would be to reduce the air travel budget significantly, perhaps we could bring more people into the city rather than us going to visit them? the reality of our job is we support a very broad technology -- right now, we do have to go visit. we have not taken advantage of that in the past as much as we should have. i like your idea that perhaps we should bring more people into the city to share knowledge with us. perhaps we could agree with the budget analyst recommendation on reducing the air travel portion. i do feel strongly about the training. i feel it is very important. our work force has been reduced to the level where it is important to me to feel like every one of our staff is trained at the best level possible. maybe we can find ways to do that in a more cost-effective manner. i would very much like to see continued investment in training

city staff. supervisor chu: thank you for your answer. do you have any other questions, supervisor kim? supervisor kim: i think i would just like to continue this and get a better understanding of how these cuts with impact -- would impact d.t.'s ability to make the changes would all like to see. supervisor chu: maybe i didn't make a recommendation. we take -- maybe i can make a recommendation. we take the cuts recommended, but with regard to the remaining items, i believe supervisor kim post some concerns with regard to the travel component of the recommendations? supervisor kim: actually, for all of the recommended adjustments from the budget analyst report.

at would just like to see how they actually connected to work we would like d.t. to do this year. i would like them to be more specific. which schools would impact and why? supervisor chu: it looks like there is a desire to see more information. colleagues, from my perspective, i am fine was holding off until thursday to make this final decisions, but i would express but i do feel supervisor chiu articulated very clearly the rationale for not continuing to star of a department -- to starve a department. i would be generally supportive of not taking those cuts that supervisor chiu articulated. i am ok with told and often as pieces until thursday.

if i can and, if we could, let's take action on the items that do not have any disagreement. we will take action on the $295,105, and we will leave the $800,000 and the thursday. thank you. the ethics department. this is a department we did hear from briefly last week. this is a department that we did ask the budget analyst to go back and see if they could provide some brief information on, a particular because we do have a significant pot of money in the mayor's campaign fund, a public campaign funds that are in there, so it is worthwhile to cover that and have a budget analyst report on them. >> thank you, madame chair, supervisors.

we did work with the legislative analyst's office, and they did complete the review. also, you requested a breakdown of how we expect public financing expenditures in 2012 to pan out. i did forward the document to all of you with that breakdown. the only other thing i would highlights while i am here today, last week, i told you the total funds distributed under the public financing program was $1,674,000, and in the seven days since i gave you that figure, an additional $826,869 has been distributed in the last week, bringing us up, that much closer to our estimate.

i do not know we will hit the $3.1 million by this thursday, but we're going to come very close. at this point, we are just over $2.5 million in expenditures for this fiscal year on the mural public finance program. supervisor chu: with regards to the campaign fund, we have a balance sitting there that will be carrying forwardthe mayor's s an additional amount in the budget as well. to the extent that, come november, after the mayor's race is completed, and all the public drawdowns have been completed and verified, if there is a huge remaining balance, is there any provision to allow us to bring that back into the general fund? >> there is actually two ways you can deappropriate those

funds, directly through the mayor's office or an act of the board. the amount i am proposing would be leftover. circumstances being what they are, it is difficult to make an exact prediction. but we are anticipating that out of that $3.5 million, we would need about $900,000 for the following board of supervisors. supervisor chu: supervisor wiener? supervisor wiener: i assume you are using pretty conservative calculations? >> i think we're being conservative in the ability of the leading candidates to raise $400,000 is reasonable. id is not certain. and then the ability of -- it is not certain. in any ability in the past has

been reasonable, but not certain. in the mayoral race, we're doing the best we can. in the board race, we least have something to go on. supervisor wiener: so, under your estimates, using fairly conservative assumptions, after we finished the mayor's race, there will be $3.5 million left in the fund, and you will need the best part of $1 million, $900,000, for 2012, so that would be about $2.5 million. >> a little bit more than that. supervisor wiener: what is the policy rationale for leaving a sum of money that large above and beyond what we expect to use for the mayoral and for the

first half of next year, for the supervisory -- given that we have so many services ranging from use the service to trees or roads that are facing major budget efficiency is it? >> also, the policy decisions are in your hands to make. i believe the founders had in their vision a separate fund that would be capped in that it is more attractive to the candidates in the future to participate in public financing should they know the money is already there, rather than being dependent on future operations. i think that is the rationale. supervisor wiener: i understand the pleading the fund to zero -- depleting the fund to zero could

have issues erratic, but perhaps that portion could be used for other purposes? >> our experience with the mayor's office is, those times when we were concerned there would not be and out, it did happen on one occasion. there was a very swift supplemental appropriation. obviously, this $4.2 million restoration is an attempt to meet that obligation. again, the process has been there. supervisor chu: thank you. given the budget analyst report, showing $3 million or so, there is no way to have that reallocated to any general fund except to actively appropriate from the department, correct?

>> madam chair, member from the budget analyst at's office asks supervisor wiener a question. each year, there is an appropriation of two -$75,000 per resident in the city. in prior years, the mayor had deappropriated funds from the balance. the current budget we institutes funds previously taken out of this budget to make them whole. at this point, there was a supplemental appropriation of $3 million just a few months ago, an additional appropriation this year. right now, with what is in the budget, they are completely whole in this fund.

if any funds are reduced, there would be protected about $3.5 million fund balance at the end of the fiscal year, 2011-2012, at the department projections are correct. you should know if any funds are taken out, they would have to be restored in the future. supervisor wiener: it effectively would be a loan from the fund? >> correct. in essence. and that is what has happened in the past. because there was not an election and there was not a need for the funds in that year. the mayor had taken funds of the budget. but now the budget is made whole. supervisor wiener: right, and i understand the way the system is designed, it can lead to potential over-appropriation into the fund well beyond what is needed.

at the same time, we are making devastating cuts to health, human services, roads, trees, rec and park, all these other areas and we are accruing a larger and larger balance. that is one reason why i did not approve the $3.1 million supplemental appropriation. i did not believe that was the right way to go. as the director noted, i remember when there was a deficit in the fund, and the board of supervisors may be supplemental appropriation to ensure the candidates would receive what they were entitled to in financing. it is really a balance about making sure we are allocating our money appropriately, while still being committed to public financing. supervisor chu: thank you. mr. rose? >> manager, actually we have no

other comments. as the department indicated, we do not have any recommendations. supervisor chu: thank you. thank you for the report. given that we know the conservative estimates may add a balance of $3.5 million after this year's election and every year thereafter we will necessarily be putting in another $2.2 million because of the mandatory $2.75 per resident, we get to where we will have $12 million again in the year 2016, where hypothetically we will have an incumbent mayor. at some point, we do need to evaluate the levels of funding we are putting in their. we had not had a mayor's race yet. this will be the first mayor's race we will see. maybe that will be informative going for. supervisor wiener: it will be

$9,900,000 for next year's supervisors' races. that leaves us with $2.6 million. then we will automatically put another $1.7 million, or what ever that number is -- $2 per resident. , atwood -- how much would that be? >> about $2 million. supervisor wiener: then we would automatically put another $2 million in, bringing us up to $4.5 million. there would there would be some drawdown, but presumably not more than $500,000 or $1 million, or whatever. then we will not have it may years race for three more years. i am just trying to get my head around why we -- i guess the

system is what it is, but it encourages an extreme over creation, well beyond what we actually need to publicly financed these races. >> man? -- may i? obviously, you are the policy maker. it is your decision. the only humbled request i have is the whatever funds you do draw down, you commit to putting them back at the time we need them. supervisor wiener: believe me, i am not suggesting that we somehow deplete the fund. it would have to be done in very collaborative process with the ethics commission. >> and it has been a collaborative all along. supervisor chu: thank you. again, it does raise questions about the program and how we fund it and whether there is a mechanism we can deploy in the future to be able to draw down if the balance is overly funded,

so that is something for another time, but thank you for coming in. ok, colleagues, i think those are all the departments that we have today. we had a few items before us. i believe items one, two need to be continued to wednesday. can we do that without objection? ok. items three, four -- can we continue these through thursday? which is the final day of the budget conversations here at the committee. can we do that without objection? >> [inaudible] we cannot put out a new agenda, so you could reset the date meeting to thursday if you would like. supervisor chu: ok, we will do that. and then we have already

dispensed with item five. we have moved items 6 and 7 to the full board already. item eight, if we continue that to thursday. without objection? thank you. do we have any other items before us? >> that completes the agenda. supervisor chu: ok, we our recess. thank you. -- we are recessed. thank you.

because we have a great waste water system here in san francisco, we do about 80 million gallons of waste water here in san francisco, which means we basically fill up 120 olympic sized swimming pools each and every day here in the city. we protect public health and safety and environment because we are discharging into the bay and into the ocean. this is essentially the first treatment here at our waste water treatment facility. what we do is slow down the water so that things either settle to the bottom or float to the top. you see we have a nice selection of things floating around there, things from bubble gum wrappers, toilet paper, whatever you dump down the toilet, whatever gets into

our storm drains, that's what gets into our waste water treatment and we have to clean. >> see these chains here, this keeps scum from building up. >> on this end in the liquid end basically we're just trying to produce a good water product that doesn't negatively impact the receiving water so that we have recreation and no bad impact on fish and aquatic life. solids is what's happening. . >> by sludge, what exactly do you mean? is that the actual technical term? . >> it's a technical term and it's used in a lot of different ways, but this is organic sewage sludge. basically what it is is, oh, maybe things that come out of

your garbage disposal, things that are fecal in nature. it's sludge left in the water after the primary treatment, then we blend those two over and send them over to digestion. this building is built to replace tanks here that were so odoriferous they would curl your hair. we built this as an interim process. >> is there a coagulant introduced somewhere in the middle of this? . >> this coagulant brings solids together and lets the water run through. that gives us more time in the digestion process, more time to reduce the amount of solids. these are the biggest ones in the world, like we always like to do in san francisco. they are 4 meter, there's none like it in the world. >> really?

wow. >> three meters, usually. we got the biggest, if not the best. so here we are. look at that baby hum. river of sludge. >> one of the things is we use bacteria that's common in our own guts to create this reduction. it's like an extra digestion. one of the things we have to do to facilitate that is heat that sludge up and keep it at the temperature our body likes, 98.6 degrees. >> so what we have here is the heat exchanger for digester no. 6. these clog up with debris and we're coming in to -- next wet weather season so we always come through here, clean them out, make sure that we get maximum heat exchange during the colder wet weather. sludge season. >> rubber glove. >> right here.

>> rubber glove, excellent. all right, guys. >> thank you. >> good luck. >> this is the full on hazmat. . >> residual liquid. we're taking it time to let it drain. we don't want to get sludge on it necessarily. take your time. stand on the side of it. . >> should we let it release for a while? . >> let it release. >> is that the technical term? . >> this is the most important bolt on the whole thing. this is the locking bolt. it locks this thing right in place. so now. >> take your hammer and what we

want to do, we get rag build up right in here. the hot water recirculates right in here, the sludge recirculates in here. the sludge sometimes has rags in it. all we want to do is go around the clean the rags. let me show you how. take the slide hammer, go all the way through the back, go around. >> got you. >> during the real rainy season, how does that change the way dealing with this job? is it a lot more stuff in there? . >> what we do, charles, we do this quarterly. every four months we go around and clean all the heat exchangers so we don't have a large build up. . >> go around? . >> yeah.

(sound of hammering). >> what i'm trying to do, charles, is always pull it out on the low stroke. >> right. so you are not, like, flying out. now talk about clean up. . >> then where does this stuff get deposited? . >> we're going to dump it in a debris box and it will go back to the plant. >> if you think back, the romans came up with a system of plumbing that allowed us it use water to transport waste away from the hub of civilization, which enabled cities to grow. . >> you have a large bowl, a

drive motor and another motor with a planetary gearbox with differential pressure inside there. the large mass up there spinning separating the solids from the liquid. we have to prevent about once a month, we go in there grease those, change the oil, check the vibration levels. the operators can tell just by the hum of that machine that it's a harmonic noise emitted that it's out of balance and the machine needs to be cleaned. it will start vibrating and we have vibration analysis machines that will come over here and check the levels. so it's kind of an on-going thing that you have to stay on top of on a daily basis. >> handled properly, you take organic residuals, as we call

them, that are leftovers of our society and turn them back into some energy. and we have another ability to take that sludge and get a nutrient value for crops there. we actually are running a kind of composting energy recovery system. >> well, this is a dirty job. we try to do it safely and we try to do it without imposing too much on the public. people want to flush their toilets and have things go away and not be bothersome again. we do a lot to try to accomplish that. i'd like to invite you to come back any time you want. once you got this in your blood, you are not going to be able to stay away. the raging waters are fun and when we do digester cleaning i really hope you can come back. that's quite a sight. >> yeah, that sounds interesting. >> i really appreciate you

coming by and it was a >> this is the small business commission, monday, june 13, 2011 meeting, the time is 5:38 p.m. and the meeting is called to order. at this time, please turn off

our cell phones or silence. item no. one, roll call. commissioner o'brien? commissioner adams? commissioner clyde? commissioner dooley? commissioner kasselman? commissioner o'conner? commissioner riley? all commissioners are present. commissioners, item no. 2 will be continued until later in the meeting. enemy number 3, approval of the april 11, 2010 meeting minutes, explanatory dowmpts draft april 11, 2010 meeting minutes. president o'brien: do we have a motion to approve the minutes or do we need a minute to study it? >> i need a minute. president o'brien: o.k., we'll give one sec.

is everybody o.k. with it?