they are doing, but they are certainly not watching. thank you. supervisor avalos: next speaker please. >> i'm bob planthold. i have been involved in public safety affairs for years. first, i want to associate myself with the remarks about the under responsiveness to people with disabilities and give you some quick examples. everyone allows dpw to have paul patrol. why is there nothing on crosswalk fixing? everybody uses crosswalks. look at market and van ness, one of the original dangerous dozen. it is dangerous if you have a walker. i want to jump to what

supervisor avalos raised. the city has no lobbying presence in san francisco. we were successful with the police department. i cannot hear anything. san francisco is silent on pedestrian safety. the supervisors hafouhave four months left on the vacancy position for their committee. san francisco is just not responsive. it does not talk to other people. i worked with deputy directors at caltrain and i have weekly meetings from them. i do not hear anything from san francisco. people are insular, isolated, looking for game, not for the public benefit.

supervisor avalos: thank you. next speaker please. >> good morning. i am the deputy director at the mayor's office of disability. i only heard about the emphasis on pedestrian safety the last week. for the members of the mayor's office on disability not to be involved in discussions of pedestrian safety, when part of what we do is 88 accessibility, it is curious. -- dada accessibility, it is curious. unfortunately, we were not brought to the table when it comes to pedestrian measures. data collection is a key point for the disability community.

the majority of injuries happen in district 6. it is an area heavily populated by not only seniors, but by a feeble with disabilities. and when we have this data based on age, we really miss a huge segment of the population possibility to navigate. -- population's ability to navigate. many to be helping people with vision disabilities and cooperative impairment. children respond much better to crossing streets when they have an audible, too. of course, that also helps the blind community. what i am saying is we need to stop thinking about the disability community as another item that makes pedestrian

safety more expensive. also, as a way of incorporating funding and working together to create an environment that is more universally accessible and safe for everybody. thank you very much. supervisor avalos: thank you very much. what will be interesting to get from the mta is a report on what percentage of our intersections have audible cues, especially on the major thoroughfares. i was just out in the country and i was impressed with -- out of the country and i was impressed with spain. almost all of their crossings had audible cues. even in the east bay, you hear it more than san francisco. >> [inaudible] project since the 1980's.

the city of sacramento has developed a policy where every single pedestrian signal that is being installed has the capacity to have audible signals. the underfunding has been seen as a major obstacle here. but rather than separating agencies into silos, saying this is a dpw problem, this is an sfmta problem, we need to work together to make the best use of funding. the same thing four redevelopment agencies. when projects are being approved and planned, there is no coordinated planning effort that also looks at pedestrian safety and improvement. it is always done piecemeal. of course, that is not a fiscally efficient way to do the work. supervisor avalos: thank you.

i appreciate your bringing that up. >> and bridget smith, mta. we do have audible signals. we had 100 put in over the last few years. it is true, san francisco had not been putting them in. we went with a technology that sort of fell at a favor, but i'm happy to say that we have about 100, putting more in all the time. eventually, we will be making the entire city is accessible. hours are not the chirping-type. it is more of a rapid tat-noise. you may have heard that -- that ridiculous. when we developed it, we were working with leading experts in the nation who came up with an

approach that had yet to be adopted by the regulatory agencies. so we are on the right track and moving ahead after years of inaction. supervisor avalos: are we putting in the sounds everywhere there is a street light, at certain intersections? >> it will be at intersections with a traffic signal. i do not have the exact figure. we are putting more and all the time. it is on the website. people can make requests for certain locations. we're also putting them into new signals as they are being installed, pedestrian signals where we do not have them. eventually, the goal would be that every signalized intersections would have this audible cue. supervisor mar: i had a question about the countdown signals, more of a update around the

implementation by the city. i know we get calls from people around the city, saying that they believe they make things safer. >> absolutely. all of our traffic signals have pedestrian signals. all locations in the city that have a pedestrian signal have the countdown, but not all traffic signals have pedestrian signals yet. that is just the the level of funding. we have a $1.5 million project to install them in some of the locations with the worst crash records. as other projects and funding is found, we are trying to fill in the gaps. we are about 80% -- about 80% of our signals have them right now. we are trying to make the rest of that happened. supervisor avalos: thank you.

supervisor mar, any closing comments? supervisor mar: i just wanted to think the pedestrian safety advisory committee for their work and incredible recommendations. we have heard a number of them before. from the marriage directive from the year before, development of a master plan, a professor apedr plan, i will be working with my colleagues to make sure that we will be making san francisco the safest walking city in the country. but i know there is a long way to go. i wanted to recognize all the agencies for their advocacy and visionary pedestrian-driven policies. as the department said, money is a barrier, but as we look at other cities, and even as we look at the appendix of the report -- showing funding sources -- it will help us move

toward getting over those financial barriers. as was mentioned earlier, if we have a street song on the november ballot, my hope is that we would prioritize pedestrian safety. the data, working with the mayor's office of disability, disabled people organizations, it is critical. i am looking forward to advancing that an encouraging the psac to include in leadership, and in thinking about suggestions from our allies in the disabled community. lastly, it has been enlightening to see the report from the department of public health especially, the trauma center as well. all of the data and interagency cooperation will help us toward making san francisco a safe place to walk. supervisor avalos: thank you.

i appreciate your bringing this hearing forward. it has been very informative. i appreciate the time that has been taken to look at the report from the pedestrian safety advisory committee, coordination with dph, mta. this is just one hearing related to the psac report. if we could hear in a couple of months what has been done in the furtherance of pedestrian safety, if we could work on that, if supervisor elsbernd is interested, we could work and that together. ok. continue to the call of the chair, without objection. thank you, everyone, for your comments and participation in this hearing. we have two other items. madam clerk, please call item

eight. >> item 8. hearing on the controller's december 2010 government barometer issued on february 3, 2011, for an overview of the report and a summary of highlights and recent trends in the city's major service areas. supervisor avalos: ready to go?

>> good afternoon, supervisors. thank you for having has come in to talk about the comptroller's office report, the government barometer for february 2011. i want to take a couple of minutes to talk about the program that creates this report. the comptroller's office, for a number of years, has had ongoing performance measurement efforts. the program kicked off in 2007. the goal has always been to increase the use of performance measurement data among public officials, department heads, the entire city family, to make better resource allocation decisions. the main activities of the program have been providing consultation to the premise that wanted to better and more performance measurement, maintaining city-wide database

of performance data, ourselves, providing public reporting of performance data. as i mentioned, we house a citywide database of performance information. the database currently houses 11 measures across all city departments, so a pile of information. some of the report to come out of the database are the bimonthly government barometer, which really talking about. the mayor proposed budget also contains about five underperformance measures, just to give people when they are looking at -- a financial sense of the activities of the departments. every month, the comptroller issues a year and comprehensive measurement report, an excerpt of which was in the pack for the meeting. the comprehensive financial report contains a bit of performance data in the end. from this database, the comptroller's office does other reporting, including responding to ad hoc requests from the

public and supervisors. the program cost major initiatives for this fiscal year has been to improve our reporting, including through the government barometer report, and posting data on datasf. we are going through a data valuation effort. we are verifying that data in the city database can be verified by prayer resource information. in the database, we are making improvements to make data collection and analysis easier for the departments that use that data base. a couple of accomplishments for the program. we served 58% -- we served various departments and 50% saw them as an improvement.

seeing that the apartments are using it more is a good thing, of course. the international city county management association provides awards to jurisdiction that have strong measurement programs. san francisco has received an award in the past two years. the only times it has applied. just to provide some context -- the comptroller's office city- wide performance measurement index is one of the main city- wide efforts in the city, but other departments are doing other things. for instance, all sorts of departments throughout the city are reporting performance data for their own purposes, particularly, around state and federal funding. whether the comptroller's office was working on this effort or not, these departments would need to be reporting data to meet their own obligations. a number of departments recently have begun to create

performance step programs, which is bringing real time data together, presenting them to the decision makers of the department to do real time problem solving. this is an approach to performance management that has been around for a while. you may be familiar with, staff and city staff. departments are starting to employ that here. supervisor avalos: was comstat the first instance of that happening? in san francisco? >> in san francisco, sf stat, which mayor newsom began a few years ago. then there's are some other miscellaneous things. local 21 has a capital gains sharing program, a for performance program that is based on performance measurement.

about the government's barometer itself, why did we decide wanted to create the report? the city is sitting on a pile of performance data. we thought we could do a better job of pushing them permission out to the public and city leadership to create a dialogue around the city's performance, and as a result, improve it. the barometer, which we will look at in the next couple of slides, contains measures that we drew from past discussions, ideas from city leaders, examples from other jurisdictions, and a lot of discussion with the apartments. in selecting measures to go into this bimonthly barometer, we wanted them to represent major service areas, things that were likely to be experienced by the general public, so it would be of interest to the public, understandable but anyone looking at it, and showing data which exhibits change. we have been brought in as

bimonthly since 2009. it isn't going back to 2008 is on data sf now. this is just to orient you to the look and feel of the barometer. it has the standard comptroller's office cover sheet. we recently introduced a one- page narrative to pull out some of the highlights of the report. hopefully, that makes it easier to read. this is the general presentation of the data and the barometer. we have the measures, of which there are 40, grouped by major service areas. for each individual measure, we have the prior year's value, the prior period, two months ago, and the current period value, just to give people a sense of

how things are changing. whether these trends are preset relative to our judgments, whether going up is good or bad. a couple of highlights from the february 2001 version. serious violent crimes declined. the wait time at dph for a new patient's appointment shows a lot of variability. 30 days compared to 13 in december, 25 a year ago. complaints are down from a year ago. you will be happy to know the value of construction products for which permits were issued is up quite a bit from the prior year. supervisor avalos: a question on the first ones. serious crimes declined by 90.7%, and we had a spike in homicides.

so every other type of violent crime is down? >> i do not have the breakdown with me, but that includes all sorts of violent crimes, homicide being among them, although it is probably the most infrequent. it would also include rape, aggravated robbery, homicid. we will look at some of the data in a second. when we discussed this hearing with organizers, we decided we would not drill down super deep into anything because this was sort of a clearing house. to illustrate the amount of data and the types of things captured in the barometer, i have a handful of slides. supervisor avalos: it is also important for the public to know that this exists and is pretty

easy to find under website. >> i have five or six slides to show you what we are capturing here. this is just data through december. as i mentioned before, we have a public data set that has these figures dating back to 2008. this is the turn of the new patient wait time. a fair amount of variability. some of the explanatory factors are clinic's opening and closing for renovation, try to add some new staff, nurse advised line, increases in enrollment around help the san francisco -- healthy san francisco. some of the driving factors, we are holding steady, around the end of 2009. muni is putting in some new practices regarding dealing with

drivers who are behaving badly. a little bit of a decline here. probably not much explanation needed for this slide. a bit of a recovery taking place regarding construction in the city. something about 311 calls, a major indicator of the city's customer service. doing a better job over time of answering those calls within 60 seconds. to your earlier question, the total number of serious violent crimes, slightly comedown over time, due to the police department cost efforts, cyclical effects. slow but steady improvement for dpw responding to street cleaning requests. that is something that is pointed out in the narrative of the february 2011 barometer of why dpw is showing improvement

over time, why some of it is operational. circulation of materials at the library going up over time. turns out it is an inexpensive and convenient form of entertainment in difficult times. the purpose of this presentation was just to give you a sense of what is contained in the report, and to familiarize yourself with it. there is a lot more the city can do to increase the use of performance data in san francisco. a couple of things that the comptroller's office will be working on, publishing this barometer, which has created more dialogue regarding performance. we have got in calls from the media, public, supervisors, department leadership. in addition, we would like to continue to have discussion regarding performance with the supervisors. we welcome an opportunity to come back to another board committee to talk about this. one thing i should know about

performance measurement programs is coming in every other jurisdiction, has an effective program, there is strong leadership and involvement from top officials. san francisco city departments are right now making great strides in measurements because it is a recognized best practice. it is definitely aided by strong leadership from elected officials. something about performance measurement is, the way the system works, you have to monitor is over time. you need a consistent level of effort. that will be something for us to talk to the board about how to address. the comptroller's office will also continue performance measurements. we will be supporting department had staff and managers as much as we can, particularly, those that recognize the value of performance measurements. we will provide any tools we can to help them continue their efforts.

that is it. this slide is for members of the public to be able to get more information regarding this performance data. it is easily downloadable from the controller's website. that is our overview. happy to answer any questions. supervisor avalos: great. thank you, andrew. just one question, you touched upon it. when you see performance going negative for a department, there is some intervention. the comptroller's office takes place in that part? >> not exactly. we are more of a clearing house, a source of guidance on setting up systems. but we're not the enforcers regarding performance. that is why, when i mentioned in jurisdictions with effective programs, there is involvement from the elected officials. we do not have the tools to hold departments accountable. that is something that would

probably be more prepared for elected officials to do. that is why having this steady performance review over time would be appropriate. if there is problem-solving that needs to be done, the division of the comptroller's office, in which we provides assistance. one of the keys might be a change in the performance data. although there has never been a monitor performance that is proactive the working through the department. supervisor avalos: based on your barometer, do you ever get challenged based on what it looks like? >> with 1100 measures in the database, the level varies. for something like the barometer, we took that data more carefully. we did some quality control.

we do not typically get challenged, those that we mentioned. over the course of the next two years we will look at every single department and confirm that it can be verified by a primary source data. at that point there will not be disagreement about the numbers. and that there needs to be some problem solving. supervisor avalos: thank you very much. supervisor? we are going to public comment. any member that would like to comment on this item? please come forward? [inaudible]

supervisors know that one of the things that all of us are really concerned about, quality of life issues. we have a population of 816,000. we have a budget of about $6.6 billion. what the budget analysts and controllers office, rosenfield and my good friend, monique also works there. from time to time i keep in touch with them, so that they know what is happening in the community. now, the first measure that you supervisors should take