work. i met with commissioners who build in other cities, it would be i was in if we had more capital and to show that this is what we are doing and it's good for us as we make our case to the mayor's office. >> yeah, i understand. that's why we put the money in reserves. and we put in labor and soft story. right no you it's on hold. the housing authority will eventually come to us. we can hire more inspectors. the other thing is the conversion, we need to hire more inspectors in case we need to do more inspections on that side. that's why we look at the

total picture. when we go through the this before, everybody thought it's a pink slip for someone. i hope we don't have that case in the department. that's why we want to do it more efficiently and save money for the future. >> your figure is roughly about $5 billion now? >> yeah. >> that's the kind of information. i would like to know how we compare to other cities. >> to the point that you were talking about other programs, the soft story programs, the condo conversions and tic thing, these are projects that require slightly different expertise as far as inspectors. as we go forward, was there included in the soft story program an initial encouragement to do it faster. it seems like they are planning

on a quite a few years in the future for these improvements, the seismic structure improvement. maybe we can entertain about a fee deferral if they come in the first period of time. i don't remember if they included that in the ordinance. we talked about it in our past discussion because it would encourage people doing it sooner rather than later if we can think about that. just think about it in terms of our budget and how that would affect it, but these are things that we can really talk about as we figure out the timing of it. a fee deferral for early actors. >> yeah. that's why the department because it has lots

of income there and we have to give up. >> yeah. >> okay. unless miss levine would work with you on that with the dream on the reality and we don't give the horse away. >> it's time to think about it. >> i like it. >> okay, commissioners if there is no further discussion, is there public comment on this? >> any public comments on these items? >> seeing none, item 9. item 9: discussion on electrification of dbi's vehicle fleet. continued from the bic hearing of sf 91234 >> i would like to excuse commissioner lee at this point in the meeting. stated for the record. >> i'm going to try to use the overhead again. thank you.

pamela levine, deputy director of services. we continued this twice and i provided a new memo to you for this meeting that updates what's in the budget and as i mentioned we are purchasing additional cars for next year. so the first thing i just wanted to give you kind of a background of what's assumed in the budget and the first assumption is that the city fleet contracts are used and we know that we have to do that. they don't currently have contracts for electric vehicles but they are working on those.

assuming that the sedans are replaced by plug in hybrid sedans and trucks by c and g trucks. finally that the location be found such as the 1660 mission garage to locate the electric cars and chargers. the biggest challenge is to have the infrastructure and we started working with real estate. they maybe able to locate a new parking lot or we maybe able to have to negotiate the 1660 parking. in terms of the dollars. in 1314 we are

planning to replace 10 vehicles that is 8 sedans and 2 trucks so the sedans would be replaced with 8 cars and we get 2 c and g trucks and in addition to that 10 vehicles that we would buy 25 hybrid plug in cars and the budget includes almost $2 million for that, 1.3 for the vehicles and then the infrastructure which would include the what i'm calling the elect electric -- if it requires new electric work. in other words, the 1660 mission they installed a charging station right now that is used by the community and i think

it's also used by a couple of city departments but mostly you put in your credit card and hook it up and charge your vehicle. if we have charging stations put in another parking lot that currently doesn't have the electric capacity and new infrastructure work has to be done, that would cost us additional money and that's why we asked for $400,000 for that and $242,000 for charging stations. in the 14-15 budget we are going to replace 10 vehicles which is 6 hybrid plug ins and 6 trucks for a total cost of -- $603,000. we know the technology is changing in particular our charging stations and whether there are portable plug in stations.

there is one country where you drive up and you take your battery out and they give you a new one and this goes back and forth. i think it's sweden that can do that. we haven't gotten that far in the united states but to the extent that we can work on that to get the charging done easier. we did the hybrid because we know that there are challenges in terms of the electric plug ins. finally a quick summary. so 13-14 we are going to have 10 replacement cars in the 25 we assume that the recommendation was from central shops to look at nissan lease s and ford c

max. they are working on the actual contracts with the fleet companies. and then in 14-15, right now the budget is only for the 10 replacement and we will see what we can do when we go to the budget next year. we just received the vehicles that were budgeted for this fiscal year. the trucks we had problems with getting with what we wanted to get which is colorado was a small truck and they were something that was approved by the department of environment. they changed their minds. we had to ask for waivers. they said no. so we are ending up getting a large trucks that it's going to be more of a challenge to find

parking spots. those are being ordered. it takes a good 6-8 months to get a car in this city for the city itself. so i think we've made a lot of progress. we still have some quite a bit of work to be done to be able to get this up and running. and if you have any questions, i hope that i can address them. >> these are hybrids that you are looking at, not just all electric? >> correct. >> okay. >> commissioner melgar? >> yeah. i want to say this you for your due diligence. thank you so much. i wish we had better cooperation. i don't know if cooperation is the right word but coordination in terms of the -- thank you so

much for this work. >> on the infrastructure might we need rental space for parking in the future budget for housing or whatever we do with them? >> yes. we budgeted that we

would need to be able to park the cars. it's hard for us to know exactly how much that is. i mean, my assumption is that by the time that we get these cars, we'll be looking at next fiscal year and we'll be budgeting for more rental space. it's going to be a challenge even if we weren't getting -- they were very -- the mayor's office was very generous in an allowing us to purchase so many additional cars. i think we are the only department that is staffing up with cars as much as we are. >> okay. >> thank you. once again. if you could find out for us where we stand with other cities, are

we ahead of the curve here, i find this is a good public relation of our city that we are out there and we happen to be ahead of everybody else. i like that aspect. thank you. >> is there any public comment on this item? seeing none. next item. discussion of work flow at dbi including fifth floor operations and staff assignments of large projects versus over the counter projects. >> good afternoon. i was asked to give you a small presentation on our work flow at the plan check on the first floor of cb and also the fifth

floor and staff assignments talking about big jobs versus small jobs. i would like to start by giving you an overview of how you get a permit in dbi. a customer he starts at the first floor and he goes through the public information counter. at the public information counter they give you what's called a routing slip. that's a piece of white paper that slopes along with the actual permit. the routing slip indicates which stations you have to visit prior to getting permit approval and issuance. once you've got your routing slip, you proceed either one of two places. if you have -- if it's intake, if it's a larger project, you are on the first floor and sent to ctb and you

sign in and they process your paperwork right there. you pay a partial fee for your permit and it's taken in. these are large projects. we can do them anywhere from a few weeks to a few months like the high rises. most of the action, however is directed to go to the fifth floor over the counter permit services. once you get to the fifth floor, if you have no plans for instance if i have a reroofing replacement of windows, kitchen and baths, small dry rot, this hits things of that nature, you proceed to plan check. you sign a list and taken in the order that you sign. the building inspector or engineer on duty calls you and most of these permits i would say don't get comments. they get approved

over the counter because they are very small in nature and they don't have plans and they are pretty self explanatory. on there you pay for your permit and you are out the door. depending on when you come depends on how long you will be there. if you are there early in the morning, you can get out of there within 30 minutes. if you come at 1130-12 when we are changing staff, we get an influx of the design people, people come at their lunch hour. you can be there an hour, hour 1/2. most people get out of there within 15 minutes. most people they have plans for the small additions, small alterations, maybe they are moving a beam, maybe they are

upgrading their foundation. what we just talked about the capss program that would be under this condition. from there you get your routing slip, you are sent to the fifth floor and sign in what we call intake. intake reviews your plan and we make sure why you -- your lot and block is correct. building code is correct and all the information that we need because we are the keepers of the record. we want to make sure that's right and your building an all the information once retrieved to you 20 years down the road is correct. it usually takes the actual meeting with the clerk who mostly do it, probably takes about 10 minutes. we usually have 2-3 clerks waiting there. they are augmented by

our inspection staff. try to envision a place where an elevator door opens and we get 6-7 people and that might happen in 10 minutes. intake backs up and there is not much happening at the plan checker, and the plan checker get passed the clerk. once they get passed that, there it's a little different. in some of the plans we look at definitely get comments which means you are told what's wrong with your plans and you are given the comments on a written form and you get the corrections and you go back to the same person or you take your chance for the next person. i usually suggest to people that they go back to the same person. it's a little bit easier. again, once you get

through that part of the system, you go for payment. once your comments are satisfied an then you have an issued building permit and everybody is happy. what also what i did was i took what we do to monitor on a monthly basis and this is may 2013, building structural plan review. it's all statistics. this is how ie manage all the 20 plus people that 20-30 people that work at plan check. for may 2013, we approved $1.5 billion of projects. out of

that, 1.44 #1$1.441 billion was for forms through 7 with all the plans. form 8, sometimes with plan and large plan. form 8 are the smaller jobs. we approved 1669 jobs verse the 36 forms 1-7. even though it's five times the approval, the dollar amount is only $80 million. you can see the fall out on these jobs. who gets what? i have next week's schedule. i can put it here to look at. it's done on a wheel system. it's pretty much everybody gets a fair crack at the counter. the only time you don't is if you are working on tgpa or working on a very large job and say i'm under constraints. i can't work three

days. we try to limit it to three 1/2 days at the most. when i say three days, it's three half days. as you can see we have skeleton crew there from 7:30-8:00 to accommodate people. they are all frequent flyers. one person works for sears and other people work for the window companies. they don't wait around. they hand it yesterday and get yesterday's back and they pay for it and away they go. at 8:00 we have a full staff. we have usually 4-5 people up there from 1 person works for sears and other people work for the window companies. they don't wait

around. they hand it yesterday and get yesterday's back and they pay for it and away they go. at 8:00 we have a full staff. we have usually 4-5 people up there from 8:00-9151234 it's usually slow. at 9:15-10:00, we have the professional come in. usually all the designers start coming in around 9:30-1030. it's hard to know when they are coming in. for example, yesterday we had 65-70 people go through the floor and in the afternoon we had 30. when i went up there at 2:00, i said what happened. it was only slow side. 130 a day is probably on the high side for plan check. 110 would be

considered very slow. as we are coming into the summer months i guess we can maintain about 140 and it slows again around october. who is assigned what? it's skill level. we have 2-3 engineers that do a lot of the high rises, the big work. we have 1 or 2 younger ones that we are very high on and we give them the large jobs. we are building up their confidence and as they get more skill they will get more assignments. some people prefer the smaller jobs and we are trying to keep people happy. we have two building inspectors that actually quite like -- architectural plan review for high rises, large projects, certainly we keep them busy. as a matter of fact we can use 1

or 2 more building inspectors that really like architectural plan review. we've hired a few young plan checkers. we are very happy with them and we believe they have a bright future and we are slowly building them up. it's going to take a while and we have one scheduled to come on board in the next few months. probably some of the new things we are doing are for the first time san francisco dbi is going to provide our own plans. so for instance, if you have a set of stairs, one of the problems if you have a set of stairs and you have to get a designer, that designer can charge you $400-600. a lot of people don't get a building permit because they don't want to pay a designer. if you have a simple

set of stairs but accurate, i might add, the chances of people getting permits are much better. we also have a one story deck. we don't like to go over one story. i think at that point you probably do need an engineer to look at it. keep in mind the vast majority of detection -- decks are only one story. others have expanded on that, like wall with six feet and under with no great surcharge and we are in the process of looking at. i would also like to point out who is helping us do this are two engineers, eric g and benjamin louis. they have a bright

future. they both finished their sophomore years in college. one goes to usc and one goes to s f state. how we look at projects in a whole, what we have inside dbi now is we have approximately 230 projects that we are reviewing. our policy is that like for instance it's a 3-week backlog. if you are handed a set of plans, we expect you to be working on those plans within three weeks. right now, we only have 24 permits out of the 230 that we've had longer than 3-4 weeks. many of them i suspect i have already got comments and they are waiting for it to come back or they are ready to give

out their comments. we stay pretty current with that. we are doing pretty well. things are picking up. we are getting more jobs and we look forward to the challenge. is there any questions that i can answer? >> commissioner walker? >> thank you very much. i do have a couple of questions. what is the exact criteria for whether something goes over the counter or something has to be? >> one hour plan check on each station. >> so if you are in the middle of something and you go over an hour? >> if i'm a plan checker, you can get your routing slip, you can go to intake. that work will be done anyway. when you go to the building inspector he takes a look at your plans and he'll say i can't do this. most of designers have a fair idea if they can get -- >> is it based on a dollar

amount? >> it's can i approve your plans within an hour. that's the sole criteria. we have a lot of designers that push us. for instance if you came at 8:00 and i know we are not busy until 10:00, we might do it. >> it's kind of arbitrary. i have a couple of follow ups. can you request specific plan checkers. this is one thing we are trying to deal with with our system? >> no. >> only as a follow up? >> we use a list. it's like a wheel system. as you come in off the elevator and finish the intake and come into the building inspection part and you sign in. if you are no. 7.

whoever is finished on-the-job they go over and they have to pick the first one. >> you have to do that in person, you can't call in? >> no. the only stuff that goes on up there is -- the list of puc, that person might be trying to get their puc portion. what we put is non-responsive and if it happens twice, we cross you out. they know what they are doing and they stand in the middle and they are listening. the first person that calls, we run over. >> as a subsequent question to yours. is that your wheel system. is that public? this system where you schedule who is going to be at the desk at a certain time? >> yes. that's public. >> if we say, so and so is there at this time. i'm going to show up at that

>> hello. and welcome to "need your district supervisor -- meet your district supervisor." supervisors campos is our supervisor for this week. welcome. thank you for joining us today. tell us about your background. where you grew up, went to school? >> sure. i was born in guatemala. i was brought here by my parents. i grew up in l.a., and then moved up to the bay area