a dedicated website with local resources for our veterans, which today has received over 1700's. 311 also began taking after- hours calls for the victim services division in december 2010 so that when people call that number, they no longer have to leave a message. they can talk to a live person, no matter the time of day. in may 2010, 311 also launched the centralized appointments database including legislation sponsored by president chiu to increase access to information about up when it's an opportunity to serve within the city, which we hope will increase participation and diversity on those appointed bodies. in the next few months, 311 will begin taking and tracking calls for the mayor's office of neighborhood services and is currently discussing being able to collect and trap constituent requests to come into board members' offices. both fleet management and real

estate launched new software programs. they should improve tracking of needs, planning for expenditures, and work schedules and overall improve the customer experience. and at mosconi center, our convention facilities department is under way with a $56 million capital improvement renovation project in partnership with the tourism improvement district. we expect to spend $15.5 million by the end of the calendar year and another $20 million in the first six months of 2012. i 2012-2013, the project will end and mosconi will resume a full schedule. our overall budget is proposed to increase by $12.4 million or 5.2% over the budget in fiscal year 2010-2011, and our fte

headcount is increasing to 638.72 positions, which is about a 3.6% increase. the budget analyst report does a good job of summarizing the reasons for those increases, which are primarily due to two transfers of functions. first is the justice tracking information system, which was transferred by mayor newsom about five months of the appearance that moved into city hall, and the deputy city attorney has assumed oversight of day-to-day operations -- or rather management of that program. eight positions transferred as part of the justice program transferred along with the $2.5 million budget. coming up on july 1, reproduction of mail services will transfer back to gsa, and that will come with 13 additional positions and a

budget of $5.5 million. there are additional changes that are highlighted that i am happy to discuss with you if you have questions about them, but those are the major changes to our budget. we are in agreement with one of the budget analyst recommendations and are still discussing the remainder of the recommendations and hope to be able to reach agreement in coming weeks. with that, you saw happen to answer questions. supervisor chu: thank you. a lot of the growth in your department's budget has to do with really the transfer of certain personnel and functions from the department of technology over to your department, correct? >> that is correct. supervisor chu: primarily, it would be repro graphics. and the others the justice program, right? >> that is correct. supervisor chu: just a question for the justice program -- who in administrative services is overseeing the project? >> the deputy city administrators overseeing the

day-to-day operations. supervisor chu: i know many of us have questions about the implementation of justice. i know there will be a future hearing about that in a different committee. supervisor chiu: if i could just mentioned, we are requesting a hearing for the seventh of july, and we want to mature everyone is aware of that. supervisor chu: my first question was on the justice program, so i will wait until we hold a hearing on it. the question that i had, and i could not find us in the report, was there was a reduction in neighborhood beautification. that was the one thing that i was curious about. >> that was due to a decrease in the voluntary checkoff donations through payroll and is unfortunate. we were sad to see that as well because that is a program we were very proud of that really leverage as contributions from non-city entities to improve

green space and beautify, but we have a as a result of a decrease in his contributions have to cut back a little bit this year. supervisor chu: -- supervisor kim: thank you. supervisor chiu: i want to thank your department for helping to put together the department's's database, and i want to thank you for that, allowing san franciscans to know how they can take part in our city government. one question around grant city arts. i understand there was a decision to not fund the api and queer cultural centers, and i wondered if you could talk about that. >> certainly. thank you. there were several reasons for that. similar to the community challenge grant program. some of the voluntary donations have been reduced. so they had a reduction in the

overall amount of money they had to award this year, so they have to look for places where they could make cuts. in applying their funding criteria, which is several fold, they found that both api and queer cultural centers did not meet the criteria fully in a couple of ways. they are receiving funding that is dedicated to cultural centers that goes from grants to the arts to the arts commission and has been distributed to the cultural center, so that funding is still intact, and they are still receiving that. another way is that grants for the arts also tries to leverage the amount of funding that is available -- maybe that is not the right way to describe it. they try to insure that organizations that get funding through grants for the arts are not overly dependent on city funding and have other sources of funding revenue. and they do that, if you look at their website, by having standards of the bigger the organization, the smaller the percentage that they can rely on

grants for the arts. i do not, unfortunately, have the percentages in front of me, but when they look at api and queer cultural center, the combined city funding would have put the well over the percentage for funding for grants for the arts, where they are so dependent upon city funding that they did not meet that criteria for grants for the arts. is there anything else to add to that? those were the primary reasons. supervisor chiu: thank you. i may want to have a conversation with you and your staff about this in the future. obviously, these are to be will cultural centers that not only have significant contributions to the city, but because of their history with regard to other centers, i think they can be -- i think they have been challenged in a way they can apply for funding. supervisor chu: thank you. why don't we go to the budget analyst report?

>> madam chair and members of the committee, our recommended reductions are shown on pages 77-78. they totaled $380,569, and of that amount, 280,763rd dollars of general fund redemptions, all of which are ongoing. these are reductions that still allow an increase of $12.1 million or 5.1% of the department's 2011-2012 budget. we also recommend closing of prior year incumbrances, which would allow the return of $359,437 to the general fund. in total, these recommendations would result in savings of $740,006. as the department indicated, we are still working with them and will report back to you next

week. supervisor chu: thank you very much. if there are no other questions, i can ask ms. brown to follow-up on the outstanding questions, and we look forward to seeing you next week. >> very good. thank you very much. supervisor chu: ok, we have mr. walton from the department of technology. >> good afternoon. john walton, department of technology. briefly, we have a for your slides to go over with you -- we have four slides to go over with you. i brought some hard copy is just

in case folks wanted to follow along. briefly jumping into the slide, i wanted to revisit for a moment, we had a lot of conversations around technology in the city. just to remind everyone, to put our department in context, i was listening to the hearings this morning. i was glad to hear, frankly, many of the department's talking about how important technology is to them in delivering their services, how they are looking to improve their technology. our department is making sure -- in charge of making sure there are good data centers and a secure robust network they can run these applications over and police department initiatives together and working with them. right now, we are going through a multi-year process, as you are all aware. a decrease in the size of our apartment. but the good news is that even in the light of decreases in our budget, we still accomplished, i think, a number of incredible things in his last year, and i

would like to thank my staff. hopefully, some of them are watching. but the interesting things we have done. we have talked about this before, so i will not revisit them all. this is a partial list, but i think it is good that there's so much energy in the city around technology. there's a lot of enthusiasm, and people are looking to embrace it and do the best they can and do some amazing things with technology in this past year, and i know there are a lot of plans and ideas that coit has endorsed. some of those we talked about at the last hearing we were at, and i appreciate your approval of the five-year plan. when i was here presenting that, we were really talking about what is the role of coit in the overall city i.t. family. even though we're in just one small department, the department of technology is either a leader or a key contributor to eight of the 10 initiatives we talked about in the last one, so we see

it as a unique challenge for us. we have a lot of legacy systems we try to support, a lot of operational duties we have. everything from the radios the police officers use to the telephones you use on your desktop at the same time. we are trying to step up, show some leadership, show some initiative, and get some of these more strategic initiatives under way as well and start making progress on those as well appear finally to get what we are really here to talk about today is what we're looking at this year. ms. brown already spoke about the decrease in our budget related to the transfer function around the reproduction in mail services. we are seeing an overall decrease in our budget. that is primarily driven by decreases we have achieved related to project cost and contract costs. i am happy to say that this is the first hearing i can remember that we have gone through this process and move where we have had a multi years of reduction without any staff layoffs.

i am glad we have found ways to achieve the savings and retain what i think is an important element in our department, which is the core nucleus of the staff to deliver on this project at the end of the day. having said that, that is all the slides i have, and i welcome any questions. supervisor chu: thank you very much for your presentation. we did just hear the five-year i.t. plan recently, last week. i want to thank you for that presentation. what we go to the budget analyst's recommendation? >> our recommended reductions detail on pages 89 to 92 total $1,416,868. of those reductions, $1,052,369 or 74% of general fund productions, and 1,301,304 are about 91.8% our ongoing reductions. we also recommend closing of

prior year and expanded general fund incumbrances, which would allow the return of $2,662 to the general fund here together, these recommendations will result in $1,419,530 in savings to the city, including $1,055,031 to the general fund. we are still working with the department and will report back to you next week. supervisor chu: thank you very much. to be clear, the department is not in agreement with the recommendation? >> we are not in agreement. we are in conversations with the budget analyst. we appreciate their ideas and thoughts, but as i indicated in my presentation, we are keenly aware of having to support the old, which our budget is mainly constructed around, and still move forward with the new. we want to insure that we can make progress on the next initiatives and not put ourselves in a situation from a budget standpoint where we are unable to deliver. supervisor chu: there was a note in the budget analyst report about the seven limited duration

positions. can you expand on that? >> we have positions identified in the budget. we have spoken to the budget analyst about it before. our goal would be to fill those positions as soon as possible. we have customers eager to take advantage of the fiber leasing program, and while we appreciate the viewpoint that perhaps money could be saved by delaying the higher those positions, our current positions, we would like to hire them as soon as possible so we can move the project forward. supervisor chu: not to be specific about the recommendation of the timing of hiring, but what would these individuals be doing? >> it would be installing, maintaining, and managing the services starting in july for those customers that would like to procure our -- dark fiber. supervisor chu: so we are -- has coit already approved that? >> they have. we have signed up the first customer, and we are in discussion with several other

customers about getting them involved in the program as well. supervisor chu: to follow up on that, given that there is an idea to go forward with a repeat of the dark fiber, was there something anticipated in your budget? >> we had written a memo. first customer we signed up brought $50,000 worth of revenue, and we feel there is significantly more revenue to be had. we are happy to share a copy of the memo with you. supervisor chu: what is in the budget now? >> i did not believe we have put a finalize the number in the budget for the revenue projection for that program yet. i think it is rather a chicken and egg conversation of how fast we could staff at and how soon we get customers on board. supervisor chu: we have the expense in there, and we have not yet budgeted? >> i do not believe we have put a place holder in get -- in yet. >> you have a question about the interim recommendations, and

we have recommended that they not be improved in the interim. this is across the board throughout the city unless there is some revenue-generating thing. we are not recommended disapproval of the positions. we're just stating that the position should start at a later time, not on july 1. that is our recommendation to you, and that applies to all departments throughout the city. supervisor chu: thank you. supervisor chiu: just to finish off the conversation on dark fiber, colleagues, you may remember that i had asked the part of technology to really look at this some months back, and i appreciate the work that has been done. i do think that hiring some headcount to bring in additional revenues that should exceed the cost of that is a reduction that makes sense for us, assuming that will be the case, and i assume from mr. walton that it would be. a global question i had, and this is really also to the mayor's office, is i certainly

appreciate and support the fact that the department technology's budget has been decreasing for the last few years. i think that is appropriate, given overall city budget cuts. could either of you give me a sense, though, of what is happening to the information technology budgets of other departments? as dt's budget has been increasing, and has put more pressure on your department, particularly at a time when we are trying to centralize i.t. i think it is important that other departments around the city are sharing in that cause inherited. >> absolutely. there are a number of things going on in the budget to reflect on, discussions that we and you have had. a couple of kind of immediate

issues related to the data center consolidation, we have, as approved in the plan that was adopted by coit, budgeted some savings in the budget to reflect the projected savings associated with the data center consolidation. the estimated savings were due to staffing efficiencies and to a boy did equipment purchase, as we were able to back off of purchasing equipment in each department in a decentralized manner as we ship them on to the consolidated data center. we also have savings associated with the data center and other consolidation initiatives in our contracts and in the past through costs going through as a function of trying to do a better job of coordinating and have dt work with departments to

consolidate purchases, contracts, and then lastly, as recommended in the ict plan, what we are doing in this budget is we are shifting and reallocating funds within the base budget to pay for projects that would otherwise have been funded with general fund. within the city wide coit/i.t. budget, there are a number of projects in the plan. about $5.5 million worth of those projects are funded by reallocating dollars from within departments based, so we have identified with those departments savings in their i.t. and use them to fund the prior ties projects. in addition, there is about $4.7 million of deferred i.t. costs

or reduce i.t. costs in an enterprise departments. the total city-wide savings from all these initiatives is about $12.5 million. supervisor chiu: do you mind presenting -- could i see a copy of the savings? that's absolutely, and i meant to bring a printed copy to put out on the overhead, but i did not. but i have an electronic file, so i can share that with you. supervisor chu: thank you. i am sorry if i did not hear the budget analyst pose a response, but i know the one difference that i did see is that the request to move the hire date from july 1 is actually for october 1 for these positions instead of august, as is in the previous positions. >> that is what i was just

mentioning to the chair, and that is throughout, as you know, the mayor said over some interim budget exceptions to the budget, which would enable physicians to start on july 1 if there is a critical need, or if they are revenue-producing. we are saying just as a matter of osmosis, it takes time to hire these people, and that is why we have suggested in departments across the board that there be a later hiring date, and that will enable the committee to save some dollars for the city. supervisor chu: i completely understood that explanation. i wondered why you chose october 1 instead of august 1 for the difference in position. >> in some instances, we set august 1. in some instances, it set october 1. it depends upon our semis of what the department told us in terms of when these people can actually be higher. the department head himself to stated to you that they intend to hire these people. there is an intention, but the

question is -- when? what date? supervisor chu: thank you. thank you for the presentation. given that the department is still working out the specific recommendations, we will see you next week. thank you very much. human rights commission. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i am the director of human rights commission. thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. i have an overhead. just to refresh some of the newer supervises recollections about the human rights commission, it is the oldest municipal human rights commission agency of its type in

the united states, founded in 1964, and the charter responsibilities of the human rights commission are to study, investigate, and mediate all instances of discrimination including intergroup tensions within the city and also discrimination within the city. prepare, and courage, and coordinate all programs of voluntary affirmative action to reduce or eliminate existing inequities, and disadvantages, or those resulting from past discrimination practices, prepare and disseminate education materials related to prejudice and discrimination and provide information, guidance, and technical assistance to others, including public agencies, private persons, organizations, institutions. very quickly, this is a little tough to read because of the small print, but it will give you some indication of how the human rights commission is organized. we are actually organized into

four distinct divisions. one is a non-discrimination division, which deals with non- discrimination policy. second is the division -- what we call 14b local business and power division dealing with contract and non-discrimination contract in. third is the 12b equal benefits division, and fourth is the human rights administered to city bond division. the budget for 2011-2012 is an increase of $98,000 over last year's budget from 5.768 mill ion. this includes an absorbing the increased personnel costs and increased benefit costs year to year. you can see in general terms the three different divisions -- or

four different -- yes, three different divisions. for 2010-2011, 2011-2012, and also personal expenses, these are on our work order fund expenditures. work order fund expenditures have gone down by 8%. but the agency is funded by three distinct areas. one is through the general fund support. third is through the work orders, with various agencies in the city, and for, and the final one is a sure yvonne, which is also through work orders -- sure the bond -- shirty -- surety

bond. one of the primary things we did this year is previous years of the human rights commission, all of our non-discrimination and policy personnel costs were integrated into our work order funds, so each of the major contract in organizations in the city paid a percentage of our non-discrimination and policy division. since none of these directly impact those particular divisions, and they are more of a citywide function, we work with the mayor's office to separate all of our non- discrimination activities and put them directly on the general fund and then reduce the costs of the general work order fund to offset or exchange the increase in general fund. this gives the policymakers and the mayor's office the ability to see exactly what we're

spending for each individual item within the human rights commission. this year, we're spending a little over $800,000 on non- discrimination and policy, which has increased the general fund of roughly $400,000, but that $400,000 has been offset by a corresponding decrease in work order funds, which are general fund departments. consequently, our overall increase in general fund after you deduct the reductions in work order funds, is about $38,000. these are the various work order funds. it is very hard to see, but you can see with the large, round graphs that our primary work order funds, they fund primarily

all of our work order activity. surety bond fund, which is the fund that allows us to assist small businesses and local businesses in gaining performance bonds. again, primarily funded through the puc, the airport, and dpw, the major contract in bodies of the city. as far as authorizing and funding personnel costs, going back to 2008, our aso is reduced from 48 individuals to 41 this year, but our funded positions have gone from 40 in 2008 to 36 this year. we will actually be reducing the funded positions one position from last year.