safe neighborhood parks general obligation bonds third sale. powerpoint, please. thanks, margaret. i can get started. is that better? no, go ahead. there we go. commissioners, and i am very excited today to be here. hopefully, to receive your

authorization to proceed with the third and final sale of the 2008 clean and safe neighborhood parks general obligation bonds. this is a key indicator of the progress of our capital division over the past year in delivering on the promises we made to the public about delivering these " great neighborhood parks, as well as a number of city-wide programs. this is our third sale. we sought two sales prior to this. a quick reminder, the $185 million, about $150 was for the rec and park department. we have worked together. we have done very successfully and are passed two sales. i apologize for my voice. i lost my voice and i cannot get much louder than this. there were a number of issues.

in the prior two years, we have worked very diligently to resolve those and ensure that they do not impact the next batch of products. we have been working diligently with the department of buildings inspection. we opened our first parks project funded by this bond in 2011, which was well-received by the community. we continue to make progress. mission dolores completed its design process after 26 public meetings. i just want to pause for a moment. people sometimes ask why things take such a long time in the city. this is one reason. i think that investment was well made. many of you might remember that in 2000, mission dolores was

supposed to be funded by a prior bond and talks fundamentally broke down about what the renovation should look like. we are very excited to have a consensus plan moving forward. the chinese rec center is now 70% complete. the helen diller playground will be opening in march 2012. we have now began two rounds of community opportunity programs and continue to move forward in that program's implementation. i think it is a good moment for us to pause and celebrate the progress of this project and just see how all the reforms put in place in 2008 continue to bear good results.

again, we have one project complete and many others in construction. we are currently in design and planning on the remainder of the six neighborhood parks in the second half of the bond. i'm going to quickly go through these. this just details of progress we have made on a citywide program side. the spending has been a little slower on the city wide program side then i would like to see things like the environmental review. also, these projects are environmentally complex. there's a lot of value in these projects. this briefly summarizes the real appropriation that we also discussed about a month and half ago. it was necessary to get to the

place that we are today as the third bond sales. the comptroller's office wanted to make sure we made every effort to expand the fund we currently have appropriated. we moved funds around to fund the bid of our second large project in that neighborhood parks program. about $20 million total budget, just like chinese rec. we opened the bids for that yesterday. we made our target date on that project. the real probation allowed us to fund that contract. it also helped build credibility with the comptroller's office and the mayor's office about our current need for additional funds. this is a summary of our spending. i think this very clearly illustrates the need for a third and final sale. we only have about $89 million

appropriated today. between current expenditures, conferences, and contracts, we are at $77 million. we will be coming back to the commission with contract awards in march. that would very quickly tilt us past the $89 million figure. we were initially intended to do that in spring. the mayor's office has fast track to the issuance of st. bonds, the street bond that passed in november. we are hopping on board to reduce the cost of issuance. we need to take advantage of this window. this just briefly summarizes the breakdown of the funding sources, of how the final sale

will be spread across projects. this will also include funds to the open space fund that we have talked about about one month ago to allow us to bid for fulton. this will restore funds to all the projects and allow us to move forward with their continued delivery. the capital planning committee and had asked us to talk a little bit about challenges and opportunities ahead. i wanted to share that with the commission, as well. again, we are moving forward. we hope that will be approved. we can move quickly into construction thereafter. we are working through the city planning department with the appropriate level of environmental review. one of the features of the consensus plan that was developed includes the removal of the central bathroom

buildings and the creation of two smaller buildings, which will greatly enhance ada accessibility, the crowd management of those bathrooms, and also the maintenance of those facilities so that we can better address them. keeping those facilities clean, as well as graffiti free, and overall security. we are working with the department of public works for the second grouping of neighborhood parks projects. they're going to allocate additional design resources. we're also exploring with construction contractors how we can potentially accelerate those contracts using some of the bid savings we have generated through this program. lastly, we have hired some additional project management assistance staff. that has been helping us speed up the development of the citywide program.

this is our current schedule for the neighborhood parks program, showing that most of our projects will be delivered or in construction in the coming year. it is our hope that will position us well to seek another ballot in november 2012 and hopefully obtain another 150 million with some capital funds to invest and fuin the parks sy. with that, i'm happy to take any questions. >> do we have any public comment on this item? seeing none, public comment -- we do. so sorry. >> thank you for your work on this, mr. ginsburg and all the commission.

♪ fix all up the city trees have a happy holiday later will have some park and pie and will do some caroling you'll get a sentimental feeling when you hear voices singing let's be jolly and the good ralph, rec and park fashion way park today ♪ [applause] >> is there any other public comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. president buell: entertain a motion. all those in favor? >> aye. >> aye. >> unanimous.

>> now we are on item number nine, betty ann ong rec center. >> good morning, commissioners. i am the project manager with the capital division. the item before you today is discussion and possible action to plant construction for the new clean and safe neighborhood parks generalbetty ann ong chinn center, which is greater than 10% of the original approved contract amount. just a little bit of background. on may 20, 2010, the commission approved the contract to approve construction for the amount of $10.8 million for the contract. the project is -- is scheduled

to be completed in may 2012 for a grand opening thereafter. in early august, we had a milestone celebration that was attended by the mayor and many commissioners here. and the general public -- general accolades for the project. everyone is excited about this project. i actually brought a picture, if you can see it. that is the current state we're in. . contract modification of to 10%. modifications exceeding 10% require recreation and park approval. the contract amount increase is

still within the overall project budget. the increase will allow us to meet our project milestone to allow for the successful completion in may 2012. i will be available to answer any questions you may have. >> is there any public comment on this item? president buell: there is one. >> please come forward. >> ♪ fix the recreation center for friends friends to the end think of betty bring it on with song i know she would want it that way ♪ >> thank you. is there anyone else would like to comment on this item?

seeing none, public comment is closed. president buell: commissioners, is there a motion? all those in favor? >> aye. >> aye. president buell: unanimous. thank you. >> item number 10, parks maintenance standards annual report. >> before turning it over to my staff, every year, we are given an annual report by the control ler that analyzes how well we're doing and taking care of our parks i want to think -- our parks. i want to thank them. it demonstrates a great deal of transparency. we are very pleased -- we continue to be pleased with our results. this is the sixth year.

are scores declined 1.4% from the prior year -- it is the second-highest annual scorecard we have ever received. i am particularly gratified that we continue to show steady improvement in restrooms and playgrounds. we worked very hard to improve the cleanliness and maintenance at some of our historic fleet lowest scoring parks in district 10 and 11. i am quite pleased. we have already gotten our first quarter scores for the current year, which were up at some of our highest scores ever at 91.25%. as i told the controller last year and this year, we issue caution to we have pretty much gotten to the highest scores that we can maintain given the staff that we have. i think some of the variable that you have seen in the last

couple of years has to do with the jobs now program. when we had our highest scoring program, we were fortunate enough to have an extra 100 staff through several stimulus funding. last year, we lost that staff for about three-quarters of the year because the program expired. through the mayor's leadership and the human services agency, i am proud to report that we have renewed a local version of that partnership where rec and park are benefiting again this year through a stimulus type program. with respect to our permanent staff, i think they are working as hard and efficiently as they have ever worked and you should be very proud with that. i'm going to turn it over to my colleagues. >> good morning, president buell and commissioners. i am a senior administrative analyst in the department.

i just migrated from the california supreme court. it has been a real pleasure to join this department. i'm here with the city services auditor's office. >> hi. i work with the city services auditor. wheat annually produce this report collaborative with steve and lydia. i would like to thank -- it was a pleasure to work with the team. i also wanted to thank general manager ginsburg for the attention he paid to this report. our division is tasked with the data driven analysis. to use the analysis in an operational way, is really exciting to see the general

manager focus on that and drill down to the nitty gritty to take those recommendations and use them. the score decreased slightly, 1.4% from last year. this is the sixth annual report we have produced. the methodology has not changed, and i'm not going to recover it. the data is collected by the comptroller of staff and rec & parks staff. we rate 14 features in each park. it's a continual process to engage all facets of the operations to maintaining high appearance standards. you can see the slight decrease,

but again, the score remains very high and the general manager did not warrant last year and this year that staffing is reduced as budgets are reduced and resources are diminished. it is going to be difficult to maintain these high scores, so it's a credit to the rec & parks that they are as high as they continue to be. this just looks at -- i'm sorry -- above 90% in the green. 80% is in yellow and just seven parks are below 80% than last year, but that is very small considering in our initial year, -- i'm sorry -- 66 parks below 80%.

>> this is the first report issued under the model we've reorganized to. you can see on this slide, the decreases that did occur, but i want to bring your attention to the 3.4% positive change. that happened specifically in low scoring districts. we have a new manager that applied really great action plans on two projects to overcome persistent problems. all of the psa's remain over the 85% threshold. we hope to use the aggressive strategies used this past year to address other decreases that did occur. >this is a listing of the

features. they remained consistent in scoring from the past year. all are above the 85% threshold and we have seen steady improvement in the playground ratings. as the general manager noted, has focused on restrooms to the public is clearly reflected. those scores on restrooms continue to rise. we are as high as 93%, which is quite incredible. >> this slide shows the district scores and the high bar is the highest scoring district. the box is the lowest scoring district. the green is the average. this is our narrowest difference between our highest scoring district and our lowest scoring

district. that speaks to the recommendations in the past to focus of a southeast portions of the city where there have been consistently lower scores. we've seen an increase in district 10 and 11 in those parks. just to see the gap narrowing ensures every citizen and every park user, and a matter where they are, are guaranteed an equitable level of service and that is great news. >> we always report on cleanliness ratings. this is a variable element and depends of the time the rating occurred and how soon or late it occurred in relationship to custodial hours. and the daily changes in parts usage. you see the ups and downs and that draws our attention to one of the drivers -- the peaks here correspond to low winter months,

when people don't get out a news the parks so much. i wanted to say again, as the general manager expresses, in this past year, we began making additional changes in an effort to continue encouragement of the department. we began giving it score reports to the service managers so they could expand their opportunities to use resources strategically. the department instituted an operational line up whereby on each day, front-line staff get together and discuss department priorities, including part scores and create action plans to address the deficiencies. we have used part scores as part of the annual appraisal process for all operations staff.

we are so serious about this process that we have reinvigorated our annual training process for a evaluators. we more rigorously apply the standards debt we use. >> and going to review the recommendations we have made for this year. one did not make it -- one was to rename this speedway and i can't believe my thunder was stolen, but next year. after they bison at helmut hollow, it was kind of dry. the first recommendation to -- is to sf the park a valuation data to determine effectiveness and park maintenance activities. that is a differentiation from past years, which is to merely use it, because of the stuff

that and taken within the division to use our data and the institutional lineups. these different structures are being put in place and now is the assessment of a is there receptivity on the staff line. that's exciting new recommendations. the second recommendation is to determine the key drivers of the valuation scores of the parties to more effectively manage park maintenance. that speaks to our resources in happens at the parks. we don't know to what level -- if i put a custodian here, how does that affect things down the line? is there a key driver moving a score and if so, how can we best allocate those resources? the next is to revise or

clarify standards and methodology entrain evaluators to improve the consistency of the violations. in general, we are seeing -- this is our sixth year of evaluations and we see people have been interpreting the evaluations in different ways. there is an opportunity to tighten the language and make sure everyone is going out with the same language and evaluating in the same context and that will make the scores more rigorous and robust. adopt a new model for scheduling compliance. this relates back to the proxy language where compliance is part of our job to ensure staff are where they are supposed to be. the schedule was dynamic and evaluators do not have a dynamic way of looking at where staff should be and to ensure compliance. it's important to reflect the way people are being used and to see where they are.

developed improved methods -- there's a huge amount of data and to make sure that rec & parks and controller are using the same systems to look at the same piece of information. it's about getting a i.t. resources and. we want to call -- resurfacing. we want to use the valuation data to plan for improvement for low scoring parks. given that there are a limited operating dollars, what is the most important feature that rec & parks want to look at? how can we look at the strategic plan said the scores are all in combination -- maybe there is opportunity to decide this is not the opportunity to focus on the lawns, but instead, restrooms.

the focus on restrooms in the parks has influenced the score and i think moving forward, how do we want to move force? >> from the department's point of view, we agree with these recommendations. we started right in on trying to make improvements to help these things along. we have turned around the time it takes in our process to get evaluation scores and the actual violation back to the staff so when they begin addressing issues, they are not stale. we have begun more regular meetings -- to develop strategies to address the recommendations. to get a better idea of how the scores of very and evaluation differences occur, we have instituted a quality-control evaluation and will be having

some of our top personnel got into a duel of valuation so we can see where the differences lie. we started a survey of our parks to make sure evaluators are actually there we have done a data check so that we know the scores being entered into the system are the actual scores people are doing in the field. we are also looking at how long it takes to do an evaluation. people take different times and we're going to make suggestions as to what the proper time for a piece of property takes. as we begin to implement best grain maintenance practices, we will do this -- best green maintenance practices, we will do this of how we become a more green city. we're also trying to make this an easier process for every one an easier process for every one of the 100 plus people invo