retirement. we can push it so that we have people was the people retire. it seems to be a slow process. >> we were having this conversation a few years ago, talking about laying off people. the financial report reflects that things are moving in the right direction. i think it is important to keep up on it so that we give our customers stakeholders the service they are paying for. >> when we come to you in january and request a new budget, the one thing that we need to be cognizant of and has been discussed in the past is how much we push the revenues in terms of expectations for growth next year. that will determine how much staff can do. it is tricky. you do not want to get too much staff too fast because you do

not want a layoff like last time. we are just trying our best to meet the needs of the customers. >> i understand that. i think that both you and the director can dissect where our needs are. and then go from there. >> who pays for the testing? >> if it is testing outside, dhr pays for it. if it is something that we are doing, essentially what happens is it is internal testing. people are participating in interviews and interviewing -- and going over resumes. the bottom line is that there is no increase in cost as a solution to opportunity. >> thank you.

commissioners? any questions additional? >> thank you. >> thank you. >> item 5b, update on proposed legislation. >> good morning, commissioners. i am the manager for public affairs legislation. i provided in your packet a november highlight summary, similar to what you saw last month. you may note that this ordinance that supervisor chu has introduced actually received some coverage this morning in the chronicle -- "chronicle," business section. about the accessibility of not reaching it. the acting director is putting together a brown bag briefing.

we are organized to do that probably by the end of this month, to bring people in and make sure that small businesses are very clear on what needs to be done. including the information on the certified access specialty that is one way to try to deal with some of these lawsuits. in addition to that, it may be worth noting that that particular ordinance probably will not come to the board before january. the small business commission is going to be having its own hearing on this december 12. i did not expect to be before the board before january. the status there, the mayor has signed it, and it has already taken effect as of the ninth of this month. the legislation that was

originally proposed by supervisor wiener, supervisors decided to withdraw that. the measure dealing with supervisor cohen's acts of god or buildings destroyed by fire, the board has passed and that as of this past week. the planning department has added a couple of amendments to find out when the actual starting date will be, giving the owners an additional 18 months to apply for a building permit. we are happy with it that because at least the property will be seen as restored as it should be. the only other items, we are still waiting for action at the board, dealing with the public arts trust fund, which may or may not involve us. >> i was at the planning commission for the public arts

trust fund legislation, which passed unanimously. i am looking forward to that. it basically expands the use of the public art feet on large developments to include arts activity, parts of will -- possible arts space and before us. >> how large? >> over 25,000 square feet. >> yes. we are still working with planning on this amendment to the ordinance that deals with possibly reflect -- requiring additional testing of love groundwater and soil that will affect how quickly we can release the building permits. that has not yet been formally introduced. nor have we yet had a scheduled meeting by supervisor of the

most to look into rental housing. all of you know that it will come to us, and eventually. >> was that more in response to the america's cup? for a condition that has been prevalent for the past year? >> i think it has been driven by the department of public health and their environmental section, who feel that people living in certain parts of the city are more subject to potentially dangerous, health-wise, toxicity. that is why we are looking into this. >> in addition to ordinance 110854, updating the department of design green requirements, i would like to commend this commission for having passed, almost three years ago, the green building policy court

proof. could you expand on house and francisco was recognized? >> san francisco was considered one of the -- on how san francisco was recognized? >> san francisco is one of the greenest cities in the country. i do not know that everyone who lives here things we are there yet, but it is very definitely a popular mode of building. >> thank you. >> it was about three years ago, with the help of the commissioners here, we extended the, or changed the code to extend permits by 36 months. now, move the clock forward a few years. we are there. there are a lot of permits right now that are being cancelled.

i would like to see the department taking another look at that as far as changing the way that we loosely just cancel requirements. i am sure that we do have notices, but i still think that the majority of stakeholders are still struggling to get money to shut these projects and move them forward. the other thing that is not clear to me, when does the clock starts ticking? from the day that it comes out of class -- out of planning? or the day the tickets approval? from the mapping and all of this other stuff, that is up to one year. i would like to, you know,

certainly big building planning, we would want to take another look at them and send out notices. what we call them? 311. the smaller projects within the envelope, i think they should be, maybe you can come up with some way to take a look at that. >> we would be happy. >> this is a different agenda item, i think. >> yes. >> well, maybe we will put it on the agenda for next meeting. >> if even follow up? >> i would like to make that an agenda item. >> thank you, commissioner. >> item 5c, update on the permit tracking system.

>> penny, dbi project director and project facilitator. we have our vendor excella 21 tech here today. like is the project director. brenda is the business process -- mike is the project director. brenda is the braziel -- business process facilitator. [coughing]

>> we got a lot done in the last month. we finalize our relationship between dbi and planning and got signed off on the mou. we completed the initiation phase. that included the project charter, the kickoff meeting presentation, the parent demo, the system staging environment, and the initial project training. our kickoff meeting occurred on october 26. the demo included citizen portal. but also october 26. questions on the status. >> was there a direct invitation of the stakeholders that will be working on this system?

>> they were involved in kickoff meetings. trainings and demos. we introduced everyone to the project, clarified their roles, give them an understanding of the schedule, and how important their involvement could be. >> commissioner walker? >> i had the occasion with the interim director to sit in on an interview with one of our staff. it was very informative to me to process the customizing of our system. it went through a detailed interview with each employee that participates in the system to see their role, what they do, the data they have, whether they need input and access to the reporting. it was pretty impressive.

i am really excited about the thorough nature of creating this system. including all of us who end up touching all of the data that goes in. i am looking forward to this process. >> excella 21 tech came in a couple of weeks ago, looking at the building staff, workloads, and physicians for the future. we have intensive sessions all this week, planning in the morning. we have about four people from excella 21 tech here every afternoon. they are proposing ideas for how to implement a system for the work flows that we need, etc. >> are we going to have a presentation at each meeting?

>> i would have to check on that. >> we can make that a monthly agenda item. >> i think that would be reasonable until we understand what is going on. >> i think that that is where we have looked at the public interface and participation happening at the meetings. >> yes. we got a lot of feedback on that debt load. people are excited about the project. >> i would say that at the last pac meeting, there was a category based on some of which were shown being in place in the present system. i am sure that there has been significant progress from that point. that was where it was going to be measured from the progress. >> exactly. that was the baseline delos system. this one will be much more

integrated. -- demo system. this one will be much more integrated. >> are we having planning strongly participate? or do we need to encourage them to have a stronger representation? >> everyone is participating and working hard. we have delivered a lot of results over the last month. >> all of these people writing the checks need to hear what is going on. i would like to see that at the meeting. >> commissioner? >> i will bring this up as an agenda item based on some of our input. to bring together the department of public health, the vw, and our department, with empty lot issues. are those other departments going to be able to input status, so that we can hopefully have more access to what is

going on in those coordinated efforts? >> we are doing a coordinated analysis of the work flows and proposals for improving the work flows, and utilizing the system. >> great, thank you. >> what percentage of work will basically be needed to include those other departments? or is it strongly focused on planning and ddi's immediacy? >> right now is focused on planning requirements. later on we will kid into the add-on products and systems that are to be integrated. those people will be brought on board. but rates. -- >> great. >> pamela levin. the goal is to end up with a system at the end of the project that will serve the needs of the department, the

other departments, in the fashion they are currently doing. in other words, the p.w. -- dpw input information, as well as others. i do not know who inputs dph, i do not know that they have direct access. the second phase of the process -- project is to move forward and start looking at the other things that the other departments want to do. dpw may want, and they have expressed the enthusiasm to look at all sorts of processes to see how they fit in to and they can use the features of the permit tracking system. using the system for business taxes. the board of appeals wants to use the system. initially, we need to look at

what we are currently doing well and who is currently using it. and then we have every intention, having expressed in this to the board of supervisors and the mayor's office, working with other departments to get them to maximize their use of the features that they are not using right now. >> it would help, i think, because the board and the mayor's office have prioritized helping small businesses. the department of health is involved. it makes sense to be able to coordinate all of this to give better service to the end user. i also understand that it is a later step where you coordinate the peripheral departments. i think it is part of what will meet our needs and the city's priorities.

>> can anyone give me an answer, how long would it take to get our records that are currently on microfilm to digital? >> it would be a lot. >> is it going to take, -- is it going to take 10, 20, 30 years? >> we have already been working on that. >> i understand that, but does anyone have any idea how long? maybe the department needs to farm it out to an outside company and have them bring it back to the table so that it is ready to implement with it the system that we have got. >> over the last two years we have been setting funds for this project. the estimate is that it is going to take five years to do the project. we had every intention to farm

out, if you will, quite a bit of it. we could have to take out rfp to do this. there were several vendors that worked with the city to work on this digitization of records. the big issue is going to be working hand in hand with the unions to ensure that we are all together in seeing how this is going to go out and be done in house. we have a lot of challenges, you know, to do it in house. both for the records themselves and getting additional staff. we have to work that out. that is the next project we are going to focus on. but it will be a challenging project to get this going.

>> that is something that someone needs to carry the ball on. we have five or six people over there right now. we could have a few weeks to get a 3 hour report and it is not good enough. if the process could be moved up? could it be farmed out? gotten done within six months? this is a step in the right direction. >> i would like to put it on the agenda for the next meeting. a preliminary proposal and consideration for the budget for next year. in terms of timing, it would help for us to understand the category and the cost that can be worked into our budget as a program of pds is being worked on. >> one of the concerns that i

have over that type of project is the issue of quality control. i know that it can be farmed out, but what happens if someone who is a contractor damages the microfiche? what happens to the data there? in terms of copying data, by a understanding is that it is not enough to take a snapshot, we have to make sure that it is legible. the only reason that i am saying that is i just had to do that with a very old document. it was not enough to just scam the document. we had to ocr it, so that generations of copies that came afterwards would be legible. it is not something that you can use. that is one of the considerations i would like to see as well. in terms of the quality control

and the documents that we will be archiving. >> just to give you an update, we are having, and have had in the last year or so, issues with the current vendor in terms of a quality control. that is one of the reasons why we are and have spent quite a bit of resources just trying to get them up to date. they have the items index correctly and are identified correctly, with quality, in terms of the picture, that being one of the concerns in order to build in enough language to make it very strong. that way if we have problems with quality control. >> so, i think also security and making sure that everything that is part of a file is actually

kept in the file. all of those things are crucial. i believe that this amount was included in the budget. >> we have set aside a continued amount. we knew that this would be really expensive to do. >> it sounds like the commission would like tos prioritize this. -- would like to prioritize this. that the data in the tracking system would be under way already and well into it. the system is one thing. 5c(nf[ link electronics, inc. model number: pdr-885 software version: 3.0c

the electric -- electronic data management system and the electronic plan review system. it is a challenge to be able to do both of those at the same time in terms of putting up the documents and making sure that we are requesting is so tight, that it gives us time. i am totally behind you and i will do the best that i can to have staff working on that. >> perfect. >> additional questions? thank you. >> item fived, update on major projects -- -- item 5d, update on major projects. >> good morning, dear

commissioner. i am so sorry to inform me of that [unintelligible] is sick this morning. we have already spoken to you regarding the high-profile jobs. for my experience, i did not have all of the data. besides those major high-profile projects, we did require a substantial amount of engineering and it -- and inspection staff to do that work. specially the last job coming

back from city planning. a $170 million job. i echo, with commissioner murphy, we have staff and the inspector use, thinking about how to staff our staff. >> on the planned check and the plumbing, there does not seem to be in place this strong identification of plan checked through the plumbing division at the early stages of the project. >> as far as i know, now is only the major project labeled with an electrical and plumbing in the project.

perhaps we have some discussion? >> it is one of the items we are looking at for next year. converting those into planned checkers. they would not do all the major ones, but they would work on the fifth floor. especially with the green ordinance conservation methods, it is just kidding more and more complex. we need more and more people that will look at just plumbing, just electrical. >> my concern is that we have a policy pushing forward with

global intent. a technical item reviews the plan in part of it. especially on the front end. becoming problematic out in the field. >> it could be a further review of the process. >> commissioner? >> no. >> thank you very much, tom. >> item 5e, q-matic nd