the usage of overtime. you had included more on how the department's active message policy was to do more fit with finance policy, it being better to do that. can you speak about that? it is counterintuitive. >> i would love to be able to provide you with greater detail on that. >> thank you. to elaborate on department staffing, in the past few years we have over five more -- we have relied more on overtime than regular staffing. there are fringe benefits paid to employees during overtime. members do not receive those. they are well -- they are held. there are provisions during the

overtime and there is straight pay for the member. in addition, there is relief paid to members where they are sick or on vacation and you have to account for those missing were periods. we have a certain number of people that must be on duty every day. in most cases an overtime shift gives us flexibility to plug in where we see fit in where staffing is needed. supervisor chu: it sounds like it is primarily the flexibility of plugging people in when they are said or not available to work while maintaining a minimum level of staffing.

you would not want to staff 120%, but she would want to be able to plug in the people as needed. >> absolutely. too many people without enough vacancies, you would want to be in a position where you could plug in rather than the reverse with too many people. supervisor chu: in terms of overtime and a person working overtime, they are already receiving health care benefits and retirement benefits, they are not getting more medical. >> absolutely. supervisor chu: on the last point, retirement benefits, you said was -- >> we have looked to historically what the data has shown.

about 1.4 times. there is savings from those first 10 hours. supervisor chu: thank you. supervisor mirkarimi: good afternoon, chief. i noticed that in the early analysis with that the budget analyst, there is still a 4.4% budget increase in the department's budget. where is the $3.5 million hole in the budget that we have heard exists? it was brought to my office his attention that there was a $3.5 billion old with an increase in the budget itself.

>> right now there is a $9 million assumption because uniformed members of the fire department are due a wage increase on july 1. there has not been an agreement as of this state. with $9 million if the wage is taking it -- taken. that is something that we are monitoring closely. supervisor mirkarimi: if the consequence is not made whole, in the stand there are two stations for opposing the activation, correct? >> when we were talking about the budget in april, we wanted to be very candid.

we did not look at the contingency at the time, as we were concerned it would have adverse impact. when the budget was presented, there was deferral from the members of 107.98. my feeling is that if that was not resolve their would have to be an operational decision made, including potential brown outs. supervisor mirkarimi: these are heavy hammers. why those two stations? >> we gave you a thorough analysis of those stations. it was based on location and if -- yet would not be a station that would be eliminated, it would be an engine company.

the station would be up and running. our analysis was basically that if that company was removed, what is the closest engine coming in. when we elected this analysis, for example, station to in chinatown was deftly populated and surrounded in close proximity by three other stations. if they were on another call or deactivated, they would be in a response time fed had less of an impact on the sunset district. copper those stations that we mentioned in april -- those

stations that we mentioned in april, and engine 14, engine no. 7 in the mission dystrophy, -- in the mission district, hopefully we will not have to go there. supervisor mirkarimi: what financial responsibility has been enhanced or changed by us absorbent of presidio off? -- cuff absorbing the presidio? >> we entered into a 10 year contract with them, reimbursing the staff and the engine companies out there. we did not assume additional revenue on top of those salaries as they paid us to provide the service out there.

supervisor mirkarimi: are they our employees? >> yes. supervisor mirkarimi: is it cost beneficial? >> yes. supervisor mirkarimi: the federal government is reimbursing us? supervisor mirkarimi>> it is a e resources. supervisor mirkarimi: are we in the second year of that agreement? >> yes and it is a 10 year contract. supervisor mirkarimi: what is the nearest station in that area panama of -- area stalof? >> the top would be station no. 10 with stations out in the richmond district.

supervisor mirkarimi: with regard to projections with that the fire department's readiness for large events, like the america's cup, which is coming? >> a perfect segue. we will continue to pursue grant funding. basically, post-9/11 in the urban areas security initiative when funding was made available. as a city moving through the department of emergency management, mostly those are separate training exercises and equipment. we were awarded a $7.5 million

grant. there be a marine based programs to support prepared this for the 13th. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you. supervisor chiu: 512 again move back to the topic of overtime, which we have discussed before. how confident do you feel that the overtime no. you are budgeting for is something you will be able to stay within? >> at this point we will continue to work with the mayor's budget office. every year we have delivered on budget. which we are proud of. not an easy thing to do, but obviously necessary. this year we overspent on

overtime, but we had reduction in salaries. within the own budget -- within our own budget we were able to manage that. place the budget into overtime to be able to balance that. i understand we were putting limitations on that. whether or not we need to look at before finalizing, we do see that our staffing is challenging for us. these targets are a bit of a moving target for us. particularly using concessions from our members. we have certain target projections, but they are just that, projections. we will continue to do our best

and live within the budget. supervisor chiu: when we had this conversation that the gao committee by proposed reducing the capital in which your employees need to get a waiver from the department of human resources from 30% to 20%. i am curious if there are other measures that we could help you with in terms of controlling overtime costs. >> because we have mandatory staffing, 30% move down to 20%, it would be the same amount of overtime expended. so, it would be spreading the overtime dollars out, not saving the overtime dollars. i am not sure if that answers your question. supervisor chu: what would help

us to save those dollars? >> we are trying to make sure that we have strict controls on stet -- sixth time and other time that we are looking at, including workers' comp, which we are monitoring closely because of minimum staffing that we have, we are mandating to have a certain amount of firefighters and paramedics working every day. we are challenged with agreements and staffing levels, processes passed by the voters a few years back related to minimum staffing. one of the things we had discussion about was over time, saving money in some ways, but personally i feel we are getting to the point where we may need to bring in more members at

higher concentrations, which is a difficult discussion to have that this point. we are not budgeted to have that class coming in. at some point we may need to have that conversation and it will depend on what happens when they retire sooner than planned. if we start to see that and the count drops too much we might need to look at possibly reducing overtime, but it is something we are simply analyzing at this point. supervisor chiu: thank you. supervisor chu: 4 typical apartments it seems we would want to bring down the cost of overtime, but if we did that and substituted it with straight positions, we might have higher costs than overtime. we need to look carefully at that analysis.

supervisor kim: one of the issues that the budget and legislative analyst's report brought was the topic of assigning staff during regularly scheduled hours to provide services rather than over time. what were your thoughts on that? it seemed to make sense to me. >> it was one of the policy recommendations that had come up before. our position was the same. it really is a hallmark program for the city and i believe that success was due to the training and the ability and capacity of members to be in front of the classroom with skills and abilities to train. our fire fighters to a great job but they do not have the desire or ability to be in front of the

group to provide education. we feel that every dollar is well spent, even in an economy like this. it surrounds using on duty staff. if someone is not able to present or it is not in the job description, necessarily, to be an educator or impart information, second we could have operational impact if we are relying on members working at stations to pull them here and there to train the public. it is not something we are currently set up to do. we believe that if you have support from the people you have trained that part of the reason that people keep coming back in those programs is the quality of instruction. the enthusiasm of the instructors. that has been the foundation of

the program. supervisor kim: what would be the challenge of having them -- having folks that are good at public presentations doing it during their normal -- >> removing them from their traditional stations and running and print -- engines and trucks short, if you will? there is a dual role that would trigger bargaining. it is not something that is part of their normal scope of duties as a firefighter. in working in the fire stations the recommendation is that they would participate in the training. supervisor kim: thank you. supervisor mirkarimi: this is by to sound outlandish, but i know a lot of smaller areas have a

volunteer fire departments. do we have such a program? is there a way without a violation of union rules where people can actually be listed somehow if they have a desire to be trained? i know that that might seem a bit out there but i have family members who are volunteer fire department members. they love what they do and they are but that it. i was furious. >> referring to them as trainers? supervisor mirkarimi: just curious. i'd think depthnurt -- i'd think thatnur nurt is great. but is there anything beyond the normal strategy or those needed times? >> we do have a fire reserve program that convenes every thursday evening. we have approximately between 45

and 50 active members that we train to assist us on fire, ground, set an alarm or greater. coming out in the exteriors firefighting operations. including just being there for the paid professional firefighters to assist. obviously they are not trained to fight fires or go into burning buildings. in terms of the roadway to the community and training, we do consider them trainees, if you will. they ha day jobs and so forth, the voting themselves 19 per week, thursday evening. it would be a stretch to assume that they might be able to be a part of it. many of them have gone through the program of training. there is an excellent core of

people that we can rely on. in the event of a large-scale emergency especially. supervisor mirkarimi: 5 was thinking to myself, do we have firefighters that live outside of the state of california? >> yes, we do. supervisor mirkarimi: how many? >> 35% live in the city. the remaining bulk live within the state and bay area. but off of the top of my head i would say that we have under 20 that do not live in the state. it is a bone of contention with me and my understanding from the city attorney's office -- fox supervisor mirkarimi: it is not many. >> is an interesting -- we hear a lot about firefighting within

the city. it is nice to have a blend of people that are not in the city. many of the new orleans firefighters and police officers had to deal with their own devastation. in some ways it was ok because we made sure that we cells and called for procedures that made sense. supervisor mirkarimi: but i think it is part of the larger conversation about overtime. accessibility. how are we able to deploy in rapid time once those people on their shift mission are here for their normal schedules and are under anticipated emergency needs? >> i can tell you that in 1989 we had a very sophisticated recall procedure where there

were 150 people that came in within a 3 hour window. usually it is not a problem. they were trained to already have a plan for their family and when they were needed, they implemented part of it -- implemented part of the need for that. we went on to have a reserve corps for the day following the emergency. supervisor chu: following up on the topic of overtime, this is not just specific to the fire department. we half a number of departments that have gone beyond overtime budget. i know that the fire department should get credit. even though your overtime budget has exceeded the amount budgeted, you have actually made it whole within your budget. i do appreciate that. is there an opportunity to have

the controllers office looked at the balance between overtime and straight time? i know that we picked up on the topic as we received department budgets before. take a look at our top 10 departments that have seen exceeding over time so that we can evaluate whether we are appropriately budgeting. is that something that the comptroller's office can help us to work >> yes, we are working on the actual overtime during the current year as compared to the actual budget. we will be making a recommendation to the extent that we believe there should be transfers of money from the cellar redline to the overtime

line. supervisor chu: it is definitely more transparent to the public. i think that that would be an improvement in this budget process. so, i know that we had heard from the chief. you have not yet talked about budget analysts recommendations. >> that there were six recommendations made by the budget analysts. i can walk you through the first four. the first item, the $35,695, that when we would agree to. items #4, 5, and six on the second page, the utility's and

training materials supplies with 20,000 on taxes licenses and permits. budget analysts had recommended just over $1 million. at this point they agreed to 115,000. items #2 and 3, roughly $962,000, they will require more discussion with the budget analyst regarding how we subject staffing and methodology that we use. we feel that we would not be able to balance our budget without proposing 610,000 over time. $351,000 in premium pay.

i would ask that we come before you next week for some resolution on those items. and then the other item, the policy issue brought up by supervisor camper, they are proposing to reduce, which we would strongly disagree with. supervisor chu: thank you, chief. let's go to the budget analyst. >> regarding the point about the 4.14% increase, the supervisor is absolutely correct. there is an increase in this budget and the mayor sent over a budget that was sent to the board of supervisors and it was declared to be balanced on the basis of the 9 million or whenever it was around the givebacks that the firefighters might give back. it is a complete the separate

issue, as we see it. a problem that must be resolved by the mayor's office if the budget is not balanced. i want to emphasize that if the committee accepted our cuts, it is a complete the separate issue. i want to call to your attention what we disagree with. page 27 of our report. let me read to you about the overtime. supervisors, there is some question about the statement that it is less expensive if we use over time. it is, to a point, but it is not completely clear in that regard. what we say in that overtime is we recommend that you cut it. we say that it has increased by $3.2 million.

here is the key. with the addition of 36 new firefighters, this recommendation would still allow for the committee's consideration a cut of 610,000, which still allows a budget increase of $2.6 million in overtime in fiscal year 0 11/12. in that recommendation, supervisors, we have considered the fact upset the fire department exceeded its budget over time by about $6 million. you are correct that they absorber, and i wanted to know that we consider the fact that overtime was exceeded.

we are recommending a cut of $309,000 and the comptroller's office is projecting a surplus of $345,000 in 2011 -- 2010- 2011. our recommended reduction including mandatory fringe benefits still allow for sufficient funding in 11-12. the neighborhood of emergency response team for the city residents, programmed primarily as an option for assigning staff through regular hours to