will mostly go towards staff resources, as well as additional appropriation authority for some consultant expenditures, and materials and supplies. so, first, let me go through the reducing the backlog initiative which is the first and largest component of this supplemental appropriation. in total we will be requesting 10 positions. you will see there's a planner i, planner ii,, and four support staff positions. these positions will cross a variety of different divisions

within the department. a majority of them will be assigned to the current planning division, which is the division that processes notices of the applications that we are seeing in our current backlog. the four support staff positions will likely take over some of the administrative type work, that current planning staff does, to allow those planning staff to focus on the analytical, technical work of the review of the projects. the office space reconfiguration line item will go towards actually configuring space for new staff as well as reconfiguring some existing space in our location at 1615 mission street. there is some other items, just to highlight here, records and information technology improvements. this appropriation will fund various information technology upgrade projects, including digitizing historical cases files located in our file room, in order to more efficiently locate these files, also will

provide autocad and transportation software for analysis which is for department staff, it will provide department-wide wi-fi access for anyone coming into the building, printer replacement and increasing capacity of our storage area network for all of the increased files that we have. there's also a line item 4 additions andh0( mó expansions guidelines. other than the residential design standards, there are no guidelines to inform the design of additions and expansions for small and medium scaled residential projects. this effort will actually develop those guidelines. there will also be some funding for refining ceqa analysis procedures, and for preservation document revisions. so in total, this initiative is approximately $2.9 million. second, as i mentioned, we are hoping that the supplemental appropriation will go towards funding some current underfunded

commitments that we have and there's two listed here. the first, as you're aware, we are in the middle of a two year implementation of our permit and tracking system in collaboration with department of building inspection and there is a need to have some more advanced training resources on this system. it also there are some additional configuration needs for the system. so this $45,000 would go towards that. second for the central corridor eir funding, the department did receive $350,000 of general funding over the last budget cycle for this eir, and the department has secured, in total, $600,000 from the metropolitan transportation commission of grant funding. but there is an additional need for $250,000 to complete the necessary analysis on this project. yesterday, i delivered this same

presentation to the historic they unanimously approved the recommendation of approval to this body. so i wantznj"á to make sure thau were aware of that. and then next thursday, i will be coming back respectfully requesting your approval of the supplemental appropriation request. that concludes my presentation. i'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. thank you very much. >> president fong: is there any public comment on item no. 11, specifically -- 10, sorry. thank you. >> sue hestor, one. largest consumers of information of the department. i am sensitive to how you

provide information, both on your website. there's some wonderful stuff on your website. there is some hidden stuff as well. as well as public documents, as well as information in the department that is people oriented. i want one thing really a lot, which is a chart of the department structure, with people assigned to it. it should be both on the wall, and it's an ever-changing document as you hire people, and people leave and retire, and on the website. it is extremely frustrating. i am a people person who deals with the department. i could not find a structure of the planning department, if i had two hours and a computer. it may exist somewhere. there used to be a picture

diagram on the wall. but we've gotten too sophisticated to provide that information. and what i would ask for is, no matter who does it, support staff -- i don't think it's a planner one, planner two, planner three function. i think it's a clerical and an intellectual function of the department to say who is running the department, where -- what is your structure. if the planning commission knows it, please tell me, because i don't know it, and people ask me, and i can't figure out who to make >> the public wants to access particular information about your house or neighborhood we point them to gis. gis is a combination of maps and

data. not a graphic you see on a screen. you get the traffic for the streets the number of crimes for streets the number of crimes for the e-mails be provided is minuscule. it's notyj@r' on the information request. i ask that the forms be overhauled to be brought into the real world, where you have not a hope in hell of understanding a project, unless and so these kinds of things are boring as hell, but they go

mr. demartini. just some individual items that come up, and these are, you know, just part of the whole picture, but i know there are all these different options that are being analyzed for the central subway exiting, and, you know, one wit may include a sta. but i assume we have taken into consideration the budget to be able to do the planning necessary for that particular contingency, or there will be something decided upon. >> commissioner, the eir we're talking about is for the planning that we're doing in the central corridor. the subway itself, the eir was certified quite a number of years ago. so that is clear, that is under construction. we're now looking at the planning work that we're doing around it, to look at the zoning and other street improvements and other issues in that area. so that's the eir that's being

talked about. >> commissioner antonini: i know we were talking about that but i was talking about changes now as we talk about where the boring of the street changes are going to come out. we don't need another eir for that obviously but i mean i don't know how much more planning would be involved, whenever the option is decided upon how to terminate the central subway in the northern end. >> you're going to see that in a couple of weeks there is an option put forward and will come to you because it requires a planning code amendment. >> commissioner antonini: i'm sure this is all being taken into consideration, piers 30 and 32, we've budgeted for theablese analysis necessary. >> that was covered in this year's budget. >> commissioner antonini: thank you. >> president fong: commissioner moore. >> commissioner moore: excuse me, i hear you say, besides i think you're making a great pretion, it seems you're really understanding how this all comes together. you made more money than you

spent is that correct? >> we're projecting we will take in more money than originally anticipated. >> commissioner moore: that's great. now you're asking because you will be making more money, to be allowed to spend some of that money on your own in order to stay on the course of making the money. >> we are requesting the authority to accept that additional money, that is not currently in our budget, and to be able to spend it. >> commissioner moore: so if you wouldn't be asking for the supplemental appropriation, and you would make the money, would that just automatically disappear? would it go #] somewhere, where somebody makes the money and doesn't give it back to you? >> so the way the budget process works is you have cash that comes in the door, but you have to have budget appropriation. so we have excess cash that's above and beyond what we assumed in the budget but we need budget appropriation to spend ut i, which is what we're asking for.

little on the workload side, what we are seeing is a backlog of permits associated with this revenue. so what we're asking for is permission to spend this money is we can address the backlog. if we don't have that permission the backlog just sits there because we don't have the resource to fund it. also, our revenue actually sits in the general) nú fund. so basically when the fiscal year closes out, all that cash -- it's a little complicated, it would basically refer to fund balance but the city is not allowed to spend it for non-planning activities so what would end up happening is the mayor's office would take our general fund away from us, and this would supplant the general fund that we have. >> commissioner moore: thank you for explaining that because it's the philosophy of use it or lose it. so it goes away to nowhere. what's very interesting to me is when we discuss budgeting last

time, and i'm looking at the director, it was just the time when we developed on most bases the disintegrating. i was saying is anybody given ability to budget even in theory that there will be a lot of additional work which obviously we have seen in some of the neighborhood plans and all the -- things where redevelopment comes in over and over again. so i think, in light of the fact that we have witnessed a notion of caution to you, even in the last budgeting cycle, not budget cycle, budgeting cycle, i think it will be very, very appropriate to leave the door open for this to occur. and it's not even asking for the whole thing. but has there ever anybody developed an idea that each department might have a rainy day fund? i read the mayor's rebuttal of supervisor kim's legislation on housing, and while i don't have a clear understanding of why it

isn't housed, but she was bothered for the budget she was asking for, and there were other reasons. the point i'm trying to make, does the planning department have like a discretionary%s$ihuy day budget allocation, somewhere in the cloud? >> we don't, but we are trying the next best thing for that. what this -- what we're proposing that's in front of you today, and next week, is to actually use this money to hire staff over awjp!9ñ two-plus -- o years and about three month period so that we can hire people on about a two and a half year basis. so it's the the best thing that we can do to get close to a rainy day fund so we're stretching the money out over a two year period, a little more than a two year period. we otherwise cannot just bank the money. we can't do that as a city department. last year we tried to get approval to have a flexibility budget authority to see if the money would come in so we wouldn't have to go to the board like here, but that approval was

not granted. the mayor's office and the supervisors would not agree to that. because our revenues are so much higher than projected we have to go back for authority to accept the money and spend it. >> commissioner moore: one other clarifying question you might be able to answer. are any of the other expenditures we're expecting for bringing in a new commission secretary is not anything which would have anything to do with this anyway, correct? >> director rahaim: no. that's in the current year's budget mngetsz we already had that together with the future ability at point x to he potentially hire a manager so the future secretary needs that. i very much appreciate the presenting it. >> president fong: commissioner hillis. >> commissioner hillis: it seems like you've only asking for $3 million so you're in fact $3 million is back to the general fund or to$% backfill. >> director rahaim: no. that's a good