respected in the city. we looked at the comments of what did take place in the park and the surrounding areas. we were concerned about the impact for the areas. there were several measures we have taken to see what is it we can do to reduce the impact. we found a pretty good solution, but we could do better. we are not certain yet, because we have not made a full determination that we can use the park. we are not sure what direction we are heading at this point.

we have had some preliminary discussions. i would like to hear from the commissioners. >> is there anyone else who would like to make public comment? item number 14 is accomplishments.

>> technology continues to be one of our goals.

>> this is a continuation of an item from our last meeting we were unable to get to g, and w'e wanted to put the book and by sharing with the community -- book end by sharing how much work gets done. behind me is a portion of the executive staff, and we have a

lot to be proud of. this is worth repeating. we have tried to maintain party it -- parks for r covers community. we have talked about how we are going to steer in 2009. this will guide us in the coming fiscal year.

to improve administrative efficiency in the department. we want to maintain for the benefit of the community. we continue to improve the maintenance of our parks and over 50 custodians short of where we need to be. it can actually link up with our system.

we were also fortunate to receive the neighborhood playground report card. i'm extremely proud of our park patrol officers who again continuing with the theme of doing more with less, we are probably 20 to 30 park patrol officers away from an ideal staff.

this year we increased our daily outreach in golden gate park and in buena vista park from 1 1/2 hours to two hours daily, meaning we are out every single morning from 4:30 to 6:30 with our park patrol, with the san francisco police department and our -- the department of public health to engage our illegal campers and to offer them services and to remind them of adherence -- the importance of adhering to the park code. this year each week we removed three tons of debris from golden gate park. three tons of debris is removed. >> can i ask a question there? is that people dumping things? >> yep. >> as opposed to just wrappers from picnics. >> it is shopping carts, it can be mattresses, it can be, you know, clothing, it can be, you know, we are challenged by people dumping things in our

parks and this just shows how regular and persistent of a challenge that is. and actually how much debris we're actually removing. one of the most important keys to keeping our parks safe is act vasting our park spaces -- activating our park spaces. we've brought fun experiences to our parks and plazas, including peter pan which concludes this week, blue grass which happens next month in golden gate park. a zip line, we had f.c. barcelona and stanford spring football games, professional soccer games. we had world cup live at civic center, a halloween event called scaregrove and an event called playday on the green at marina green and we continue to add new park amenities for the public. we continue to be proud about this one. in june and july our free world cup viewing civic center attracted tens of thousands of soccer fans of all ages, including an estimated 15,000

fans for the final match on july 11. goal number two, healthy recreational choices. we want to increase opportunities for recreation and promotion -- recreation and promote healthy lifestyles. a report from the trust for public land estimates that people are using parks 30% more in a down economy. in san francisco, our data continues to show that people are using parks and programs more not less. the total number of registered families in our system now exceeds 25,000. overall, program registrations in our system increased this year by 37% and scholarships tripled from 729 families receiving scholarships to 2 00,355 families. -- 2,355 families. we doubled summer camp participation and generated $500,000 in new revenue from

those programs. we expanded our learn to swim programs by 25%. and we did it while offering healthy snacks at our facilities in compliance with the department of public health and the mayor's healthy food dreble directiveless. as you know, one of our most important accomplishments this year fits with significant budget challenges, reorganize the way we deliver recreation. we've implemented a more efficient model that provides more relevant programming to the public. in collaboration with our labor unions and with the community and with leadership and guidance of the neighborhood parks council, we conducted more than 50 internal and external meetings, developed a plan that preserves public recreation. it is a move toward best practices that also achieves an important budget objective of save saving over $2 million. we've already started our fall season where we are focusing our program at 45 sites across

the city including our rec facilities, nine swimming pools and actually a handful of clubhouses as well. our program something focused on four places, cultural arts and leisure services. in my decade in government, this was both one of the most challenging and also rewarding organizations and restructuring that i've participated in. goal number three, improving our financial capacity. we want to continue to develop and improve our ability to generate revenue and to sustain revenue streams for the long-term. we want to continue to increase our overall grant funding and implement new concession agreements. this year we were faced with a $12.4 million budget deficit. this comes on the heels of an $11 million budget deficit the year before and over the last five years, $36 million worth of cuts to this department. it is crucial, crucial to the services and the mission of this department that we become

more financially sustainable. and our strategies have been guided towards that end. this year the department -- i'm very proud to report that the department received over $3.1 million in philanthropic gifts benefiting both our capital program and operations. our gifts included $70,000 gift from sacred heart preparatory cathedral to help restore the football field. $50,000 from the tennis coalition to resurface the golden gate tennis courts. $150,000 from various sponsors to produce the world cup event at civic center. $100,000 from the friends family to renovate the rec center. $50,000 from a fundraiser in partnership with the producers of peter pan, to raise money for a youth scholarship fund. a family foundation donation of $53,000 a year for three years to keep jolie recreation center open an additional day per

week. in partnership with the parks trust and the friends of the playground, an $850,000 gift to renovate that playground. a $1.5 million gift to renovate the dolores park playground. and another $150,000 gift from the san francisco parks trust to provide basically equipment and supplies for our new rec centers. this is in addition to some of the philanthropy generated by a couple of other key partners. the city fields foundation which over the past five years has given the department -- contributed to the department nearly $25 million, to renovate our play fields. and several million dollars from trust for public lant land who has helped us raise money to renovate three very important park projects. we've implemented, as we talked about today, we've implemented new amenities and concessions in our parks that help generate revenue from the department.

obviously our food carts have been much discussed today. but we've also got an teak market at candlestick, a new parkwide bicycle rental which will enable our park users to rent a bike and ride it and drop the bike off there. we've got a new management agreement at the harding park golf course that is now awaiting board of supervisers disapproval and a new concession at the lake is in process. gold number four, improving -- goal number four, improving our stewardship. we want to create a cultural sustainability and implement practices that can serve our resources. rec and park has implemented recycling at all rec centers and composting has been implemented at most of our sites and that's something we're going to finish this year. rec and park and the public utilities commission which has been a terrific park for us have identified the top 12012 parks with the highest irrigation problems. $2.5 million has been allocated for repairs. our natural area staff has

partnered with u.s. fish and wildlife services and city organizations to reintroduce the blue butterfly atop twin peaks and we're the first city in the nation to introduce the new green steam machine, a weed kill that are eliminates the use of pesticides around children's play areas. with respect to sustainable design, the department is committed to providing its newest parks and recreation facilities with sustainable features. renewable energy features have been included in all project designs. 100% of qualifying building construction and renovations meet lead silver standards and smaller standards comply with green building standards which were developed by this department. so we have the chinese rec center and a new prop 84 projects, we've got proposed new native landscape areas, and a community demonstration garden.

a playground which is currently under construction, we've got living roof and solar panels on the clubhouse, a water saving drought-tolerant plants and rainwater system. in addition, we manage over 35 community garden consisting of roughly $7 -- 750 individual plots. a 2008 survey found more than 500 names on the waiting list for our community garden plots. so we have identified several new community garden sites in each district and we're working to encourage the develop of those gardens at places like geneva avenue strip, golden gate and steiner, and others. goal number five, improving our community loyalty and relationships. we accomplished this by improving the transparency of the department's operations, increasing opportunities for volunteers, improving the

quality of external communications, increasing opportunities for community participation and making the department more user friendly. strategies which we hope will result in broader support for our parks and, yes, that includes outreach. with respect to customer service, this year we streamline our permitting process. we actually improved our online family account registration process as well. we've eliminated the need to actually sign up for an account in person, making it easier for working families to participate in our programming. we have continued our integration with the city 311 call center and our own t.m.a. system with response to issues and i think some of our closeout rates and improved responses to park scan are a reflection of that. we have begun working internally and with the neighborhood parks council on an outreach assessment plan

which we hope to bring to both prozac and this commission shortly. very significantly, this year we launched our five million community opportunity fund grant which was a product of the 2008 parks bond. thanks process which is going to allow for community-driven park improvement projects and increased public participation. and the criteria for that -- for the process and for the grants was developed with a community-driven stakeholder group. our identity. we've worked on a new improved website which we hope to be back to you at the next commission meeting with a sneak preview before it launches. we've developed -- we're trying to get hip to social media and develop new social media networks including facebook and twitter. important new ways to do things we haven't done before. we've continued to try to implement and brand this department so people are aware of the important things that we do and this year alone we're very proud to announce that the

california and park recreational society for excellence. we had our botanical garden manager and conservetory flower manager receive a award for managerial excellence and we received several san francisco weekly awards for best slip and slide, best old-fashioned summer camp, best public pool, best skate park and best park. volunteers. in a climate of diminished resources we rely on volunteers more than ever before. our volunteers provide support for our park beautification and maintenance projects as well as for our recreation events. it allows an avenue for the public to get involved with the parks. last year rec and park logged a total of 129,000 volunteer hours arnings increase of 19%, which equates to a value of approximately $3 million in labor.

our sixth goal, improving our capital infrastructure, we continue to successfully manage products related to the clean and safe neighborhoods parks bond. our goal is to be transparency, ensure accountability and deliver probablies on time and on budget. we had several recently completed projects in 2009-2010. hamilton recreational center, an $18 million project, sunny side conservetory, lincoln park playground, $1.5 million project. a $2.5 million project and the midtown terrace playground. upcoming capital projects which have broken ground include chinese rec center. we're getting close to breaking ground at sunset rec center, dolores park and playinga. all of our projects are on budget with rec and park receiving lower than anticipated bids for projects like chinese rec center and mission playground. and following the merger of our

planning and capital divisions, we've embarked on a new relationship with the department of public works and a better link between some of our land use and planning issues and some of the delivery of our capital projects which we hope will keep projects delivered on schedule. other capital highlights include $3.5 million in grants awarded to rec and park for a variety of capital projects including buena vista, the golden gate park stables, the palace of fine arts, which is under construction and the golden gate park carousel plaza. we have four applications into the state of california, totaling, i believe, close to $20 million for four important projects and we're awaiting word and we hope to get some good news this fall. and we've got three projects going with our partner, the trust for public land. our park forestry citywide projects are under way. lastly, improving our owned a misk efficiency. this is going -- this has been

a really important focus of our department internally and i'm particularly proud of a rather ambitious goal to lower compensation costs. for which we cut the cost of new workers compensation claims this year by 23%, saving the department approximately $67,000 or roughly a gardner. i'm also very proud of our new gardner apprenticeship program which will launch this fall. it's the first apprenticeship program in the state of california. this year we took full advantage of jobs now and we were able to hire over 120 jobs now stimulus workers to support our guardians and custodial workers with park maintenance function. our overall training and professional development for twine-2010 included regular new employee orientations, disaster service worker training, safe worker practices, recreation delivery trainings, communications trainings and

skill trainings. we conducted two departmental disaster preparedness trainings, one focused on notification and another that focused on evacuation. so, the hour is late. it's a little bit of a taste of all that's happened in 2009-2010. it's been a fak fantastic year and i really do want to thank our staff. again, i've been in government for 10 years and i've never seen a team work harder and do more with less than the recreation and park department has done this year. president buell: thank you very much. commissioner lee: thank you. that was a lot of accomplishments you fulfilled in the year that you've been here. and you started off talking about safety and i read your editorial in the sunday chronicle which i wholeheartedly agree with we want people to use our parks.

and the best -- however, i do believe we can partner with the community in keeping the parks safe. and i am a part of the community advisory board for the richmond police department. and we had our meeting yesterday and i'd like to invite you to come to our next meeting next month. the members have a lot of good ideas of how they can help this department keep the parks safe, help you keep the parks safe, and i'd love to have you come and meet the members of the richmond district community. so, i'll send you something on that. >> i'd be honored to be there. commissioner lee: the other issue -- as i was reading through your report on philanthropy, you throw on a

lot of impressive gains in terms of grants and donations and such. and the one thing that wasn't clear in my mind as i was listening to you was, what percentage, what jumped out at me was parks trust in the year 2009. how much did they raise for, the department? and the numbers that you're presenting, are those numbers that have been donated directly to the department or are they due parks trust? i'm trying to get a better understanding of how much has been raised because it sounds like a lot of money. you've done a very good job of raising funds. >> the grants in philanthropy we we raise, which benefit the department, come from a variety of sources and the park eag's trust has been a very instrumental partner. i'm particularly grateful to the parks trust for the $160,000, $170,000 campaign

called the gear up fund which they launched really on a moment's notice when as some of our new facilities were opening up, there was no plan to put anything in these facilities. so there's an example of one. the parks trust was also the fiscal sponsor for friends of the playground. which was an $850,000 gift. the neighborhood parks council is the fiscal sponsor for the friends of the dolores park playground which is also involved $1.5 million gift. we continue to work closely with our park partners. we meet quarterly with all of our partners. i have biweekly meet wgs the executive director of the council and the director of the parks trust. i think as you're aware, the parks trust is very focused on our party for the parks, which is intended as a philanthropic event. i'm feeling very optimistic

about our fipthropic relationships. lee that's great and i think that's a credit to all the work that you've done with our partners. i'd like to see parks in a future meeting, to look at how much has been raised for us. so we get an idea. >> i think it -- president buell: i think it would be interesting to see and maybe if we have any historical data as well, to see if there's a growth pattern and who's giving and how much they're giving. i don't necessarily say it has to be a public report but it would be interesting. i don't want to embarrass anybody for any reason but i think it would be nice to see what the circumstances are for philanthropic giving. >> sure. president buell: great. many thanks. congratulations. >> thanks. thanks to this commission for your hard work. president buell: it's a little sad that all these accomplishments were wasted on

singing to the choir. i think we're, you know, we need the public to see the accomplishments. it's on tvland. i'm sure it's a best seller. >> is there public comment on this? >> i just want to take a moment to commend phil and this commission and the staff of the rec and park department for their hard work over the last year. i will say that since phil has been in the leadership position at the department, culturally the doors have been much more open to collaboration and working with community groups and solving problems and that was an awfully impressive list of things that got done. and i think a lot of times i spend my energy trying to keep phil from moving too fast but i think to his credit, there's a lot of high pressure situations president buell: don't we all. >> i know. and we're facing a lot of scarcity and uncertainty. the things that make people really upset is when they feel like they can't be included, they don't have a voice and

when the neighborhood that they need and want and love so much isn't being respected and so neighborhood parks council commits to continuing to work with the department over the next year and taking it to the next level, particularly when when it comes to outreach and collaboration and i also think to your questions about philanthropy, one of the things that we've been -- i've been working with on trying to understand is, what is the role for philanthropy? nationwide what are other cities doing? what does philanthropy bring to the table in terms of capital and operations and what does the landscape look like here in san francisco? because i think that if we're not smart getting ready for this next budget year, we're going to get pummeled and we have to be really proactive and it's not just philanthropy and it's not just earned revenue, it's got to be a complete package. but we have to understand the relationship between those funding sources and the role they play at the department. so i just want to say thank you. it's been a real pleasure working with you this year. president buell: and i'd add to that