that's only now because -- i mean, we had -- we didn't have a rent appropriation when we moved out of city hall to the veterans building in 1995 with the mayor and board of supervisors. when everybody came back and they were expected to come back and we did not, then they implemented that appropriation towards rent in the veterans building which, of course, was not commercial rent. so, when we moved to the new location, the, the rent will be part of our budget as is proposed here. and we're going to be in the same commercial building as health services and some of the other city departments. >> okay, thank you. >> so, while we're here, just quick update. where are we on? i know we went through a relatively tense process earlier about the space and so forth. where are we with the litigation right now? >> the situation was -- and i'll ask that you not kill the

messenger, but the situation was six months ago there was no place determined -- there was no -- nowhere for us to go. and, so, regrettably, even the library tried not to do it, we filed suit. as a result, the department of real estate's responsibility to obtain a lease and space for the library. if you've seen the lease resolutions, and also to arrange the move. so, at this time ~ the department of real estate is working with the owner regarding the execution of the lease. prior to the last board hearing on this, the law library withdrew its motion on the calendar regarding the injunction. the reason we had a request for an injunction was that we didn't know five, six months ago what would happen if there

wasn't a place for us to go and where would we go. now that there is a place that's been located and the city is working on, it wasn't necessary to go forward with that hearing. so, we are working very closely with one of the official from real estate on the issues regarding relocating to that new space at 1145 markets. >> so, there is no suit pending at all? >> no. >> okay. and i imagine the legal fees associated with that were done pro bono from other folks. just want to make sure the city is not funding lawsuits against itself. >> no, it's not. >> okay. thank you for that clarification. and i appreciate your cooperation in working on that. supervisor mar? >> yes, i wanted to say thank you so much for what a great library. i know that as i've used it -- >> owe good. >> even for lexus and neck us to be able to do the legal database searches, but also

just the media sources that anybody has access to ~ and the population of [speaker not understood]. i think you're really doing a good job making an accessible service and resource for people that really need it in the city as well. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> okay, thanks. we do not have a budget analyst report so, thank you for being here. >> so, can i anticipate that it most likely that you won't need me next week? >> that's right. we don't need you unless we do, we'll give you a call. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. okay, this time we'll call our fire department up. i see the chief here along with her staff. mr. clerk, hold on a second, chief.

mr. clerk? mr. clerk, can we please call item number 7 with this. >> item number 7, ordinance amending the fire code to increase the fees for certain fire department services, and making environmental findings. ~ services. >> okay, thank you, chief, for being here. >> good afternoon, chair farrell, members of the budget and finance committee. joanne hayes white. i wanted to briefly go through and provide you an overview of our department's budget. we also have some hard copies for members of the committee. and highlight some of the major changes we have going into the next few fiscal years. given that you have a heavy agenda these weeks, we tried to stay on point and we have 10 slides for you. we condensed them. we wanted to try and do roll call. we have 10 slides as supervisor farrell and ms. howard relayed to us. so, we'll start with the first

slide, which is just an overview of our department and -- thank you. as a brief overview, as you know, the department is responsible for providing fire suppression, emergency medical, and all hazards response to residents and visitors of san francisco. we currently operate out of 46 stations, 43 here in the city which includes trish: and the presidio, and then as well we have 3 stations at the san francisco international airport. treasure island ~ in 14-15 we are scheduled to open a new fire station, part of the new public station in mission bay. we'll be cohabitating with our colleagues in the san francisco police department. in addition to our fire stations, we operate as you know a dynamic ambulance fleet to respond to emergency medical services. ambulances are deployed at various locations throughout the city and can be moved to adapt to shifts in our dee mapped for service. the department has a number of

minimum staffing requirements it must meet and the goal of the department is to do so efficiently as possible both from a financial perspective as well as an operational one. this next slide is really cramped, but we washingtonved to just do it in 10 for you. the slide on the left, as you know, is a familiar slide. we talked to you about it in april. it gives you a high level look at our budget expenditures. and as you look at the chart on the left, the department's operating budget consists of approximately 92% of operating budget costs allocated to salaries and fringe benefits. it leaves a remaining 8% to account for items such as materials and supplies, equipment, and work order services of other departments that are required to support our daily operations and core functions. the slide on the right sees the programs that our budget funds. the vast majority of our budget goes to front line fire suppression operation which includes fire and ems response

as well as all specialty units and responses including our fire [speaker not understood] hazardous materials unit and [speaker not understood] units. the remaining 16% covers the support program for our department such as our bureau and fire prevention and bureau of fire investigation, administration and our division of training. next slide addresses the major budget changes in 12-13 to 13-14. the overall budget increase is approximately 8.2 million dollars. roughly half of that is due to increased fringe benefit costs to the department ~ mainly to the increase in the retirement contribution. the mayor has proposed and we're very grateful that he has agreed to a second academy class of 36 members to come in in early january of '14. and that's above and beyond the class that was already incorporated into our budget as part of the mayor's public safety hiring plan for both police and fire departments.

the first academy and we're happy to announce is scheduled for august 19th and with a graduation date of december and the second academy commencing in january '14 as i stated and graduating in may of '14. in addition, our department is proposing funding of four additional full time equivalent employees in our fire prevention bureau. as the economic recovery has continued for san francisco, we're seeing an increase in construction projects throughout the city. that leads to a corresponding increase in work load for our members in our bureau of fire prevention because what they do when we have more construction, you're reviewing permits, plans, and doing inspections. the increased work load has required the department to increase our staffer to handle timely review of these projects. along with the increased work load and need for additional staffing, there will be increased revenue associated with that. which funds the additional personnel request. and there is also a piece piece

of fee legislation before you with this budget that proposes a minor increase in a few of our prevention fees which we can talk about later. this is proposed to allow for full cost recovery of the services that we provide and represents a fee increase just under 5%. and in addition to the increase in fire prevention revenues, other revenues are projected to increase as compared to the current fiscal year. this includes the public safety tax allocation from the state's sale of tax revenue and emergency medical services revenue from an additional federal reimbursement program. this next slide discusses the changes from 13-14 to fiscal year 14-15. we see a further increase in fringe benefits as the main driver to the department's overall cost increases. the cost of the second firefighter academy is removed in the second year because it is doing that in 13-14. as previously mentioned, we are opening a new fire station,

going to be fire station 4 at third and mission rock as part of the public safety building. as you recall that is part of the easer general obligation bond feuding. the target to open it in the fall of '14. ~ funding so, that is accounted for in the 14-15 bah. ~ budget. what it means is we'll have nine additional personnel on duty with one new truck which is staffed with five people, one new engine which is four people and is costing approximately $4.4 million in the second fiscal year. the department has also been allocated an additional 900,000 from capital planning to addressing some of the our deferred work at a number of our facilities. as i mentioned, we have 46 stations, three of them being at the paramount pictures. we have about 50 facilities and there's a lot of deferred maintenance. so, in addition to the capital projects, we have 900,000 also for some i-t related projects in conjunction with some of the department of emergency management upgrades to improve

efficiencies and communications and we're working closely with the d-t as well as d-e-m on those projects. the revenues controller's office is projecting a further increase in public safety sales tax revenue in the second year. $1.3 million. i wanted to highlight some of our fte changes. i talked about them a little bit earlier. but just to summarize with the assistance of the mayor's office, we're appreciative the department is proposing hiring 120 new entry level firefighters over the two-year budget that's presented today before you. this will be done over the course of three a cad ms. as i mentioned, all of this year, january of '14, and august of '14. the department is anticipating approximately 65 retirements over the next two years which will present a bit of a slow down. and, so, what we're hoping for is we will begin to see our staffing for the first time in

10 years incrementally step up, which is a good thing for all of us. and i already touched upon fire prevention due to the economic resurgence, we will need four full-time equivalents to assist us with timely preparation and review of plans to do their inspections. but those will be recovered through the revenue. i warranted to give you a slide on our historical uniform and full-time equivalent count. and as you can see from fiscal year '02-'03, there has been a steady decline in the last ten years of hiring. and as we worked with the mayor's office and the controller's office, we have relied on a more overtime dependent staffing model which has proven to be more fiscally efficient. we're at the point where we have an adverse impact to our operations. and, so, thus we're very excited about bringing on the

is more fiscally efficient but we're at the point where we need to reinvest in staffing up. we did have one academy class in august of 2012, graduated in december. and, so, that brought a little bit of relief and it's begun to reverse the trend again to have more people coming on board in the department. and we feel that barring any rash of retirements over the next couple weeks, we'll finish this year with more uniformed personnel than we had in previous years and we're very happy to report that the trend is moving in the right direction. and given the new hires and retirements projected over the tumsing two-year budget, we anticipate this trend to continue and the total level of uniform staff to increase in both fiscal years. ~ which again is great news. slide on overtime. looking at our total overtime with the projected increase in staffing as compared to the

current year, the department anticipates a reduction in overtime in fiscal year 13-14 as there will be more members on staff as compared to the current year. our level of overtime is depend ithctionvctionv on number of staff available. ~ dependent on the number of staff available. there is a direct correlation on the lower number of staff, the more we rely on overtime. with the hiring of the class that came in last august is the additional three a cad ms. over the next two 20s cal years, we will begin to see a reduction in overtime as our staffing increases. so, we're definitely moving in the right direction. and continuing on overtime, i know there was an interest in any measures we've taken regarding the allocation of overtime. and outside of staffing levels, we've put a number of measures in place. i'd like to acknowledge mickey cali, we worked with her staff to decrease overtime. [speaker not understood].

we're having to rely too heavily on mandatory overtime. with the trend of hiring, we'll see that reduced significantly. the department has revised our overtime assignment and mandatory overtime policies and fortunately we have been able to institute and it seems like a lot, but it is a hard cap of 1100 hours for fiscal year for members. even those with approved exceptions to the overtime ordinance. that was not easy to arrive at. we worked closely with the department doing resources and with our partners in labor in 1978 to arrive at that. that being said, the department is scheduled to come back to the board to request the remaining reallocation of overtime that was not approved at a previous meeting in april. that i believe is on for next week. this was needed to address the current staffing shortage and the department is requesting to reallocate salary funding to make up for the deficit. we can talk a little bit more about that next week. while we were able to add 48 members to our workforce in the

last academy that graduated in december, those numbers didn't enter until december and the department was forced to use mandatory overtime shifts very heavily over the summer and into the fall of last year. the request will be before the committee again next week and we'll be happy to provide additional information. in fact, if there is something specific that you would like us to present on that particular item next week, if you provide us with that any time before then, we'll have that specifically for you next week. and the other thing, i think it came up either from supervisor breed or one of the other members of the committee, we did do some looking at the percentage of overtime as a result of overall budget. and our overtime costs were approximately 13% of personnel costs. and the -- i don't want to say industry standard, but what's common in the industry in the fire service industry is that many jurisdictions are similar in that range, with the average being between 16 and 19%. so, heavy reliance on overtime

in other jurisdictions including [speaker not understood] county, long beach, sacramento and oakland. some cities have also been successful at instituting overtime caps like we have, but interestingly enough, those are at a much higher level. i mentioned ours was 1100 which seems very high and it is very high, but many of the other departments have caps that are between 1500 and 1700 hours per year. >> excuse me. supervisor breed. >> yeah, i realize that there is a certain percentage of when you compare the percentage of overtime in other counties, you also have to look at the fact that they have a higher amount of hours that they work per month more so than san francisco. so, i just wanted to make that point. >> very true. so, there are -- most other departments within the state of california that have a higher workweek. so, either between 52 and 56

and currently our members work a 48.7 hour workweek. good point. next slide, which i believe is my last slide, you were interested in knowing about capital and bond improvements. just to touch on some of the larger projects before finishing up the presentation and being available for questions, the department was allocated approximately 4.2 million in capital funding over the course of the two-year budget. it's a large increase in recent fiscal years and the department would like to thank the mayor's office and cap fail planning for their support. ~ capital planning the department has as you know literally hundreds of millions of dollars in deferred maintenance on its approximately 50 facilities in addition to needs that pop up in the fiscal year. we began to chip away at this backlog with the easter bond that was passed in 2010, but we still have quite a bit of work to do. i wanted to give you a summary on easter bond. with regards to the easter bond, the department is

currently undergoing focused scope projects to a number of fire stations and that includes maintenance like new windows, roof patching and new roof in some cases. this will continue over the next few years in addition to a handful of larger comprehensive projects. and as i mentioned, as part of the easter bond at the opening of the public safety building, they bring a new fire station online as well as recreate the task force which is currently 14-15 [speaker not understood] over to that plot of land on third and mission rock. we're working closely with dpw and capital planning on the second easter bond program as well. just for frame of reference, there is approximately 22 facilities that will be touched in some way with the easter bond funding, be it through windows, booths, or major work including station 36 on oak and franklin. and then two stations which will actually be taking down station 5 on turk and webster

and station 16 on greenwich. the other piece of easter, there was three components to it, fire departmental indication, the public safety building, and the third piece was the awss which used to be under the fire department and is now under the puc. so, just to assure you we're working very closely with our partner the puc to make sure the awss funding is getting managed very well, which it is. also like to highlight that it's not in the slide, but there will be several new sis teshvxes to augment our current water supply system in the event of a large-scale emergency, particularly residents that are not as well served with scaling points of water will have new sis terns built. we'll see a lot of that construction beginning next month. that concludes my formal presentation. with regard to the budget analyst report, i'd like to report that we will continue to work with the budget analyst. there is some work to be done,

and we're doing some further analysis. i also and i should have at the beginning of the presentation acknowledged the great work of everyone working as a team and i'd like to personally acknowledge mark [speaker not understood], stand up, who has done a great job in assisting me with the presentation of the budget and has -- is a really important member of our team. i'd also like to acknowledge carol lu who is our person that we work with in the budget office as well as kate howard and her staff, they do a great job, controller's office, of course. and we've been working with [speaker not understood] and the budget analyst. so, we have some work to do and i just wanted to comment on that. >> thanks. for those watching on tv, mr. course is actually kneeling down right now. he's one of the taller members of the fire department if he stands up. >> the tallest. >> supervisor mar. >> thank you. >> thank you, chief hayes white. i really appreciate the presentation and keeping it to 10 slides as well. i know that for each of the

departments we're asking questions about how you have strategies to address the disparities and to make your department as accessible, especially to vulnerable populations. and i'm wondering if you got those four questions. and if you can address some of them. what are is your department doing to make sure it is culturally appropriate to the broadest number of san franciscanses, especially those who need your services most. ~ that's one question. mickey callahan from dhr reported how the applicant pools for new hires for police and fire, it's been an uphill battle to make sure that women and under represented groups like people of color have access and that the applicant pools are as diverse as the populations are so that there is an ongoing effort to make sure that our fire departments and police departments are representative neighborhoods we serve and i wonder if you can

address some of those issues as well. ~ representative of the >> your last question first regarding recruitment. years ago when i was part of the recruitment committee that actively was a unit to assist with maintaining the diversity in our department. as everyone knows, particularly in public safety or any position where you're dealing with the public; a department that truly reflects the workforce or the community we're serving is value added. proud to say we have a very difficult verse department. we no longer have that recruitment unit it was a funding issue. but i think in a lot of ways the men and women that work for the fire department in uniform are our best advertisements. so, growing up in the '60s and '70s, i what increased by the fire engines and trucks that passed by but there were no role models for me. it wasn't something i considered as a career. it's much different knoy. i love young people can see people they relate to and say this is a career i'd likev to do some day.

so, having said that, we were very proud, and i don't have the numbers off the top of my head. we have a bilingual workforce. many of our members speak different languages, mostly spanish and cantonese. [speaker not understood] really important when we're responding to medical emergencies. being able to calm the person down in their native language is helpful. we're continuing to have a diverse department. i would like to say we're probably in the top 3 to 5 in the nation in territorixv of diversity of our workforce of our uniformed members. ~ terms that is a priority for me because having worked out in the stations, all 43 stations in the city, it is helpful to have a blended team of people when we're responding to emergencies. so, we will continue to strive for that diversity because i think it's very, very important.

in terms of recruiting from a gender perspective, i don't think we'll ever have the number of women -- let's say we have percentage-wise in our community in our workforce because i think this type of work is not always of interest to a certain population of women. so, i don't see that would be like a 50/50% sort of like the general population. but to have 16% of women in uniform in our department, again, i think is in the top 3 in the nation and i'm very proud of that. we are years post the consent decree. i think there was some concern in the day that when that went away, that diversity would then shrink back. that is not the case. we've maintained the diversity and grown it to a greater capacity. so, i'm very hopeful that we will continue to embrace the rich diversity of our department and how valuable that is when we respond to day to day emergencies. we'll continue to -- even

though we don't have a recruitment unit, we're working closely with dhr looking at a different type of testing. [speaker not understood] list is due to expire in april of 2014. dhr has recommended for both police and fire a different type of entry level testing which they have presented and they're analyzing and looking to replace the traditional type of testing in the fire department. and i'm assured from the director of dhr that it is very helpful in terms of recruiting a lot of different diverse backgrounds. >> yeah, one thing that struck me by looking at the police department applicant pool versus the fire department's is how much fewer african americans and latinos were in the applicant pool for the fire department. and to me, role models are very important, but proactive recruitment strategies and anything else that we can do short of violating prop 209 or any other policies is really critical. so, i guess i want to know more of any new efforts your department is making and also

what new or needed strategies you're taking to really diminish historic inequalities and existing inequalities that exist in your department, and to make you even more accessible to, you mentioned language minority communities or others, but what are new strategies that you're looking at? >> okay. the other thing i should mention is that we rely heavily and are grateful for the support of our employee organization. so, there is the main bargaining unit as you know local 798 that we have employed groups that have all stepped up and will continue to step up when it comes to recruitment. we have a very active asian firefighters association, black firefighters association, united fire service women as well as [speaker not understood] for hispanics. so, to partly answer your question, we will continue to rely on their assistance with recruitment. from a community perspective, less by the recruitment

perspective, we're proud of our neighborhood 49ers is training response program. ~. [speaker not understood]. we're grateful for the people that have stepped up and continue to take the training and work shoed doer to shoulder with us in the event that they're needed for a large scale emergency. ~ shoulder. we do have and expand -- mayor lee's initiative is to expand -- it's a free program, but to expand the outreach to some of the populations that do not speak english. we have [speaker not understood] in spanish and cantonese, but the number of classes that we've been able to offer in those languages is probably lesser than i would like to see. so, we want to grow that program because we think that not only does it make for a safer city overall, not just in the event of a large scale emergency, but on a day-to-day basis, getting to know your neighbors, feeling confident about what to do if there is, you know, slight medical

emergency. utility shut off, all of that is important. large scale merge sill, but also day to day living. and we hope to increase that. and we appreciate over the past few years especially the support collectv i havely from all board members of our nert program. there were days since this is the 10th time i'm presenting the budget that it was questioned, frankly. and we're happy to see that there is an investment. and albeit a small investment, i believe it's 400,000 or so and is a line item. something next year we'd like to do is increase that, like i said, with greater outreach to different communities. >> supervisor breed. >> thank you. thanks for your presentation, chief. i'm ag actually very excited we're going to have an additional class in year. the mayor has put this in his budget. i know one of the biggest complaints most recently with the department has been the mandaty overtime. and i know it's been frustrating for the chief and it's been frustrating for the

membership and i really want -- i'm really excited about that because i want to make sure that in the department there is really high morale. and if you're forcing someone to work, and some of the stories i've heard from members of the station, we have definitely -- we're heading in the right direction and i think we're going to have to also look at next fiscal year and doing more, reevaluating once we get those two academy classes going. i do want to ask about station 5 in particular. i know we have plans to -- i think 2016 to do work there. i know that in the bond it's only for construction, but at the time i know one of the challenges we dealt with with station 5 was the need for fixtures, the need for equipment and other things in order to make sure that the station was made whole.