>> and they will want to thank them for the lumir willingness. i want to recognize that we also have a very diverse group of individuals serving on a diverse group of boards and bodies. have the pleasure of reappointing someone who has a connection that goes back generations, larry mazzola, sr.

i'm pleased that subject to approval, p.j. johnson will serve again. president of the arts commission, who has been doing an outstanding job, really raising the bar in terms of public art and our commitment to neighborhood arts. i want to thank lisa gruwell for her willingness to serve on the civil service commission that sets my salary. i wish you luck and independence from whoever is serving as mayor. i want to thank the environment commission, which is something we are very proud of, for his willingness to serve as a new member.

london and michael are quite familiar to their commissions. they will both be here. thank you, chief. i know you are pleased to have both of them. you have already told me you are pleased to have both of them. i am enthusiastic about their commissions. it's a good thing for everybody. we will have the opportunity to give people an opportunity to give people on their respective boards the opportunity to serve as well. thank you, lily chan. she will be serving on the golden gate park concourse authority, which is interesting for so many reasons. i'm grateful that you are willing to continue your service here and the city as well. human rights commission, reappointing cecilia, michael,

and julius. you have done a great job. i appreciate your support of our director, into the good work, the human rights commission continues to do. where is sam? there you are. thank you, sam. thank you for your willingness to continue to serve on the immigrant rights commission, and your good stewardship and leadership in the committee. michael nguyen. we technically swore in michael, but it was private. i appreciate your willingness to come here are any more public setting and have the honor to swear you in. carol kingsley, who was supported unanimously, which is

pretty impressive, on the police commission. she will be serving as the newest police commissioner. i'm very enthusiastic. the board of supervisors seems to share that. well, air and good lucome and g. not the easiest of commissions, but incredibly important. we went through a lot of presiresidents. i'm appreciative of her willingness to serve. the rent board. do not screw up something that is working. we had a debate on a solution to a mysterious problem. we do not have a problem because we have a balanced rent board. people that want to obtain a

strong relationship and inappropriate one. as a consequence, i felt like i did not need to reappoint new folks. felt like i could reappoint the existing folks. they're doing a great job. thank you for your willingness to continue your service. i do not know why -- all of you were enthusiastic, too, when i called you. i thought maybe one or two of you wanted to take a vacation from the service. i am grateful that you were willing. i am also grateful the retirement board is getting a lot of attention. pensions are getting a lot of attention. some people have confused san francisco with sacramento. it is a big difference. budgets, pensions, retirements. nonetheless, this is an

important body and board. we have two great people who are willing to serve. i know he is very enthusiastic. he was very concerned that we appoint people of high integrity, high skills, that tended to be above a lot of the politics in this town. we have two great people there. i imagine he wanted to be with all of you. he wanted to be with his wife in particular. wendy paskin-jordan is here as one of the new appointees to the retirement board. she will join victor makras, who is very familiar to us. i kind of try to convince you. i was not sure victor was so excited about this. i asked him. hi needed somebody of his

character. i am very pleased. i think those are two great appointees, wendy and victor. this will continue to elevate what is already a model retirement board for the rest of the state. the two remaining divisions, the small business commission, jamie, thank you for your willingness to serve. as a small businesswoman, you know a thing or two about the challenges and reveal. lu o'brien -- how long have you serve? not even a full year. this will extend his turn. -- term. you guys ask good questions yesterday. it is important. finally, al norman. al, thank you for your willingness to serve in the

southeast community facility commission. i always thought -- we need to raise this far out there of what we do for the southeast community facility. we'll have a lot of conversations. al is a legend out there. thank you for that. who else are we missing? oh, yeah, nancy. you will also be continuing your service. i apologize. we did not know you were going to make it. i'm glad you made it, nancy. thank you for extending your service with the golden gate concourse. i will remind everybody -- if you are going to disagree with me, please give me a heads up. that does not mean that things do not, in front of you that are controversial and on the fly, you might have a point of view, and you should share that point of view.

on big issues, all i ask is a heads up. only on two occasions -- frank, i imagine this has happened to you periodically. i have a call at 2:00 in the morning where one of my department heads was removed by the commission. nobody gave me a heads up. i was a little concerned about that. those are the kind of things. give me a heads up. otherwise, exercise your independence. exercise your insight. that's why you're here. i just want the opportunity to have a chance to dialogue if we are on different sides. then you use your judgement and conclude as best you could what is the right path for the people of san francisco, who do not represent some special interest. the folks that show up here are important.

folks that do not have the time to show up here are equally important. please remember there are a lot of people out there that count on you to also have a voice that cannot make it down to your committee hearing or board. that is something that is very, very important to me. that's why you are here. you are here to represent the city. that city includes those that do not have stickers or buttons, that do not show up at 6:00 p.m., that also deserve your attention and your goodwill and your stewardship. those are really two points. otherwise, i'm very happy that you're here. i'm very thankful. thank you for coming down to city hall. supervisor duffy is sitting there with his arms crossed. what is it? are you ready? all right.

anytime someone has his hands crossed, that means get going. they are shutting down. [laughter] york physiology changed my standing up, and raising your right hand. when i say i, you state your name. why don't we go down here? larry will go back, and we will end with you. during such time, we hold the position of -- and then you will mention your respective commission board or body. is that easy? all right. you have your right hand up. i -- [inaudible]

i do solemnly swear that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states, and the constitution of the state of california, that i bear trap, faith, and allegiance to the state, that i take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, that i will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which i am about to enter. and during such time, as i hold

the position, as a member -- [inaudible] for the city and county of san francisco. congratulations, everybody.

[applause] i appreciate how effective that was. [applause] >> i want to thank you all for

being here today. i'm the mayor of the city of long beach, california, and i'm also a trustee of the u.s. conference of mayors. mayors from all over this great state have assembled here today to talk about the energy efficiency conservation block grant program. this is a program that started in 2007, and it delivers funds directly to cities to be able to improve their energy efficiency, reduce their carbon footprint, and as important, create new jobs in our community. i will just give you a little background in this really quickly. program was originally thought of in 2005 when the u.s. conference of mayors launched its climate protection agreement. the agreement is a landmark measure across the country. the u.s. conference of mayors initiated it. it began with 141 mayors.

it now has 1044 mayors that have signed on to the climate protection agreement, committing to reduce our climate footprint in each one of our communities. the energy block grant program has been an integral part of that. it gives us the resources to reduce our energy consumption and reduce our carbon footprint, and as i said, it also creates jobs. it has been the result of a lot of people working together, but i do need to thank the speaker of the house, nancy pelosi, who worked hard to make this program a reality, and we would not be here today except for her efforts. on behalf of american cities, i want to thank the speaker for her commitment and diligence. without her help, as i said, this would not be here. i also want to thank president obama and his administration for his support of the program as

well as the american recovery and reinvestment act, which is also to fund a number of new initiative projects in a number of our cities. as i said, we are here to work for efficiency and reduce our carbon footprint. in my city, we are investing about $4 million to accelerate private city efforts to reduce energy efficiency in our city structures as well as some of our residential buildings, and we will hear in a moment from the mayors of other cities about what they're doing, but this program is exactly what we need to continue. it is really the only major funding source we have to be able to improve our efficiency and work on climate change issues, particularly by reducing our carbon footprint. we know that a successful plan for reducing u.s. energy consumption is grounded in local action, and all across this country, it has been demonstrated that local government can take action that is effective and not only

reduces our impact on the environment but also puts people back to work. we have been leading the nation in this effort, and i have to tell you, it has been an innovative program that provides the flexibility needed to local governments, and it is the kind of thing that must be carried on in the future. i now would like to introduce a friend of mine and no stranger to all of you, san francisco mayor gavin newsom, who is going to discuss what things have been going on right here in san francisco with this program. mayor newsom: thank you for your stewardship and leadership in bringing us all together. i thank all the mayors that are here and all of you for taking the time to be here. from our perspective, there are few things more important than this. at the end of the day, what we are really talking about, what we are organizing around is job creation and economic development, reducing the costs

not only to government, but reducing the cost to individual businesses, large and small, that want to reduce their energy bill at the same time we advance our environmental principles and advance our collective goals. as many of you know, san francisco has a low global climate action plan. basically all that is is the formal plan that 3043 other mayors -- at 1043 other mayors have signed to robot greenhouse gas unless it -- emissions to 1990 levels by 2012. we have done that through -- in small part in terms of that reduction. that is energy efficiency. that is the low hanging fruit. that is the easy part of this effort. we have some very ambitious goals nationwide. about half of that, most

objective analysis has been done that shows that half of that can be achieved through energy efficiency, so you do not need something in the order of magnitude. just common sense. swapping out that level, taking the old boiler and replacing it, taking that call don t --hat -- that caulk gun in different respects. the think about it is it is so obvious and so easy but we were not achieving our goals until the president and speaker got together and demanded we get some block grants. we needed some energy development block grants and we needed some autonomy. let me conclude by making a jobs case, and i was making this just

a moment ago, on why this matters. we get about $7.7 million through block grants, and we are using that jobs now program, the federal subsidy for direct jobs. 3600 jobs we have created. they are going out and doing energy audits, so we are doing free energy audits, and then we are using all these grants, and then we are providing free resources for folks to actually deal with their boilers and other issues, but here is the big idea, and this is something -- if we put $1 billion -- you do not need to take $1 billion credit. you can just leverage the percentage that is arguably of to what $1.8 trillion that is just sitting there on the sidelines. just to leverage that money is guaranteed, like we do small business association loans, and start getting people to work today on energy efficiency and

create real jobs. here's how we do it -- you get $1 billion just making this case, and you invest into coal, and generate about 870 jobs. sounds great, but you could generate 1000 or 1500 jobs in nuclear energy, but if you want to create more jobs and wealth and opportunity, 1900 jobs in wind or about 3300 jobs, but the big game changer is retrofitting and green building. 7000 jobs for that $1 billion investment. you can just use the money that is sitting in all these financial institutions and guarantee those loans and get people back to work, doing the energy efficiency work that all these mayors are doing quite successfully, and you do it in rural and suburban areas, not just these big metro areas. get people to work, particularly those in the building and

construction trades, those that have the highest rate of unemployment. that is the opportunity, and that is where we are trying to communicate, what we are trying to organize around. this is a win on all fronts, and this is being demonstrated in cities large and small across the country. one of the successes of the stimulus plan is the focus on jobs and this economy. i want to thank everybody who is here and think cathy and her team for their leadership, and think mayor foster for helping bring all of you here to our city and county of sentences go. thank you. >> thank you, mayor newsom. >> i would like to bring our partner to the podium, the efficiency secretary, cathy joey. >> thank you all for coming. three quick points. on behalf of the president and

secretary chu, let me underscore that energy efficiency is central to economic recovery from our perspective. we need to bleed into all the energy potential. americans spend $1.10 trillion on utility bills in their businesses and homes per year. we can become more efficient. that is $200 billion we can save, and we can create jobs while doing it. for every billion that gets invested, 7000 jobs. this program will go on to create more. we love our partnership with the mayors. the mayors are working directly in investing money in cities on the ground, in buildings, schools, and communities. this program has 2350 grantees from across america that have programs under way this summer, demonstrating that investments in clean energy, green energy,

helps economies. watch where the projects are. some of them are wildly innovative. some just make good sense. there are sensible, money saving light bulbs that should have gone in a long time ago. putting new elie de -- led technology into traffic lights, which create safer streets. there are literally thousands of projects under way. take note of what those are. share information. in washington, we are very excited about our partnership. we are very excited about the energy savings that will come from this program and in the future. thank you all. >> thank you, madam secretary. finally, we will have another major address you with what is going on in her city. she is from the city of santa barbara. >> thanks you. i appreciate the opportunity to speak here. i think mayor newsom for your

leadership from the beginning. hopefully, we can see some allocations after the first- round is moved around. that is important for congress to see the investment of this as not just an expenditure. the city of santa barbara has a little over 100,000 people. our funding was about $658,000. we did lighting efficiency projects in four parks as well as some heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning retrofits in eight city buildings. the park's alone are saving 140,000 kilowatt hours annually, a savings of $88,000. the eecbg grants, coupled with other funding we did with our municipal building energy audit, is sitting as $150,000 in our general fund. along with the jobs that are

being created with this project, when i came in and met with a number of mayors this morning, the first question has been how is your budget going. what is going on with your general fund and your public works? in our city, if we are able to save $150,000 a year that would have gone to paying for energy bills, which can put it into police officers, firefighters, parks and recreation -- the municipal services people have come to expect. that is helping us get over this recession on top of giving private-sector jobs. it is saving energy at the same time. it is a great program. we need to keep it coming to the cities. i appreciate the leadership of the u.s. conference of mayors for having this meeting today. >> thank you, mayor schneider. are there any questions from anyone? >> i was just wondering about --

speaking of leveraging grants, clean energy loans. can some of that money come to this program? >> can you repeat that? i did not get all of that. i am sorry. >> we just passed with a lot of fanfare and no follow-up, not because of good intentions but because of fannie and freddie. i was going to use the wrong adjective. [laughter] their unwillingness to be supportive of the program -- they are wrong. this is right. the president is right. congress, by and large, is right. all these mares are ready to go to do what -- all these mares are ready to go to do what the secretary started.