specific agreement and their impact. the ones we have identified sort of the larger that we would look at would be the naming rights agreements for bill graham in candlestick park, but also advertising agreements under the jurisdiction of various other city departments. after the prior meeting, the controller's office did tell me they had just been requested to conduct a detailed audit of the m.t.a. contractor's clear channel. and that they were going to do that audit in january. we would coordinate with them, i be looking sort of at the contract somewhat differently than they would. not necessarily looking at specific transactions. but we would coordinate with them and make sure that whatever they were doing we would not be ñi

so the final part of this project would be -- supervisor mar: can i just back you up. besides m.t.a. what were the other major departments you would look at? >> reckon park has a naming right. i have to see what other types of advertising agreements they have. certainly they have the naming rights of candlestick. and then the be g.s.a.'s contract for the bill graham.éñ supervisor mar: ok. >> so finally the -- this would be an evaluation to look at the cost and benefits of the practices and procedures, current procedures, look at their gaps, areas where either ñ and they are not or perhaps a agreement doesn't benefit the city as well as it might.i2n possibly looking at) areas where perhaps the agreements may be conflict the

city policy. we would see this a project would be probably about 440 hours. it might end up being somewhat less given the controller's more detailed audit of this clear channel agreement which i think is probably one of the more agreements require more scrutiny. on the next one we were asked to look at the assessor's property assessant backlog. this question is very specific. the controller did do a much more comprehensive performance audit of the&q&$ assessor's off that was completed in the spring of 2009. in the budget that year the assessor requested and received new positions that were designed -- intended to look at their property backlog. this would really be a very narrowly focused project that would look at the impact of those positions. we often find in budget when

departments request positions and say impact when we go back next year, the positions have not been hired. or if they have been hired other positions are vacant. this would be very specifically focused on that and looking at the positions that were hired into the real property services division and whether they have been able to use those positions effectively to bring down the backlog. so the areas that it would be looking at would be new construction, change in ownership, assessment appeals. ways in which they have been able to conduct those. this would take into account the controller has in fact looked at that area already. we would not actually be repeating any of the work that they have done. supervisor mar: miss campbell this is reduced significantly from what was presented at the last meeting which was estimated at about djdtv hours. it's been pretty much cut in half. this scope is narrowed? >> that's correct. i believe one of the issues that

was discussed is narrowing the scope on all these projects, to be very precise. we went back and did more detailed work and did narrow the scope as much as we could on these proposed projects. the third one is a larger project. this is looking at the m.o.u.'s. there is discussion in the prior meeting. we had recommended a project on evaluating the city premium pay practices. we also recommended a project looking at the city's m.o.u. practices. because of some concerns that might conflict with work already done by the controller's office, we combined those two. the scope of those two projects. we identified sort of certain issues. the context for this is that the city has 33 m.o.u.'s, given employee unions. all of which will be between now

and 2013 will be subject to renewal. under the charter, the mayor -- the department of human resources has day-to-day responsibility for labor negotiations. the mayor gives direction. however the chart specified clearly that the mayor is to condult with the board of supervisors on giving direction in the meet and confer process for new m.o.u.'s. the board has the authority to approve the m.o.u.'s. over the years we have identified concerns that my the time the m.o.u.'s come to the board many things have happened during negotiation process that make it very hard for the board that very late date if they have concerns or issues to really weigh in. the bulge would be to look at the city's m.o.u.'s and look at the very broad criteria. areas where things have developed over the years and m.o.u.'s that we think have created inequities among m.o.u.'s or practice that is don't benefit the city as well

as they could. we have identified some broad areas that we would look at in terms of this analysis. one is how special pay provisions actually meet the job requirements of the needs of the job. you'll see parking, travel, uniform, phone call, education, standby pay, several various pay categories that have developed into various m.o.u.'s that may or may not be specifically related to the needs of the job. so that would be one area where we would look. supervisor mar: supervisor maxwell? supervisor maxwell what's our goal? >> the goal here is not to look

at what specific departments are paying on this. although -- the goal is to look at what the city has agreed to in memoranda of understanding to provide and they are obligated to provide and to go back and take a look at that and to see, one, if its consistent with city policies in general. two, if some of those provisions are actually substantive requirements of the job. so the city agrees to provide parking, free of charge, to employees at a certain location is that because it's a remote location? is that because of the hours that would make -- prohibit an employee to get there on public transit? or is that in fact a benefit that may be is not consistently applied across the city. supervisor maxwell ok. -- supervisor maxwell: ok. i hear that. i just think like tuition

reimbursement and education leave, i'm just concerned that has there been a problem identified with these things? is that why we are looking at it? because there may be other things. what is prompting us to do this? to look at this? because how many of our departments get education leave? certainly not -- i don't know that d.p.w. does. what are we talking about when we say educational leave? what are you talking about? what do you mean? >> what i'm seeing is very specific. for instance, if the m.o.u. with the nurse's union says that nurses are given 40 hours of paid leave a year, and then we go back and we say, nurses are required to do 40 hours of continuing education each year, then the m.o.u. would really be in line with what that job requires. but are there other areas, and i can't tell you right off hand,

are there other areas where there's a pot of money setaside for education needs that's either not used or the criteria are not specific to the job? is that really where the city wants to put its resources? we are looking from the position of an m.o.u. provision and what the city has been obligated to do under the m.o.u.'s. this would be one aspect of what we would look at. this is not the total of what we are recommending to look at in this evaluation. >> one that i think would be looking at the m.o.u.'s if one bargaining unit gives good incentive and more flexibility, perhaps that could be extended to other bargaining units. it would give us an overview, i guess, of what kinds of flexibility or incentive programs are within our labor relations. so maybe it could be spread more evenly and equitably within different public employee

classifications, i think. >> i can't tell you before i go in and look at this whether this particular issue might be a problem. it could very well be. supervisor maxwell the goal is to incentive advise -- incentivize or make things better? i'm for that. if the goal is to find out who is doing something wrong -- unless we have been -- unless there is a problem that's been identified, i just have a concern it's about making policy that's better. i can -- supervisor mar: this is two combined audits that were proposed at the last meeting. one part was more modernizing and taking out more of the archaic types of premiums like word processing premiums, what might not be relevant anymore but maintaining graveyard shift premiums, for example. but it's to modernize and bring more up-to-date different

premium pay practices, is that right? >> if you want to speak specifically to the premium pay which is one of the areas in this particular category where we talk about how dot provisions in the m.o.u. meet job needs,dy a quick review and i think the controller's office can run a detailed list of all the different premium pay codes. it would take time, they didn't have it immediately available. there are premium pay codes. if you have -- are in this job classification but work in this location, you get extra money for that. supervisor maxwell i understand. without getting into detail that's what my feeling is. things like that. that's what i remember we were talking about. things that were archaic. i'm just concerned about when i see some of the other things like uniforms and tuition and reimbursement where it doesn't cover a lot of employees, because certainly d.p.w. doesn't

necessarily do that. and some of the other ones don't. it's almost like, we are targeting who? and is there a problem there? and that's just my concern about it being -- it's kind of more spread than i remembered. i did remember us talking about all of this stuff. >> last you spoke specifically about premium pay and requested i come back an look at the m.o.u. in general. but in terms of process, because i think i understand your concern we'll come in and say she's guys get this money for tuition reimburse. it's a cost to the city but it might be a benefit to the city. i put together this work plan, what we have to do is kind of look at everything and go in and see what it means. we might say, this is a good thing. and come back out. our goal is not to find each and every thing to be a reduction. our goal is to find where things are out of date or they create sort of a misallocation of

resources or inequities among different job classifications and different people working different departments. for instance, paid parking, the city has a transit first policy. do they want to provide free parking to employees? to a nurse working night shift at san francisco general, yes, they might. the question is what is the criteria? what is the specific instances? i understand your concern. we're certainly probably not going to come back and say firefighters shouldn't get protective gear. i don't think that's the goal of the audit. supervisor mar: supervisor chu. supervisor chu: thank you for pulling it together some additional details. just on i think a little bit of what supervisor maxwell was talking about, i think part of it when we were talking about it last time was the concern about the duplication of work, potentially that would be easily found at a department like the controller's office who could easily run a premium pay

schedule and show how departments are spending their money. i think what could be valuable in this analysis is whether or not that premium pay actually works for the type of function we are talking about. and one very good example of that is something that we have dealt with with some of the issues around the visstation, nguage access issues. tation, and particular the fact the city pays premium pay for language still but how are we utilizing those employees? are we gaining a benefit that we are -- we believe we would be receiving from pay it? -- paying it? i think in terms of the work you srñ%ikir so much uq whether or not the amount and premiums connect to the type of benefit we think we should be getting. supervisor maxwell: i do, too. when i saw the phone calls and i see uniforms, that's very !.fqv different for me than what we had originally talked about. >> supervisor maxwell, we can

also do a very quick look at that. if there's not an issue to be followed up, we would not follow up on it. if it's a phone call because it wasq&ñi required, we would not more than that. supervisor mar: what's the estimated number of hours for this audit? >> let me just -- there are more pieces to this. total estimated hours would be 1,000 because of looking at the m.o.u.'s city wide. let me go to the other pieces because i was trying to bring together several things. one of the other pieces would be to look at the impact of automatic pay or benefit increases. ñi creating in our recent analysis of the m.t.a., we actually had a0t that by guaranteeing the t.w.u. members a certain level of pay it created an incentive or disincentive for them to actually negotiate over other work requirements.

we actually on that level. we would look at provisions and look at where salaries, for instance, link to other jurisdictions. one of the things we found maybe not so much in san francisco but i have seen this occur in other jurisdictions where 9-v say, this group has to5#v get the sa percentage increase in pay as &xz other 10 counties. well, that's fine except if your county is already at a higher pay scale than the other counties and you're giving them 5% and everyone else is 5%, you may distorting what -- what the pay should be for that position. o#ijeqst too. salaries mean to other m.o.u.'s to the extent that that happens where you are linking positions and responsibilities that aren't linked. that would be something to look at.ffñiñfi one of the other pieces would be to look and evaluate how provision conformso7oó to state federal laws. %ñût:wiw3 like

minimum staffing requirements. workload requirements. overtime, sick leave or disability leave. how do they conform to what's required by state and federal -- also probably local audit except san francisco does8 on the books for these things. we do have concerns about some of the minimum staffing requirements or budget. we have recommendations in the sheriff's department. when we did a staffing analysis about some of their m.o.u. provision that is were making it hard for them to appropriately staff their units.7e that's an issue. supervisor mar: i could see how that would be helpful as the department of public health faces more and more cuts, the staffing levels that are mandated by the state would be really helpful to look at, i think. >> i believe at this point the nurses contract is in conformance with the state requirements, but we would take a second look at that.

the other one to evaluate the equity of benefits. because each bargaining unit is a separate negotiation process, you will see things enter into some and not others that could perhaps increase -- make up differences in benefits provided to city employees that aren't necessarily wrarnlted by the -- warranted by the job. so we would look at that. in the final piece, this actually might get a little bit to some of the tuition reimbursement questions you had, which is to evaluate the actual funds set up by the m.o. u's. the controller's office -- supervisor maxwell: you manage these funds. >> in d.h.r. we simply look back at those funds. the balance. how they are used. if there's issues there. if the controls are appropriate. those comprehensively we would see this maybe perhaps being 1,000-hour audit. as we go in and look at the issues, we would prioritize where we would focus our

efforts. supervisor mar: supervisor maxwell? supervisor maxwell: do you know how many funds there are set up and under what circumstances? can you give us an example of what you mean by a fund set up by an m.o.u. >> definitely tuition reimbursement funds. i'll let ben talk to the others. >> good morning. ben rosen field, controller. the vast majority of our labor contract have setaside fund within them typically for tuition reimbursement in local 21 the city commits in that labor contract to setaside, i believe, 250,000 annually that can be drawn upon for local 21 members as approved by their management for prescribed purposes. for professional development training. so we have these little accounts required on each of our m.o.u.'s to facile at this time

professional development for our employees. different amounts in each m.o.u. with different restrictions given the object paekings -- occupations covered by that m.o.u. supervisor maxwell: most have a certain amount. if the amount is $250,000, each year you have to make sure that that amount is there. you don't have to add to it -- there's not always -- there's just that amount. >> typically it's an annual requirement to setaside a certain purpose for that bargaining unit. sosñy6q $250,000 annually in th example i just gave. supervisor maxwell: even if it's not used? >> typically there is an allowance in the m.o.u. if it's not used that balance rolls forward. for the most part these are -- accounts are used and there's typically more demand for the accounts than there is funding in them typically. not always. >> i do want to give one example where we also want to look at the language.

we addressed this in budget this year is the firefighters had a touchdown 50,000 set aside for a fund for recruitment. but there was going to be no recruitment this year. we were able to work something out where that money was returned to the general fund, but there wasn't any kind of automatic language that said if you are not recruiting can this money be returned to the general fund. those might be some issues to address. supervisor mar: that's 1,000-hour project. it sounds like it's a whole bunch of different peepses of it, too. -- pieces, too. supervisor chu: remind me how many hours we have left for this fiscal year in terms of hours? >> for the fiscal year? our budget is on the calendar year. so we would have maybe about 1,000 hours left, maybe less than that at this point because we have taken on some other work for the budget and finance committee. between now and december,

perhaps about 1,000 hours. however the budget's on a fiscal year. so going into january, work can follow into january. supervisor chu: we have about 1,000 hours through the end of this year. through december. ok. >> just one final project i want to talk about. i just came from the budget and finance committee yesterday so i haven't really done a lot of work on it. but an issue came up in the budget and finance committee on community benefit districts that are being looked at sort of one by one, but city departments if they are located geographically in that district do pay for the community benefit district. there was certainly concern, maybe paying in an amount that isn't readily apparent to the community. so we were asked to come back

and look at this. i think this would be a pretty small project. the controller's office evaluates the total cost of the district to the city, but it is an a.a.o. we do know how much each of these assessments is. the controller could quickly run a report on what the costs are. i think whereas the work would be, would be a little bit more sort of evaluate what the city departments get back for paying that cost. supervisor mar: that sounds like a good audit and project. miss campbell, for the 2011 calendar year, in the last meeting you said you wanted to get started on a number of other projects as well. you're recommending these for the end of 2010 and then also to begin part of 2011, the projects that you just described? >> that's correct. these are specifically the ones that i was instructed to go back and do more work, more detailed

work plan for. on the list that we provided where we sort of looked what we had identified as areas, there were two other projects on there we thought we believe are still opened projects that would probably be worth looking at but haven't done any more evaluation of. supervisor mar: let's total number of hours for the project you laid out? >> all of these, i'd have to do quick adding, about 1,950. if were you to accept all of them. supervisor mar: ok. i appreciate the detail and kind of taking the closer look and you being sensitive to supervise ors chu and maxwell's concerns. and proactive goals of better efficiency but also not taking something away but making it more equitable and eliminating waste and inefficiencies and bringing it up to date as well, it sounds like.

mr. rosen felled -- rosenfeld. >> one quick point. i know the committee's trying to determine how to allocate limited hours here. i know our office in working through our audit plan for the year as do others, we like to see audits completed at the moment in time where they have the ability to effect a change. that ultimately that's the end goal. and one of the unique circumstances to think about for this year, especially for this calendar year, is the fact that the vast majority of our m.o.u.'s are closed. we have m.o.u.'s that are closed not only for the last nine months of this fiscal year but for the most part with a couple of very small exceptions for the entirety of the next fiscal year. to the extent that the last audit is really going to make recommendations that require changes to m.o.u.'s to implement, the audit will be complete well in advance of any time that the city would be able to implement any change. so if you're trying to think about what you want to get done this year and think about for

next year, m.o.u. provisions are not going to be one this city will be in a position to make change two even if they are obvious recommendations to push forward in the next nine months. supervisor chu: a question on that, maybe a question that would work with d.h.r., as a controller was talking about in terms of the timing, even though we might not have contracts opened immediately, we would be able to negotiate different provisions for, given the timing of the findings we might get through the end of the year, how would that work towards your negotiation schedule? for example even though we are not expecting to open m.o.u.'s at this time, could it be beneficial to have that information to begin that thought process around where we might want to see changes? >> good morning, supervisors and the chair, martin grand, department of human resources. on an issue by issue basis, i think some of the issues

referenced by miss campbell, the data would be fresh and would be -- what i would identify concerns of the board would want to raise or make recommendations on. others maybe less so. and again we have -- it's a very fluid environment in some casings, word processing premium that's an example in which -- we sunsetted that. had negotiated that out of the contracts in the last round in 2006. the issue of -- wellness payouts is another provision which has been negotiated out of the contract. so i think we would need to work -- carefully with the budget analyst office to make sure we weren't looking at issues which have in some sense been solved. and then there's some issues which are probably things can change and have changed quickly. we have much less use of the --

some of the travel pay provisions just because we have had less training funds available for employees. some of those would -- the data could be stale by the time we get to the bargaining table. by and large i think you could identify issues which we would be able to address in time. supervisor chu: when is our most -- most of our contracts coming due around what time? >> we have the bulk, the vast bulk of our contracts will expire on june 30, 2012. and then we'll be negotiating hopefully multiyear agreements a s which won't expire until june 30, 2013 for the fiscal years 13 and 14. supervisor chu: potentially an alternative would be if we are expecting to be at the

bargaining table in about a year and a half, there would be potentially some of this information that could be useful that wouldn't be stale for that process, then there might be others we might want to hold off on for a later time. >> right. that's correct. again i would just want to echo what miss campbell said in her introduction which is that the charter the mayor directs d.h.r. to carry out the negotiations being confird for developing proposals, very specific that's under the charter the mayor then sends the contracts back to the board. so what you are talking about is making recommendations to the mayor's office to direct d.h.r. to carry out. i would just want to make that understood so we could certainly look at the data and having conversations with the budget analyst's office. we do meet with the boardrrwáñ closed session prior to every round of negotiations and during negotiations. so i think we are9÷'