there is likely a need for additional funding beyond the $5.7 million provided by the state, supervisor. as you know, our fiscal year 2011-2012 budget included $15 million reserve for the state budget pact and $25 million general fund reserve. in addition, the half-cent sales tax restoration measure on our november ballot will bring in an additional $15 million to be split evenly between public safety and health and human services, should the voters approve it. these contingencies are available to us should we need them. however, there are a number of other known and potential state and budget legislation and have that my office is tracking. these include the $25 million payment to the state to insure the continuing existence of our redevelopment agency, cuts to child-care subsidies, adult day health centers, and potential

changes to medical funding that will impact our public health. we are also facing pending trigger cuts that will occur if the state does not meet its revenue targets as well as on known cuts for the committee on deficit reduction. we just -- we must be mindful of this and proceed with caution before we tap into our reserves. i have assured chief still and the sheriff that we will continue to monitor the impact of ab 109 and assess the need for additional funding once realignment takes effect. this will be a continuing review, but we must not lose sight of a larger budget picture and the continued fiscal challenges the our city faces. thank you for that question. supervisor chiu: our next question will be provided by our colleague from supervisor 7, supervisor elsbernd. supervisor elsbernd: thank you.

over the last month, outside the building, there has been a great deal of discussion on subway project, and i thought i would use by opportunity here, your opportunity in the next five minutes, to maybe move away from the cliches and one-liners of campaigns and share with us your thoughts on the central subway project. >> thank you for this very important question an extremely important project for the future of san francisco. i have always been a strong supporter of this project. many people forget that the third straight line and central subway project work product of extensive community feedback and planning. it is a promise to low-income communities of color that stretched back for decades. we made a commitment to create a world class, stated the our transportation link between neighborhoods in the southeast, downtown, and chinatown. the central subway project, when completed, will use clean, renewable energy to carry

nearly 44,000 passengers daily and serve as a vital transit link to underserved areas of our city that continue to grow and where 68% of households are without access to a car. combined with bt line, we estimate 65,000 trips a day and travel time reductions from 20 minutes 8 between chinatown and the call center station, all while creating 30,000 local jobs. we need to remember the big picture when we talk about the central subway project. phase one of the project was the third street light rail project, which unites the city's established civic, business, retail, and culture centers with it evers communities along the light rail line and encourage economic revitalization along the entire quarter. the third street light rail open with full revenue service in

april 2007. phase two, the central subway project operates at an extension of the light rail. our san francisco transportation authority identified the corridor with an extension of chinatown as a priority for the late 1980's. the need to better serve the chinatown neighborhood was further necessitated by the 1989 loma prieta earthquake. project has been fiscally reviewed for years by the federal transportation authority under the new starts program. it has a fully committed funding plan and enjoys broad, federal, regional, and local support, including from the obama

administration and senators feinstein, boxer, and leader pelosi here once opened, the light is projected to be the highest writer ship line in the city as it will serve the jobs housing quarter with the highest projected growth in the city, south of market, and the mission bay. first of your construction projects are nearly complete, and one of the largest -- a $230 million guideway tunnel contract is scheduled to begin later this month. by the way, it came in $13.2 million under the engineers estimates. now is the time to support the city's goal of enhancing our infrastructure system and building the need of capacity for our system. our mta will be submitting its final breath agreement request to the federal government before the end of this month, and we would be working diligently to finalize the details through the last months of this year. thank you very much. supervisor chiu: our next

question will be provided by our colleague from district 9, supervisor campos. supervisor campos: thank you very much. as you are aware, the comptroller's office recently released -- the controller's office recently released a plot -- a report outlining the fact that city departments overspend their budget by at least $40 million in fiscal year 2010- 2011. top city departments they used the most overtime account for about 97% of the city's total overtime, and those apartments are the sfmta, the fire department, police department, department of public health, share, public utilities commission, the airport, department of public works, emergency management, as well as the recreation and park apartments. in fact, the sfmta accounts for 42% of overtime overruns. recently, along with my

colleague supervisor farrell, i introduced legislation that requires departments come before the board of supervisors for approval of spending over their budget, that they have to come before the board and seek a supplemental appropriation. we also urge that the sfmta, which, as you know, their budget items are not subject to action by the board of supervisors for the mayor. our only choice is to support the overall budget. but we have urged the sfmta to develop and overtime spending plan, and they have advised us that they are in the process of doing that. the first part of my question is will you support this good government piece of legislation that supervisor farrell and i introduced? second, as we seek to improve service, what will you do to ensure the ridership of the mta

that the issue of over time will be addressed and we will not have the delays we have seen? mayor lee: thank you for sharing your concerns and making sure we pay attention to this because it is an extremely important consideration, particularly in these hard budget times. i share your concern regarding overtime costs and the practice of certain departments of exceeding their budget year after year. since i assumed office this january, i have demonstrated my commitment to fiscal discipline. our five-year financial plan, which i have proposed and you unanimously as a board adopted earlier this year, recommends controlling employee wage and benefit come across as a strategy to restore long-term fiscal balance, addressing extensive overtime costs is a key strategy. we must ensure that departments are using overtime only when absolutely necessary. excessive use of overtime must

be brought under control through better management and monitoring and, if necessary, legislative reform. however, i want to be sure that any changes we implement take into account the operational needs of the department and do not actually result in increased costs for the city or worse services for residents of san francisco. for example, from my conversations with chief white, i understand the fire department has carefully constructed staffing model that balances over time and straight time to provide 24-our coverage back of firehouses and saves money due to the high cost of health benefits associated with full- time permanent employees. in the case of our mta, as you point out, the department has face particular challenges i a controlling overtime costs in recent years. these costs overruns are in part due to certain work rules and staffing limitations, included in the labor agreement with the

transit operators union. with the passage of prop g last year, the mta has the ability to change those rules and take a bed of greater flexibility in staffing, including using more part-time muni drivers to reduce the need for overtime. i know the new director of our mta is singularly focused in making sfmta an efficient and effective organization, and i meet with him every week to monitor and discuss ways to meet the agency's performance. i support your push for an overtime reduction plan, and i will encourage director reiskin to begin drafting such a plan. i cannot take the risk of jeopardize our ability to protect public safety or respond to an emergency, so i look forward to discussing this legislation with you and continue to look for ways to address overtime costs, even with all the hissing.

supervisor chiu: our final question will be offered by our colleague from district 11, supervisor avalos. supervisor avalos: thank you. last year, the voters approved prop c, establishing your appearance before the board of supervisors to establish policy discussions, possibly of the board of supervisors would develop a format for merrill appearance in consultation with you, with your office. i actually think we have had some substantive discussions with -- not really discussions, but presentations. i think that the format was established at a time when we had a more civilized relationship on the board of supervisors, but just curious. i think we have degenerated this question time into a very scripted exchange between the board. we often are reading our statements or questions.

the responses are red, and i wonder if you would consider a more dynamic interchanged -- interchange, and i would be willing to work with board members to work have one of figuring that out. >> i am open to improving any process that might improve the process even more, indeed the public at a high level, and make sure you understand the process. i think one of the most important things besides answering is to make sure that people know how we're thinking because that is as important as the final decision, how we think and how we approach problem- solving appeared i want to thank you for having the discussion because it is important that our public understands the substance of what we're talking about. voters told us last year that they wanted the mayor to come to the board of supervisors once a month to engage in formal policy

discussions with members of the board. clearly, the public wanted substantive discussions, and i have been very happy to come out in my fifth question time to discuss important issues with you and your colleagues. take this month questions, for example. we're talking about major hospital development, the incredibly important central subway project, public safety and transportation issues. supervisor, this is substance, and i think this is exactly what the voters had in mind when they approved prop c. my answers may not be great for blog. i am not here to generate headlines. i am ehud answer the questions your colleagues asked about issues that matter to your district and city -- i am here to answer the questions your colleagues asked. in the past six months, since the board of supervisors created

the will to govern this question time process, i have received a series of thoughtful and challenging questions. we have covered topics from secured communities to muni deficits. i have answered your questions about balboa park, the neighborhood improvement and graffiti and litter in your district. by the way, i feel really good when i go by that station because that makes me smile because we have done something concrete to show the public we care in your district. i think these are very substantive and dynamic exchanges, discussing issues i know are very important to you as district supervisor, and they are very important to me as the mayor, making sure our city is clean and beautiful. that is a very high priority for me. that is why we just rolled off the jobs now three program to put 200 low-income san franciscans back to work in public service of current ship programs, cleaning up our streets and parks -- public

service apprenticeships. i believe in sustained attention to real day-to-day challenges people see on the streets. i believe in focusing 100% of our energy on solving these problems and improving the quality of life for san franciscans in all neighborhoods. supervisor, if that is not enough, i will invite you this sunday to play ping-pong in chinatown because we are going to have a very substantive, dynamic, and interactive engagement of using been wrong to really establish sunday streets from all of grant avenue from bush st. -- to really establish -- a engagement of using ping-pong to reestablish on the streets from all of grant avenue 2 bush st. i played when we celebrated the 40th anniversary of ping-pong diplomacy, about a month ago

when delegations came in from china, and they were the olympic winners from back in the 1970's when we first got started. >> i used to work at the boys and girls -- supervisor avalos: i used to work at the boys and girls club. i played every day. [laughter] supervisor chiu: game on, everybody. thank you. madam clerk, why don't we go to our consent agenda, items to through four? >> items 2 through 4 comprise the consent agenda and will be acted upon by a single roll call vote unless a member request discussion of the matter, it shall be removed and discussed separately. supervisor chiu: would anyone like to sever any of these items from items 2 through 4? ok, if not, could you please call the roll on these items? >> elsbernd aye. farrell aye. kim aye. mar aye. mirkarimi aye.

wiener aye. avalos -- supervisor avalos: actually, this is the consent calendar? i wanted to separate one item. i apologize. campos aye. chiu aye. chu aye. cohen aye. there are 11 ayes. supervisor chiu: supervisor avalos would like to make a motion to rescind. supervisor avalos: actually, i am fine with the consent calendar.

it was the continued items i had a problem with. >> item five, or did amending the administrative code limiting the hours of overtime work to 20% by any employee in the fiscal year to require departments to implement a reporting mechanism. supervisor chiu: find you. first of all, i want to thank our colleagues from gao for passing this legislation that addresses one aspect of overtime out of committee. we know that our city's over time issues are complex and we have to tackle it from a number of different angles. i want to thank supervisors campos and farrell not only for voting for this legislation before offering a different legislation that we could vote on. this deals with the fact that employees are allowed to work overtime work a 30% of regularly scheduled hours without getting an exemption from the department of human resources. this equates to about 624 hours of overtime a year.

our controller's mid-year over time report showed that by the middle of this fiscal year, there had already been 74 employees who worked over 624 hours. five of these employees had worked over 900 hours of overtime by mid-year period is roughly equates to 80-hour work weeks or two jobs held by one person during the first six months of the year. to address the culture of overtime use and ensure we do not create safety or quality issues, i oppose reducing the allowable percentage of overtime hours for 30% to 20%. i want to thank the many labor unions who have been dissipated in a for your separate meetings on the issue. i certainly appreciate this in these tough economic times. city is only filling vacancies for essential services, and many departments are working shorthanded. to balance all the issues in

front of us, colleagues, i have circulated a number of amendments to address the concerns raised by labor. the major amendment would set the overtime our rate at 25% rather than 30% before an exemption from human resources must be requested. that is half of what we had originally proposed. we are also amending the legislation to a number of overtime days in it were quick to four full overtime days in a week and to require that of the mta director, who has ever discretion in overtime, and the department worked overtime in practice to work more over time to address these issues. as amended came about, and i want to thank before helping to work toward consensus. are not substantive, and at this point, i ask your support. supervisor campos: colleagues, do we have a motion? is there a second? colleagues, any comments? supervisor avalos: i have more

of a question for the controller. one of the issues with this legislation was that we could reduce the threshold for overtime from 30 to 20, and we would not see any material difference in the overall over time usage in the city and county of san francisco. i wonder if the amendments we have today change that in any way. we are still going to see pretty much the same amount of overtime across the board from our different apartments. >> ben rosenfield, controller. my expectation would be this legislation like the legislation proposed several years ago and adopted by the board, rather than serve to reduce overall over time expenditure levels -- it will serve to spread it over a larger base of employees. you will see fewer employees

with very high overtime use balances. i would not expect it to dramatically change the overall level of overtime expenditure, though. >> i just want to get a clear acknowledgement about the value of this ordinance. are we looking at the goal of overall reducing overtime in the city, or are we looking at the goal of reducing overtime for certain individuals who have a high use of overtime? and explain why is that important? supervisor chiu: from my perspective, the thrust of the legislation is to address both of those aspects. as i mentioned earlier, the fact that by half way of this year in the first half of this fiscal year, we have had 74 employees that have worked over 600 hours, and five employees had worked close to 900 hours, roughly 80- hour work weeks for these employees, there has been in some of these departments a little bit of a culture of

overtime usage as well as potential safety and work quality issues, and that is part of what we wanted to address. initially, i have proposed reducing the exemption cap from 30% to 20% as a result of the meetings we have had an extensive discussions with labor where we work through all these issues. we have agreed that a 25% mock would be the more appropriately to go to head in the right direction, and we will keep monitoring this to establish exactly where this goes. in part, i was willing to make that concession out of respect for the fact that right now, we do have significant work that needs to be done at a time when budget shortages, but at the same time, we all know that all of us, i think, are trying to get a better handle on how to better manage overtime, and it is my hope we will be able to reduce overtime somewhat as well as ensure that we do not have a handful of individuals working an intense amount of overtime.

>> someone who reaches that 25% threshold under this new legislation, to exceed that amount, would have to get a waiver? >> -- supervisor chiu: that is correct. one of the things that has been misunderstood about the legislation was this is not a ban on overtime over 25% or over 30 percent and you what this says is if an apartment house was called in the legislation a critical staffing shortage, they can approach the head of department of human resources and request an exemption as has been the regular practice. the department of human resources has routinely granted exemptions, but with some oversight and reporting and monitoring of this so we know how often this is happening. supervisor avalos: what do you see the difference in your bureaucracy and administrative

burden in monitoring and providing waivers for people seeking them? i assume we will see more people hitting the cap, even if we lower it. >> human resources director. we do anticipate an increase of requests for exemption, and we will devote more resources to evaluating. we will evaluate those as carefully as we have. it is true we have routinely granted them, but we have not made them easy to obtain. there are also a small number of employees who kind of squeak through without an exemption where they come in above the cap, and we have worked directly with those departments to identify why it has happened and try and eliminate the practice. supervisor avalos: just wonder what kind of staff time to devote to providing waivers. do you see that increasing? does that take away from productivity?

>> i would say that we are -- our classification and compensation unit is the one the works on that. they bring it to me. it is not a large bird now. it looks at the number of employees who are over 25% as opposed to 30% was on the order of 3000. if we assume assumptions -- exemptions for those groups, i would anticipate an increase that we could likely have -- handle with current staff, but it would take more time. supervisor campos: colleagues, and the other questions? we have a motion before us. can we take the motion to amend without it submitted without objection? motion passes. do we need a roll call? supervisor avalos: i think we need a roll call. supervisor chu: just a quick comment. i appreciate the points that supervisor avalos brought up.

we intend similar points at the budget committee as well. one of the things that we really made clear before we took the vote is that with the previous version, before the amendments that were made, it was proposing with the legislation proposed to go from 30% to 20%. the thought that i always had was this is not necessarily a tool that will reduce overtime across the city overall. we know there are much more structural changes that need to occur before that occurs a much more close watching a different apartments before that occurs, but it might be a measure that spreads over time. i agree there will be administrative burden associated with it, but of that, i think the one thing that is of value in terms of the legislation, in terms of the recent amendments that was not present before in the committee is the components that set to bring in the mta into the fold. as we have seen in many of the overtime reports, most of the

over how we have seen has been from the mta department. we generally do not as much oversight. they did not have as much oversight in terms of granting waivers, but to the extent this could help move the process forward, i think it could be helpful for the organization. though i am is skeptical this is really going to reduce overtime in the city overall, i think one component, which is the mta component, could be helpful. supervisor avalos: i could see wanting to do something about curbing overtime, but i think it is a very blunt way of doing it. it is more gimmicky than anything, and i would be voting against it. supervisor campos: on item five, can we have a roll call? >> on item five, as amended. elsbernd aye. farrell aye. kim aye. mar aye. mirkarimi aye. wiener aye. avalos no. campos aye. chiu aye.

chu aye. cohen aye. there are 10 ayes. one no. supervisor chiu: the ordinance passes on first reading. >> item 6, ordinance ordering the vacation of a portion of the public right of way located on cayuga avenue, approving the jurisdictional transfer from the department of public works for the immigration of our department approving the jurisdictional transformation a man and avnet and a portion upper cayuga. elsbernd aye. farrell aye. kim aye. mar aye. mirkarimi aye. wiener aywe. avalos aye. campos aye. chiu aye. chu aye. o aye. o aye. -- cohen aye.