you have a new mayor organizing and administration and seeking board approval for a staffing plan. i understand the logic of that suggestion, although i could imagine it creating a difficult situation for both the board and the mayor. with somebody coming in and trying to argue their staffing plan from the board. that would be my one thought on that. supervisor chu: thank you. supervisor kim? supervisor kim: i appreciate that the mayor's office did come in to chat with me on this. i understand the $300,000 for the fund. i would still like to hold off on the final decision until we see the full budget or where we are at in a couple days. we have tremendous services that i know many of us are fighting

for for our city. i would not want us to be put on reserve to the budget committee 's position, because i think this would be an awkward position, and i and trust that the controller's office would make sure the mayor's office is appropriately extending the fund's. i would like to back a couple more days to evaluate it in relation to other things. supervisor chu: thank you, supervisors. actually, i would agree with you. i would not want to put that on reserve pending approval of how the gets spent. i think it would be wise to hold off on taking action on this. perhaps we can pass through this general responsibility. at least the $300,000 project balance. ok, next department. city administrator.

>> good morning, madame chair, members of the committee. in the brown, acting city administrator. -- aimee brown, acting city administrator. we are still not in agreement as to the recommended cuts of $10,065 for animal care and control and to address the reasons as to why we have not been able to reach agreement, i would like to call up the director of the department of animal care and control, rebecca katz. >> good morning, supervisors. i understand that the budget analyst's office recommended additional positions and salaries for some other departments.

unfortunately, there was a recommendation for reduction of $10,000 for animal care, supervisors. the reason we are objecting to that -- we are running a very lean operation, as you know. we are 24/7, 365-days a year operation. we have calls for emergencies, calls for aggressive animals, people in harm's way, i injured animals, cruelty cases, and so on. we also house in our facility 24/7. we provide round-the-clock care. nonetheless, despite operating like public agencies or a hospital or, dare i say, like a jail, we do not have supervisors

throughout the day. we have one supervisor for each division. the supervisor is called on on his days off, when he takes a vacation, at night to make decisions that range from whether or not to provide treatment for diseases such as potential rabies infections, to determine the care of the animal, and he provides advice at all times of the day and night. the budget analyst reports suggest we could reduce the standby pay for him by asking him to carry a pager or department-issued cellular phone. the pager challenge is when he receives a call, he needs to be able to answer the questions immediately. these are frequently life or death decisions for living beings. as far as the department-issued

sell fun goes, that would be a challenge -- cell-phone goes, that would be a challenge. it is asking a lot of an employee to be on call, to deal with as much as he does as often as he does. further, another such device was not working one weekend. those of you who are former attorneys like ibm -- -- like i am, it is challenging. i think he goes above and beyond in his responses. he currently has incurred a significant amount of compensatory time. he is nearing his limit for vacation time. he rarely digs of. those -- he rarely takes of. those accruals will increase, and we will be forced to pay him

out of time, which will be more costly than what we are paying. i am happy to take questions. supervisor chu: thank you. mr. rose? >> madam chair, members of the committee, our total recommended reduction for this department is $200,236. the dispute -- i would like ms. campbell to briefly respond. >> the recommendation is specific to an understanding said wide -- citywide, and employees on standby can receive 40% of their rate of pay and receive a pager or cell phone or 25% update. the concept is they have to be near a location of a telethon to be available. gradually the apartments are

moving away from that and providing -- departments are moving away from that and providing a cellular phone. it is understood city-wide that everyone will be provided a pager or cellular phone and be paid a portion of pay. we do include the cost of the cellular phone in this recommendation. so as not to impair the ability of the individual to respond. supervisor chu: supervisor mirkarimi. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you. said the $10,000 difference the department is asking us about, is that in the making of this cellular phone? where is that $10,000 coming from? >> it is actually $10,000 reduction in premium pay, and

then we have recommended that you add $750 for a cellular phone. it is a net reduction of $10,065. again, as ms. campbell stated, it is to implement the existing provisions of the mou. supervisor mirkarimi: and so, ms. katz, on the question of the $10,000 and us not being able to find that, what would happen? what would be the consequence? >> the supervisor would not take on a department-issued cellular phone. rather he would be at the shelter more frequently to respond to emergency situations, and in which case he would either approve compensatory time in excess of the mou provisions for which he would be paid out, or an assistant supervisor would fill his

positions for other duties, and they get paid at time and a half. for some odd reason, the mou that covers the supervisors and assistant supervisors requires that the supervisors get $1 more per page. . they are paid pretty similar. we would ultimately end up incurring greater cost to the department. supervisor mirkarimi: i know this is a negligible amount in the scheme of things. am i hearing from the department head brown that this is something we should correct on the $10,000? >> it would be our desire to have that restored if possible. i defer to director katz for how she thinks it is most efficient to run her department, and i am

sympathetic to the 24/7 demands put on the employees of for department. thank you to the budget analyst, and this is a fairly negligible amount -- it would be my request that you restore that if possible. supervisor chu: thank you, supervisor. we have heard from the budget analyst and the department on this item. the budget analyst has recommended $215,000 worth of cuts, and the department is requesting that the $10,000 not be taken. if we are in agreement with the department, we would still be taking to a hundred $5,000 worth of cuts. is this committee ready to act on this item? supervisor mirkarimi? supervisor mirkarimi: i am sympathetic to what director katz has said. i think animal welfare has been taking a number of hits over the

past few years. i would be more than happy to be the dissenting voice on this recommendation. supervisor chu: thank you, supervisor mirkarimi. one question for the department -- is the department in agreement with the other cuts? >> madam chair, yes, we are. supervisor chu: yes, i would be supportive of supervisor mirkarimi's position. perhaps we can make a motion or take action on the $24,900 in budget closeouts and accept all the recommendations from the budget analyst except the $10,000 for the animal control section? can we do that without objection? ok, we can do that without objection. thank you very much. supervisor mirkarimi: thank you.

supervisor chu: the department of technology. >> good morning, supervisors. john walton, director of the department of technology. i am here to give you an update on our discussions with the budget analysts office. we are in agreement with them. these 16 recommendations of the total value of approximately $800,000. unfortunately we are not in agreement with the budget analyst on several other items related to travel, training, equipment maintenance, other

expenses to cover unforeseen expenses throughout the year. they add up to a total of $823,041. 16 of the 22 cuts we do agree to add up to -- the ones we're not in agreement with the budget analyst don add up to $823,041. with regards supervisor chu: with regards to the budget closeouts? >> we are in agreement with the budget closeout. supervisor chu: can you articulate the items you're not in agreement with? >> sure. they relate to travel and training.

we want to get more aggressive in the training area. supervisor chu: can you point out where in the budget analyst reports they are? >> on page, i believe, it is 80. the item of training. there is an item on there for training. it adds up to $12,000. another area we're not in agreement with the budget analyst john -- on is on page 81, the other current expenses for $495,000.200 $96. i missed one.

supervisor chu: we just want to make sure we understand where they are. >> also on page 81, and i am sorry, the maintenance services- equipment. supervisor chu: $246.349 in total? >> and then on page 89, the travel expenses for a total of $10,000. 58,446. supervisor chu: ok, so far what i have got.

page 80, $12,000.9050 on training -- $12,900 on training. maintenance. 82, $10,000 on air travel. >> madam chair, they disagree with the $495,296 on the bottom of page 81, also. supervisor chu: with respect to the larger items, can you explain those two? >> yes, ma'am. every year, we tried to reevaluate and rewrote negotiate -- and renegotiate maintenance agreements. we are in the midst of changing technology this year, and we believe the maintenance is necessary to keep these systems up and running. all the other services we are

implementing across the city our dependence on our data centers, our networks to be up and running as much as possible. we are working with the department's. they would like to see our department averages be much higher. we will need as much maintenance as we can. supervisor chu: with regard to the budget analyst recommendations, they are recommending the cuts based on historic spending levels. >> i believe when they look at our budget, and they see we have not extended those dollars, they recommend reducing or eliminating those dollars. while i appreciate it, i am not a fan of use it or lose it. some years, we're not able to use all of our dollars because we're focused on other things.

sometimes our maintenance agreements fluctuate. i do not believe cutting our budget in this area because we did not spend it in the previous fiscal year is pretty. supervisor chu: so, what about this year would convince me that you are going to spend at this level? what is it? >> we have many maintenance agreements related to our equipment, to the new data center of equipment. a lot of the aging equipment around the city. again, because we are highly decentralized, a lot of departments have not maintained the equipment's -- equipment. date usually gets -- they usually get a one or three year maintenance agreements when they

buy new equipment. when they fail, they look to partner with us to help them replace their equipment or place it under maintenance of the systems do not fail. supervisor chu: thank you. budget analyst? >> madam chair, members of the committee, our recommendations that we provided last week totaled 1,460,008 $67. we're recommending cuts of 1,000,003481 $47. mr. ian hart will briefly go over the disagreements. they recommend approximately 70% of the reductions in this department. this department' recovers nine

items in need -- in the general fund, but the department is basically disagreement with 75% of our recommended cuts. >> madam chair, members of the committee -- just to step through our reductions. on page 80, with regard to training, the department was allocated $16,950 for training in the current year. it is projected to spend less in the current year. therefore, we are recommending a reduction of $12,950, which is still low. it is above what is projected for next year. on page 81, in the past three fiscal years, the department has underexpended maintenance

service agreements by over $1 million. the current fiscal year, that is also the case. the mayor's office has recommended $80,000 for this line item. the additional reduction would still allow for $1.8 million on this line item in 2011-2012. that, in addition to the line items before you, there are additional budgetary line items. in the past come up with regard to other current expenses, also on page 81, the department has expanded the line-item in 2008, 2009, and is projected to do so again in 2010-2011. are recommended reduction of $145,246 would still lau for

approximately $3.6 million -- would still allow for approximately $3.6 million in the program next year. on page 82, the department is projected to expend approximately $9,000 on air travel in the current year. they expended this line item for this year as well. finally, on page 83, in the past three the school years, the department has not spent more than $111,983 on this line item. with recommended -- we have

recommended a reduction that would still allow for $140,000 for training next year. we feel that is a reasonable amount given the last four years. i am happy to take any additional questions. supervisor chu: thank you. i do have a question. i know we've been asking the department of technology to really take a look at other opportunities to get the city for all departments on the same track with e-mail and other things. if we were to take these reductions, what would that do to that process? >> thank you, madame chair. i agree. the department of technology is about to take a leadership position in moving forward some of the strategic initiatives around consolidation, working together, finding ways citywide for folks to come up with solutions that do not replicate procurements as solutions.

it is hard to say at this level of production where we would be. what i can say, when we agreed to doing eight of the 10 strategic initiatives, we did not anticipate these additional cuts. there will be some impact if you decided to take these additional recommendations from the budget analyst. we would have to reassess how many exactly we could continue to support. we have been cut back the last three or four years fairly significantly. we are a bare bones operation. at this point, at this level of cuts, though perhaps necessary, would be significant to us and we would have to frankly ss our leadership -- frankly reassessed our leadership position on some of these things. not to belabor the point, but every i.t. investment we make around the city is dependent on the central i.t. department to

be successful. when we hear all these projects that people would like to implement, we want to be supportive of those, but because of our decentralized nature, we need to have a certain level of agility, of funding availability, so when other departments have large projects, we can make the changes we need to on our side for this project to be successful. to be frank, at this level of cuts, we would have to come back to you with your approval and perhaps put more definition to where we would have to scale back, perhaps in our leadership role strategically, or perhaps to where we are supporting some of the other department's activities. supervisor chiu: colleagues, i wanted to share my own

perspectives on this issue, given this is something i've been thinking about for some time. i am often a significant critic of what our city is doing with regards to information technology. we are often asking the department of technology to do a lot more for less. to provide a little context to our other colleagues on the board, and in years past, i have often talked about the tenures of reports that our city has conducted on the city -- the 10 years of reports that our city has conducted on the city's i.t. expenses. mayor willie brown said that it was important invest in centralization. this is a conclusion we have come to over the past 10 years. unfortunately, in san francisco, unlike other

organizations comparable to the city and county of san francisco or you have the two-thirds of your resources in i.t. -- where you have two-thirds of your resources in i.t., and the rest of your resources disperse in specialized departments, we've done exactly the opposite in san francisco. the vast majority of our resources are decentralized among different departments, and that has led to, i think, the frustrating situations with i.t. in san francisco, as well as the frustrations many of us have had with the department of technology. i do think that continuing to start i.t. in the way -- continuing to starve i.t. any way that we have been doing is not the way to proceed. i would suggest we not move forward with the final amounts. i think if we want the department to finish the e-mail consolidation project, the server consolidation project,

bringing the enterprise contracts together, all of the things we recently signed off on me and in the five-year capital planning process, we have to make sure that d.t. has the resources to do it. this is potentially a situation where we could be penny wise, but pound foolish. i would forced perspective that we should support dept.'s recommendations. supervisor chu: supervisor kim? supervisor kim: thank you. for me, i understand the argument, but i want to have a better understanding of how training, air flights, and some of the material supplies and equipment would actually help the department to that consolidation work we've asked them to and take on the goals we have asked them to? i understand budgetary cuts will prevent the department from doing some of the things it is supposed to do, but it is not clear to me how these cuts actually impact that work.

so, if i could get more information on that, that would be helpful. also, seeing that we're in the center of a lot of this technology and innovations in the country, i really question flying around to other areas to get support and professional development on technology. i do not understand why we would need to leave the bay area for any of that. >> i can respond to some of that. the training is twofold raley. -- really. we need to keep our staff at the same level of knowledge as other departments we're working in partnership with. also to your point, supervisor kim, it is important to keep our staff at the same training level as the people around as. travel --