alarms and the ventilation for the subway system, the monitoring of all 267stations -- of all substations, broadband, which connects all the underground infrastructure and uninterrupted power supply, which basically is to maintain service of our communications and network in case of a power emergency. here you have the major project milestones. the next one that is coming up is in february this year. they will start construction for completion in december 2013.

the transportation authority's project oversight team is closely monitoring this project. here you see the funding plan. the total cost of the project is $46.6 million, of which 68% are from sources other than prop k. there's a couple of conditions. that concludes my presentation. the project manager from the mta on this project is also here to answer any of your questions. commissioner campos: thank you

very much for your presentation. i think that having this item follow the audit discussion was very appropriate because i think it was important for us as a funding agency to hear directly from the mta on the steps that have been taken and they will be taking to address some of the concerns that were identified in the audit. this kind of a project, which i completely agree is essential, and i think we need to fund it, and, frankly, this project should have been started years ago -- is important. but it is also the kind of project that if you do not manage it well, the cost can go up exponentially. i think it is a good thing that we heard directly from the director of transportation on the steps they are already taking to address some of the concerns that have been raised

in the audit. i would simply ask that we at the transportation authority continue to work closely with the mta to make sure that some of the points that were identified in the audit are monitored so that we stay on budget as much as we possibly can. colleagues, and the questions? commissioner chu. commissioner chu: just a question with regard to the integrated system -- how does the system allowed us to track railcars? >> that is part of a separate project, which is the radio replacement project. that is the one that has the vehicle tracking system. that is also part of the program, but it is a separate project. commissioner chu: the system will be able to integrate the data within it? supervisor avalos and i have talked a lot about the turn back

of vehicles and whether or not there is an adherence to the five-minute policy with vehicles coming behind it. i just wonder if there was an issue being able to track those performance measures. one of the other things i have heard recently from some residents and have actually experienced myself -- sometimes, we see it might say five minutes or six minutes, but suddenly, that train goes away. if it is adjusted to another time frame, it might be 15 or 16 minutes later, which does not help the residents because they thought a train was coming in five or six minutes. >> i will invite frank to answer that question. >> good morning. to address or answer your question, the next bus system tracks the vehicle, the train.

if the train is being routed to a different line, the system will automatically take off from the prediction, and the following train will show in the predictors, so i think that is what you have experienced. commissioner chu: i am not sure how that would work because the i am at 26 avenue, so the only line is a straight shot, and it says the next line going in- bound is, say, five minutes later. there is really no where else for it to be rerouted. you do not have to have the answer now, but i would appreciate -- >> it is possibly caused by a malfunction of the tractor.

maybe the system thought that there was a system break down. commissioner chu: perhaps we could follow-up with some of the specific issues. commissioner wiener: thank you. as a somewhat overlapping issue with that, i just want to point out one issue. in general, and i think it is part of the reason why we sometimes do not have enough trains or replacement trains. that muni simply does not have enough lrv's to begin with, and a number are broken down or being rebuilt, and it is taking a highly and reasonably long amount of time -- a highly unreasonably long amount of time.

i know and he is focused on this, but it is becoming an ongoing problem. commissioner campos: that as just a very simple question? in terms of any member of the public out there who is watching this, if we approve this and this goes forward, what would that do in terms of what it means of the ridership of muni? >> it would integrate the new train berthing location. i to be very helpful. right now, there are two of relocations -- there are two locations. they would have to look at the platform. this is the area above the boarding area. we will integrate them together. those are the immediate improvements they will see. on the back end, it would be

providing a much safer environments to monitor the alarm system. from a central control point of view, because we are adding the controls, it means they could see the power circuit status. when there is a breakdown of the power circuit, they would be able to respond quickly. commissioner campos: thank you very much. colleagues, unless there are questions, why don't we open up to public comment? is there any member of the public who would like to speak on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. colleagues, this is an action item. we have a motion by commissioner david chiu.

can we take that without objection? the item passes. can you please call item 6. >> item 6, introduction of new items. commissioner campos: any new items for introduction? is there any member of the public who would like to speak on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. can you call item 7? >> #7, public comment. commissioner campos: this is an opportunity for the public to comment on any item within the jurisdiction of the committee that is not on the agenda. any member of the public that would like to speak? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> and item eight, adjournment. commissioner campos: thank you very much. the meeting is adjourned. happy new year to you.

supervisor campos: good morning everyone, welcome to the thursday, january 12, 2012 meeting. i'm the chair of committee. the clerk of the committee today is filling in for her birthday. we want to thank members of the sfgtv staff for covering the committee today. can you make any announcements? >> the items that are recommended will go to the board on tuesday, january 24, unless otherwise indicated. soap ok, thank you. can you please call the first item? >> item number one, general

obligation bond oversight committee 2010 annual report. soap thanks. i understand we have shelby here, chair of the citizens general obligation bond oversight committee to present on this item. >> hello, i'm very glad to be here today. this will be my first time using this machine, so i may need some assistance. ok, it appears to be working. this is the first, this is the 2010 annual report. one of the things you're going to hear as we go through this report, it will be about 10 minutes, and then hopefully we'll have some questions from you. is that we have changed our year to now correspond with the fiscal year so we're hoping to come in front of you again in about seven months at the end of our fiscal year. this is actually prepared by habe ham same nons who was the

-- abraham simmons. i'm merely presenting it today. the first thing obviously is to explain what we do. we review and oversee the delivery of the general obligation bond program. and then in 2003 was added to our perview, also the city services audit and overseeing that and the whistle blower program underneath that. what we're going to do today is look first at the bonds and then we're going to look at the other pieces of what it is that we do. so just the major bonds. the first bond i want to bring your attention to is the laguna honda hospital. that started in originally authorized $299 million, and has finally has a completion cost of $585 million.

obviously our purr view -- our perview is to try to make it on time and on scope. things didn't go particularly well with this one. it did start prior. but we did learn a lot of lessons from that and these are lessons we can bring to quite directly with another product we have in front of us which is the general hospital. i should say the controller is also here. should i not be able to answer any questions, you will be more than happy -- ok, i'll keep going. so the second program here is the improvement program which again started prior, the good news is that 22 of the 24 branch libraries are complete. and reopened.

and the bad news is that it has well overrun its initial budget and schedule. and there's something that happens in the course of this that improves things, the m.o.u. between d.p.w. and the branch library improvement program helped a lot. there were a lot of, i think project management is actually an issue with some of these bonds and that when they actually do some memorandum of understanding then things do seem to get better. and this was probably the most similar the other bond that we have out there that's similar to this in the sense there's lots of little projects is the park. so that's one we can hopefully learn from the branch library project. and here we are, there was a $2,000 bond and then a 2008 bond. the 2000 bond was for $10 million and the 2008 with for

$185 million. 2000 did have its difficulties. there was a lot of change orders that occurred. we are hoping, and obviously not at the end of the 2008 bond for completion, but we're hoping that the m.o.u. again between d.p.w. and recken park is going to help with those change orders. nonetheless, and this is a concern to us on the board right now, on the commission is that the committee is that there are delays already. some of those delays are greater than 12 months on some of these projects. and so we have requested that recken park figure out some ways and come back to us on some ways they might be able to reduce the amount of time. they're not overbudget, but they are overtime. and our experience in lessons that we've learned is that even if you're just overtime, that can lead to overbudget later on down the line.

this is our largest bond. it's the general hospital rebuild bond program, and there's an authorized amount of $887 million. this is a major, major project. and it's fairly early on. the current projects are on budget, but they are definitely potentially not going to be on time. however, we have been working with the project manager and i'm going to tell you a little bit how you change things beyond this report. to hopefully make things better. we go about what we can do, and the project manager is working with paralleling various projects. to try and reduce the overtime. he does estimate that the project will come in on schedule for 2015. so, obviously some of the lessons that we learned from laguna honda came into play, not

obviously, but they came into play before even we started. and that was one thing is that you can preplan. you actually can go out there and make a lot of preliminary investigation and budget process before you even put it on the ballot. that was done with this project. there is also a very close relationship between the architect and the construction manager and there is a third party estimator which the project manager thinks has done a world of good. having a third party estimatedor to come back and sort of check on the bids as they come in. and so, he believes that that has made a difference in this. so, we are cautiously optimistic about that bond. this is a new bond. it was in 2010 it was passed,

earthquake safety. there's not too much to report on this, particularly since this is 2010. we're supposed to be speaking about there was a first issue in the fall of 2011. there will be an exciting new, the large majority of the money is for the public safety building, which i think is going to be really important in the event of some sort of a catastrophe. we do have, as we've seen after 2010, we have some real issues with some of our fire stations that this will help with. this will also update or water supply system. so those are the major bonds that i'll be talking about today. i just wanted to say a few words about the city services audit division. that is that what we do is, and this is, mr. simmons actually had created a subcommittee, i was on that subcommittee. and the purpose of this subcommittee was to try to tighten up how we act with city

services on audit division to review the scope to provide sta triage i think direction. in the past we only had four meetings per year, and litvinenko fitting everything in could -- and it will help to stream and we've streep lined the process so that as a group we will deal hopefully more effectively with a series audit division. i believe you've heard something about the whistle blower program from the civil grand jury. we are do oversee the whistle blower program, and under abraham same mon's, we began to explore ways to improve how it functioned. we did hear regularly from whistle blower who did conduct a

review of the program. he reported back what he found. we also heard regularly from wrissleblowers who made us aware of their concerns. a lot of what happened as a result of the civil grand jury, a result of chair simmons work. as a result of the whistleblowers who were brave enough to come forth and talk to us, some of the developments had happened more recently. first of all we did have a fair amoint of turnover. we have a couple of new members which bring fresh blood to the committee. it's actually quite a rocking little committee in my opinion. believe it or not. we were really feeling as citizens dealing with, in

particular $887 million project, it was just too big to really wrap our brains around. and so, we now have liasons, one to -- do we have three? one to three on each bond. we also have a liasons for the whistleblower. we are scheduled to meet for frequently. we decided that in order again to get our brains wrapped around this we needed to meet six times a year. and we are starting that this year. january 26 is our next meeting and we'll be meeting bimonthly. and as i mentioned earlier we changed our work plan so we'll coincide with your fiscal year. i am looking forward to hopefully coming up in front of you and telling you a little bit more about what we've been able to accomplish in seven months time or so. and, regarding the whistleblower, in particular we are continuing to monitor the changes we worked very closely with the controlers office to

implement the changes that we felt were reasonable on the part of the civil grand jury. that includes things like the website is going to change. we are going to get quarterly reports now instead of an annual report. they actually have all of the cases on there with the confidentially still in place so we can get a sense of what's going and what's not. and there will be regular public hearings among other things. we also had the ethics executive director ethics economics come in front of us to talk about his process for whistle blowing. and we will hopefully continue to work on improving the oversight of the whistle blowing program. does anybody have any questions?

supervisor farrell: are you also looking at the port projects? >> yes, we are. we are in the port project at least at this point are substancally on time and on scope and on budget. supervisor farrell: you mentioned there were some potential time weakenses? could you elaborate more on that? >> a lot of it happens, i think partially as a result of listening to the project manager. i'm actually one of the liasons for the general hospital. there are issues where in the past, there were issues where maybe weaknesses either on the architect or the construction management side that have been short. that was one thing. they were actually because of their budget problems on the state level that were slow downs with getting certain things done in sacramento, and that has slowed thing down. those are two areas that i can

definitely speak to. ben is there? >> a lot of things beyond our control. >> those things are beyond the control, but i think what we're really trying to do is say yes, there will always be things beyond our control. so what will we do to compensate? we're working directly with the project manager to try and create opportunities there to makeup the time. supervisor farrell: ok. so, question for you, it seems like you talk about laguna and the branch library and the parks, some already overbudget and overtime and some potentially in the near future here. it seems to me that, i guess i'm wondering how much -- what kind of a hammer do you have on the administration of it? because it seems like it's great that we're learning lessons and hopefully getting better in the future. but is that really what you think ultimately this committee is there for, the best -- the thing that you're doing is best is preparing us for the future and how we incorporate and

monitor these things ahead of time? or really the existing bonds that have been floating out there, what can you do so to speak? >> yeah. that's a great question. and it's one thing we have thought ourselves about. because really the only thing we have originally was the super, heavy-duty big fat hammer of no, you cannot issue the next section of your bond. and we have that. that is it. that's our sschtick. we've been working quite a bit and the way we're working with the park is part of this idea, what can we do between saying no, you may not issue this, which has never been done, it has never stepped in and done that and frankly it would be a big deal to do that. can we establish steps along the way that says in this case, the steps if the park is essentially can you give us, and we ask for 10 ideas of ways that you can

reduce the amount of time that you're overtime by the next meeting? so that we can see that progress is being made. if you cannot, then that's -- and we don't have it sort of solidified that. is that a point system. but that is certainly a mark against will you get your next bond portion issues? so that's what we're trying to establish because i had that exact same feeling. if nobody, there's a reason nobody has ever used the one stick that we have and it's so large it is almost too large. so we're trying to set up ways that we can monitor things that at least at the end of the day they've received several warnings before, actually not receiving the go ahead. >> ok, ok, thank you. supervisor farrell: any other comments, questions? all right, thank you. appreciate your time here today.

let's open this up to public comment. any members of the public that wish to comment here? everyone's going to have two minutes. >> good morning supervisors. my name is dr. derrick kerr. after 20 years at loo ghana honda hospital i became a whistleblower. then i was laid off. there are two missions in the annual report. i'm referring to this one you received, the line page report. the section on the whistleblower program does not mention tracking retaliation. that's because neither that or the whistleblower monitor retaliation against whistle blowers. that should be part of their function. proposition c authorized them to serve as the citizens audit review board. they omitted the word independent.