lot of participation. thanks a lot for your support. thank you very much. commissioner murphy: thank you very much. next item. >> next item is item 6, directors report. item sixa -- 6a is the update on dbi's finances. >> deputy director of administrative services. we continue to have our revenue be strong and grow a little bit. when we compare this year to the same time last year year to date, we have gotten 17% more revenue, so we are seeing some growth.

in terms of the refunds, we continue to get between three and 5 refunds' a day. most of them are small, less than $30,000, not like what we had a couple of years ago where we would easily have a couple hundred thousand, a month, so we are seeing a little bit of the recovery. in terms of when you look at our revenues and compared the year to date to last year, it looks like there's some sort of issue, but most of that is caused by the fact real-estate billed us for the full amount of our rent in november rather than in january, which was last year, said they just received one lump sum, and that throws off the comparison. we also continue to fill positions and we continue to have training and purchase of

code books, which also we have not had that in the previous year. all of this was budgeted. all of this was expected. but excuse the comparisons year to year. we are looking at last year's end of year entries. the city typically does not close the books as a final closing with all the audit adjustments until around thanksgiving. i think they are a little bit delayed. until everything is completely closed, i do not actually feel comfortable with the numbers. we are looking at that. we are also looking at where we are with six months because it has only been five months right now. once we get six months, we can do a better projection for the rest of the year and into next year as we develop the budget, but we are looking at things are strong, that we would submit a

supplemental sometime in january to add to positions to meet the volume of growth and the demands that we have for both the plan review, the building, and the inspection services areas. that was very short and sweet. do you have any questions? commissioner murphy: yes, the $38 million -- what is that for? it says for rent. on page two. >> if you are referring to the increase of $2.5 million year- over-year, $2 million of that is the rent being billed earlier.

it is not an increase. it is just the timing issue. in fact, our rents stayed the same the last two years. commissioner murphy: how much are we paying -- we renovated to we will floors. any idea what we spend on the renovation for two floors? -- we renovated two floors. >> a couple million? commissioner murphy: ok. the other question i have is we switched to a lot of stuff around because of layoffs and things like that. have we spent any money on retraining staff? >> we are spending a lot of money on training. the last couple of years, it has been a pretty tight budget, but we have been sending people to training, not just on the code

books, but on a more general basis. commissioner murphy: any idea how much we have spent over the last year? >> the training is an interesting issue because a lot of times, it is incorporated into various line items. i would have to look at that and come back to you on it. commissioner murphy: if you could break that down and maybe let us know at the next meeting. i would appreciate it. commissioner hechanova: i have a question on the interest and investment line where there is the deficit of 122 from the projector 194. are those associated with what categories that those rates are being affected by the current downturn, or -- i guess i'm just kind of curious as to what

basis that it gives me the precipitous drop. >> honestly, the budget for investment is difficult for us to do. we have gotten information from the controller's office on how they are doing in their projections. it is hard to apply that to what our fund balance is. not knowing what our fund balance was until -- i mean, we are still going through the entry, trying to figure out where the end was last year. it is difficult for us to develop the budget. there is also a timing issue. the comptroller's office does not post the interest until the next year -- i'm sorry, the next month. i do not think this is necessarily a reflection of not getting as much money.

i think it is more a reflection about how the budget was developed. we are going to look into this. in percentage of the total budget, it is so small we spend more time trying to figure out what the rest of our revenue is worth, but we would like to sit down with the controller's office. the information they sent to us was just a couple days before the budget was finalized, and so it was hard to take that into account. >> do you have a breakdown of how much revenue increase as a result of our two revenue measures? the registering of vacant properties and then the one and two unit registrations? do you have an idea of what that added to our revenue? >> the vacant building is -- in

terms of year to date, we can go into it -- well, see, this is the problem. we have not yet have a posting of apartment licenses because those have not posted. i think we got about in the range of six -- last year, total, we got $6 million in apartment license fees and $1.4 million in one and two -- i'm sorry, this is not correct. i'm getting the years mixed up. i think we got about $6 million is correct in terms of apartment license fees, and quite a bit of that, something around $3 million to $4 million was the

increase that we did when we did kind of a reshuffle of the methodology, and the one and two-family -- we budgeted out what we projected last year, the $1.4 million. that is about what it was. but remember, that was not for the full year. >> that is good. thank you for helping us with the fact that we now have a $2.5 million surplus, that looks like, in his latest budget. >> the projection right now assumes that all of it will come in, but as i said, we do not know. in january, we kind of had an idea what the final was. but we really do not know until april, may, what exactly the final is.

>> thank you. commissioner hechanova: where does the sum or amount that was originally projected for services that were going to be awarded for the computer analysis -- where is that part during the course of the year? and that rolled over to next year. does that accumulate interest? those are things -- kind of like we were for last year's budget. it was not spent this year. what was it doing this year? will it be rolled over to next year? >> that was budgeted in -- several years ago -- in increments. that sits in our fund of totality. it earns interest, and it rolls over. it is a continuing project and

rolls over. it is still available. if we were to need additional funding for it, we would have to go and include that in our budget submission. but you do not lose that money. >> we do not lose the money, but does it accumulate interest that rolls back into that amount, or is it where that interest gets a absorbed into the sort of -- >> i believe the interest is posted to the operating. we will look to see whether we can pull it out, but i would have to look at that. we did not give it away to anybody. it stays with us. commissioner hechanova: that is what i want to make sure. the planning department has basically taken liberties before. >> no, that stays with us. >> we gave them liberties.

[laughter] commissioner murphy: i do not know whether you can answer this question or not, but the money allotted for the caps program for the past year -- is there any of that money left that maybe dbi can use for other things? ongoing expenses? commissioner hechanova: make it work for us instead of just laying around? >> money that was paid came out of a program called the strong motion attached the program, and that is a separate fund that is set aside, and with the contract, a certain amount of money. that amount of money is due to be spent, and there is a fine balance in the program. it is replenished every day, every time a person takes out a permit.

we will be asking in the next budget cycle to appropriate that for disaster coordination program. and there is money left, enough to fund that position, and will be ongoing from now on. commissioner murphy: dbi will have control over that money? >> dbi has control over that money. it has to be spent for special purposes around mitigation for earthquake purposes and things like that. it is dedicated money that can only be used for training, programs like the caps program for that type of situation. commissioner murphy: how about training for the new codes 2011? >> it cannot be used for that. it can be used for the disaster preparedness program and training inspectors to be able to use the new methods of

reporting an earthquake and tracking disasters and things like that. it is very specific. >> we budgeted all the money that we needed or we thought we needed in the operating budget. commissioner murphy: every financial statement looks different. this one, the only point i do not understand -- it says expenditure recovery. what does that mean? >> that is the payment that other departments pay us for services that we provide. commissioner murphy: now i understand. >> we build up on a quarterly basis, and we just have not billed that yet. commissioner murphy: any further questions on this item? public comment? >> seeing none, we can go on to -- commissioner murphy: we have

won. >> oh, i'm sorry. -- we have one. >> just one question, commissioners. the director, you were saying that every exam that is taken, there is an allocation of funds toward this particular program. there is specific rules about that money being expended and issues to do with impact consequences. presumably, that means earthquake. is that documented in the receipts page of the permit that you take as a line item? >> yes, it is called the smith -- smif fee. strong motion impact fee. then on whether you are building commercial or residential, it is a certain price. 21 cents per thousand dollars,

and i think it is 10 cents for commercial and 21 cents for residential, and that has been ongoing since probably be made 1990's. it is a line item fee. most people just do not even realize it is there. >> yes, i do not want to get into the invoice business. i will just leave it at that. i just wanted to understand that. thank you. commissioner murphy: any further public comments? i see none. >> ok, item 6b, update on proposed legislation. >> yes, again, good morning. we have some proposed legislation that will be impacted -- will impact the department that will be implemented july 1, and it is a

landscape ordinance that is coming through, which will require us to expend more time in routing plans to the puc and actually more administration costs for time spent on this. we are negotiating with the puc regarding this and how much staff time is going to take to recoup our costs, which will again show up in the expenditure recovery. we will do a work order about that. we are actually doing some programming for them in our computer system to identify certain properties that will be affected, and that is also going to be regrouped through the recovery. we also have the legislation i want to bring up. last year, we started the legislation regarding the name change for the department. it got stalled in the mayor's office, so things were happening there where it was not high on

the priority list, so we want to make sure we are bringing these up again so it will either get on the june ballot or the november ballot because it is a charter change, a charter amendment. that is all the legislation we have currently ongoing at the board. commissioner murphy: have you any discussion about puc staff'? we have staff on the fifth floor now or not? >> yes, we have two currently. they have been with the department now for a least three to four years. there's puc staff on the floor, but they will not be the same staff working with this landscape ordinance. the landscape ordinance has to go through the department of public works. it is a different program. it is going to be similar to --

we will be plan checking and mounting civil drawings were we have not in the past. commissioner murphy: have we had any discussion with them, what that process is going to be? is this going to be another black hole for plans? >> no, it is not. we have had several discussions with them. in fact, we are ready to roll out their new plan check. they have a list, when the project sponsor will be filling out in the beginning of the project, notifying us whether they will be disturbing more than 1000 square feet of ground. we have and we are working with them almost weekly to get the programming completed in time for the rollout on july 1. commissioner murphy: public comments? seeing none.

>> item 6c, update on the permit tracking system. >> deputy director, administrative services. we are ending our long marathon on putting the rfp together. we will be talking to the city tomorrow for the final review along with the controller's office review. everybody is out in last month and a half at different times. departments are skeleton crews or less than that, so we are finding where people are not available at the time frame we would like them to be available, but i'm still looking at -- i do not think it will happen next week, so it will be early

january. but we have gotten down to probably a handful of issues that we have to discuss with the city attorney's office. commissioner walker: i just said -- in-line -- commissioner hechanova: the efforts on here seem to be perplexing because at one time, it was supposed to be awarded. >> it is awarded. it was awarded, and we got it called back. commissioner hechanova: there was the canadian organization or company that it was being awarded to and then was retracted and then, if it was to have been awarded at that time, at what point with the additional work to get to this new rfp?

>> two years ago, we went out for an rfp. we had a long evaluation period. we sat down with the vendor. started working things out. there were several process reviews by various city departments. we decided that we would reject all bids and that we would go out again. between that time -- because there really was not any written mou between our department and the planning department trying to figure out what people's responsibilities were and how we would develop the rfp and how we would proceed to a portion of the implementation of the project. that took several months.

the mayor's office went through the last -- or the city went through the last budget process, and we had to work out kind of a different funding methodology so that the general fund would not be severely impacted. we finished the mou and had that executed. i have been working with an individual from the planning department along with the technical staff from our department, the planning department, to rewrite the rfp and the process, so we do not end up with the same situation where we have to reject the bid, so we are successful in this. two, to rewrite and tighten up so that it is very clear what we

want from the vendor and so we can get what we asked for. that has been a kind of drawn out process, but what we wanted to do was to make sure that we kept the process so we would not have any process issues, to not have any more reviews by various departments. when you do that, you include other departments kind of attached at the hit, so we have been working extremely closely with the human rights commission, the controller's office, and the city attorney's office to make sure we do not have any issues. that is why it has taken time. frankly, the -- it is a better product, and i think that we will be able to get what we

want. but we did not want to -- when we went back -- because i was not really involved in the formulation several years ago, but we went back and look at it, and there were things that were not clear. you were not sure exactly what we were asking for, and we saw that as we would do in the process with scoping of the work with the vendor, so we really tried to learn from what happened in the past. >> i guess my only comment is that in light of what took place earlier today on the abatement that the category of if the information flow is crucial and necessary, especially in the category of where the assessor's office does not have the continuity of change of

ownership, it has impacted the process where staff time and everyone's time has really continue to just get drawn out, and i think in light of this, trying to get the permit tracking system, on track, as soon as possible is really my main concern. that is taking far too long to get the rfp out there. commissioner murphy: the only thing i can say is i'm still as frustrated now as i was when i came around six years ago. we had a public speaker came in then and he said that we're talking about the tracking system when he was 62. he said i am now 74. and that was six years ago.

so do the moth. it's been a long -- math. it's been a long, long time. commissioners. public comments? >> good morning commissioners, luke o'brien, coalition for responsible growth. you know, just as some feedback, it's not a real satisfactory situation right now in terms of feeling like, well, i understand exactly what is going on and i understand where it's going. as far as the past is concerned, i probably would prefer to look to the future and let the past go, although there seems to be an awful lot of unanswered questions. it might be better to just let that be as it is and look

forward. i came here and testified at a previous meeting and i indicated that logistically this is not an impossibility. sure, it's a challenge, but it's not an impossibility. i also suggested keeping it small to begin with with the caveat that it's expandable as a system and, therefore, you can build a system that will be maybe servicing one department initially and subsequently will be expandable to serve as other departments and can be modified to accept protocols that other departments' computerized systems may be using that may be different than the system or protocol that the d.b.i. may be using. it sounds like it has to engage the planning department anyway, but the other suggestion that i

made at that time as well as keeping it small to begin with was to put a schedule together. i ask that we might be given some sort of a timetable of targets and when the targets would be met. so i'm going to take it today that the target is that we are going to be privy to an r.f.p. in the first week of january based on what i just heard. i don't think anything is going to happen between now and christmas. then i would ask please that at that time we would be provided with some sort of a schedule of how that's going to roll out over the year and what the target objective dates are. i would also like to suggest that somebody from the public and the people who are going to be affected by the efficiency of this system, that their input is part and parcel of the process because i think it's process because i think it's fair to say right now they are