forced us to think long and hard about how we deliver recreation, and we completely reorganized our recreation delivery model, which unfortunately, had to reflect some cuts, but did give us an opportunity to take a good, hard look at how we deliver recreation, and i think these things structurally a lot more better, although, unfortunately, with fewer people. we reorganized our permits and reservation division to not only increase customer service but also to create better systems, so we were capturing more of the revenues, which should rightly come into the department. we also implemented our first gardner apprenticeships program. it is the first apprenticeships program in the state of california in which we had our first class. not only a budget measure, but a very important work force development and professional standards development to give people an entry into the profession and teach them a certain level of professional standards.

even with limited resources, this year has seen a very dramatic expansion of summer day camps. we will be offering 30,000 -- capacity for 30,000 programmer reservations for day camps, including early morning and after-school care for working families. a very robust scholarship fund. it has seen an overall increase of about 16% in recreation programming because of the way we have restructured. that translates to an additional 20,000 hours of programs offered in our departments. supervisor chu: did use a 16%? >> it reflects a 16% increase in the amount of programs we offer. -- did you say 16%? supervisor chu: i'm sorry, you said for the expansion of the summer day camps, what does that look like? >> we offer over 85 different camps.

we were just talking about our summer program this morning. we are proud that we are offering over 30,000 summer camp program registrations. we are offering our first specialty camp in glen canyon, specifically for children on the autism's spectrum, and we will be sending approximately 60 at risk youth at the end of the summer, and those are some of the highlights of our summer camp offering. even with our staffing challenges, we have been able to maintain our park maintenance gore's right at about 90%. we think this number has probably leveled out. we do not see as getting much higher, given the staffing challenges we have had, but we are actually at a five-year all- time high. again, through the goodwill of san francisco voters and the support of this board and prior mayor's through the availability of state grant funds under proposition 84 and proposition

40, we continue to renovate our parks and facilities, so we actually have some upside and optimism with respect to our capital programs. we focused very hard this year on administrative efficiencies as part of our overall budget solution. we have reduced our workers' compensation expenses this year by $350,000. which is significant. we have an employee safety committee. we had a transitional work assignment program where we will leak -- really were quite hard -- really worked quite hard to get them back. we have reduced our overtime by over $150,000, and we had implemented a number of technology and customer service improvements this year, including our website, which my staff is very proud of calling our award winning web site because we won an award for excellence in the california parks and recreation society. we are not able to take event

permit applications online. we now go online recreation and summer camp registration and a currently in discussions with 311 to utilize the system to be able to register for programs. we have got an improved permits and reservation phone system in a centralized computerized calendar database. believe it or not, just two short years ago, there was no centralized calendar of our permits and reservations, and if you call them one of our staff was on the line, you got a busy signal. turning to 2011-2012, here is our general fund budget challenge this year. like all city departments, we have been asked to reduce our fund support by 10% here with and asked to replace lost revenue to absorb cost increases. we did already make a mid-year reduction to our total base reduction. is about $4 million. we also have been asked to

commission the mayor's office a contingency reduction. just to put this in context and remind everybody that there is a little bit of an unfortunate history of this department, this is the seventh year in a row in which we have been asked to make a significant general fund reduction or stalled for a significant general fund problem. over the last seven years, we have been asked to solve for over $43 million. we do have a series of budget balancing principles, which guide our decisions. these principles were developed last year and reaffirmed this year. it was a partnership between the part of representatives neighborhood parks council, and community parks advocates. our commission, the sanford cisco parks trust, there was a lot of discussion about these vegetables, which were ultimately endorsed or approved by our commission. we want to create financially sustainable department. that has unfortunately cost a

lot of difficult conversations, but that is what this department needs. this department must know the resources that it has and be able to plan in program not just year over year, but we just had a long conversation about a five-year budget plan. we need financial sustainability in our department. our services and our parks touch too many neighborhoods, too many quarters of every street, and too many san franciscans to live with the kind of general fund volatility we have lived with over the last seven years now. we want to protect our ability to provide clean, safe, fun parks. we want to protect our mission to provide healthy recreation for all san franciscans. we focus on low-cost opportunities, and it is our guiding principle, that ability to pay never prevents the dissipation in our programs. we want to preserve our responsibilities as environment stewards. we want to preserve our mission as community partners. we want to preserve our citizens

capital investment in parts of the cell is by identifying dedicated funding for maintenance. it is a mistake to invest significant capital in our facilities if we do not have the resources and are not planning to take care of those facilities adequately. lastly, as i talked about earlier, we want to invest in user-friendly systems that improve access to our services and enhanced service delivery. and of course continue to train and support our staff so that they can continue to maximize their potential as public servants and community stewards. we actually go through a very extensive outreach process during our budget cycle. it usually starts following the mayor's issuance of the budget instructions. this year, rec and park alone had four budget meetings, which i will talk about in a second. we have ongoing labor management meetings and dialogue with our

two largest unions. we had regular updates at our rec and park commission meetings and our commission ultimately improve our budget. we participated with the neighborhood parks council, and also a budget-related town hall. we present our budget to the parks recreation open space advisory committee, and i join many of you at your district budget town halls with the mayor. we held four community budget meetings all across the city this year. we actually did some things a little differently this year. rather than just present our budget and respond to questions and respond to frustrations, we have more of a facilitated budget meeting in which we gave

a short overview of where we are, and we had more of a facilitated conversation, and we broke the participants up basically into two groups, and they got to choose which group they wanted to be in. one group focused on what programs and services are most important to you to protect from budget cuts as some guiding influence for us, and another group answered questions what ideas do you have or brainstorms about ideas that they had to help solve for the reduced support from the city's general fund, which is really our fundamental budget challenge. staff took notes as members of the community brainstormed ideas, and at the end of the meeting, every attendee was asked to vote for three ideas that he or she liked best, and responses were pretty illuminating. in short access to our feet -- ensure access to our facilities to the greatest extent possible. preserve open space. people want clean and safe parks. people are focused on making

sure that there are adequate use programs in the city -- adequate youth programs in the city. so how we fund them? we had a very positive response from the community in these meetings. public enjoyed the idea of brainstorming. sitting in our chairs for a little while. all told, we came up with -- community participants came up with over 50 different revenue ideas ranging from better marketing of department facilities such as weddings sites, to implementing a garden- taught for a cultural program, which we will try to pilot this year. overall, the top three revenue strategies identified work better marketing, more special events, and more concessions and parking amenities. dressing well enough, the feedback mirrored the results of the neighborhood park council's recent park users survey, which found that 90% of survey respondents supported the respondents efforts to reduce service cuts or minimize the impact of service cuts through

revenue-and ark amenities and neighborhood events. 86% of the survey respondents supported the concept of foundation and corporate support to help the parks and recreation -- keep park and recreation facilities well maintained and opened. supervisor chu: quickly, on revenue strategies that people have brought out, are you in the process of evaluating some of those, whether they are possible to implement, or are you and lamenting them already? -- implementing them already? >> it is a combination of both. we had an intern from san francisco state this spring who went and photographed a number of different sites and were putting together actually some marketing materials so that when people utilize our website, they can have better access to what a wedding experience would be like at a variety of our venues. more special events and concessions and parking amenities is obviously a

conversation we have been having for a while, and we continue to work at the iowa community-a brick or part-appropriate ways. a lot of folks did talk about a ballot measure to generate revenue. a lot of folks in this community meetings talked about benefit from america's cup. while we are very excited and optimistic about america's cup, we are still thinking through how this could be a revenue- generating event for the department. i think it will be a fantastic event for the city and generate considerable positive economic impact for the city as a whole, but our challenges with respect to america's cup will be much more, you know, logistical and operational in making sure evens go smoothly on our sites and in our facilities, but that is something we obviously continue to think about. somebody really wants us to sell rec adn pa -- rec and park- branded merchandise.

people actually look really like the best spirit of a today may be too hot to wear. we are evaluating all their ideas. we take them seriously, and we're grateful for the feedback. we know that every dollar we earn in this budget climate is a dollar we do not have to cut. i'm going to turn it over to our director of finance and administration to begin next part of our over you and get into the nuts and bolts of our budget presentation. then i will conclude. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i'm just going to start with a quick overview of our revenue and expenditure budget and then talk about the solutions we have proposed to the mayor's office for the 2011-2012 fiscal year. to start with revenue, as you know, rec and pakrk is blessed

with a variety of funding sources. we earn revenue from our property including parking garages, permits, concessions, leases, and the stadium. we have to be special funds -- golf, marina, and open space. finally, our work orders are funded through gifts and grants. rec and park has been in the current revenue business for a decade. from the marina to our golf courses, concessions like coit tower and stow lake, we have been making money to support our operations for a number of years. in the last couple of years, with the uncertainty of the general fund support we have been receiving, the department has really moved to intensify our efforts to increase the amount of revenue that we occurring annually -- that we

earn annually. i really think this is paying off, and as you can see by this line chart, we have been able to increase the amount of budgeted earned revenue this year. we have done is in big and little ways. we have had the outside lands, in golden gate park, which generates over $1 million a year for the apartment, and then we have food carts, which on an annual basis, in particular from part might generate $30,000 a year -- a particular food cart might generate $30,000 a year. our current year expenditure budget is $127 million. the vast majority of that is operating $118 million, with a capital budget in the current fiscal year at $9 million.

supervisor wiener: just to ask a question. one of the things we have been hearing as we all go through these processes, and each one seems to spark a war. one of the things we see is every time this seems to be a big dispute about how much money we have brought in. we saw a lot of competing analyses around a botanical gardens. it was the food truck. some of the opponents assert that would be almost no money brought in, and it is confusing sometimes. can you address that? >> a share. -- sure. supervisor wiener: it is a broad question, but one that seems to be coming up over and over again. >> going back to the revenue

side, the department, primarily, our revenue occurs on the general fund side. we have probably five big buckets where we have our earned revenues. then, concessions in city-wide facilities, which is really where our park amenity concessions and leases are used. if you look at this slide, we had $8.9 billion budgeted in the 2008-2009 fiscal year -- sorry, in 2009-2010. i did not think we are actually going to hit that $9.6 million figure, but we are going to do

better in that category of revenue in the current fiscal year than we actually did in the last fiscal year by about $300,000. i guess if you look at it on a concession by concession basis, you will see that some concessions are up and some are down, but overall, we are going to exceed our actual earn revenue for concessions in the current fiscal year over what we did last year. >> i think part of the challenge with the conversation is the people would like to understand that we're going to have a concession in dolores park, so what extra service is that going to deliver? we would love to get to the point where that was the conversation. right now, those services and amenities are helping us

maintain a level of service in dolores park, and i think that is just -- maybe it is counterintuitive. if you are going to be generating revenue in the lowest part, where is it going? our general fund support has been cut. if you want gardening time and custodial time, we will need to find a substitute for that loss in general fund support. we do not at this point have of the accounting ability or the system to actually track every single park on a part by part enterprise basis. we have a few large enterprise funds in our system. we are in the process of trying to take a look at golden gate park, but frankly, there are certain locations in the city and certain types of facilities, which actually generate revenue that subsidizes those that do not. the idea of tracking inputs and

outputs that each park becomes a little bit of a challenging conversation because we subsidize almost everything we do. so we use -- outside lands generate $1.1 million, does not all necessarily stay in gold and park. that goes into a larger bucket, which supports services, whether it be on the gardening side or custodial side all throughout the city. that understandably perhaps makes the numbers a little bit more challenging to understand. what comes in comes in, and we use it to provide the services that we provide. and that as an overview of how the department spends that revenue that we are generating, similar to pretty much every other city department, we devote

the largest share of our budget to staffing. in the current year, we have a $72.7 million salary and fringe benefit budget. we spend over $17 million a year on services of other departments, which include light, heat, power, sewer, water, city attorney, workers' compensation, central shops, etc. $5.2 million in the open space fund covers debt service on open space revenue bonds, which were used to finance capital projects. $4.1 million a year is for the zoo management agreement. $3.3 million to run the harding clubhouse operation. $5.8 million for materials and supplies and equipment, and $3.1 million total for facility maintenance. and then, we generously support the city cozy overhead budget by

$1 million a year. you can see from this slide that approximately half of our staff are dedicated to maintaining our parks. the next two largest slices of this type are the delivery of recreation programming and our swimming pools and the maintenance of our facilities by staff in our structural maintenance yard. 6% of our staff are administrative, and that includes the general manager, and finance and accounting staff, human resources, payroll, health and safety, purchasing, property management, i.t. 3% of our staff support park city. the remaining two slices of this pie support the marina not harbor -- yacht harbor, the zoo, and volunteer services.

to get down to our proposed budget solutions for 2011-2012, we are again focusing on -- in this budget on revenue as the primary tool for balancing our budget. we are proposing to solve 85% of our budget problem with revenue in the amount of $3.4 million, and 15% of the problem, we are proposing to solve through expenditure savings. about $600,000 worth. the department's ongoing focus on revenue is reaping benefits in the current fiscal year, and i am able to budget additional revenue as a result of that. this year, we are earning more money than expected from our recreation programming because we had such an increase in program participation. we are earning additional revenue from special events such as peter pan, and from field

permits for events like the stanford cardinal whites gained. things like ultimate frisbee tournaments, again, gay softball league tournament, and just a couple of examples where we are seeing additional permits for our fields. all told, just from revenues in the current fiscal year, i'm going to be able to budget $1 million in new revenue next year. we are also going to include some new revenue in our budget, including revenue from long term lease that we entered into with the public utilities last year -- public utilities commission last year to lease parking spaces at civic center garage for their fleets of vehicles. that is worth over $1 million next year. some additional revenue from

concessions and amenities. this is primarily being able to annualize revenue that we budgeted in this fiscal year where we have implemented some new things and we are going to see a full fiscal year of revenue next year. we're going to take some funding from the downtown park fund to help offset debt service that is occurring because of renovation of union square park a number of years ago. and then, we also are going to budget additional revenue and even more revenue from recreational programming from enhanced day camps and enhanced programming in all of our different recreational competencies'. we are also committed to enhancing the philanthropic support for our operations in next year's budget. we have been pretty successful with this so far this year. we have gotten a grant from the foundation to keep joe lee rec

center open for programming an additional day a week. we have gotten some funding to fund a halftime gardner out at crocker amazon park. we have also had some funding for a support a gardener program. it is more challenging to raise money for operations then it is for capital traditionally, but we really are focused on doing more of that next year, so i have $150,000 budgeted for that. of the new revenue that we have budgeted for next year, comes just from our rental events and concessions, which equals about $1.6 million, just to put that into context, that $1.6 million will support summer recreation program in. it will support two custodians, two gardners, and three parked patrol officers. the revenue we generated directly related to supporting

the operations department engages in. the expenditure savings that we are proposing to the mayor are primarily occurring in three areas. we're going to have some savings in workers' compensation. we continue to be reducing the over time we are spending on an annual basis, so we have been able to budget a reduction there. frankly, we have just increased attrition. we are assuming that we will delay hiring next year and have been able to budget some savings as a result of that. we are also going to implement next year the second class of the gardiner apprentice program that we have initiated this year in partnership with local 261.

at the mayor's request, we have submitted a contingency proposal. it is entirely made up of additional revenue items. we are proposing to take even more of the revenue from our long-term agreement with the puc for the civic center ride -- garage. the mta has given me a revised estimate, which is $450,000 better than what they told me in february and what is currently in the base budget. we are seeing japanese tea garden admission better than is in the budget, and i think we can budget an additional $100,000 as a result of that, although i will caveat that if supervisor avalos' ordinance

passes, this would no longer be available as a contingency proposal. we think we can squeeze even more out of recreation program fees. i think we can budget comfortably another $100,000. then, we are once again looking at whether it makes sense from a policy standpoint to begin to charge for parking somewhere in the rec and park system. i'm not sure exactly what form it would take, but we are putting it on the table as something to talk about. supervisor wiener: can you go back to the tea garden? that is not a proposal that i recall. >> i believe either this past tuesday or the tuesday before, tuesday or the tuesday before, supervisor avalos introduced supervisor avalos introduced