examples, i'm just going to talk about a couple from my own experience. i know ed lee was here, the great mayor of the city and county of san francisco. one thing we created was an initiative called back on track, which we created when i was d.a. of san francisco. we chose to focus on the 18-24-year-old he is, first time, low-level, non-violent drug sales offenders. why that group. when i was in college, i was in that group, and we were all called college kid. but when you turn 18 and in the system, you are considered an adult, period, without any with regard that that is the very phase of life where we have invested billions of dollars in colleges and universities, knowing that is a prime phase of life during which we mold and shape human beings to

become a productive adult. we focused on that age population, and essentially it was a public-private partnership, and again with diminishing resources, public-private partnerships are the way to seeing our way for a more improved criminal justice system. it is going to be calling on leaders of business who consider themselves not only leaders in business, but leaders in the community. what we did is we brot together job skills development, parenting classes and a number of other resources. over the course of five years, we reduced the recidivism of that population from 54% to 39%. it is a model for innovation around the united states. i think we all know this. innovation in law enforcement is not an oxymoron.

we can do it. there is another initiative that we started, again with the same purpose and focus, and it was a bit controversial. it was the issue of focusing on elementary school truancy. now why did i do that? we had a rash of homicides in san francisco a few years back. many of our cities are plagued with those statistics going up and down. it was an issue for all of us in leadership. so i asked a member of my staff to go and tell me who are our homicide victims who are under the age of 25 when they were killed. the data came back and included the fact that 94% were high school drop-outs. so then i went over to the school district and asked the support -- superintendent what is going on? she said the of the number we had in san francisco public skyhooks, 54% has been designated as habitally and

chronically truant, and 54% of those were elementary age students. we are talking about 6 or 7-year-olds who are missing, 50, 60, up to 80 days of an 180-day school year. who do we think those children will end up being? and so the direct connection between public education and public safety. and so we decided to take it on, and i decided to do something that was a bit controversial. one of the benefits of being the chief elected law enforcement officer of then the city and now the state is you have a big old badge. and there is an artistic rendering of the badge on your stationary. i sent a letter out to every parent in the san francisco unified school district outlining the direct connection between elementary school truancy, high school drop-out rates, who will be a victim of

crime and who will be a perpetrator. the letter went out to every parent in the school district. i got a call from a friend, and he said my got the letter. she freaked out. she called all the kids into the living room, held up the letter and said if you don't go to school, she is going to put you and me in jail. intended effect. [laughter] the minnesota was to do exactly what -- the point was to do exactly what was accomplished. the superintendent said you haven't been returning my calls. did you hear what the crazy d.a. said? this is a crime, and she is going to look after it. return my calls. over the initiative, which the current d.a. is continuing with the partnership of ed lee, over the last four years consecutively, we have seen a substantial decrease of truancy

for that population. in fact, over 30%. [applause] and some people, some people said well, you are trying to criminalize parents. the last thing we want is for parents to be locked up. i agree. but you know the beauty of this initiative? we drew this initiative and had interactions with hundreds and hundreds of parents where we did what we call the d.a. mediation. sometimes i would have some of my prosecutors come and sit in the mediations. when i first rolled it out, because this was not traditional for a d.a.'s office. alameda county is doing it. i took volunteers because there really wasn't the budget for it. my first volunteers were my homicide and gang prosecutors. i would have them sit in

mediation, and those dudes already look mean. the parents would say who is the mean-looking dude. that is someone the d.a. sent up because they are going to start prosecuting. by putting the infrared spotlight of our public safety and law enforcement on that issue, we were then able to find out exactly what was going on. we then learned, for example, of a woman who was by herself, raising her three children, holding down two jobs and homeless. true story. so by asking the question and bringing her in, we then put access and helped her ack services that already exist. and that was the point of the initiative. to this day not one parent has been jailed. but we have prosecuted a couple of the cases, which means basically it is an infraction. but hundreds and hundreds of

students have benefited. so i would suggest there are many different ways at which we can focus on this issue that you are meeting about today. what we can do to focus on gang crime at its worst is by rolling it back and looking at predictors and how we can intervene early in the cycle. because frankly, again -- i will end my comments where i started. i am a career prosecutor, and i do believe in consequence to crime. that is why i went down, and the first couple of months of my new position to imperial county, california. i looked at the tunnels down there, and i saw photographs of tunnels with walls as smooth as they are in the marriott, lined with lighting and air conditioning. and it was clear to me that that was about a business that is making a lot of money

through the trafficking of guns and drugs and human beings. i saw evidence of the seriousness of the threat to public safety when we look at the cartels and how highly arguized and efficient they have been in committing crimes that are running right up the i-5. i have seen it when we were part of an operation that ended up in the arrest warrants for 101 gang members. so it is a serious issue. but it is in that way something that we need to approach understanding it is not monolithic. and in a way of understanding that we can and have a responsibility, all of us, be communitied leaders, social workers, teachers, police officers or prosecutors, we all have a role to play in

addressing this issue in a way that i believe and know we can make a difference. i will close by just saying that we are facing obviously many changes, but i think we are all here because we know in the face of challenge and crisis, there are also great opportunities. so i want to commend and thank all of you as leaders for being here today and dedicating this day and your time and expertise to moving us forward to find some of the solutions. thank you very much. [applause]

>> you can see that it is amazing. you can hear that it is refreshing. you reach for it because it is irresistible. and the taste. simply delicious. san francisco tap water. it engages the senses. 311 is an important resource for all san franciscans. should

>> good afternoon and thank you very much for being here this afternoon. i am general manager of the san francisco public utilities commission. i want to thank you for allowing us to be here to talk about the energy retrofit programs they have been allowing us to do. it was a really simple goal. it was federal stimulus money, and the goal was to do something long term that was good and the other goal was to make sure we spend the money quickly and got jobs we were creating. what is great is we accomplished both. we wanted to celebrate that today. the city already provides about 100% clean natural gas -- not natural gas. back that up. the city provides greenhouse gas free, 100% renewable energy. what is different is we're saying now that we provide that energy, we should always still be conserving, all we still be looking at energy efficiency opportunities, and that is what we're doing. this is one of 10 sites in the

city including other cultural centers, health centers, where we took this money and really changed the behavior of what is happening in those buildings. we are here to celebrate that work. we had $3 million of this money from the stimulus funds. we are updating fluorescent let's -- lance and replacing them with modern efficient versions. we are updating the outside air economizers, as we call them, which is a nice way of bringing the frog inside buildings and cooling it down. we spend this money on time, which is difficult to do for some places in the united states, but the goal was to spend a certain amount of money by this last june. we have already spent 80%. we are completely on target to spend all the money by next august, which is the requirement of the program. we have also created jobs. we have over 12,000 labor hours.

it is a wonderful success. we have been doing a lot of energy efficiency programs peer this extra money allowed us to step up and do even more of those, so we are pleased about that. in the last 10 years, in total, the puc has saved a total 40,000 megawatt hours per year, enough to power 5000 homes. it is a wonderful program. it is really pretty simple. we are reducing greenhouse gas emissions, saving the city money, and improving the performance of facilities like this, so what could be better than that? thank you for joining us in that today. i would like to introduce our mayor to save a few words. [applause] mayor lee: thank you. thank you for your stewardship of this program but also the whole pc. we appreciate your mindset, your attitude to go forward and really help our city in all of

this energy use. i also want to welcome you to the arts commission. we are here at our mission cultural center, and it is one of the buildings the city owns, but amongst the 10 buildings the city owns, you should see the diversity of where these buildings are. community health centers, other cultural centers pierre the arts and is very enthusiastic about this center because it houses so much. after november 8, i can do the salsa. a? but thank you. there are so many people that visit the center every single day, and they, along with our arts commission, art lovers, just get to appreciate the cultural historic art that is presented here, both in its visual and performing, but it is

functional buildings like this that i want to really express my thanks to the department of energy and dr. kelly is here today as the acting assistant secretary to verify, if you will, our city's appropriate use of this money. and, of course, supervisor campos is here today. he and i have been on many walks throughout our community. not only for public safety issues but also, i think, for both of us, it is just the pure enjoyment of being in our neighborhoods. we love to see our buildings updated as they are. there is an update on the boilers, the furnace, the air economizers, as they say. we do not really have air- conditioning in our great city. we have air economizes to freshen the air. to the lighting fixtures where if the rams are not being

used, why are we wasting energy in that respect? our health centers, our community centers, 10 of them, and the smart thing cpuc did with this energy efficiency team, they did the auditing, so they knew what the base line was and how we would measure the improvement, and i want to talk about them. they have been doing this not just from went and that money came in. barbara hail -- hale, others, you are part of that energy efficient team, and i want to express my thanks for working with the rest of the city and the building owners and everyone working together, because it is with those audits, and then wit and a great mind, to bring down what could have been in large single contract, we broke it down to represent opportunities, something the supervisors and i

have been working on, and that resulted in 76 bay area workers getting jobs. that is that we use our federal money not in it -- not only in a responsible way, the money we were rewarded, but we use it even more responsibly. we kick up the standard by engaging the people who use the building in their habits and their culture and using it. it can be improved, and then we use our ability to contract out, and the puc contract in the 42 suggest this could be done by many more people involved, and guess what? we have that many more people who are trained to this kind of building improvement, so you look at all of that, and you say it got started with president obama, to stimulate. it was not to do everything. it was to stimulate the economy, and we took that word

"stimulate" in a very specific way, and we stimulated our neighborhoods and our art and our culture, and we stimulated our job ability. that is what this whole program was about, and i think is another example of how san francisco does it not only the right way but even a better way, so thank you very much for everyone coming here to celebrate. [applause] >> thank you, mayor. next, we want to introduce the acting undersecretary. thank you very much. from the department of energy. >> assistant secretary tree you have to keep your washington vocabulary correct. that's right. anyway, thank you. thank you, mayor, and thanks to the cultural center for inviting us. it is a wonderful opportunity to see how san francisco has been created in the way it has been

able to use its recovery act money. the recovery act, of course, as the mayor said, was designed to stimulate economic growth, and clean energy, of course, is a key part of that, and the things you are doing here are a wonderful example. altogether with the recovery act, we put something like $12 billion into upgrades. more than 2300 grants to cities and counties around the country, and that includes 306 grants to the state of california, for a total over $700 million, and that money has been put to very, very good use. one of the things we tried to do was create flexibility so that they could design and the most effective way to use it in their local communities, and the way that san francisco has chosen to do this is an example of when you let people be creative. it is a marvelous example of

what can be done, but nationwide, we are very proud with what we have been able to do. we are creeping up on having to retrofit many homes, saving the average homeowner $400 per home, and that is per year. for a total savings to the homeowners of about $200 billion. we have also in the process created over 24,000 jobs. they are offered jobs with continuity. people have picked up skills that will be very important to them. our goal was to get 1 million homes retrofitted with the recovery that. there are 125 million homes left out there, so we are not going to be running out of work. we have also upgraded commercial building space and put in 156 megawatts.

this is all under this recovery act. this has been a very significant clean energy investment for the whole country, and it is important to the whole national energy economy and achieving our environmental goals, because buildings alone are 40% of all u.s. energy and a certain percentage of all u.s. electricity, and the irony is you have a very fine and sophisticated energy generating industry, providing 70% of their energy into structures that are not sophisticated in the way they use the energy, so the good news is there is a huge amount of opportunity to do this. the other theme is that in addition to being able to provide a cost-effective way to meet our energy and other goals, it is a very strong driver of

economic growth, and for clean energy, it is central to the economic future, and there are at least two reasons for that. when you are just achieving productivity, you are putting money in the hands of home numbers because there electric in utility bills are there. you make government buildings and commercial buildings more productive. companies can be spending that money on other things. the second thing you can do is that the industries associated with clean energy themselves are major economic drivers. energy is a $1 trillion industry, and nationwide, it is about four or four -- or five times that big. investments like the ones we have seen in the recovery act make me real confident that america is going to be at the head of the world clean energy

revolution, not only leaving in technology but also leading in business growth and job creation, and what has happened right here in san francisco is an example. it was imaginative and intelligent and the way it designed and used to the energy, but it was also very creative in the way it managed the project and was able to draw the best technical support from utilities and also create a contract in an environment that allowed you to hire people locally, so i am here from the department to congratulate you. thanks to the mayor and to san francisco. [applause] >> thank you, mr. kelly. it is amazing what an lined leadership can do, so we appreciate that. aside from the mayor who is here, there is our supervisor in this area, supervisor campos.

[applause] >> thank you, everyone. my name is david campos, from district 9, and i think i represent the best in san francisco, not to take anything awayhe mayor will not be able to confirm that. i want to recognize jenny and her staff and the board members who are here for the tremendous work they do with the center. the center is a very special institution. it really is an integral part of the life of this neighborhood, and i think it makes sense as we are making these kinds of investments and retrofitting these kinds of buildings that we focus on these kinds of cultural centers, and i want to thank the general manager and his staff for the tremendous work they have done to make that happen. it makes a lot of sense. not only is it the impact of the

actual retrofitting of the building, but because the centers are a gathering place for so many of us in our community, it does not just stimulate the economy, but it stimulates the mind and the way people think about energy efficiency, and you have a multi-cultural but multi generational congregation of people, so it is the elderly, the young people, who are not only looking at art but who are going to have, i think, a better understanding of why energy efficiency is so important, in terms of being good stewards of the environment, and the arts commission, you can see the connection between the arts and energy efficiency and technology, and so, it is a very exciting opportunity. you are, dr. kelly, here in one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in san francisco,

and the mission is a neighborhood who attracts people who are very creative, very innovative. i know you were walking around our neighborhood. you can see the amazing art that happens, and that energy transcends beyond art. we have a lot of people who are starting businesses in the mission. we have a neighborhood that notwithstanding the tough economy is thriving, and that is because of the energy and innovation of the people who come to the neighborhood. i want to thank the mayor for being part of this investment because it is an investment that will go beyond the actual money that is spent. it is an investment that is going to have its roots for a long time to come, and what i would like to say is that the mission welcomes that kind of investment, so i encourage our federal government. i encourage room 200 and the mayor's office, puc, and other agencies to come to the mission, continued to come back to the

mission, because this is a place to get things done, and innovation is happening every day on our streets, and you do not often hear the confidence. there are things that happen, and you pick up "chronicle," and you read about bad things that are happening in places like the mission, but these are great things that are happening, and i again want to thank jenny and the others because this is what makes this happen. again, thank you to all of the members of the city staff, whether it is puc, the arts commission, the environment, all of you for making that happen, and i look forward to the future. thank you. [applause] >> and the arts commission has some new ideas about what we can do. thanking the puc staff and the art commission staff, they are

the ones who run it, the department of environment people, our in trunk cards -- in trump arts -- thank you. if you have time for a quick tour, we can go around and see the things in the building. thank you very much for coming today. [applause] captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org--