>> i like to call the meeting of

the public utilities commission to order. >> [roll call] president vietor has an excuse to attendance. the next item is approval of the minutes of the special budget workshop meeting of january 13, 2011 and a special budget workshop meeting. >> any additions or corrections? all those in favor? it is approved. >> general public comment, members may address the public -- members of the public may address the commission on members -- items within our jurisdiction.

>> the afternoon, thank you for hearing me. i like to thank the general manager and staff. in support of the infrastructure development. i just wanted to introduce myself and provide an invitation to the public utilities commission for a conference to be held in coordination with the federal government tomorrow. information is in the folder. we have been in the improved labor compliance program. i am one of 40 certified

consultant in the state of california to provide assistance. we have been able to collect over $2 million or a correction meeting to be made. we are interested in facilitating contractors that are having problems making sure that the local hire requirements are fulfilled. we would like to express our support for that. it is certified by human-rights commission. i have a master's in public administration and contract compliance. the invitation is the first of

its kind. it is the first time in agency is taking the time to go into a community to look at the work force and other interested community members. specifically of interest, section 3 requirements that discusses what the federal government -- what regulations have been, creating the disadvantaged areas. i am hoping to see representatives tomorrow as it would have the information directly from back and available.

thank you. >> the next speaker card is from mr. jackson. >> good afternoon. i would like to say congratulations to the new commissioners that are here. i was here to support you at the last hearing downstairs. this is the first time that the department of labor is coming to san francisco. one of the reason for that is because of the passage of the local hiring. i refuse to wait another 40 years for san francisco department to come into

performance. i received a call before coming here today and i am really burned out. a department which is one of those work force ones. i named it to somebody. you know what? i am upset because what they don't seem to understand is that i pay their salaries. it is a slap in the face when the u.s. department coming from washington d.c. begins looking for information because i have known the lack of knowledge, and i know you have people watching

this meeting today. do not allow miss jackson to file a complaint against your department. >> the information provided to us, is there a copy of the invitations to the they will have that information? >> we have a couple more speaker cards, but it might be related to what is on the agenda today. it would be the approval of the budget. i believe that is the topic you wish to address. >> we will be accepting public comment on that item. anybody else that has public testimony on something that is not on the agenda today?

>> when is the meeting going to be held? >> tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. to 12:00. people will, and to mingle with the people. -- people will come and me go with the people. the agency, the cbo's. >> do you know who is coming from the department of labour? >> you can call and she will give you the name of the lady that is coming. >> secretary solis isn't coming?

she was my former chief of staff. >> it is nice to see you back at our meetings, you haven't been here for a while. >> some of the staff came to receive me. i had a kidney removed in november. so yes, that is good. they are keeping me healthy to do what i am doing here today, to let them know that playtime is over. >> i don't believe we have any other speaker cards, mr. president. commissioners have received an electronic copies, this will be

the time when commissioners might make a request related to the advanced calendar. >> please call the next item. >> any new business the commissioners wish to bring out. >> any new business? >> the next item will be the report of the general manager. >> before we get into the local higher ordinance, we have a lot of the weather related issues, how the weather is affecting our facility.

>> we wanted to give you a quick update on the weather. we have had a number of precipitation events the last couple of days. a couple of things happen in our system that you don't know about. this is getting an idea of the practice, giving us precipitation in the bay area. to give you an idea, this is the reservoir. this is where you can see the snow in very visibly.

it is difficult to drive across it because of the snow. we had a tree cut down, it went down at 10:00 at night. it trick off our units. we were able to reroute the power for a couple of hours. making sure that none of the trees fall back into the yard again. it happened in the middle of the night. what happens down in the bay area, it did rain quite a bit. we had about an inch and a half or 2 inches. i wanted to show you the new system that we have, something that we call storm watch.

the green dots are calls we have received, and we have no information on the ground. somebody has called and said there is flooding. the orange dots are things we have assigned another priority to. we also sort of have the traffic disruptions. that was interesting. what we're really concerned is the red triangles. they have some other class's, one notably that the crew has responded to.

the of the thing about the system is that if you come today, we don't have any green dots. we can clear the base, we can secure the site, we have a crew going to the store because it is collapsed. we are able to respond and keep track. this is called a storm watch. we have it in place any time a storm is on the horizon. we work with the department of public works to be able to respond to citizens' request. now we have the outlook for next weekend. the crew will be on standby. hopefully, we won't run into as many instances as we did over

the last storm. this is pretty typical of what we see. -did you say that this dtw shares the same system? >> we have the inner city command structure. they're the one calling for resources until it enters private property. and we take over on that particular site. we have the bureau of street and sewer repair. >> i received some calls regarding vernal heights.

>> we were working there? we might have had a main site. it is not showing up based on storm watch. we actually have those -- >> it looks like muddy water. >> we have those as well. >> the water is under pressure, so water is just flowing. i wanted to give you an update on the local hire ordinance.

this introduces legislation related to this. the local hire ordinance that was adopted by the board of supervisors goes into effect for any project after march 25. we're working on the rules and regulations that will accompany that. if it happens after march 25, we will see the awards for several months later. you should be starting with the goal of 20%, and that should grow about 5% a year until about 50%. the first way you comply with that is by having every trade have 20% of the people working that many hours. about half of those should be disadvantaged.

there are other ways that you can meet this goal. one is by working with work- force development so that next time, it is more than you can have. another way is a specialty trade. it really is almost impossible to get local people to be employees that can work on some of those traits. you can get credit in some instances for hiring people on the non-city jobs. you can get some credit for that. we haven't quite worked that out yet in terms of how that works for them. incentives and penalties that are called for, those are asked to be looked at. one of the things that is lost

on many people, in working with the board of supervisors, there were a number of instances where we thought that something could cause a problem. the work with us to really try to make sure that it is x -- as successful as possible. one is that any project, [unintelligible] for the water system improvement program, they have accepted it. there was conversation about whether this would apply to projects that are part of a water system improvement project. it does not apply to projects where there is federal and state money. you can apply it to the local side, but not the federal and state. it also only applies to the

share that we pay for. again, that was put in their for the work with the wholesale customers. about 2/3 of the water, 1/3 is paid for. we would only apply this to the ones that we pay for. if there was a project next month, we would get about one employee for every 15. it would be 20% to our 1/3 of the project. when it gets fully loaded, it will be about one in six. i don't think it was intended to cause problems for our

customers, but we wanted to make sure that you were aware that it only applies to a certain part of it. another area says if there is a project more than 70 miles from the city, the definition of local is expanded to meet either local to san francisco or a person that lives or works in the region where the project will take place. that means it would be open to people living and working in that area. it is the same 20% growing to 50%. this means the single biggest part is the source system. so much is paid for by the people of san francisco. that is pretty much all of the source system improvement projects. over the next 10 years, looking

at the city capital program, they assumed about 40% of the funds will be puc projects. that is why we are working on it right now. we are working to make sure that we have the legislation, the rules, and the procedures in place to take care of it. we also have people working on the working groups. we're also trying to make sure that it doesn't add an additional cost. we already have some fairly onerous types of positions in working with the human rights commissions. they're working with our department to give us that information. this simply gets incorporated

into that. everybody in the city will share that as opposed to adding to that. we are trying to use this as a way to streamline the contract as opposed to add more. we want to continue [unintelligible] but also getting into the goal of having local people for the project. we want to make sure they are aware of this. we have people here that are expert in this. we will answer any questions that you have. >> will this be achievable? >> the problem has been when we

say that you must use locals. it is hard to get companies in san francisco to do a project. the whole of larger area makes it much easier. that is one of the issues we will have to come across. sometimes it will be easier for others to meet these requirements. it has been a fairly good local source of higher. -- hire. >> they have indicated with this legislation that he wants to limit any implementation of projects here in the city if they have state funds. what is our response going to be with that?

>> we have exempted the federal under his legislation? >> very little would be affected in the legislation because we are not doing the things he believes we are doing. >> have we communicated with jerry? >> yes, and we communicated with staff before he introduced the legislation. >> did not do any good? >> no. in fairness, there are some projects that would be different. the demolition of the old jail would fall under this. again, if that happened in the next year, it would be asking san franciscans to have one out of every 15 jobs. that does not seem to be owners. most of the jobs of funded by the federal government and most are covered by a profit labor agreement, so they would be exempted, but some would be covered by this. the coverage is important, but

it is not overwhelming. >> is our position going to be neutral? it does not have an impact as much on us, but maybe of the departments? >> part of it, too, is that other places in the state have local hire ordinances, and we generally do not think you should be trying to apply this one size fits all blanket prohibition. that concludes the report. >> any public comment? >> my name is espanola jackson again. there is a lot of confusion concerning local hiring. i would like the state -- the reason this came about is because of the fact that my husband -- he was an electrician, and he worked for hetch hetchy. this was in the 1960's, but he

was unable to join the union because the books were closed to minorities at that time. we have been following what has been going on in san francisco since redevelopment came in as good faith effort. we have had the faith in san francisco, but there has not been an effort to hire people that live here in san francisco. a statement has been made -- this is the reason why i say it is very important that you have your representatives at that meeting tomorrow because the statement that was made about federal contracts -- it has been on the books since 1958 to deal with local hiring, and guess what? nobody seems to know anything about it. this is the reason why -- and the name that wanted to say that said they were not coming is a city built -- is citybuild.

i not see anywhere where you city agencies are talking about including in this the cbo's in the community where the people go to those agencies for jobs. why should people, all the way from other communities to work at city hall when they can do that in the community what they have been doing. i am tired of the duplication. we are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for people to sit up here at city hall, but we are only giving a little bit to the community. this has to stop. dpw -- i was at a meeting and human rights the other night, and they said the contracts they did before the 25th comes to not apply. yes, it does apply. that is the reason why you need to have people at that meeting tomorrow to get the information.

because the federal government has on its books section 3, and i think it might be in the package you have got there. that is the section about local hiring. but, you know, people turn their heads. i have problems with these compliance officers that are supposed to be doing a job for the people in san francisco, and they are not doing it. i want to know -- are they certified? if not come get them certified. get them to do the job they're supposed to be doing, the money they are making. the shares they are sitting on are the ones i have paid for here at city hall. thank you. >> to clarify -- one reason the federal government was exempted from this is because it has its own set of requirements that have been in existence. >> thank you. any other comments? if not, please call the next item. >> next item would be