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 e 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, supervisor avalos introduced legislation that would make the tea garden free for residents. the vast majority of visitors

are non-residence, and it is, frankly, something that our department is open to, but it does have a very real fiscal impact. supervisor wiener: thank you. supervisor chu: just a quick clarification on your contingency proposal. the garage revenue is better than expected this. the tea garden does not have anything to do with increasing admission. just tested it with where you project attendance to be. and the additional civic center garage revenue, is this realistic? >> last year, we entered into an agreement with the puc. we entered into a 75-year lease with them for parking spaces at the garage for because it is very proximate to wear their new building will be on golden gate. that deal was worth $6 million.

in the current fiscal year, the current budget has $3 million of revenue from that deal. we are proposing $1.30 million in the base budget and an additional $520 thousand if the mayor's office were to accept the contingency. we have an mou with them. chairperson chu: thanks. >> i think that is it for me. i am going to turn it back over. >> just to conclude, perhaps where we started, the department has had obviously a challenging budget year to establish sources of revenue, reorganize, and implement the new revenue model. but it is paying off.

due to hard choices we have made, we do have some good news in the context of a $4 million based budget cut. we will not be laying off any additional staff. no increases to existing fees for programs or permits. no reduction to facility operating hours. our goal is to continue funding our scholarship fund by 50% a year. we hope to be well over 300. we communicate about a scholarship fund. we're going to add a second partner apprenticeships class in september 2011. we have been in conversations with human services agency and tuition services and other agencies about a work force development program for

playground embassadors. this would be a pilot with a small amount of money. we are interested in increasing the amount of youth we employ during the year. we do a very good job of that during the summer. we are in the process of concluding a labor-management partnership with the university that we are confident will increase school hours -- will increase swimming pool hours in the coming fiscal year. just so we leave here not thinking it is too rosy, we still have some significant challenges. park safety remains a very vexing and serious challenge for us. our part patrol resources are at a bare minimum. we have only adequate funding to staff with two officers at a time. we operate 24-7. we have one officer that operates in golden gate park and

one that operates everywhere else. supervisor weiner: that is an issue on a lot of different levels. i know there is frustration you share and a lot of members of the public share that the rules are frequently not enforced in our parks. does the department have an estimate on what the cost would be not to have a cadillac parked patrol or public safety program in the park, but just to have something that would be adequate? i know you have had some questions from the police department and others. but what is the wish list you have? >> we actually do. i would be happy to share that with members of the committee. we are in the process of working it through. there is 2 you will promise to this. this is taking a hard look at our -- there is two