>> the full package. >> full package, flag drop too. >> i want to make sure when we say full package, because i heard a discussion about gates. >> if we could take it item by item and let me know, let the board know, what we will have by that meeting. >> i'm walking down that. we can have a proposal on peak time medallions, we can bring back the meter increase and that is mileage as well as wait time and then we can also bring you pack a proposal as it relates to a flag drop. so we can have all of that by the second meeting in june. >> personally to me, that's fine. i don't need to wait for the gate increase, that's a different issue that needs to be vetted, i wouldn't want to hold this up for that. i mean i realize the director may feel differently or feel differently about timing but for me if we get those three

things an clarity about how the credit cards are going to work vis-a-vis the customer, there's a whole mess of issue it is deal with as to whether 5% is the right fee and who bears it in the industry but if those four things came forward in june, i'd be satisfied and prepared to vote for the fare increase then. >> we can do that. >> given that, and given the fact we have all the information and we can support the industry, because i fully support the fare increase, i think it's long overdue, it is a long time to wait based on the cost of living increase and san francisco is an expensive city to live in, i would want everyone to be able to live in the city and live comfortably, so if we have all that information, we can vote for the meter increase, the flag drop, everything, then i would support moving it and being prepared to vote to support everything on that day. >> director brigman? >> i'll second the motion to continue item 11.

>> i fully support an increase for the drivers, you know, this last-minute notice of, talk about a flag drop, that's really kind of -- that really threw everything off kilter now. my concern is, i know there's a real immediate out there for the drivers. i know there are things that logistically have to get done. so i guess the question i pose is, if you look at just the portion that we want to pass, you know, can we show our commitment by passing that now and having that done with? >> i think that was from a staff perspective, that's what we were proposing today to recommend the meter increase, recognizing the fact that we have to come back with the flag drop, we had to come back with the peak time medallion program, but as a show of good will and support for the industry and drivers,

recognizing that the gentleman from weights and measures, the meter increase would not occur prior to you taking action on these other items. from a logistical standpoint. >> i think we need to show support to the industry at this point. what i would ask is for that vote that we pass it, we have a a way to work out the logistics, at least the industry knows and got the message that we are concerned and we hear their message and we do understand the need out there. so i would like to make a recommendation to move with the item. >> mr. chairman, you actually have a motion and second on the floor that would be proper to deal with that motion first. >> so your first motion? >> it's director heineman, continue item 11 to the second meeting in june with the understanding that staff will bring back four items with

regard to -- >> peak time medallions, flag drop, the current meter increase as well as -- what was the fourth? clarification an we handled waybills. >> i hear everything you're saying, vice chairman lee, and i, you know, the industry knows how i feel. they know i'm going to favor the meter increase. i think it's appropriate procedurally to do this all at once for the very reasons you stated at the outset of the discussion. >> so the motion is to continue item 11 to the second meeting in june, ke the june 21 meeting, to consider peak time medallions, flag drop increase, the meter increase and mileage for wait times and credit card charges. is that -- >> yes. so it's a motion to postpone. >> yes. >> and for the last time.

>> is there a second? >> do you want a roll call vote? director bridges. >> aye. >> brinkman. brinkman aye. director lee, no. director oka. no. oka opposed. the item fails adoption. any motion of the m.t.a. board of directors requires four to pass. >> i want to propose a motion to approve the increases as stated. >> i'll second. >> so, mr. chairman -- >> are the city attorneys comfortable?

of course she is. >> mr. chairman, just for clarification, on motion to approve the meter rate for wait time and mileage. >> yes. >> can i make a proposed amendment to this that we just clarify that if we adopt this right now, it will not be implemented for the reasons we talked about until we've finished this entire package of materials? >> yes. >> on motion to approve the meter rate for wait time and mileage with the understanding that there will be no implementation until the additional package is brought to you on june 21? >> yes. >> i'm sorry, we need a second for that one? >> yes. >> i'll second that.

>> there's a motion on that, and a second. roll call rote? >> yes. >> director bridges. >> this is on the amendment? >> on the motion to -- >> with the amendment. >> it was a friendly amendment. so it was accepted. so this is on the motion to approve the meter rate for wait time and mileage which is not to be implemented until the additional package is brought to the full board on june 21. director bridges. briges, aye. brinkman, aye. director heinicke, aye. director oka. aye. director lee. aye. the motion is unanimous. >> we're going to call for a >> at this point, to rrn to the agenda, we were in the middle of the director's report. >> i gave you a lengthy introduction as it relates to

the overtime report, so i'm going to sonali bose who will report on the overtime and its utilization at the san francisco m.t.a. >> good afternoon, again. what we wan to do this afternoon is walk you through a couple of issues related toover time. hopefully you remembered mr. ford's opening statement since he made that statement but i'm going to read some of the points. we want to talk a little bit about the transit division, other divisions in the agency, executive director ordinance that's going to affect the board supervisors and some of the key considerations that drive our overtime and then the management strategy. so here's the m.t.a.-wide overtime picture for this fiscal year for the first nine months. the top left-hand pie chart shows you the trends division

accounts for 90% of the division and as you can see our annual budget was $33.3 million an we've spent $33.6 million in the first nine months and we're expected to hit $51 million inover time for the year. i should have said, the agency has always had a significant amount of overtime and we've never budgeted for the right level of overtime since i've been here for a variety of reasons. this is a year by year comparison. if you look at the first nine months of the fiscal year for 2009, 2010, and 2011, you can see we're about $4 million higher than last year in the first nine months and the bottom right chart of the bar chart is what i want to point out specifically. in fiscal year 2010, which is a light pink bar, we tried to

increase our overtime budget because we knew this is -- this is a lock standing issue. unfortunately, we had to bring the budget back down because we had budgeting issues, we hoped to bring down theover time but we haven't been able to. this has been a constant struggle for us, budgeting overtime as well as having significant series in our salaries and benefits line items because of our hiring process. this is what the transit division looks like for the fiscal year. the three main groups of staff that driveover time in transit division, the transit operators, a little over half, the vehicle maintenance an may not nantz right of way are about a quarter and the remainer is in our central control. so the 80% of our overtime is consumed by transit operators, and supervisors.

this is a division -- >> can i interrupt? you just sunshined with the local 6 contract changes that will improve in terms of overtime in that contract. >> and to be more specific, the previous contract had a work week monday through friday, 8:00 to 5:00 and as you know we're not a monday 8:00 to 5:00 agency so we were having to pay elick trisses overtime any time they worked outside of those hours, so that's been changed and should impact our overtime. this is a year-to-year comparison for transit. you can see that we're -- the $4 million increase from last year is in the transit division and the bottom right hand chart you see the positions that are the biggest drivers of overtime and they're really all our front line service delivery positions. the majority, once again, transit operators. this is the other division, the nontransit divisions and here's the -- here the biggest group

is the parking control officers in our enforcement division. they drive about 46% of the overtime hours and 48% of the expenditures for other divisions. if you look at other divisions from last fiscal year to this fiscal year, we're about $1 million higher than what we're projecting for, compared nine months to the rest of the year. we're actually lower, projecting to be lower in fiscal year 2011 compared to 2010 for this nontransit division. so the board of supervisors has a legislation that requires all individuals who work more than 30% overtime to be reported. out of our group of a lit overall 100, 71 of them are transit operators who work 30% or more overtime, 14 of them from supervisors and 21 are mechanics. these once again are the

frontline positions that are incurring other 0% of overtime. this is the real meat of our discussion and to revisit the issue of that scheduled overtime is critical to our service delivery, it's a tool that the transit system uses to address day-to-day service delivery issues and mitigate service disruption and they use theover time which is built into the schedule to maximize service. once again, hopefully the renegotiations of some of the contracts will lead to better complement of staffing so if we can implement part-time operators and use them for special events on weekends and don't have to incur the overtime costs. the third bullet point, one thing that's come to the front this year, filling front line positions is getting tougher and tougher. when we stop hiring and start

hiring back again, it creates a disruption an the continuity of keeping these major hiring going on even though we may have reductions in service is something that we learned this past year. a couple of other things that are sort of exacerbating the overtime issue this year, we had a wellness program retirement citywide which meant that a lot of individual that was been a -- that have been here a long time chose to take retirement otherwise they would have lost their wellness provisions so we got a will the of vacancies as individuals took that retirement. secondly, we also in our citywide groups we were participating in furloughs. in the fair collectors, they participated in the citywide furloughs, we ended up having to back fill them on an

overtime basis so that citywide participation hurt us in terms ofover time. special events. there's two kinds of special events, there are two kinds of special events that happen every year, that we can plan for an others like the world series that we can't budget for. these special events are incredibly resource intensive from our agency's perspective because it requires a lot of our front line employees to be present and they almost all work overtime to do it. and in san francisco almost every weekend there's a special event in the city. we are trying to do a better job of tracking special events because right now our systems don't separate some of the hours we need to do a better job of that. the second bullet on this page is also critical because the

facilities are in such poor condition, we're having to maintain and back fill them on a regular basis and it requires a lot of attention from our maintenance staff. so as was mentioned, traditionally the m.t.a. has managed the overtime costs within the budget so for example, because we have so many savings and because we're not hiring quickly, those dollars available in our nonovertime line items to cover overtime costs and since i've been here for the past four years, we've always exceeded our overtime business but not our overall budget in salaries and benefits. that seems to be the way to create flexibility, to include overtime and to keep the positions on our inventory so we can continue to hire them. this is my last slide. what we're trying to do, these are the five points we're

focusing on as a management group. we're trying to fill the vacancies we have, focusing on hiring and overtime an the training required to bring the operators, there's several classes right now, the mta board is starting to receive reports and the board of supervisors has asked us to go back on a regular basis and talk aboutover time. we are also working on unscheduled absences, for example when people are sick or out on leave that are unse scheduled. this requires changes to our policies, for example, in managing fmla or other kinds of absences. >> one thing i want to point out and i don't know if it's necessary for john to come up and echo on this, if he was planning on saying this, but if you remember last fall we implemented a very strict sick leave policy with the operators where if you were out sick, you had to bring in a doctor's verify cage, no matter how short the period you were out sick.

we observed a switching from sick leave utilization to fmla which has much more lax controls and we're going to start looking at what we can do in terms of fmla but we saw a mydepration from sick leave usage to fmla and that's one thing we have to deal with going forward. >> did that percentage stay the same? if it was 15% absentee rate, then all of a sudden because of fmla, stay at 15%? >> i don't know quite if it offset each other but there is constant work being done to -- there has been a switch from sick to fmla but i don't know if it's equal. >> but that's something that we're obviously going to have to look at. it's not an issue just with our agency. i saw thises that something happening on the national level in terms of utilization of fmla and it seems to be growing and creating more of a challenge in

terms of work force staffing. >> so the fourth bullet is a critical piece because a lot of the ways we deliver service, to the extent we're more successful in our negotiations with street supersizors and those contracts, that will really help ourover time pause right now a lot of our contractual requirements are kind of having an overtime basis of service and the last bullet is sort of, we all recognize it's going to be levels of overtime in our system and we're at a sweet spot where overtime is actually built into our base service model and where is it that we're now not managing well and we're -- we have to figure that kind of break even point where we move from and that has been a discussion, i think, that we need to work on the next couple of years is to say, ok, this is our base level overtime, this is good for the service, this is what you can expect but then

beyond that is sort of a management issue. we're trying to figure out how to make that distinction. but the more data we can get, the more easier it will be for us to make that distinction. the -- so we have to go back to the board of soup visors on a regular basis and talk about overtime. the one piece of information that i got from john is that -- mr. haley, is that if we did not use this level of overtime we would not provide the 98% of service we are providing, it would sink to 96 pk or below level service. the bottom line is, if we don't use overtime, you are impacting service delivery. >> one additional fact i want to point out if a statistical standpoint, scheduled overtime, built into the skell jewels, built off the contract an scheduling capabilities but

built off the work rules and policies in our contracts, is approximately 80% of the overtime that you're seeing here. there's actually the remain 20g% is kind of what you call management discretion or unscheduled overtime that we do have some clear day-to-day responsibility in terms of controlling. as we go through these contract negotiations, once we hopefully have a negotiated contract or arbitrated contract, that will change the rules of the game in some way in terms of overtime usage, sick leave usage, all those things that we have discussed with you as a board. >> so the message there is, currently we have to use overtime to meet service needs but one of the reasons that's the case is for lack of a better word the inflex bt caused by the contract and the hope is we'll have more flexibility after contract negotiations and we can address that. >> that was one of the goals in these negotiations. >> how much of that is

attributed to being short drivers? >> that's a food question. john, can you come up? the question is -- john haley, our director of transportation, the question is, of the overtime that you expend on a daily basis, how much is related strictly to shortage of personnel, shortage of operators? >> in terms of operator overtime on a daily basis, one of the buckets of overtime is what we fill -- runs with we fill with overtime, we put out 1,174 all together. some of that is not having enough operators and part of it is the question raised earlier about part of -- part of that is catching up, the system catching up with the people that left, the attrition rate, stopping of hiring a couple of years ago, to catch up on the hiring and training.

the other part of it is work force management. on a typical day right now we're pushing on the range, 15% has gone to 20% of people that are scheduled to work that are unavailable for a range of reasons. the biggest reason is use of fmla across the system but there are some other reasons as well. so part of what we have to do is work with everyone to attack those problems. >> right but narrowly, what percentage on a daily basis of overtime is related to your shortage of operators? just the sheer shortage of operators? >> right now it's, of that 70 runs you have, in the range of 15 to 20 on the rail side that have been related directy to -- directly to shortage of operateors. we've made some progress, i'm pleased to report, since last tuesday in shrinking that down and we're working with the

training department to do some other things to fill that hole right now i would say it's roughly a third or so of the overtime is directly related to operator shortage and it's been coming down as we've moved forward with training classes on both the bus and rail side. >> ok. john gave us a presentation in the meeting, my understanding of part they have problem is you can only put so many prospective drivers through the class, they don't make it, it starts all other. >> we can start out with 50 operators in training and end up at the end with 25 through people, not wanting the job, two, not making the cut, and you know, i've always cautioned john and reginald mason who is responsible for traping, yes, we're short operators but we're not going to cut corners because we'll create a safety issue for the agency.

i believe it's six weeks to create an operator in terms of training and -- but our attrition rate, we lose people monthly. we're losing between eight to a dozen operators on a monthly basis. >> have we ever looked a at the possibility of increasing capacity within our training? we constantly have this attrition going on. >> we're looking at increasing the number of trainers, increasing the hours of training, i believe we're doing training not just monday through friday but training is occurring on saturdays and sundays. there have been some tratjis, maybe it would be better that -- >> i mean there's actually three -- there's three things we've been doing. one is extending the training hours, one is looking at the available pool of trainers, in other words, supplement traditional instructors with something called line instructor, operators with good records who can play a role in helping other operators learn a

route for example or in handling techniques and seven days, longer hour, using line instructors, using, we've also got on the rail side some maintenance trainers that can help contribute to the familiarization of the vehicle itself which will short then program a little bit. we're doing those kinds of things. ? ok, thank you. >> any other questions regarding overtime? ok, continuing on with my report, the next item i need to bring to your attention is introducing you to item that will be brought to you in the future in terms of final decision but we are planning, and you've probably read about it, planning to introduce a new n-line express service to help deal with congestion on the n-line. it's one of our highest ridership lines and staff has been aware of overcrowding

conditions on the line, particularly in the peak period heading inbound. john haley, our director of transit, is here to discuss a pilot program we hope to have up and in place in the early -- in the june time frame. he'll give you the direct data for startup. >> good afternoon, again. i think you may recall, for the last several months, we've been -- we were looking at service in particular on the rail side watching and monitoring the m line. last fall during the discussion of that and the rest of the service we talked about po tenable of a pilot program. the line, as mr. port indicated, is the busiest line of any of the rail system. it is one of the longer lines. and during the course of the last several months, it's one that we've experienced some additional crowding and in

particular on the inner portions of the line, continue to look at ways to improve the service. so one thing we have to look at, we were concerned about the number of rail cars we had, we wanted to obviously, we would have scheduled more if we had them but as we go through our rehabilitation program and look at ways to improve the availability and reliability of the fleet, one thing we can do in a quicker fashion to support the n line is to provide express bus service. again, one thing we want to point out on this particular slide is that 70% of the route is on the surface that has a significant impact on the travel time. a lot of stop signs a lot of stops, slow service. we're looking at ways to give our riders choices, get them to their destination during both, particularly during the two

peak commute periods. one of the things to point out about the n-line, despite the fact that it has a will the of stops and has relatively slow travel time, the characteristics of the line are very much like a commuter line as we see on this chart here, the color, on the upper side, eastbound, that shows heavy boarding at the end of the line going into town in the morning an the reverse, the green means ons, those are the people that get on in the amp system of the characteristics of the line, while it's heavy ridership throughout the line, it is -- it does demonstrate the same kind of characteristics as a commuter line which lends it to being a good place to start this kind of service. what we're proposing is a six month pilot to start on june 13 and again, the idea here is to supplement the existing service. this will not take any cof