card holders and have not received any negative feedback. supervisor chu: thank you. why do we open this item up for public comment. are there any members of the public who wish to speak on item number eight? public, disclosed. do we have a motion to send this item forward with recommendations? questions? supervisor mirkarimi: on the candlestick parking lots, what are the increases from? it says the daily fee per vehicle and trailers will be $1,000 per day for candlestick parking lot events for various trade shows, it will be $5,000 per day. >> that section of the code is not being amended. those rates are set and not being amended. >supervisor mirkarimi: i was not

sure why that was in here. motion to accept. supervisor chu: we have a motion to send this item ford and seconded. we can do that without objection. item #9. >> hearing to consider the annual review and adoption of the proposed board of supervisors/clerk of the board of fiscal year 2011-2012 budget. supervisor chu: we have the clerk here for this item. >> good afternoon members of the budget and finance committee. i am the clerk of the board. two weeks ago, february 9th, i both provided the budget guidelines and presented the proposed budget in what may have been excruciating detail. the committee subsequently asked several follow-up questions that have resulted in some cost savings measures.

while i will not review the minute detail again from the previous hearing, with your approval, i would like to provide an overview of the changes. my initial budget proposal presented to weeks ago was $2.9 million, or $431,000 more than the current year. thank you. my initial budget proposal at that time, the increase was driven largely by two things -- fringe benefits, up by $300,000, and i.t. purchases which would be to maintain existing systems. at that hearing, i indicated finding cuts for the budget year would be difficult because over the last several years, we have taken the low hanging fruit and even deployed more difficult strategies. after that hearing, i met with every member of the board and

was able to find consensus around some savings ideas from the committee's questions that were not captured in my initial proposal. the first is a recommendation to reduce the advertising budget by $100,000. supervisor mirkarimi has defined the word summary. this would reduce the size and cost of the ads published in the newspaper. i also recommended the leading the newsletter software. as board members have indicated to me, they can forgo this purchase and will continue to use the free service. finally, i recommend phasing in over the next two years the replacement of 20 computers, which in the budget year will be eight years old, which will reduce our budget request by $10 million. -- excuse me -- $10,000.

the projected salary costs in the proposed budget have not changed today from november 9th. please note that there are no position upgrades or other increases from the current year with the exception of recognizing 10,000 worth of salaries in the budget and fringe costs from the aids job sharing which our current-year cost but not budgeted for. the proposed salary budget is 4.8% higher than the current year. while the difference is approximately $349,000, it is the increases to the fringe benefits which are truly driving

85% of the change. the fringe benefit cost numbers are not final, but they're based on the controllers budget instruction. the city's retirement is increasing from approximately 14% to 17% of the total salary. dependent coverage and dental benefits are also increasing by 10%. additionally, i included $40,000 in the bos budget to support fringe benefits which will come from job sharing. this will support for halftime position splits. the next slide it presents the non-salary costs. the actual non-salary budget is where you will actually see the decreases in the budget of $132,000. my initial budget proposal increased the non-salary budget by $82,000. today, you see the budget will

decrease by $50,000 due to the committee's questions and recommendations. the proposed budget adds nothing new. i'm grateful for the committee for raising this question of advertising. supervisor mirkarimi for introducing the legislation to redefine summary and the advertising budget is actually what is allowing us to absorb our cost increases in the department. addressing software licensing costs and the mailing cost increase in the aab. there are few other minor cost increases which preserve the same level of resources we currently have. the proposed budget by division -- it is $10.78 million. it's almost the identical to the estimate of fringe benefit cost

growth. as i have said, there is no new growth in terms of positions or initiatives as we are trying to be conscientious and responsible in another tough budget year. the changes in the salary budget that are not fringe- related are driven by the cost of existing staff. long termers in the department and aids going to beat seventh step. -- aides going to the seventh step. i am not going to go into the detail on this light, but it is worth placing on the overhead projector. the board has reduced its reliance on the general fund by 7.5% during this time shown on the slide from 2008-2009. the proposed budget should be considered in the context of prior year's reductions, some of which are listed on the slide. as we head into the last three

slides, a general overview about revenue budget is presented. over the past several years, the board has sought to increase non-general fund sources and as a result has more than doubled our sources of revenue since fiscal year 2008-2009. in that year, the total was two under $55,000 and now the total revenue is 5 under $76,000. for the budget year, i propose a $71,000 increase on top of that in the revenue budget which i described in more detail in the memo i presented on february 9th. -- the result of the budget proposal of dollars1 sign0.78 million will be an increase of to under $29,000. our general fund allocation will still be 5.4% lower than the allegations in 2008-2009.

finally, the proposed budget meets our mandates by maintaining our resources. the department requires its current level of staffing resources, the consulting contract, and minor non-salary budget to meet these requirements. with your direction, we have found additional savings. thank you for your attention today. i'm here to answer any questions. supervisor chu: which is thank you. any questions from the committee? just a few comments on our budget. i understand we're going to go into a process where we will submit a budget to the mayor's office and, over the course of the next few months, the mayor will propose a budget to us by june 1st. at that time, the board will have an opportunity to make changes to the budget, including our own department's budget. i want to say thank you to the clerk for all the work you put into putting this budget

together, particularly working with supervisor mirkarimi and supervisor campos and on the advertised rate -- advertising savings will be seeing coming forward. i think the work is not done with the budget. i would be happy to see a submit the budget into above request we continue the conversation on a few areas, perhaps as we proceed in a few months. my understanding is we do have four vacant positions that are currently funded. i would like to understand and ask the clerk to speak with members of the board about your vision of how you see that being structured into the future. how can we do things in a better way and whether there's an opportunity to look at those positions and understand what is necessary to fulfill the mission of the clerk's office going forward. i think that would be a helpful

conversation to have. in regard to the youth commission, we have about $150,000 that goes to the salary of the folks within the u.s. commission. we have long had a partnership with them but my understanding is there may be a separate entity that might be planning a similar role. if i could ask the clerk to work with the department to see if there's a possibility to look lot -- to look at the structures and see if there are opportunities for us to generate savings or combine them in order to generate savings or efficiencies there. that would be helpful as we go into the coming months. finally, on a minor point, with regard to our materials and supplies lines and equipment lines, if we can take a look at current and past years expenses and whether there is any opportunities where we may not be expanding all of those, it might be a good place to look. this is simply because, as we

are asking all departments to look underneath every single place they have, it's important for us to do the same exercise with our budget here. i think that would be a good thing to pursue. >> thank you. i have an active recruitment currently afoot with the administrative deputy and certainly seek permission to hire into deposition. that would leave the others blank to continue this conversation you're looking for to have here. supervisor chu: i think it would be fine with most folks here. >> thank you. supervisor chu: any other questions from the committee. why don't we open this item up for public comment. are there members of the public who wish to speak on this item? seeing none come up public comment is closed. then we can table this item, i believe -- file this item. without objection. thank you. do we have any other items

before us? >> that completes the agenda for today. >supervisor chu: thank you very much. we are adjourned.

>> there has been an acknowledgement of the special places around san francisco bay. well, there is something sort of innate in human beings, i think, that tend to recognize a good spot when you see it, a spot that takes your breath away. this is one of them. >> an icon of the new deal. >> we stood here a week ago and

we heard all of these dignitaries talk about the symbol that coit tower is for san francisco. it's interesting for those of us in the pioneer park project is trying to make the point that not only the tower, not only this man-built edifice here is a symbol of the city but also the green space on which it sits and the hill to which is rests. to understand them, you have to understand the topography of san francisco. early days of the city, the city grows up in what is the financial district on the edge of chinatown. everything they rely on for existence is the golden gate. it's of massive importance to the people what comes in and out of san francisco bay. they can't see it where they are. they get the idea to build a giant wooden structure. the years that it was up here, it gave the name telegraph hill. it survived although the

structure is long gone. come to the 1870's and the city has growed up remarkably. it's fueled with money from the nevada silver mines and the gold rush. it's trying to be the paris of the west. now the beach is the suburbs, the we will their people lived on the bottom and the poorest people lived on the top because it was very hard getting to the top of telegraph hill. it was mostly lean-to sharks and bits of pieces of houses up here in the beginning. and a group of 20 businessmen decided that it would be better if the top of the hill remained for the public. so they put their money down and they bought four lots at the top of the hill and they gave them to the city. lily hitchcock coit died without leaving a specific use for her bequest. she left a third of her estate for the beautify indication of the city. arthur brown, noted architect in the city, wanted for a while to build a tower. he had become very interested

in persian towers. it was the 1930's. it was all about machinery and sort of this amazing architecture, very powerful architecture. he convinced the rec park commission that building a tower in her memory would be the thing to do with her money. >> it was going to be a wonderful observation place because it was one of the highest hills in the city anywhere and that that was the whole reason why it was built that high and had the elevator access immediately from the beginning as part of its features. >> my fear's studio was just down the street steps. we were in a very small apartment and that was our backyard. when they were preparing the site for the coit tower, there was always a lot of harping and griping about how awful progress was and why they would

choose this beautiful pristine area to do them in was a big question. as soon as the coit tower was getting finished and someone put in the idea that it should be used for art, then, all of a sudden, he was excited about the coit tower. it became almost like a daily destination for him to enjoy the atmosphere no matter what the politics, that wasn't the point. as long as they fit in and did their work and did their own creative expression, that was all that was required. they turned in their drawings. the drawings were accepted. if they snuck something in, well, there weren't going to be any stoolies around. they made such careful little

diagrams of every possible little thing about it as though that was just so important and that they were just the big frog. and, actually, no one ever felt that way about them and they weren't considered something like that. in later life when people would approach me and say, well, what did you know about it? we were with him almost every day and his children, we grew up together and we didn't think of him as a commie and also the same with the other. he was just a family man doing normal things. no one thought anything of what he was doing. some of them were much more highly trained. it shows, in my estimation, in the murals.

this was one of the masterpieces. families at home was a lot more close to the life that i can remember that we lived. murals on the upper floors like the children playing on the swings and i think the little deer in the forest where you could come and see them in the woods and the sports that were always available, i think it did express the best part of our lives. things that weren't costing money to do, you would go to a picnic on the beach or you would do something in the woods. my favorite of all is in the staircase. it's almost a miracle masterpiece how he could manage to not only fit everyone, of course, a lot of them i recognized from my childhood -- it's how he juxtaposed and

managed to kind of climb up that stairway on either side very much like you are walking down a street. it was incredible to do that and to me, that is what depicted the life of the times in san francisco. i even like the ones that show the industrial areas, the once with the workers showing them in the cannery and i can remember going in there and seeing these women with the caps, with the nets shuffling these cans through. my parents had a ranch in santa rosa and we went there all summer. i could see these people leaning over and checking. it looked exactly like the beautiful things about the ranch. i think he was pretty much in the never look back philosophy about the coit.

i don't think he ever went to visit again after we moved from telegraph hill, which was only five or six years later. i don't think he ever had to see it when the initials are scratched into everything and people had literally destroyed the lower half of everything. >> well, in my view, the tower had been pretty much neglected from the 1930's up until the 1980's. it wasn't until then that really enough people began to be alarmed about the condition of the murals, the tower was leaking. some of the murals suffered wear damage. we really began to organize getting funding through the arts commission and various other sources to restore the murals. they don't have that connection or thread or maintain that connection to your history and your past, what do you have? that's one of the major elements of what makes quality

of life in san francisco so incredible. when people ask me, and they ask me all the time, how do you get to coit tower, i say you walk. that's the best way to experience the gradual elevation coming up above the hustle and bustle of the city and finding this sort of oasis, if you will, at the top of the hill. when i walk through this park, i look at these brick walls and this lawn, i look at the railings around the murals. i look at the restoration and i think, yeah, i had something to do with that. learning the lessons, thank you, landmarks meet landmarks. the current situation at pioneer park and coit tower is really based in public and private partnership.

it was the citizens who came together to buy the land to keep it from being developed. it was lily hitchcock coit to give money to the city to beautify the city she loved of the park project worked to develop this south side and still that's the basis of our future project to address the north side.>> hello. 9 judge terri l. jackson. the court is now recruiting prospective civil grand jurors.

our goal is to develop a pool of candidates that is inclusive of all segments of our city's population. >> the jury conducts investigations and publishes findings and recommendations. these reports them become a key part of the civic dialog on how we can make san francisco a better place to live and work. >> i want to encourage anyone that is on the fence, is considering participating as a grand jury member, to do so. >> so if you are interested in our local city government and would like to work with 18 other enthusiastic citizens committed to improving its operations, i encourage you to consider applying for service on the civil grand jury. >> for more information, visit the civil grand jury website at sfgov.org/courts or call

esident newlin: called to order the meeting of the entertainment commission. entertainment commission. please call the roll.