first, it is a conservative number. this is a projection through june so we don't want to propose to use every dollar. but secondly we're having discussions about how to potentially use that money in next year's budget for one time improvements and expenditures. i guess that's the answer. >> commissioner hillis: on reduce the backlog planner one $185,000 -- >> that's roughly two years and three months. >> because i was applying for the -- >> [laughter.] >> director rahaim: i would apply too. >> president fong: any further questions, comments? >> director rahaim: thank you for your comments. we'll bring this back to you for action next week. >> president fong: commissioner sugaya. >> commissioner sugaya: if i'm reading the,jp,ñ reduced backlog correctly, we're projecting to add a total of 10 new staff at

various levels with the $3 million, if it gets approved. >> director rahaim: that's right. >> commissioner sugaya: is that then carried over into subsequent years? >> director rahaim: yeah. what we're proposing to do with this is put it in what's called a project -- a project fund is that we can actually use it over a two year and three month period. >> commissioner sugaya: and then i guess this is a question then for the next presentation because keep that in mind because i have a question on the projected 2013-14, and 14-15 counts. because it doesn't seem to reflect this. >> director rahaim: okay. thank you. >> president fong: thank you. >> item 11 for fiscal year 2013-15 proposed department program. >> director rahaim: commissioners, the last item of

course was for this year's fiscal year. this fiscal year this is the first of several discussions we will have with you on next year's fiscal year, just as a reminder, our budget by charter is all departments budgets are so we will have a series of meetings with you over the next few weeks and i believe in mid-february. it is scheduled to come to you for action. i just -- keith will do the presentation. i just briefly want to -- before we get into any level of detail i think it might be helpful to list the kind of major projects we're anticipating this coming year, and consistent with my comments earlier. so i'm very happy to say that on the permit tracking project we are on schedule, on budget, and we are scheduled to go live with that, in fall of this year. closer to the summer we will have a go live bait with you but we're on schedule for go live

for the fall. we are working on the eir for the transit effectiveness project, a massive citywide eir for ma's proposed transit improvement project. we of course are working on the central corridor and moscone center environmental review which are partially combined. we are now in that project doing a single transportation study, but two separate eirs, one for the plan and one for the moscone project. there are a number of things we are starting to work on, long overdue updates to the general fund, one to the transportation element, which is long overdue, and the urban design element which i believe puts back to the 60's at this point so it's long overdue to redo those. we are working on the city's invest in neighborhood strategy which is the strategy to support neighborhood commercial districts. we are actually working on 25 different districts right now. we are working on a series of kind of snapshots, if you will, of those districts, jobs,

obviously as i mentioned earlier there are a number of very large projects on public sites, including obviously 3032 or the arena is proposed pier 70, seawall lot 37 which is the giants lot a. we're also working on just barely starting work on a couple of -- on some work on the ma sites that they are considering looking at for joint development, as well as ucsf which as you may have heard put their 11 acre laurel heights parcel on the the market for development. so these are large publicly owned sites roughly in the range of 10 to 15 acres each that are all in play right now so it's an interesting challenging time for us as we look at these sites. finally we are working on the eir for the tsp, the transportation -- program which is the long standing desire of this commission and department to shift away from level of

service analysis into a rational way of doing transportation studies. so with that, that's a quick the coming year. with that i'll turn it over to keith for details on next year's budget. >> thank you, director rahaim. good afternoon. keith demartini martini, finance manager for the planning department and secretary eye own-in and i have copies forever the commissioner. before i begin the presentation, this work program is what we're calling the base budget or the status quo budget, as it stands today. so it basically assumes that there are no changes from what our adopted budget when we went through this process last fiscal year. department staff are currently working through various budget requests and initiative ideas. and we are working through those requests now. and when i come back to you in the next couple of weeks and in early february, i will be presenting a revised version of

this work program for submittal to the mayor's office. so i thought i'd start with the calendar. again i delivered this same presentation to the historic preservation commission. i will come back to you on january 31 with draft revenue and expenditure detail budget including grants and capital projects and other financial items such as that. and then in mid-february, we your approval of the department's proposed fiscal year 13-14 and 14-15 budget. for our preparation for submission to the mayor's office on february 21. then if there are any fee changes, we will come to this body in may, and then the mayor proposes his budget to the board of supervisors early in june, and then in july 1, the start of the new fiscal year, the annual appropriation ordinance will be adopted. so that is the schedule for the

upcoming budget cycle. so i just want to start with a high level overview of what the mayor has given his guidance for the upcoming budget cycle. this is issued a few weeks ago. i wanted to highlight a few of the major things in that document. so, first,? b, projected its shortfall for the city's general fund at just over $129 million in fiscal year 13-14, and just over $2 $263 million in 14-15. this is current revenue assumptions across all city departments. these shortfall figures were much, much higher in about a year ago, when -- a year and a half ago when the city first issued its first five year financial plan document. and over the course of that time, through some revenue improvements and cost saving adjustments for ongoing solutions the city has managed

to bring that shortfall projection down to where it is today. there are still many uncertainties that exist, such as the continued slow and steady growth of the economy, continuing cost escalations for employees health and retirement costs, the state budget, and some upcoming labor negotiations for the city's unions. for the planningg&ihvdepartmente guidance that we have been given from the mayor is that we are to reduce our general fund allocation by 1.5% in each of the fiscal years. so that equates to just over -- just about $62,000 each year, which is a fairly small number for us. and we will definitely submit a budget that meets that target. so this pie chart is just a high level overview of the fte or full time equivalent staff allocation across the department's five divisions. again, this is the base

allocation of our ftes at this time in the coming weeks we will be incorporating any new position changes or position substitutions or movements across different divisions at that time. so now i'm just going to show you a slide for each division for each of the sort of major initiatives, that go on within those divisions. so i'll start first with the current planning division. which does represent a majority of the staff in the department, and just over 50ftes. in fiscal year 13-14 proposed current work program is on application review which is about half of the total division staffing goes towards that work. there's been steady increase in applications over the past year, as mentioned before, and these -- we've actually added two staff in the current fiscal year to assist with the additional backlog.

and we hope that we will be able to grapple this backlog through these moves. we've also maintained existing staffing at the planning information counter, as it has over the past couple of years. the current staffing consists of four planners per shift with historic preservation staff available for shifts which has been improvement made in prior years. you also have seen fiscal year 13-14 in line item five on process improvement and maintenance that the fte allocation will be declining and that has to do with the conclusion of the permit and project tracking system project taking staff that were working on that and reallocating them on application review. so now i'll move on to the citywide planning division. which will, at this time, and its base budget will experience a slight reduction in fte counts and that has to do with one time funding that the division got

for some specific projects. again, we are working on some different requests that will increase that position count in our revised fiscal 13-14 presentation which i will deliver in a few weeks. with expected conclusion of activities including japantown and western soma this will enable division staff to focus more on the general plan and citywide planning programs as the director mentioned before. and it will also concentrate on activities and planning efforts such as the healthcare services master plan, the invest in neighborhoods initiatives, and master plans on publicly owned sites. now, moving on to the environmental planning division, the environmental planning staff has recently completed eirs for a variety of different projects, including the transit center district plan, pier 27 cruise ship terminal for

america's cup, noma and western soma. cpmc five campuses has remained on appeal at the board of supervisors as the hospital program is being redefined at this time. some other ongoing major eirs include the warrior's arena, central corridor plan,mta a transit effectiveness project, academy of art project and mexican museum, just to note a few. moving on to the zoning administration and compliance division, this division has the zoning administrator and his support staff, as well as the code enforcement function and the general advertising and sign program staff. and there are no notable position changes in this division to speak of at this time. and then finally the administration division, this has directors office, finance and accounting, i. t.,

legislation, staff in this division, there's quite a few staff focusing on the permit and project tracking system project which is noteworthy to note. as well as focusing on some of those i. initiatives that i spoke about earlier. so now i just want to show a few slides and talk about the department's performance measures. on at least on a semi-abl semi-l basis the department reports on update on how we are performing on our performance measures both to the controller's office and to the mayor's office. and department management review this information to make sure that we are meeting our targets, or striving to meet our targets, and identifying where we have areas of improvement to make those adjustments accordingly. so i just want to provide an overview of what those publicly reported performance measures are and describe to you what the targets are.

for current planning division, current measures have to do with how efficiently staff are able to review various application types in a timely manner. for example building permit review within 90 days or conditional use authorization within 180 days. you will see historically we've been unable to meet those targets but we have shown some slow and steady progress over the first six months of this current year, which is promising. planning division performance measures, there are two, how efficient we are in processing general plan referrals, and the programming of the development impact fees. again, which general plan referrals are within our targets but we have made improvements within the last six months of this current fiscal year. moving on to environmental review, you'll see many of the documents take a very long time to process.

an eir on average could take about two years to process from start to finish. with some of the categorical exemption reviews we have been successful in reviewing those cad ex documents within a 45 day target period. moving on to zoning administration and compliance we do track how efficiently we have been able to initiative enforcement proceedings on code enforcement actions within 30 days and we have been successful in doing that historically and hope to continue to do that as well. and then finally with administration, we track our review of ordinances from the elected office -- from elected offices. we've also been tracking the success of the implementation of the permit and tacking system which is on schedule and on budget. and we make sure that our i.t. infrastructure is up and running at all times.

so that concludes my presentation. i'd be happy to answer any questions you have. thank you very much. >> president fong: thank you. is there any public comment on this item? >> i'm much shorter than he is. sue hestor. i don't know where it's appropriate, so it may as well be the budget. i think the department has to think through whether the -- system works anymore. what was -- what i really would like is a map of the city that had, on the map, all of the planning areas broken down. planning areas broken down. you will find -- i knk3 the southeast quadrant is in a

formal planning area. and you have people in the audience, working, waiting for market octavia. there is a sense in the community that you go through a large exercise to plan an area. and it's passed on to a planner who may have no experience in the planning of the area, or the years of discussion that went on about what are the important policies for development in that area, and they are just looking at the planning code, and -- pardon me, area plans are put on a shelf. they're not looked at. the people who do the plans have left the department. they've gone off to the mayor's office of economic development, or they are in private practice, or they've gone on their assignment with the department. and why do we have the same

structure, decades after we have gone through area plans, why are we not thinking through some kind of continuity in planning, and implementation, and not just -- how many -- can you tell me how many area plans are in the northwest quadrant, how many are in the southwest quadrant, how many are in the northeast quadrant, in the southeast. you should. you're the planning commission. so where is the map that should be a focus of everything. what are we doing -- we're generating a lot of paper in an area plan. but i'm not sure how much of it is real. and a secondary thing, which is specific unto me.

you have let the warriors go through the entire process. there is not an application in, other than an environmental review, and there is no money in the department because there is no application. i have a public records act request for how much you have generated in cost, and i know that the billing -- that the receipts and funds for non-environmental is zero dollars because they haven't filed them. thank you. >> president fong: is there any additional public comment? commissioners? commissioner moore. >> commissioner moore: could you perhaps, on page 5, under division program -- work program administrative division, explain to me why there is a drop in personnel assigned to the commissions. you're going from four in 2013, to three in 14-15. >> commissioner, last -- in the

current fiscal year, when we found out that linda was going to retire, we had -- we double budgeted that position. there was a second position in there that was 0923, manager two for those of you on the recruitment committee which is a topic of discussion. so there was a two and a four in there. and so this now reflects, with linda's retirement, the other position going away, and the staffing level going back to three. >> commissioner moore: thank you. appreciate that. for the director, and it's not as much budget, you mentioned -- do you see expression master plans for public owned sites, would you give us an example. that's kind of scary, actually. >> yeah, that word is probably not correct terminology. i apologize. the idea as i mentioned earlier we're working on these very large sites with public agencies. we wanted to devote some

resources to getting in front of those projects with the property owner whether it's creating master plans or guidelines, because those projects are so big we find it important to have early conversations before any applications are filed. >> commissioner moore: that's great. >> director rahaim: that's what that is about. >> commissioner moore: while you are there, ucsf laurel heights is that -- fund? >> director rahaim: yes. they put out an rfq for redeveloping that site a couple of months ago. it's 11 acres. >> president fong: commissioner wu. >> vice president wu: i have some questions that that director you will want to answer. there are performance measures where there is room for improvement and i think our talk about the supplemental was about of related. so i just wanted to get a sense from you about what the strategy is for keeping up, or for improving actually these

measures. it seems like this report talks a bit about the number of staff but i think there are probably other factors, supervision, training, other factors i'd like to hear about. >> director rahaim: yeah. there's a number of things like that. that's a great question, actually. obviously staffing numbers, just a sheer number of project has gone up so it makes those numbers hard to meet. i think to be frank some of those target numbers aren't necessarily realistic on the other end of the equation so we should maybe look at those 80% for example on the drs isn't realistic but anyway, i think training is one, for example, one of the things that we now have a full time training coordinator in the department which we did not have before this year. diana is looking at a number of training programs like project management, even though these aren't projects in the typical sense of the word in the way we do them, it's those skills we want to bring to the projects so that staff understands how to move projects forward. the other thing we're implementing this year that we had not -- that we had started

last year but kind of fell through the cracks is a case manager approach that there's a single staff person who is the primary point of contact on any project in the office. that might change from environmental planning to current planning but a single point of contact is responsible for owning that project and carrying it through. those are kinds of things we're looking at as well as other improvements as well. >> vice president wu: thanks. those sound promising i think. i'd love to see that happen. my other question is also somewhat unanswerable. i see that there's actually a lot of staff dedicated to the general fund -- i mean general plan and that's also all the different elements. >> director rahaim: right. >> vice president wu: i was curious about your thoughts about making the general plan for relevant maybe to the public about using it as an education or engagement tool. i feel like even as a commissioner, when i get all of the different elements, not sure exactly how it relates to everyday life to projects to the way we experience the city. >> director rahaim: that's a very good question.

unfortunately, because of the nature of the way that plan has evolved over the years our general plan reads like code and frankly it's so big that it's hard to get your hands around it. so what we are working on this year is kind of a summary document. and that will be very graphically oriented. that will help kind of make it a lot more accessible. and i think one of those things that we are proposing in the supplemental for next year, or i should say not in the supplemental that you just reviewed but using some of the funds for this year next year is a community outreach position that would be able to kind of go out to the community, not based on projects or plans, but kind of talking about planning, what we do, how we do it, and getting ahead of some of this stuff. so the general plan obviously is something that guides our work, supposed to guide the work of a lot of city departments but i >> vice president wu: thanks. >> president fong:

commissioner antonini. >> commissioner antonini: just as a clarification, originally when we talked about firemen's fund ucsf you said a sale but i'm hearing it may be a redevelopment of the area with a different built environment. is that what -- >> director rahaim: yeah. i believe as a state agency, they're not allowed to -- state university, they can't sell outright because that would be lease but the idea is it would be redeveloped and ucsf would move out. >> commissioner antonini: but there could be a difficult built environment but you're not sure what they have in mind. >> director rahaim: the assumption there would be a whole new different buildings there, new development, yes angetd thank you. >> president fong: commissioner sugaya. >> commissioner sugaya: just on sue hestor's point about an org chart there is one but it doesn't have staff so you can put people on here. >> director rahaim: we have a work chart that shows the staff names and we've happy to put that on the website.

>> commissioner sugaya: that would help because i've wondered where people are and stuff like that. then in terms of -- thank you for answering my question right off the bat that's clear. so i think the numbers will change as you come back. >> director rahaim: exactly. only other suggestion i have is on the performance measures for example on dr, in order to get the 80% you can just change 90 days to 180. >> director rahaim: well, i really do think we should look at that time line. it's just so many times they are -- you continue them for good reasons and that's not really captured in there. >> commissioner sugaya: just the last thing prompted by commissioner wu's question on general plans, the historic preservation commission ever raise the issue of the preservation element? because basically there's been one written now for about 20 years or 30 years. >> director rahaim: it hasn't come up recently. has it come up yesterday? >> commissioner sugaya: there's been one cigging around

ever since who knows when and there's been intermittent something happens. so i think as far as the format and the goals and policies and objectives, and all of that business, i think it's maybe things have changed, in terms of how elements are being -- now but at least back then it still seemed to be plausible. >> director rahaim: i think we'll look at that. i don't remember. there might be a -- was a -- i don't think we've conducted environmental review on it and that's one we'll have to tackle. >> commissioner sugaya: that's for sure. >> commissioner moore: zoning administration compliance and enforcement as -- continues we're asking how are you going to enforce. i hope you would at least have some contingency planning there, talking about bicycle parking, which comes up, talking about car share, and we've all looking towards your group to basically

enforce some of the conditions we're imposing here, so a good -- probably would be a good idea to have some contingency, additional people, rather carrying of constant as you're going through these fiscal years you're planning for. >> director rahaim: i think we are proposing, and if we can use some of the money that's supplemental we are proposing an additional position there so that's great. thank you. >> president fong: any further questions, comments? okay. thank you very much. >> director rahaim: thank you. we will be back in two weeks with more detail on this. >> president fong: thank you. >> commissioner, item 12, sustainable doesn't program and ecodistricts. this is also just an informational presentation.

>> good afternoon, president fongs, members of the commission, my name is kate mcgee, planning department staff, citywide division. i'm here today to introduce the department's sustainable development program. the primary focus of the program is to meet state and city environmental goals and requirements while accommodating the growth we've planned for over the last decade or so. and also to ecodistricts. they've emerged as an important tool to help implement this wo work. so is the presentation today will be about 10 or 15 minutes. i'm going to talk about the two drivers that are behind this program, which is really the