leslie katz. supervisor, welcome back to city hall. welcome back to the rules committee. thank you for being here. good afternoon. >> thank you very much for having me here. it is somewhat interesting to be on this side of the digest. i understand all the dilemmas you have been facing all morning with what has been proceeding before you. i also wanted to take the opportunity to thank supervisors alioto-pier and dufty for the service on the board. i know what a labor of love it is to serve the city, and something extraordinary to be able to do. thank you both for all you have done. supervisor campos, i wish you best on your continued term on the board. it was a tremendous honor to serve the city in that role and i am very honored to have the opportunity to continue to serve the city as a role in a member of the port commission,

especially at this incredible time before us. many people, i think, are very familiar with finally getting awarded the america's cup here in san francisco, which brings with it great opportunity but also great challenges. the figures that struck me, which a think are quite extraordinary for san francisco -- the america's cup will bring in approximately $1.40 billion in economic investment and benefits to the city, as well as providing approximately 9000 jobs. that means the port commission is going to have before it tremendous responsibility to ensure the stewardship on behalf of the city with respect to the development that takes place in coordination with the america's cup as well as other projects that are ongoing, ensuring that we honor the law recently passed as well for local hiring, which i think is again a great opportunity for us as a city. with the number of jobs coming

in, to be able to employ our local people. i know many of you in various different capacities, but i want to touch on some of my experiences that are relevant to serving on the porch. my mother reminded me, coming full circle, that my father had been the solicitor of the maritime commission in the kennedy and johnson administrations. when nixon took office, we moved as far away physically and spiritually as we could, to berkeley in 1969. [laughter] it was touching to receive the nomination and be able to go full circle with something my father had always cared so passionately about and instilled in me. my first involvement on a city commission are in advisory group was when mayor agnes appointed me to the hunters point shipyard citizens' advisory committee. in that capacity, way back, we are still revisiting many of the issues that were around then -- cleanup, economic development,

hiring, and figuring out how the city will be best served by projects on some of their last remaining space. i served on that committee before moving to the san francisco community college board of trustees. again, i think my tenure on the board of trustees demonstrated by ability to reach up to a variety of communities and be aware of the myriad of issues that come before a city body. then of course i joined the board of supervisors. as you know, you have to become experts in a broad variety of issues. i hope that while i served on the board i was able to bring my legal background, having worked in representing design professionals and a large public-works projects as well as some public agencies, but having worked in representing employees who are discriminated against in the workplace. i was able to bring those varied law practices to my work on the board, where i had an open-door policy. as a member of the port commission, i will be able to

continue to reach out to the broad communities of san francisco, to be open, available, and transparent in the work, because we have quite a task before us. as a former member of the board, i recognize how important it is to keep a strong dialogue with the board so we all know what is happening as we move forward. this will be a fast-moving project and we want to make sure it is done right to benefit the city as we move forward. supervisor campos: i do have a question for ms. moyer, if i may. one of the things that i wanted to know about was the current makeup of the port commission. my understanding is that there are usually five members. i am wondering if you can talk about how many you have currently. i know there are a number of things that need to happen in a very short term. so the issue of making sure the port commission has a quorum is something i am definitely worried about. >> thank you. for the record, monique and

moyer, port of san francisco. thank all of you for your tremendous support in helping us work through a myriad of details on the america's cup. it is going to be something for the generations, i think. it is not going to be easy. it is going to be complicated. with respect to the port commission, there are five members. there have been vacancies since july 1, actually, when the maid terms expired and the 60-day hold over. expired. -- when the may terms expired and the 60 day holdover expired. i am concerned about another delay. we have so much work to do for the america's cup. the sooner we can get everybody up to speak, the better. all of us as departments need to submit our budgets to the mayor's office. we are one of the budgets that go early. we start our budget hearings in

early february. i do not know how much of a delay this is. going forward, there are budgetary impact on the part by the america's cup that are not routine. if i could compel you to think about that, it would be very helpful. the port's business is extremely complex. a look in my resin they would tell you that i had very little -- a look in my resume would tell you that i had very little experience in the business report does, but it takes somebody who is committed, engaged, and able to do complex thinking, but also to be in coordination with the community. that has been really important to us with commissioner fong, commissioner brandon, and many others. we've been fortunate to have a good breed of commissioners. but those empty seats are important to us. i hope that answers your question. supervisor campos: thank you. supervisor alioto-pier: i am curious. i know that crowley was just

put on and is new. i believe the commissioner brandon came on two years ago. >> a year ago. she will be finishing up her first year at this may, the first year of a four year term. supervisor alioto-pier: commissioner lazarists has two more years? >> yes. supervisor alioto-pier: for my own thinking, we have three solid commissioners through the america's cup currently. >> through 2013? yes. at least through everything we need to do by our deadline. supervisor alioto-pier: i am asking the question to make sure we do not have someone else -- anyway. thank you. supervisor dufty: i briefly wanted to add some welcoming remarks for supervisor katz and think lesley for incredible service on the board. i was a board aid and worked in

neighborhood service during her tenure, and she was an incredibly substantive member of the board. be she did an incredible job of bringing those business interests together with the city, helping us understand it, really being mayor brown's point person. with the transition to district elections as a proud resident, there was a longstanding supervisor, and not often in public life do you see someone get back and accord someone that respect that tom was deserving, not seeking to just pick up roots and move somewhere else, although probably over time, she did come to live in my district, but i just sensed that lesley

is really an incredible member of the public family in san francisco and a longstanding member of the democratic central committee, someone who did not just get on the central committee in order to get somewhere and let it go. she stayed there as a stalwart democratic and someone who has made a significant contribution. i know so many people in the community have reached out to me, to be sure that i knew how important it was to see someone of her accomplishment, someone of her integrity, and someone of her capability have this opportunity. supervisor mar: i was just going to thank supervisor katz as well. i appreciate your interest. i think you would bring tremendous depth of experience to the commission, especially during this critical america's cup period. i see you as a problem solver,

but also someone who believes in strong community engagement, community relations. you were also one of the nominees today that i'm supportive of, and not continuing, especially given what monique just said about the need for as full report commissioned as possible as we move toward the america's cup. i appreciate your enthusiasm as well. supervisor campos: thank you. i know we're going to take public comment, but i do believe it is important to us to make sure that we have as full a complement of that commission as possible, and i think that the sooner we act on any of those vacancies, the better. what a better way to do it than with someone who has the experience of having served on this very body. why don't we open it up to public comment? is there any member of the public who would like to speak? please come forward. we continue to be joined by the

commissioner of the board of education. >> briefly, i wanted to thank you both for your service, and i feel luckyo have senior here today and be able to express that, so thank you very much, and good luck. i also want to let you know that i'm supportive of leslie katz in all of her public service. i think she would be a wonderful complement for commissioner, at -- to the current four commissioners, and particularly at this crucial time, we need someone with that experience and with the ability to negotiate and understand public service, private sector coming together

for such a big event, but there is a theme, for me, that means true with lesley, as it also has done for the other appointments that i'm here to support today. mr. courtney, ms. bridges, and ms. katz has an incredible an uncanny ability to reach across the boundaries of political spectrum, community spectrum and engage in the discussion in the argument in the conversation, and that is why i'm here standing before you to support her. i wanted to let you know that i'm in support of her nomination. thank you very much. supervisor campos: 9 you, commissioner. next speaker please. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i've been a resident of san francisco for 55 years, and for 24 of those years, i've been a supervising deputy attorney general. i've done litigation, appeared

before many boards and commissions. i know lesley professionally and personally, and i have to give you full disclosure -- she is my daughter-in-law. there are probably not very many mother-in-law's who would come before you advocating for her daughter-in-law, which shows what a quality person you have before you, and i volunteered for this. leslie is a fantastic person, the most competent professional person i know. there is a running joke in our family. anytime anybody need something done, call lesley, and she gets it done. you have heard from her, and i've heard from you. she's enormously devoted to public service. she's worked tirelessly in all kinds of things with no compensation at all. she loves san francisco, and i know she wants to do everything possible to help san francisco. on a personal level, she is just a wonderful person, would

be fantastic to work with. she is very collegial, very easy to get along with, and i would enthusiastically add my voice to all of you who supported her nomination. supervisor campos: thank you. is there any other member of the public who would like to speak? yes. >> sue hester. may 1, there were three seats open on the port commission. the mayor did not do anything with them for an awfully long time. then one commissioner moved on to i believe the fire commission, and after he had been confirmed, the president of the board commission was surprisingly moved to the planning commission. that shocked everybody. we have had these rolling vacancies. this is the last appointment

made by the mayor on this very powerful, extraordinarily important commission. at the beginning of this hearing, you said you were going to defer making a lot of decisions. this nomination was made the first of december. this hearing was notified thursday. for today. no one knows about it. you have to be really obsessive to find out about a hearing over a holiday weekend. i really think that's a port commission, given its magnitude -- there should be a little bit more thought given to it so that people can have a chance to really raise issues, and you can ask the full range of questions. i do not see why this has to be voted on tomorrow. that is my point. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you. is there any other member of the

public who would like to speak? seeing none, public comment is closed. colleagues? supervisor alioto-pier: i would like to make a motion to send this forward to the full board as a committee report with approval. supervisor campos: we take that without objection. thank you. madam clerk, is there any other business before the committee? >> no, mr. chair. supervisor campos: thank you very much. the meeting is adjourned.

because we have a great waste water system here in san francisco, we do about 80 million gallons of waste water here in san francisco, which means we basically fill up 120 olympic sized swimming pools each and every day here in the city. we protect public health and safety and environment because we are discharging into the bay and into the ocean. this is essentially the first treatment here at our waste water treatment facility. what we do is slow down the water so that things either settle to the bottom or float to the top. you see we have a nice selection of things floating around there, things from bubble gum wrappers, toilet paper, whatever you dump down the toilet, whatever gets into our storm drains, that's what

gets into our waste water treatment and we have to clean. >> see these chains here, this keeps scum from building up. >> on this end in the liquid end basically we're just trying to produce a good water product that doesn't negatively impact the receiving water so that we have recreation and no bad impact on fish and aquatic life. solids is what's happening. . >> by sludge, what exactly do you mean? is that the actual technical term? . >> it's a technical term and it's used in a lot of different ways, but this is organic sewage sludge. basically what it is is, oh, maybe things that come out of your garbage disposal, things

that are fecal in nature. it's sludge left in the water after the primary treatment, then we blend those two over and send them over to digestion. this building is built to replace tanks here that were so odoriferous they would curl your hair. we built this as an interim process. >> is there a coagulant introduced somewhere in the middle of this? . >> this coagulant brings solids together and lets the water run through. that gives us more time in the digestion process, more time to reduce the amount of solids. these are the biggest ones in the world, like we always like to do in san francisco. they are 4 meter, there's none like it in the world. >> really? wow. >> three meters, usually. we got the biggest, if not the best. so here we are.

look at that baby hum. river of sludge. >> one of the things is we use bacteria that's common in our own guts to create this reduction. it's like an extra digestion. one of the things we have to do to facilitate that is heat that sludge up and keep it at the temperature our body likes, 98.6 degrees. >> so what we have here is the heat exchanger for digester no. 6. these clog up with debris and we're coming in to -- next wet weather season so we always come through here, clean them out, make sure that we get maximum heat exchange during the colder wet weather. sludge season. >> rubber glove. >> right here. >> rubber glove, excellent. all right, guys. >> thank you.

>> good luck. >> this is the full on hazmat. . >> residual liquid. we're taking it time to let it drain. we don't want to get sludge on it necessarily. take your time. stand on the side of it. . >> should we let it release for a while? . >> let it release. >> is that the technical term? . >> this is the most important bolt on the whole thing. this is the locking bolt. it locks this thing right in place. so now. >> take your hammer and what we want to do, we get rag build up right in here.

the hot water recirculates right in here, the sludge recirculates in here. the sludge sometimes has rags in it. all we want to do is go around the clean the rags. let me show you how. take the slide hammer, go all the way through the back, go around. >> got you. >> during the real rainy season, how does that change the way dealing with this job? is it a lot more stuff in there? . >> what we do, charles, we do this quarterly. every four months we go around and clean all the heat exchangers so we don't have a large build up. . >> go around? . >> yeah.

(sound of hammering). >> what i'm trying to do, charles, is always pull it out on the low stroke. >> right. so you are not, like, flying out. now talk about clean up. . >> then where does this stuff get deposited? . >> we're going to dump it in a debris box and it will go back to the plant. >> if you think back, the romans came up with a system of plumbing that allowed us it use water to transport waste away from the hub of civilization, which enabled cities to grow. . >> you have a large bowl, a drive motor and another motor with a planetary gearbox with

differential pressure inside there. the large mass up there spinning separating the solids from the liquid. we have to prevent about once a month, we go in there grease those, change the oil, check the vibration levels. the operators can tell just by the hum of that machine that it's a harmonic noise emitted that it's out of balance and the machine needs to be cleaned. it will start vibrating and we have vibration analysis machines that will come over here and check the levels. so it's kind of an on-going thing that you have to stay on top of on a daily basis. >> handled properly, you take organic residuals, as we call them, that are leftovers of our society and turn them back into

some energy. and we have another ability to take that sludge and get a nutrient value for crops there. we actually are running a kind of composting energy recovery system. >> well, this is a dirty job. we try to do it safely and we try to do it without imposing too much on the public. people want to flush their toilets and have things go away and not be bothersome again. we do a lot to try to accomplish that. i'd like to invite you to come back any time you want. once you got this in your blood, you are not going to be able to stay away. the raging waters are fun and when we do digester cleaning i really hope you can come back. that's quite a sight. >> yeah, that sounds interesting. >> i really appreciate you coming by and it was a

>> welcome to culturewater. in 2001, the san francisco arts commission and tampa does go public library established an arts master plan for the city soon to be renovated branch library. almost 10 years later, the san francisco arts commission has integrated a collection of vibrant new artworks by bay area artists into five new libraries, and there is more on the way. here is a closer look at some of the projects. >> the branch library improvement program is a bond funded program undertaken by the san francisco public library to upgrade each of the branch libraries throughout the neighborhoods. one of the great benefits of

this opportunity is that each of these branches has a unique artwork that has been created specifically for that branch, based on input from people who live near that branch, in the surrounding neighborhood. >> trur- minded. there was a lot of community support for the project. i try to make it about the true hill and its history. they were something that natives used for making houses. the construction of the pond is based on abalone house construction. at the bottom of the form, it is woven into a rope which transforms into a manufactured

rope. that is a reference to the cordish company, a big industry at the waterfront that went along with the shipbuilding industry. other examples of art work in libraries that you might be interested in seeing it is dana zed's glass shatters in front of a library. there are a wall sculptures in the lobby of the glen park branch library. and then there is an illuminated book on the wall of the mission bay library. >> "ocean current." we are on ocean avenue, so there is a connection to that. that is what this is about.

culmination of all lot of dialogue, processing over a five-year period. that is longer than most art projects take, but i really feel like the product was enriched from that. making the sculpture involves forging and fabricating steel. we used to deal to create this flowing, central sculptor, heating, bending, grinding, painting, bending, and adding a patina to it. layers and layers of craftsmanship that went into this. >> of the artists who participated in this project are all bay area of projects. they work in a wide variety of media. metal, glass, natural elements, photography, just a range of different approaches and