it, and it will be a challenge. we did propose to change it. i would also note that a big drag is less so on the rate of pay is really the number of hours if they work, if you look at the survey. in general, firefighters work 56 hours a week in the state, and in the region. in san francisco, they work 48.7. that is actually in the charter and the labor contract. we cannot change it. if we change it in labor negotiations, it does not help but because it is enshrined in the charter. i see that as a major driver. >> -- president chiu: supervisor farrell? supervisor farrell: thank you. i appreciate you looked at the numbers and over the long haul,

more overtime does make sense. everyone is under the gun this year fiscally and there are a lot of pension negotiations happening. i would just say that we have to look did that right away as we think of the potential of bringing in new class is coming getting that ball rolling, what ever they may be -- bringing in new classes. president chiu: from my perspective -- supervisor campos: from my perspective, i would rather budget in terms of the overall budget, make sure it is an accurate, realistic budget, instead of budgeting over time. i understand there are efficiencies. but i think that is better from a public policy standpoint, a better way of budgeting. in terms of staffing, chief,

what is the plan going forward? for the department in terms of bringing staffing up to allow all wear over time could be lower -- where overtime could be lowered? >> the plan is to match new hires with the number of people retiring. our target is someone off. we've not been able to hire in 36 years. we will bring in new firefighters beginning next month. our projection for next year, clearly we have been given the direction. we have the same amount of overtime budgeted for next year. if i am hearing from you -- and it is good news for me -- if you would support bringing in more fte's, then i would much prefer

doing that. not to the old days of 1782, but we will look at that. we do have the good work of dhr. right now, i do not believe we have a new class scheduled to come in in the fiscal year. i am happy to work with all of you. again, i think it is appropriate we raise this, as we are supposed to go before budget and finance in the next week. in yen, -- in the end, the budget will increase slightly. we can do that' analysis for yo. supervisor campos: i think there may be differences of opinion on this committee, but i would rather have a realistic budget as opposed to relying on

overtime to provide a service. one issue is the number of hours worked. she mentioned the 48-hour number. as that is compared to other jurisdictions. chief, what is your thought on that? that seems to be a significant difference. >> we run about 100,000 calls per year. it is pretty challenging. it has come up in the past, in the recent past. your colleagues have looked at this issue. currently, it is tied to the charter language. the 40 cents -- it would require a change in the charter language. i believe we work -- the work week for the sentences go firefighters is 48.7. i believe that is the lowest in the state. the membership to assist with

the deficit, they want to a 56- hour workweek. san jose is also at 56. they have seen wage reduction voted by the membership. it is something that has been looked at. it is obviously opposed by the membership in local 798. again, when we are looking at solutions, there's a lot of discussion. >supervisor campos: president chiu? president chiu: i would like to respond to our chair's comment. there is a situation where firefighters are receiving packages that are more than their counterparts in other jurisdictions, i do not know which is the more difficult decision. whether to charge a lot more overtime or hire more folks.

neither perspective is a good choice. we have to figure out at a time when you're asking every department to share the burden and to fairly shoulder the burden of our budget deficit, how are we going to do it? it is a problem. supervisor campos: i understand the point president chiu is making. from my perspective, we can learn from the private sector. in private sector, if you are a business owner, you try to make sure you have the right level of staffing to reduce your overtime. i think it is complicated given the benefits package here, but i think we need to have that discussion. the fact we are facing a budgetary crisis provides an opportunity for us to do that. >> i am happy to work with you and continue to work with partners in the controller's office and dhr and try to come

up with solutions. >supervisor campos: just to wrap up the presentation. i think it would be helpful to get the analysis from the hr department and from the controller's office. and we will bring you back so we can have additional discussion. >> and i believe the controller's office does have that analysis. dhr does not. we can assist. just to read same -- reframe what you are asking, it is an analysis of overtime? supervisor campos: absolutely, but also issues of staffing, and five years ago we were at 20.6 million, and just to have a better understanding of how we got suit -- >> the quick answer is we have

dropped by 369 employees in a six-year period. i am happy to work todhr on details related to that. president chiu: ms. callahan. >> do you want me to go through this? president chiu: it is up to you. i want to have an analysis of whether overtime is more cost- effective and whether the larger staff was able to keep overtime lower. i think it would be helpful for us to have an understanding of what the right level of staffing should be going forward, the implications for that and in terms of overtime, so we have a sense of the numbers. you know, part of the fear we have and in hiring more people is that implicates larger

benefits, more costly. at the same time, as supervisor farrell indicated, we're going forward budgeting through overtime. having a better sense of what the numbers are and the interrelationships between staffing and overtime from hr would be helpful. >> absolutely. president chiu: what we hear from the municipal transportation agency. -- why don't we hear from the municipal transportation agency? mta. >> hi. i am terri williams. unfortunately i do not have an official presentation because we thought someone from transit would be here to discuss in more detail.

i am here to answer any questions you may have as far as our overtime issue. president chiu: i know my colleagues probably have questions, but looking at the presentation from the comptroller's office and in 2005 -- in 2005, the mta was spending $21 million on overtime. now you are projected at $55 million. that is $5 million more than was projected. so, what's going on? you are moving in the wrong direction, at least based on the numbers. >> we were. if you look at the most recent on this track, you can see that in favor of 318, we have started

to move back down. i can give you a history of fiscal year 2011, but i want to bring your attention to the fact that in 2005 that mta, and we started to incorporate toprop a, -- incorporate with prop a, that ross and differences. we started with service reductions. then we restored the service. excuse me? oh. st. francis circle in the summer, going into the fall. most of our overtime issue is attributed, 91% to transit operations.

the other 9% would be in other areas. the most basic problem we have been having so far is paratransit has been drivers. we have ramp up -- so far is our transit has been drivers. we have ramped up. we have an accelerated program with one class that has completed. the success rate in our classes has been 61%. we doubled our numbers up to 40. we definitely need to have more operators on the road. we have to go ahead and have these drivers keep up with services. we do not want any disruption. that often includes maintenance. no maintenance to keep up the videos -- the vehicles. when we did our last two-year budget, we eliminated 263

positions. that is one of the problems. a lot the more in the maintenance division. that happened to some of them. doing the street line projections, i do not think it is actually -- the straight line projections, i cannot think it is actually correct, because we had the anomaly of a lot of special events. like the play off games. that was another reason. so to do a straight line projection, but would probably not be as accurate, because we had a one-time situation that was there. president chiu: ms. williams, i do not know how other members of the committee feel about this, but it would seem to me that both the committee and the agency, and perhaps the public, would benefit if we had a presentation from the mta that in detail explains what is

happening. i would certainly like to see it, hear it directly from mr. ford. i know he could not be here. supervisor farrell? supervisor farrell: i completely agree. we have volumes of paper. people read through the numbers, to have an oral description of what is happening. this is a big deal. i think we would appreciate a written presentation and either mr. ford or ms. bose to walk through it. >> and that can be arranged. i can secure that. we thought that this was being handled by our transit services section. that is where most of the overtime lies, and we thought it would be able to come up with a better detailed presentation.

supervisor farrell: president to? president chiu: i would concur with my colleagues. i know you are simply the manager -- who are simply the messenger. there's a pattern of the mta not cooperating with the board of supervisors. i agree with my colleagues that we probably should have a separate time period for a written presentation. supervisor campos: thank you, ms. williams. again, you are simply the messenger. >> thank you. supervisor campos: you are welcome any time. [laughter] i think we do need to hear from mr. ford. hopefully mr. ford is watching. now we will hear from our police department. >> [unintelligible]

as you have seen with the trends, -- better? supervisor campos: yes. >> the police department has made huge cuts in the number of overtime hours of the last four or five years. from 300,000 hours in the fiscal year 2007, and we are projecting 86,000 hours for the current fiscal year. if you have any questions, we would be happy to address them. supervisor campos: supervisor farrell? supervisor farrell: how are you doing it? we're seeing other lines and other agencies, what ever the best practices are from your point of view, i think we would run -- we would love to learn. >> team met -- the main difference is we have been able to pull on duty resources for events in the community, where other departments are required to have an individual at a

specific location for a specific amount of time. it is really shifting resources away from one activity onto another activity. that is the majority of it. supervisor farrell: and i know one of the things coming up this year is the drop program from the police department. absent that, it would be significantly higher than it is right now? >> absent the drop program? i do not think it would have an impact in the coming fiscal year because people are still able to sign up for the drop program even if it is canceled. so, if the life of the program goes for three years beyond the end date of sign up. supervisor farrell: right. let's think generically. if those officers were not there. >> yes. definitely fewer officers over time. we would want recruits. we would want new officers.

it is not dropped for overtime. it is really officers were overtime. -- it is not drop or overtime. it is really officers or overtime. supervisor campos: is in a follow-up on supervisor farrell 's question. the police department has a staffing mandate. and yet, not withstanding, you are reducing overtime. so, it would be interesting to find out exactly how it is that this trend is going in the right direction here, but not in the other departments? >> again, i think the requirements the chief was talking about earlier are the main difference. police are able to reallocate resources. and so, we have taken resources

to cover the activities that had been done with overtime previously. supervisor campos: going forward, what do you expect? i know the budget is not before us, but do you expect this trend to continue? reduce the overtime going? >> i believe the trend in ours is to keep the same staff we have now. we can continue at the level that exists. it is extremely, extremely low. whereas, approximately 2% of the hours worked overtime compared to our regular staffing, and so the ability to decrease more, i do not believe exists. if we can keep the same staffing yet now, i think we can continue with where we are. supervisor campos: one of the

things we have to do with respect to the police department is there is an interest on the part of a number of us to have more foot patrols and enhance community policing. at some point, we need to have a discussion about what that means in terms of overtime staffing. that is something we need to discuss down the road. colleagues, if any other questions for the police department? thank you very much. >> thank you. supervisor campos: if we now hear from the public health department? is he here? hello. >> good morning, supervisors. i did bring a couple of charts that might be helpful regarding what is happening in the health department. can we push a button or something?

there we go. this chart -- this is a 10-year history -- supervisor campos: if you could speak into the microphone. >> i am sorry. this is the 10-year history of our overtime expenditures. there is a dramatic decrease in recent years. there's a little this year for a projected $10.5 million. the increase this year i would attribute to a couple of things over the last two. overall is the impact of additional furlough days that we can negotiate with our employees and a 24/7 operation in a hospital when someone is not there, so we have to back fill a position. that is one of the issues that has had a bit of an effect on overtime. the other is, as we moved to the new facility in laguna honda, we had a transcendent -- transition

budget that enabled us to manage the occupancy in the new facility and the movement of patients and all the rest. it was a planned use of overtime to fund a portion of our transition costs. and the reason it has been lower over the last three years, what i would attribute that to, is we have worked out a very good, expedited relationship with the mayor's office and the comptroller's office to get our vacancies filled in our hospitals quickly. there are no barriers to getting approvals or requisitions. so that enables us to make sure we fill our vacancies and we are able to staff with regular salaries and not rely on overtime when vacancy rates get high. also, a little bit less of a problem, there was a shortage of

nurses. no vacancies in nursing unable to address more effectively and in recent -- we have had vacancies in nursing we have been able to address more effectively and in recent years. to put this in more perspective, the reason we are on the top 5 list is we are the biggest department in the city. we will have the most overtime dollars by the nature of our size. when you look at overtime spending as a percentage of our salaries, this chart here compares the lower line is our department spending on salaries. the top line is the citywide average on salaries. you can see we are way below the citywide average. there are many departments, smaller departments and larger departments whose rates are much higher than ours. so, i think we have actually been pretty effective in managing overtime overall.

i do not think there are any health department names on the list of people who had exceeded hours required. so, we are also managing the number of hours the individual can charge. happy to answer any questions. just one other thing -- we have a supplemental appropriation coming in the near future. there will be a hearing on that. we will be able to provide a full explanation of what those positions are. i do not think they are associated with overtime in this particular context. supervisor campos: how are you doing in the number of overtime hours budgeted? >> i believe we touched on this. we have always had a smaller

budget for overtime and our actual overtime has run. there has always been a $3 million differential between budget and actual. that is not unusual for us. our feeling is we do not want to plan overtime. our desire is to plan to hire and fill and staff. i do not particularly subscribe to the theory that overtime is cheaper. i think there are times when it makes sense, if you have unscheduled absences and need to felony on a short-term basis. it may make sense to -- and need to fill a need on a short-term basis. it may make sense to do it if it is appropriate. you need to make sure that health care staff are alert and on the job and regular employees are doing the job they need today. supervisor campos: thank you.

colleagues, any questions? finally, why don't we hear from the sheriff's department? good morning. >> supervisors, i am sure if jan dempsey on behalf of the sheriff. in salaries, are spending is staying flat between fiscal years. this is partially due in fact that one of our jails has closed and we've been able to reassign staff. there are still a number of vacancies in the apartment, but because of the one jailed being closed, we were able to get by without the increase in overtime as a result. our overtime is driven by mandatory staffing levels.

the minimum staffing levels in the jail is primarily where they are. we need them, definitely, as minimum staffing levels. we also have the impacts of who comes in the front door and who comes in at any given time, which we have no control over. we do our best to get as many people out of jail and into alternative to incarceration so we can keep that jail closed as long as possible. i will be happy to answer any questions. supervisor campos: i do not think we have any questions. this is headed in the right direction. you are half of were to were in the fiscal year 2005. >> there were some beginnings at the beginning of the fiscal year. these are flat line projections.

barring something unusual, there will be a lower projection. supervisor campos: thank you very much. colleagues, any comments, questions, anything else from staff? why don't we open it up to public comment. any member of the public who would like to speak. francisco decosta. >> supervisors, my name is francisco decosta. we need to put this in perspective. we're facing difficulties one comes to our economy. new supervisors -- i was watching him before i came here.

you were reviewing the fire department from the year 2006 until now. you do not need to be a rocket scientist to see why the cost in certain areas has gone so high. i am here to state one thing. our budget is $6.6 billion. you all know what is happening with the pensions. but this is what has to happen. department by department, those who work for our city have to comprehend and ask themselves, do they really want to work for our city