. supervisor avalos: aye. clerk calvillo: there are 7 aye's and 3 no's. president chiu: this required eight votes. the motion does not pass. supervisor elsbernd: to those who voted no, i would like to continue the item for a couple of weeks to give you that opportunity. supervisor kim has sat through three hearings in the last couple of weeks ago we have yet to steer -- yet to see any actual options. i would like to see that move forward so we can save the city some money. if we let this die, it would be very derelict in your duties. why don't we move to continue the vote until two weeks?

you can come up with the elixir that every other city in the country has been unable to come up with. but at least you can try to save us some money. president chiu: there is a motion to continue. clerk calvillo: we would have to continue this for three weeks. supervisor elsbernd: do you think you can come up with the magical elixir in three weeks? supervisor kim: i appreciate the motion. i actually looked at mr. st. croix to see if that would be enough time. supervisor elsbernd: i will just withdraw and hope you can come up with something on your own. president chiu: is there a

motion to rescind? i would certainly make one, but i want to -- where are we? supervisor elsbernd, have you withdraw your motion? i am sure the naysayers know what they're doing. i will leave it to them. supervisor wiener: we all know this will not be fixed in two or three weeks. it has to go through the ethics process, through the committee, through this board. it is a lengthy process and not something you're going to want to rush. you want to do it the right way. supervisor elsbernd: supervisor mirkarimi was not here. there were only three people who voted no. perhaps supervisor mirkarimi will vote yes.

if he votes yes, we will not have to have this, so i vote to continue it for one week. president chiu: i have one question for our attorney. could be a menace to include other aspects of the public financing? or does anything have to go back to the ethics commission? maybe we could ask our outside counsel. i think i know the answer to that, i think it is no. >> if there is a substantial change, it has to go back to -- president chiu: supervisor farrell has introduced this in response to the supreme court case. we have legislation to deal with that. if we are making a change under

the same subject matter, to make our system as constitutionally tight as possible, would that fall under a change we can make your at the board without going back to ethics? >> i do not have the exact text, but i understand it has to start at the ethics commission. perhaps you could make a suggestion to the ethics commission and then it comes back to you. >> if you're going to make changes, it has got to be adopted by a super majorities of both committees. it does have to go back to ethics. the way the wording is, ethics is suppose to acts -- act first, but there is nothing to keep both bodies from acting

simultaneously. the only thing that would have to happen in ethics, is a final vote by ethics before it goes to the board. president chiu: when is the next meeting of your commission? >> october 19, which is a special day because our normal day is -- supervisor avalos: any way to have a special meeting? >> i would work to pull a special meeting together if it were necessary. i am sure the ethics commissioners would be as cooperative as possible. just a caveat, they are 5 busy people scheduling meetings. supervisor wiener: i am not going to fight this, but i have not heard what the proposal is. this has been percolating around since june with a huge

process. i would think that if someone had the great idea for how we change the system, that would have come of already and probably would have been packaged with this already. i do not think anyone wanted to amend this without a replacement, if a replacement existed. has the ethics commission come up with a day -- i have not heard any of my colleagues or anyone say that there is some sort of great idea. >> of all of the solutions we analyzed, this was the one that maintained the integrity of the three purposes of public financing and also addressed the issue of the trigger. supervisor wiener: supervisor farrell's proposal? >> right.

the other solutions did not work. there were rumblings that something else would come up. i have not seen anything yet. it is still possible. supervisor campos said maine is working on something that will fit within the framework. they are not done yet. supervisor wiener: i do not know. this is a little perplexing to me. there is literally nothing on the table in terms of this is something you can substitute it with. if that might happen in three months or six months, who knows? i guess we are not making a plea to the three of my colleagues who voted against this. i just do not understand why we would reject this, given what we know of the state of the law, the lack of a current alternative. there are a lot of smart people

involved in this process who will think of one if one exists. we know what is before us right now and what is facing us right now and the severe risks that are facing us. i just do not understand. supervisor farrell: to add to that point, no other jurisdictions, and there are a lot of other jurisdictions, have come up with a solution. this has been around since the summer. no other jurisdictions have come up with a solution. to think we are going to implement something in one week that will stymie a lawsuit and save our taxpayer dollars is a dream. i am all for finding a long-term solution to this, but right now it is fixing the problem at hand. president chiu: supervisor cohen.

supervisor cohen: nothing. president chiu: there is no motion in front of us to rescind this vote. supervisor elsbernd: i will make the motion to rescind or one week and hear from supervisor mirkarimi. president chiu: seconded by supervisor campos. any objection to the motion to rescind? without objection, this motion passes. we will continue this meeting to october 4. supervisor elsbernd: would it be advisable from the city attorney to continue the closed session item to next week so he can get whatever briefing he might need? president chiu: we ended the closed session.

he was with us during a good portion of it. he had chapter duties and had to leave. supervisor wiener: there was a fire with about 25 units or something like that. president chiu: the motion to continue has been passed for one week. thank you to our outside counsel and the head of our ethics commission. why don't we move back to the four-o'clocks special order with regards to west portal's community benefits meeting. clerk calvillo: the return for the voting was 48.92% and the balance voting against it was 51.08%. there is a majority protest. president chiu: the opponents

have prevailed and it would be in order for us to entertain a motion to table. supervisor elsbernd: i will make that motion, but before i do i want to say a few things. unfortunately, matt rodgers had to leave. i would like to publicly congratulate him for showing real leadership in the corridor. leadership that had not been seen in decades. a really great job in public service. i am very disappointed for him and all the merchants who supported this because this did not happen. i would say to the naysayers, a lot of misinformation was put out there and i really hope those who said they opposed it but actually support the concept do not sit back and run away from the issue. i hope they step forward and try to make this happen. this is absolutely critical to the future of that corridor. it needs to happen. with that, i make the motion to

table. president chiu: is there a second to that? seconded by supervisor campos. if we could take that motion without objection, the item is tabled. onto our reference counter. items 37-47. clerk calvillo: these are being considered for immediate and unanimous adoption. they will be enacted by a single roll call vote. unless a commissioner -- unless a supervisor request discussion. president chiu: would anyone like to supervise -- separate any items? rollcall vote. supervisor campos: aye. president chiu: aye. supervisor chu: aye. supervisor elsbernd: aye. supervisor kim: aye. supervisor farrell: aye. supervisor mar: aye. supervisor wiener: aye.

supervisor avalos: aye. clerk calvillo: there are ten ayes. there is an imperative item declaring september 27, 2011 to be karen bishop day in san francisco. president chiu: supervisor mar has made a motion to adopt. seconded by supervisor avalos. any public comment on this item? with regard to motions of the commendatory of finding, could we do that without objection? those motions are made. could we take the underlined item and to do that same house, same call? without objection, this is passed. clerk calvillo: today's meeting will be adjourned in memory of

mr. jerry palsman. president chiu: is there any other business in front of this body? clerk calvillo: that concludes the business for today. president chiu: ladies and gentlemen, we are adjourned.

>> 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 terms of being good stewards of the environment, and the arts