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tv   [untitled]    November 14, 2011 12:30am-1:00am PST

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year or two away from anything happening at the state level, and in the meantime the abuse will continue. i know a lot of smart people have been thinking about this. this is been an ongoing problem, and i know this is why the civil grand jury has been focusing on it, and i am just trying to think about what we can do to a accelerate this. >> we are very eager to do this. the revenue charges are what -- are half of what we're measuring now. the revenue loss is huge for us, so we are eager to move on this as quickly as we can. supervisor campos: if i may make a couple of comments. i appreciate the fact that you are here to present them. the concern that i have with something like this, and i think it is a reoccurring concerned with committee -- many items that involve mta, the fact that
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has taken a long time for anything to happen. this report was the 2006-2007 report, and a lot of the things -- a big part of the response is we are looking into it, talking to folks, and this is essentially 58 years later, so it does not leave one with a great deal of confidence. that is the problem i think with this. if we're talking about the millions of dollars that you acknowledge we're talking about, and the mta in the past couple of beers cut service significantly to the point that it would have to come to the county transportation authority to ask for 7 million, if i have that kind of the fiscal challenge that i am dealing
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with, and i have millions of dollars that i am potentially losing, i am going to do whatever i can to address that problem. so it is not something directed at you, but it is the agency itself. it is really frustrating, and i do not think it is acceptable five years after it the report comes out to say we are working on it, to the extent that has been a part of this answer. >> i could not agree with you more. i am facing the challenge of fixing the budget, but one thing i can assure you is this program is now going to get work focus. historically it did not have ownership in the agency, so i think that was part of the reason it did not move, but now with it being under sf park, i
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am very committed to it. we're very eager to move this because of the revenue impact. you will see aggressive movement on this, i can guarantee it, in the next year or so. presidensupervisor campos: i the need to make sure this happens, and maybe the thing to do is for us to come back and do a follow- up hearing on this to see this. >> we would love that. supervisor campos: it the chair of the committee said $8 million being lost annually, probably even higher. that could pay for youth, increased service to all of our riders -- there are so many things you could do with the revenue. >> i could not agree with you
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more. we're happy to do you an update on a regular basis. -- give you an update on a regular basis. >> i think it would be helpful if they could come and talk to us, given the amount of money that is involved. the next time we come before you we can give you more concrete feedback from the groups. supervisor campos: the second point on the issue of what your policy will be around these placards, because i do think, even though there seems to be a connection, that we are talking about separate issues. whether or not we should charge disabled individuals for parking is something that should be looked at it objectively and analyzed separately. i do not know it is good to say we need to do this as an enforcement mechanism, because
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charging has to be judged on its own merits, and the fact that we are not able to enforce certain things, does not justify charging it charging on its own is not a good idea, so i look forward to the concept of the plan as you develop it, and i would simply urge you to make sure you engage members of the disabled community so they have their feedback. thank you. is there any other department head that needs to opine on this report? why don't we open it up to public comment? >> good morning, supervisors. my name is douglas yelp. i would like to thank the civil grand jury for their independence and objectivity. in my opinion, they do both,
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which may be lacking in many city-run departments. i think these reports need to be taken seriously. i think it is pretty obvious they are not being taken seriously. it is kind of discouraging for city hall observers like myself. all we hear our excuses and promises to do better. i think we should run the city like a private industry. you are given the job and objectives, and if you get the job done, you stay employed. if you do not get the job done, the next person gets a chance. there are plenty of qualified people looking for a job, and i think the city needs to take a new approach and set an example for everyone else. let's put it this way, if the civil grand jury does these reports, everyone has a hearing and make their statement, i
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think it is pretty important they should be carried out. what is the purpose of continuity reports it five years later it is still not being carried out? i think we need to set an example and tell people that this city is not a life-long job, and that we need performance and accountability, and if you do not get the job done, there is plenty of qualified people out there that are willing to give it a try, and i think these continuity reports need to be emphasized, so this way people can understand it -- understand this is something that needs to be taken seriously. i think you need more people to help on these continuity projects. maybe we should take and volunteers from the general public. i am sure when you bring in volunteers from the general public there will be different ideas on how to do things, and maybe increase the performance of our city departments. it is nothing like thinking
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outside the box. i think that is what we need in san francisco. we need people thinking outside the box. we do not need career employees who want to run it like it has been run for the last 30 years. it is pretty obvious the city is not benefiting from that philosophy, and in my opinion, since i have been living in san francisco for 59 years, the last 20 years have been a definite decrease in the quality of life of san francisco. if i were a firefighter or policemen, i would definitely have second thoughts about living here, especially if i have kids. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you very much. next speaker. >> good afternoon. andthankthanks, i got it at thea
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market. there is a parking disabled place for us. a disabled place for us, a place to park and for free. and then the pilot past, i hope you continue it, but please somewhere, somehow, civil grand jury right now,. unfortunately that musical ended in a tragedy. supervisor campos: any other member of the public that would like to comment or sing on this item? supervisor farrell. supervisor farrell: thank you.
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let me take time to think this of a grand jury for your time and effort in putting these reports together and following up. much appreciated as always. i know the full board approaches all of your efforts, so thank you for that and the staff in response to these issues. i will lay out my thoughts and a few recommendations, because i know we are asked to respond, but a number of items that were not necessarily laid out in the resolution, but are before you. in terms of pensions, on the findings, thank you to mr. callahan for coming forward and are comptroller. i will suggest we vote both knono. i think pensions biking is not something we do intentionally, but it has gone a long way to
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curbing that. also, in terms of changes of help service board and other health-care changes, i do believe that will have a monumental impact going forward. then to the recommendations as well, i think prop c will have a lot of recommendations. i do not think it is warranted and quite possible to implicate in many regards. i will suggest we vote no on both of those findings and recommendations. i would suggest we vote no on those, as well as to the sole recommendation. i would hope everyone completely
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agrees on this, and will be frustrated when they hear the appeal is that couples -- happens. and i think for me in response to the specific evidence, it is a bit of a waste. number four, and the recommendation is impractical. i think we need the flexibility to move forward on many different policies while this is being debated as well. and unless you have comments, i can certainly make a motion before you make a comment. president chiu: the only thing i would suggest is i do not think
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that we need an independent review panel, but i would like some sort of report to us within some time, because this was pointed out it has been years. it strikes me that would take several years before we get any positive feedback. >>supervisor farrell: i will co- sponsor to follow up. i do not think there is a place for it in any grand jury response right now. i completely agree. president chiu: did she leave already? supervisor campos: i would ask the mta tuesday to the end of
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the hearing. president chiu: perhaps it is adequate for them to provide feedback within an adequate time as for what the program is going forward. supervisor campos: i think a hearing request makes sense, and maybe the three of us can do that. one thing we can do, and i would ask the clerk of committee, is i will send a letter to the mta asking for a report on that specific item. supervisor farrell: let me make a motion for the findings and recommendations. there is no changes, so it should be simple. for the pensions, i would disagree with finding one and two. recommendations one and two. on the go box report, agree with finding one and two, and the sole recommendation.
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on the parking for the disabled report, agree with both findings, finding one and seven, and disagree with both recommendations, one and a recommendation four. so we have a motion. can we take that without objection? motion passes. thank you very much to all of the members of the civil grand jury, to the department heads, staff who were here, as well as to the budget and legislative analyst on the work up of this. >> item #5, hearing on the update from the public utilities commission regarding community choice aggregation. supervisor campos: colleagues, this is an item i introduced, a hearing on something that has been going on for quite some time here in the counties of san
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francisco. with us to present this item is the general manager of the san francisco public utilities commission, mr. harrington. i want to thank him for being here. let me preface this hearing by saying from my perspective this is the beginning of a discussion about where we are with community choice aggregation. it is a very important for gramprogram, pursuant to a progm in 2007. puc has been moving forward in implementing committee choice aggregation. a lot of work has gone into this, and we have before us a proposed term sheet that outlines the scope of the initial phase of the program. it is a program that would be implemented in phases, and at s the program moves forward, there is a parallel track where
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we're working on a buildup, which is an important part of the component of community choice aggregation, and those of us better support of a moving forward believe it is important to move on parallel tracks with a bill out to make sure the bill that happens as soon as possible. this is the beginning of the discussion we wanted to have been hearing early so by the time the proposed contract comes before the board, we will have had an opportunity to have an in-depth discussion of issues. i will turn it over to mr. harrington.
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>> we have been working on this for so long, it is tempting to jump into how will we make this happen. if you could put this up on the screen, that would be the goal. it is good to live in san francisco where you can talk about climate change. it really does exist. greenhouse gases are happening. peoples' activities are a part of that. in san francisco we have tried
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to do a variety of things. people try to be energy efficient and conservation programs. they walked and ride transit. there is brown power with all but the environmental impacts of that. there is nuclear power, and so the idea really is to have the city give its people the choice of having green power as opposed to the choice they currently get. in many cases if you own your own home, you can do so. for many of us we are renters and do not have those options. the real options is to abrogate our purchasing power and say we want free energy. through this program you say i will pay a little bit more energy, but i will grit -- get clean energy and feel better about it. we want to start the program
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relatively small. it will be the largest cca in california. it is a good first step. as you mentioned, and the long- term goal here is to be creating our own power. the reason the water system has worked so well for the city is we own our assets and create the assets, and you can keep long- term rates stable and do things differently. the goal here is to get customers and start to build on that and do everything you can about energy efficiency, but we still have to create some power regionally and locally and figure out ways to foster that and build those things as we move forward with this program. we have come a long way. and the basic idea of it is to provide electric generation services to customers within the area you are aggregating four.
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one line of the bill that we will control is the energy generation. everything else will still be pg&e. they will be doing the metering, building. if you have issues with anything, it is still the people from the service department. you get all of the services at pg&e. what is different is we deliver greener power. the state law provides that the way this program works is we send out notices to people and give them multiple chances and a lot of marketing to make sure they realize this is their choice. they have a choice to go ahead and stay with clean power or to go with pg&e. we give them to notices before we start delivery in two notices after. -- two notices before we start delivery and two notices after.
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again, this is about choice for people. this started a withab11 ab117. the board of supervisors seven years ago established the first cca program. in 2006-2007 we put 5 million into the budget to do engineering, research, and initial marketing. in 2007 with a draft implementation program. after that we started with proposals. in 2009 that was a bit of a false start. brown's successful in the negotiations with the first under we selected. we came back to the board in 2010 and said we need to configure this a little more flexible. there was no one willing to do all the things we for originally.
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we put about $1 million in the budget, primarily to talk about marketing. we want to make sure everyone is aware of the program and choices. then we started negotiations after that. we came back, and we ended up going out and selecting shell energy north america to be the provider of the power and broker for us, and noble america to do the customer service management. in may of 2011 we brought market research to the board, and at that time we said -- we went about and ask people if there were proving to get more to get green power in san francisco? the basic response was that many of them were not. many of them were price sensitive. if it costs $1 more, they would rather have the power they currently have. at least a third of them were
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willing to pay a little bit more to have clean power. so what we're proposing is 100% clean proposal. it is easier for marketing and makes better sense for the world. we also asked for policy guidance to make sure lafco and the commission were ok with what we were going ahead with. we have come before lafco and the commission 26 times in the past five years. this is a program that has been vetted. there are 11 joint meetings in the pasttw two years. our next joint meeting will be december 6, 2011. at that time we hope to have a contract that we can endorse and bring to the people -- full board of supervisors in the month of december.
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unless there are larger questions, i will turn it over to talk about the program and finances. >> thank you. barbara hale, assistant general manager for power. i would like to dive deeper into some of the policy direction we received from the commission -- from the board. first oand then compare that toe program we are proposing to you. as mr. harrington mentioned, we had guidance from an ordinance adopted in 2007 that really hit on these key points. rate, to meet or beat. stability, we want to make sure we provide long-term rate stability, not programs that have a lot of fluctuation in rates. we were asked to provide our renewable mix that was 51% dependent on renewable generation sources by the year
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2017. at that time it was a 10-year ramp up. the objective was to develop 360 megawatts. we were asked to enroll all san franciscans from day one of the program. the expectation was we would have a contractor ration of about 15 years or longer that was perceived to be necessary to allow for this large in-city generation and efficiency component. that there would be a single supplier to reduce the administrative accountability issues and the risk would be allocated primarily to the supply year where the city would not be are risky under this program. no financial liability to the city. in the course of our effort, reaching out to the marketplace
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to achieve those objectives, it became clear we needed to compromise on some of them in order to launch a stable and effective program. what you see on this side is a comparison between the original goals and what we're proposing today on each of those points. our rates we are proposing is to have rates that are higher than pg&e that paid for the full program cost, but an energy mix that is 100 percent signed renewable from day one, not a 10-year ramp up, but a day one wanted to% renewable with rates being stabilized over the multi-year contract of 4.5 years. with enrollment based, about 50 to 75 residential accounts at the start.
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that we would have multiple suppliers, show energy north america for the supply, and noble for the back office work, and that the city would take on some financial responsibility, some risk, which involves an appropriation of 19.5 million for the first phase of the program. i will spend more time on that, that important point as we go through this. it is important for us to know the program as we have designed it has built into some mitigation of their overall risk. that starts with the phasing of the program. we are targeting that initial 50-75,000 residential customers. that allows us to flex up in the program offering if it turns out
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we have higher numbers of customers saying no thank you during that process that mr. harrington mentioned. we will process those and hope to stabilize the program in the early months of the program. we are resuming relatively high it off-ouopt-out rates. the fact that we are offering our customers 19% renewal