forth in order to deal with homicides. other questions for the mayor or ms. harris? >> let me just, and i'll get out of everyone's way. let me amplify something the chief said because it's important and to amplify a bit what the district attorney said. let's keep this going. we're moving in the right direction. let's not put into the hands of elected officials here at city hall the determination of how best to deploy the resources of the san francisco police department. let's keep that in the hands of the police professionals, the police chief, the police commission. let's not allow politics to enter in to those decisions. this chief and law enforcement in partnership with the district attorney's office, probation and others, have proven they can get the job done. the last thing we need to do is bring it back to the hands of

the san francisco board of supervisors. >> thank you. >> what i would like to do now is i would like to continue with a couple of presentations that are going to be very quick, but they have a tremendous amount of value for the public. first i would like to bring captain charlie orks that works in our community relations unit. >> good afternoon, the san francisco police department understands that it has a responsibility in educating the communities in public safety and in this area we understand that there is large volumes of community members in this city where english is a secondary language. some individuals do not speak english, read, write, or understand it. so we have the task of educating them. in a department, we have come up with some policies where we have dedicated phone language lines in each district station so if you're a victim, you can go to the station and you can talk on a three-way

conversation with the officer, someone who speaks that specific language, and the victim. and it can get the crimes reported in that manner. we have signs displayed in every district station, they are two feet by two feet laminated posters and these signs are in seven, eight different languages telling the community members that they have access to someone who speaks their language. it's important that the community know that they don't get the same level of service that english speaking people do in this town, they do get the same level of service. we have things printed out that officers kea. they're possibility guides. they have another guide that can give to the community and it's in 98 different languages. to assist the police department in our efforts, we worked collaboratively with san francisco safe and at this particular time, i would like to introduce cindy brandon from

san francisco safe. >> good afternoon. i would like to thank chief gascon, the mayor's office, and the district attorney's office for their commitment to public safety as well as their efforts to reduce crime and their increase in conviction rates. i also would like to thank the community because without their knowledge and efforts in reducing crime and preventing crime, we wouldn't be where we are today. a few quick things. some of the crimes that we're seeing today are definitely preventable. i think our role as a crime prevention partner of the police department is to educate the public on things they can be to be aware of things that will happen in the community no matter what city you live in, no matter what neighborhood you live in. some of the crimes that we are saying are theft of the use of cell phones, ipods, laptop computers while in public. we encourage everybody to be alert and aware of their surroundings at all times, even if they're exiting their home or their car. a lot of times, they're

comfortable with their surroundings so they're not really paying attention. what we encourage people to do is whenever they're out in the public, just pay attention. look around you. notice if there are people hanging out suspiciously. notice people that are too close to you. carry your purses and your wallets close to your body. do not carry them in one place. we suggest to carry them at different locations on your person or in your purse. that way if something is stolen, your hole world and your purse and your wallet is not taken away at once. we encourage people to report suspicious activities to the police at all times, calling 911 or nonemergency will definitely get a police response. also, another crime that we are seeing is car breakins or auto boostings. people leave items in their cars that are visible. so we encourage people to not leave anything visible in your car at all times. never leave anything visible including a jacket or a shopping bag.

as we approach the holiday season, people tend to leave their shopping bags or their coats in their back seat of their vehicle. police do not leave anything visible in your car. if you need to put something in your trunk, police do so before you arrive at your destination. that way people will not know that something is in your trunk. a lot of these crimes are crimes of opportunity. we would like to educate the public on safety tips that include being aware of your surroundings, knowing how not to become a victim. reducing the amounts of incidents that occur when people are careless when they flash their wallet at an a.t.m. in the dark or they're walking down a dark alley away that is not lit late at night. just practice safe habits. i think with the public learning all of these things, especially as we're entering into the holiday season, we can help contribute to the reduction of crime in our cities. so please pass on some of these safety tips. we do have more information on our website and with the police

department. it's sfsafe.org. we're a tremendous asset to the community. please pass this on and help others learn about their surroundings and help prevent crime. thank you. >> before we open this up, i would like to give the opportunity to the vice president of the police commission to say a few words. >> thank you, chief. first of all, i would like to thank mayor newsom for having the foresight and the courage to hire a true policing professional by bringing chief gascon to san francisco. he has raised the level of professionalism and we recognize that as a police commission. thank you for your hard work. i would like to thank the members of the san francisco police department, the men and women who do this job every day. we as police commissioners are the liesson between the community and the police department. i have to tell you, i left a medal of valor, it's where we get together and decide what the medal will be. the chief talks about guns

coming off the street, violent guns. we saw where they took away guns immediately on the spot. they had the courage to take the gun away. it was very impressive. we had some young officers in the housing projects who chased somebody down and took him out at gunpoint. he was carrying an ak-47 with 30 rounds in the clip. that makes you proud as being a member of the police commission and a member of this city. the officers are doing the job out there. those guns came off the street and those people are in custody. i want to thank the officers for their hard work, i want to thank the mayor. i want to thank chief gascon. he has done a great job. thank you. >> thank you, commissioner. we can reopen for any questions that you may have. yes. >> chief, my understanding -- a number of shootings more than that in previous years or car

robberies in the tenderloin as well. >> unquestionably, crimes move around and sometimes you put resources in one place and you move it to another area. there are neighborhoods that we have seen some concerning trends and we put a great deal of attention. some of you may recall that actually earlier in the year, we started to have a spike in robberies. year-to-date, robberies are now down again. as a matter of fact, as of the last week, we're down 7% which compared to the same time year-to-date. at the beginning of the year, we were having, in fact, those of you that really follow the statistics as closely as i do will remember that at the beginning of the year, robberies were inching up. again, there was a great deal of brainstorming that went on, a lot of people working together, working doing a lot of analytical work who the suspects were, who the victims were, where was it occurring and a lot of efforts put together and that was turned

around. so while there is no question that there are places that we are having issues and there are certain neighborhoods that we need to continue to pay attention to, the overall trend is a good trend. the reality of the ideal society there will be no crime is very unlikely to occur, especially in an urban environment. we know that there is always going to be areas where there are issues. the question is not whether we have the issues, but what do we do to avoid it or prevent it. one of the reasons why i wanted san francisco safe to come in and cindy to talk is the best way to reduce crime is by preventing crime in the first place. the best way to prevent crime is not even by arresting a suspect, but quite frankly, it's been taking the opportunity from the crime to occur in the first place. there are a lot of things and most of them are bad that occur when a crime occurs. if you leave an item unattended in a vehicle and a young

person, 16, 17-year-old sees that computer there that is very attractive and he or she breaks the window in order to steal that computer, you are doing several things. number one, you're out your computer more than likely. that is going to increase your insurance and increase the level of fear in our community. the other thing that is occurring, too, is we have a young person that eventually will be arrested, if not for that crime, but another crime, and you have a person that is in the system as a criminal and his or her likelihood of being able to succeed as they grow old, it diminishes significantly once they engage in crime. when we're preventing crimes, not only are we doing ourselves a favor and the community, but we're also helping a lot of young people that very often are tempted to commit a crime, that if we perhaps were more thoughtful of removing the opportunity, that would not occur. one of the things we talk about our communities san francisco safe, very assertively talking

to people about how to avoid becoming a victim. there are a whole bunch of things that occur once that crime takes place that impacts even including the lives of those that are actually committing the crime. any other questions? >> [inaudible] what specific areas of crime -- >> i mean, we're evaluating this on a daily basis. i think that most of you, again, those of you that follow the numbers very closely, you know that we have in the last 18 months or so we have had a tremendous reduction in overtime. this department has gone from general funded over time. i know that it's confusing, but there are different pockets of

overtime. there is one where the officers get paid by merchants to work on their off-duty time. you often see that on the report of the controller. that is not tax base overtime. there is the general funded overtime which is what the taxpayers pay. that amount has gone from nearly $23 million just two years ago to right around $5 million this year. when you compute the numbers, that is equivalent to about 115 police officers that are not here today that were here just two years ago. so if you take that number and you say, ok, we have reduced already about 115 officers by that reduction in overtime and then in addition to that, you put that on the backdrop that we, through the budgetary process, agreed to reduce the size of our force by another 78 officers, you can see the math very quickly gets to the point that we are approaching very rapidly to the point where

we're going to have about 200 officers less available to deal with crime problems. 115 that come from the reduction in overtime and 78 that will simply be people that will be leaving that will not be replaced. that is nearly 10% of our workforce. that is why it's so important for the community to understand that the deployment of police officers really needs to be left up to us because we're putting people where they need to be. you cannot, on a static fashion, deploy police officers on a foot beat just because it's nice to have them there. if there is crime in that area, it calls for it. we do not have the luxury of doing so today and it's less likely that we'll have the luxury to do so in the next years. any other questions? ok, thank you very much. really appreciate your time. thank you.

>> good morning.

i would buy to call to order the october 14 meeting of the transbay joint powers authority. madam secretary, please call the roll. > [roll call] mr. chairman, you have a quorum. >> next item. >> communications. the november meeting will be held on november 1, due to be regularly scheduled date following -- falling on an absurd holiday. an official notice will be sent out. >> thank you. next item. >> order directors new and old business. >> any new or old business?

seeing none, let's move on to item five. >> executive director's report. >> good morning. i would like to begin by mentioning that we have a new head of the program management program control team for you. emilio cruz. i think you know him from working on the project in various capacities. i wanted to officially welcome him. we continue to be in support of the design and development structures, with all of our stakeholders, including the fire department, dpw, we have also met with the sentences for redevelopment agency, as you will hear later on. we are also working with greyhound and amtrak as well. we are now 35% complete with the

construction documents for the project. excavation packages are due on november 9 to us. as you know, we have extended the bid date because bidders requested more time to prepare for this package. with respect to the bus ramp. we have been working hard on that. i would like to have richard present the design to you right now. >> good morning, commissioners. my name is richard kauffman. i am on the design team. i want to give you an update on the structural design elements of the bus ramp connecting the transit center. we did have some changes with high-speed rail in the springtime.

over the summer, we worked out those alignment which had an to affect on our ability to stretch across natomas street, and that has caused some changes in the design. what you see is a rendering showing how word square, the southwest corner of the transit center. and the design there has buses going in two different directions. what i want to talk about today is how we are modifying this designed to span across the train's box. as maria mentioned, we are around 35% done in terms of construction documents. we have 35% issued and we expect to have 65% by springtime. the train box changes impacted us in a few ways.

primarily, the ability to take columns down through the tracks is a huge challenge. we met with planning -- we had a meeting last thursday with the project managers, redevelopments officials. everyone was in agreement on going forward with this cable print design. we followed that up with a seismic structural committee on monday. they also concurred that the cable bridge was a good engineering solution for this challenge. we are excited about this. i also want to give you some a visual context and a brief cost schedules as well. structurally, i will just review the boss for ramp layout, working from south to north connecting the bay bridge. we have a substation on sterling's trade that will be

realigned in future designs. -- sterling street that will be realigned in future designs. we also have plans for a burger- type bridge. -- girder-type bridge. going north, we have an embankment along essex street that will be part of a retaining wall system. there will be abutments on both sides of that. the abutment will tie into a viaduct spanning over folsom st., howard, and natomas. this is the area where we are focusing our changes. the trained box, as of the 35% design in march, as seen in

orange, as you know with the changes in high-speed rail, it moved about 100 feet to the south to allow wider turns coming into corners and better design characteristics for high- speed rail. that changed the span to about 200 feet where we could easily put a column through the train box. lots of seismic challenges. so we came up with a cable bridge design that spans from howard across to the trauma. this bridge spans 200 feet from howard street to the transit center. you can see the profile here. this is a preliminary profile. it allows the span across the entire transit center area. about 300 feet of the cable bridge time into a concrete by

doctors. this is a cross-section of the bridge. only about five and half be. that reduces the visual impact. that is good for allowing light in, the bulk of the structure. it is a little bit wider because there are cable anchors on each side. here are the images. this is what we really want to show you today. this is the look from suckeresed howard street. this will be a landscaped area with connections to natoma, the transit center. you will also see the parcelled building to the right of the towers. that has been integrated with our thoughts on how this would fit into the context of the

area. this is a view looking west on natoma through the pedestrian plaza area. a bigger advantage of the cable bridge is it does not extend columns into the area, and as well, operates better with the bike routes underneath. this is the view from second street. here you can see the span across to the bus deck. finally, this is looking from howard street to the north. you can see taxi ramps and bus ramps going down to the lower concourse. designers are really excited about turning this into an icon of the neighborhood that ties in

the transit center, but they are worried about the bulk of the tower, so we will be working with them to get a more graceful design, have a more tie-in structure. right now, the schedule is to spend two months doing the cable bridge design. we will incorporate this into 65% construction documents by next march, final documents by next november. this would lead to a bid for peril, with tjpa approval, putting us around march 2012. that is right on schedule and ties into construction for 2012 through 2015 with the main building. as far as cost, about $36 million for the bus ramp. this is in line with the estimates.

the cable bridge, $10.9 million. the harrison over crossing, the retained sections, that totals about $25 million. so our next up is refining the design, technical details, in the next few months, and we will be back to answer any questions. >> i should also add, peter walker is working with our team to look at the landscaping surrounding the ramp as well. >> ok, any questions? director harper? >> the last i heard about this area -- i did not hear about spanning the train box or anything -- but there was an issue of the curvature for transit buses, whether there

would be enough room. did that address this? >> we already modified the alignment of the curbs. it has been refined since those issues were discussed. i do not think there are any geometry issues. this is the improved version. >> ok, thank you. >> moving on to the report, you will be hearing from steve role on our demolition update. i did want to report last week, we celebrated 5000 hours of demolition with no problems. 5000 hours without incident. we continue on a 100% safe to track record. i would like to have steve give us an update on the demolition. >> good morning, directors. as the executive director

pointed out, that is one of our big milestones. through the end of september, 5000 hours of no incidents whatsoever. safety was a big milestone. we have also completed the phase one demolition and turn the temporary terminal back over to the contractor to finish up the last portion, the northwest corner. they we mobilized on september 20.

we have also gotten into the phase two demolition, removing the building through fremont street. we are 70% into that. that includes removing the remainder of the bus ramps at the beale street crossing, getting into the terminal by us representative. as of yesterday, we started to take down the terminal roof. the yellow areas on your screen our phase one appeared that is now complete. think areas -- pinkz"w on the southern portion of beale street is complete. about 70% leading into the terminal is complete. here are some photographs of what was accomplished last month. deep shoring that had to go into removing the foundations on the temper terminal site.

that is completed. we are now working our way across parcel land, soon to cross beale street. this is the parcel p area. that area has been completely cleared off and is free of debris. i think ac transit is using part of that for bus parking. starting to go across beale street. this was in september. moving on to the complete removal. there you can see beale is cleared, except for the fed supporting the bridge structure. then moving into the terminal itself. last month, a