this and they provide no funding for it. the other point to keep in mind is that they do collect funds for a variety of different programs that we think are beneficial. we have been trying to get more control over those funds, also, so they're not able to spend money in that way. so that we have the authority to direct that money and spend and how we would like to. we have been unsuccessful at california puc so far in trying to do that. supervisor mirkarimi: in the go solar program and san francisco's determination to be a leader on this front with regard to the green jobs phenom -- and i was on budget committee when this happened. there was a lot of enthusiasm for us to bring this program on line politic. lee speaking, the term "green

jobs" became very much a mantra term. while i very much support the program, i think we should have a more honest discussion. i'm still not impressed by the term "green jobs" in san francisco or frankly, anywhere in california, because i do not think it has lived up to the term. i want to be careful. i think it's important that we continue to invest in the '80s of advancing a work force connected to renewable energy infrastructure, it does not seem to be the way we would want. i want you to be able to sort of opine. >> i guess i would agree with you, supervisor. i think we all have that hope that we will have local jobs, jobs for disadvantaged workers, green jobs or otherwise.

green was the thinking. it has not panned out in my mind, either. it does not mean we give up on it. this may not have been the best strategy. we have to keep looking for ones that create more jobs and better jobs for people that are low income people that are entry level into the work force. supervisor mirkarimi: should we be scaling down our expectations in some ways so it is a more intellectually honest discussion? when we talk about subsidizing in low-income areas, like the southeast sector, which has been degraded by environmental impacts. it really felt like two or three years ago that we were on a promise that this was going to really deliver. it has not delivered. i do not think that anybody's

fault, but i think we should be clear about how real this notion is of green jobs. >> again, supervisor, this has not worked out as much as we would like it to work out. i'm not willing to give up on the idea. if you recall, last year's budget had $8 million for l.e.d. streetlights. we are planning on replacing all the lights in san francisco with more efficient, greener lights. we could have gone the old fashioned way. probably would have been an outside vendor. we would have fired the standard folks. instead, we chose to break down the job so that we are going to have one vendor supply us with the lights and then we are going to break into 10 micro-benderve.

local people do that work. that's the benefit of doing it that way. i would rather try to change how we do it then give up on it. those people will end up being trained to do work related to lighting. they will be good jobs that last for a while. again, we tried different pilots. we tried different ways. if this does not work as well as we would like, we try something else. supervisor mirkarimi: all right. i appreciate that. this is also a question for the leaders in the community, who i know will come up in public comment, to help answer this question. what needs to happen in order to really return back to the objective of having an accountable, and verifiable, robust go solar program in -- robust green jobs program in san

francisco. supervisor chiu: is oewd here yet? supervisor chu: i believe they're not here yet. supervisor chiu: i understand they're going to come shortly. from my perspective, the numbers for economically disadvantaged workers are very low and quite troubling. there are ways for us to consider how this program can be changed or tweet -- that would be an interesting conversation. mr. harrington, do you know how many solar panels have been installed as a part of the go solar program? >> i do not know the number of panels. there have been approximately 1300 installations. i could make a guess of what the average size would be. supervisor chiu: i know you had an op-ed yesterday where you talked about how energy efficient programs are much more

efficient than the go solar program. can you explain that concept a little bit? >> sure. if we spend money to go to the police department or the fi re station and we change out their lighting, it means we will produce less power. we can sell the power and have of that money to programs we want to do. if you're looking of the need for a new heating and ventilation and air-conditioning system in your library, and we can provide the money to do that, you end up saving taxpayer money that would go to the library, and you have a more efficient way of providing for heating ventilation at the library. if you're looking at the general goods for greenhouse gas emissions in san francisco, if you took the go solar money and you gave everyone who had a refrigerator that was more than 20 years old a new refrigerator, you would save a lot more money

and you would impact more people. if you are a low income residents, you can get a solar installation and we will give you $10,000. we can affect a lot more people, with a lot more reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. supervisor chiu: is there a way to make sure we are hiring the types of workers that we want to hire and incense the green jobs growth? >> i also would question whether hetch hetchy are the appropriate place to spend that. we're supposed to have a business place and a charter to spend hetch hetchy money. health clinics are really good things we want in the city. hetch hetchy is not able to spend money on those things. there would have to be a nexus for why hetch hetchy is able to spend money on these programs.

supervisor chiu: ok. thank you very much. supervisor chu: thank you, supervisor chiu. why don't we go to the budget analyst report? >> our recommendations begin or are summarized on page 7 of the report. recommendations are on pages eight through 19. let me mention that we have worked with mr. harrington this morning at this meeting. my understanding is that we have reached agreement and we have made three changes. let me review the changes for you. on page 9 of our report, we have a recommendation for air travel

-- a reduction of $3,500. we are revising that to increase to 45 under dollars, a $1,000 increase for what we had both in fiscal year 2011-2012 and 2012- 12013. we are withdrawing two recommendations. training of $9,000 in fiscal year 11-12 and training of $15,000 in 12-13. we are withdrawing our recommendation on membership fees at $10,000 and that is for both fiscal year 2011-2012 and 2012-12013. on page 11, we are significantly reducing our recommendation with

respect to power for resale. supervisors, this is based on documentation which he provided us this morning, which had not previously been provided. where we have a recommendation of $500,000 for power or resell and reduction, we are reducing that, in total, to $250,000. we are reducing our recommended reduction. that is true in both 2011-2012 and 2012-2013. on page 18, the recommendation for equipment purchases, we are with strolling $100,000 on both. the bottom line is, supervisors,

if you go back to our summary comment on page 7 of our report, where we previously recommended a reduction of $4 million, we are now recommending for your consideration, reductions of $2 million and 412-13, where we previously recommended reductions for your consideration of -- we are now making recommendations for your consideration -- i would be happy to respond to any questions. supervisor chu: thank you, mr. rose. to confirm, the department is in

agreement with the recommendations? yes. thank you. i believe the representative from the mayor's office, mr. elliott, has some information about work force. rhonda and jen cannot make it to the meeting. >> thank you, supervisor. apologies that i have to deliver this information. i can give you as much as i was able to ascertain. i understand there's some confusion. just to offer some clarity, the number of similar jobs in the city is somewhere in the several hundreds -- 400 to 500 range. we do not have a total survey. we expect -- that is across all industries, not just funded by go solar. the number funded by go solar is 72 people who have been referred and placed in the program.

you could make the argument that san francisco's leadership on go solar, including the proposed appropriation for next year, does represent leadership in creating a hub of sorts around solar technology and encouraging investment here in the city. supervisor chu: ok, so it sounds like the 400 number is really related to the numbers -- you mentioned the several hundred number and that is related to general jobs overall and not necessarily tied to go solar? >> right. supervisor chu: is there anything different from what i see on the slide on page 11? >> no, that is the same 72 jobs

created short-term and long- term. those are those placed directly through the go solar program. supervisor chu: ok. 23 still employed is still the number we have at this moment? >> yes. supervisor chu: thank you. public commsupervisor chiu? supervisor chiu: i need to understand where this money is going. 72 jobs created over the past few years with $11 million spent overall. a lot of this money, obviously, is going to these six companies, but not being used to create these jobs. supervisor chu: barbara, also, since you worked in conjunction -- if you can. >> yes, supervisor.

i'm the assistant manager for power. where did -- the question is, what portion of the dollars went towards jobs? supervisor chiu: exactly. >> i don't have specific data on the portion that went toward jobs. the with the program works, we make payments to the installation. in our experience, most of the cost of solar installation is in the materials and in labor. i would expect that most of the incentive payments that we make go toward those two areas. supervisor chiu: thank you. supervisor chu: thank you, supervisor chiu. i believe we have agreement with the recommendations at this time with a few adjustments to it. if we could, colleagues, would you like to entertain a motion to accept these recommendations with the modifications?

from the members of the committee, and seeing that they would like to go to public comment before that happens. we are doing public comment as a whole, actually. i could ask the department of environment to come up next and then we can take up all our public comment. >> good morning, supervisors. i'm the director of the san francisco department of the environment. today we have brief remarks about our budget. of course, we would be happy to answer any questions. the department's proposed budget for the coming fiscal year is $ 17.1 million, which is up from $3.5 million for the current fiscal year. $1.1 million is from rate revenue. $100,000 is from fees or

services. the department has not received general funds since 2003. our revenue comes from a combination of competitive grants, fees for service, and the california public goods charge, which is a portion of utility bills earmarked for energy efficiency and renewable energy products. through work orders to the department, such as the library, our department helps to contribute to the general fund. with the funds are referred to, the department provides a wide range of services to residents, businesses, and city departments. for the next fiscal year, the majority of the increased revenue will come from grants for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. we have also received a major additional funding for a clean transportation programs, environmental justice projects, oil recycling, and bottle and can recycling. in total, the department will have 27 active grants for part

or all of fiscal 2011-2012. i will name just a few of these grants. we have a $250,000 grant from the center for disease control to fund an indoor air quality program in order to promote environmental justice citywide. we also partnered to deliver a similar program in the western addition. $105,000 from the department of energy to fund alternative fuel vehicle efforts. we have a $250,000 grant to develop a blueprint to get to 100% renewable energy for the san francisco city of. we have a state grant to increase oil recycling and keep oil out of the bay. a number of the grant will end in the next 18 months, especially those funded the

through the american reinvestment and recovery act, which are federal dollars, the department anticipates it will be able to continue to present balanced budgets without any general fund support over the next five years. the department is fully in agreement with the but jusbudget analyst's recommendation. supervisor chu: thank you very much. supervisor chiu, i see your name on the roster. no? why don't we go to the budget analyst's report? >> madam chair and members of the committee, our recommendations are summarized on page 22. are recommended reductions to the proposed budget total, $263, 903, which would still allow in increase of 24.4% in the department's budget.

i would be happy to respond to any questions. the details are on pages 23, 24, in 25 of the report. supervisor chu: thank you. it sounds like the department is in agreement with the budget analyst's report. do we have any questions from the committee on the department of environment's budget? if not, i would like to open it up for public comment. this is the day we are opening up public comment for all the enterprise departments we've heard so far. i have a number of speaker cards that i will read. if you hear your name, please line up oin the center aisle. paulie, david, sarah, jacob bear

arett, kenneth, angelo, monique washington, and melissa mcdermott. >> good morning, supervisors. my name is janine. i'm co-founder upof san francisco's solar install a. we all work full time for the company. we have grown from about four to five employees to 20 since go solar started. of that, six jobs are for my colleagues that came to us through work-force development. we hired our first workforce development person in august of

2008. we have hired a total of seven and one individual has left us. it a third of our workforce is go solar sf, young community developers and the san francisco conservation corps. i'm going to talk to supervisor wiener's specific issue and i also want to talk about the concept of the companies getting the money. the money goes to san francisc ans that put solar on their homes. we reduced the amount that the homeowner or the organization has to pay to put solar up. that means that we carry that incentive. this allows for low income people in san francisco to get

access to solar, which has transformed who gets solar in san francisco. it's really a question of vision and commitment. with respect to the $1.3 million that is left, go solar has always run out of money in the past year. supervisor chu: thank you. >> do you want me to end? i was going to answer the question of supervisor wiener. supervisor wiener: please finish, very briefly. >> in the past, we've had boom cycles where we've gone through the money very quickly. it did not require all installations to have certified go solar sf work force development employees and now there's a requirement of 50% of the workers.

what happened at the beginning of this fiscal year is that the sf puc made a number of changes reducing the amount of the incentive, expanding the jobs from just installer to back office and required that all installations have go solar sf work force development employees on the job. what that did is it witreduced e drop of the incentive. it is a good thing. it was a benefit to the program. it has been a good start ship of the program by the san francisco puc. supervisor chu: if i can ask you to wrap up. >> yes. ia while ago, earlier this year,

there was less than $1.4 million in the pot. i anders and there was about $1 million that was earmarked for low-income projects that were going to go forward. in those projects, the san francisco puc was notified and it they were told that the project would not go forward. net absent that amount of money going back into the pot, the sf puc did a really good job of estimating how much money and at what clip it would be used. here we are at six weeks to the end of the fiscal year and we have $400,000 left in the pot. now, $300,000. supervisor chu: thank you. next speaker, please. >> my name is david, community advocate. i am asking the board of supervisors to keep full funding of the go solar san francisco

program. i'm convinced it has done a lot of benefits for our neighborhood and did much to attract foreign technologiegree. i've met solar companies, including one provider who lives in my provider, working in my neighborhood, as well as those in other communities, whose jobs could be banished. the program allows the disadvantaged people to gain experience in green trades and make them tomorrows business and community leaders. even these young people out on the street not only wasted the effort and investment, but also bashed their newly acquired confidence to have a better life. in these difficult economic times, the willingness of the city to continue investing and solar energy will send a

powerful signal to domestic and overseas firms, a venture capitalists, and investment in our continue thescommunities. it will tell the world that our city is marching forward to the future. the few million dollars is a wise investment for the community building in the future of san francisco. supervisor chu: thank you. next speaker. >> supervisors, good morning. 2007-2008, served as san francisco a commissioner san puc. i want to provide a little bit of context. if you recall, that year, the city came this close to approving a $271 million plant.

that was canceled and go solar san francisco was issued. it has been one of the single most effective programs. at the time the program was created, there were three solar companies. today, we have over 30. as of this morning, the count was over 450 solar jobs. companies are locating in san francisco because of the program. beyond that, it has brought down the cost to install solar by 25%. the day the go solar program was announced, we have 500 in the city. today, there are 2400 to one of the principal goals was to make this city a leader in solar power. it's really a question of what the economic vision for the city should be. how serious are we to be 100%

renewable power by 2020? you cannot cut the solar budget and still make progress toward those goals. this is a net moneymaker for the city and here is why. when solar gets installed, it increases the property value. that increases revenue to the general fund. that's a material benefit, net benefit, to the city. in addition, every single go solar project that is installed, the city keeps those renewable credits. over time, they become a system of revenue. supervisor chu: thank you. >> thank you. >> good morning. i'm the director for sun tech. one day, the true cost of our