really at the apex of our objectives, and the category here that the core value of those objectives are clear. and that's the way the permitting process is fair and transparent. last but not least, i would also like to extend my personal thank you to sonya, who has been terrific to step in and a step in boldly and more than adequately the wide and a big shoes of ann ahe andr also the strongestn directivee and i, opinion and the guidance that john malamut has provided me in my presidency and during my years as a commissioner and vice-president. thank you very much. in light of that, let's move on

and get back to business. thank you. >> first, and went to officially welcome commissioner melgar to the commission as well. and just to say thank you to commissioner hechanova, murphy, and commissioner roegner, though he is not here, and i thoroughly enjoyed working with you guys. you have been instrumental in getting me where i am and of the department. i am sure that ann sends your well wishes as well. next, any comments on item number two, the president's announcements? seeing nine, item number four, report, discussion, and possible action to approve the department of building inspections proposed budget for fiscal year 2012- 2013. commissioner hechanova: number 3, public comment. >> i am sorry. i moved on to quickly. item number 3 is public comment. the bic will take public comment

on matters within the commission's jurisdiction that are not part of this agenda. >> good morning, president hechanova and members of the building inspection commission. deputy director sweeney, deputy city attorney. my name is joseph butler, an architect in private practice in san francisco 24 years now. a member of the american institute of architects for the past 22 years. today, i am requesting that the building inspection commission convene a hearing next month on the failure of director day to make a determination about whether or not a permit application 2011 02250973 for 550 jersey street was issued in error. we believe it must be revoked, because the san francisco building code has not been upheld. the city charter grants commissions the power to hold hearings. this commission has a specific responsibility for the enforcement and administration,

and interpretation of the city's building mechanical, electrical and plumbing bills. the charter appendix describes the bic's powers and duties. shall inspect and recommend additions, alterations, and repairs covered by the san francisco code. the commission may reverse, a firm, or modify determinations made by the department of building inspection on all permits required for final certificate of completion. i wrote to director day on december 9, 2011, requesting that she investigate the 550 jersey street permit application for the numerous breakdowns in departmental procedures and practices intended to protect the health and safety of the public. i followed up on february 3 of this year, citing the sections of the building code that were violated. for a 10-year project where the construction had never begun, including the failure of the

central permit bureau to perform its duties on this application and the discovery of two different documents purporting to be the approved permits issued by dbi, i had requested the director provide me her determination on the errors after previously afforded her two months of time for investigation. i have not even had the courtesy of a reply from the director. i construe her of failure to act as an upholding of the permits issuance. in light of serious and numerous building code violations with respect to this application, i have identified to her in handling of the 550 jersey permit. i hereby challenge her determination that is the ballot, and in putting your commission on notice of my imminent appeal. departmental decisions on permits are subject to the building inspection commission review as authorized in the charter. [bell rings] therefore, i request that your commission act on my appeal on

or before your next regular meeting in march. i will submit the appeal in writing within the 15-day requirement on february 10. i will ask this commission in march to find that the facts of errors in the issuance of this permit are serious enough to order its revocation. i do not undertake this lightly and have afforded the director every opportunity to act in upholding the san francisco building co. thank you for your time and attention. [bell rings] commissioner hechanova: thank you. >> is there any additional public comment? ok, cnn, item number four, report, discussion, and possible action to approve the department of building inspections proposed budget for fiscal year 2012-2013 and of the proposed draft budget for fiscal year 2013-2014. >> good morning. pamela, department of building inspection. at your last meeting, you asked us to make several changes in

the budget, and i documented those in the report i gave you. specifically, we clarified that the new electrical inspector and won a new pulp -- plumbing inspector will be budgeted in their respective divisions, the inspection division. they will be working on an as- needed basis part time, doing plan review, as needed. and they will also be out in the field doing inspections. so it will be shared. then you wanted us to look again at the staff for plan checks, and we're proposing that add two new engineers and two new associate engineers to the staff. that brings permit services up to 74 positions at the end of

2013-2014. we funded those positions by looking at what the new rates that are rolled through by the comptroller's office through the budget system, which were less than they were originally loaded in it there, so there were some savings there. and we also increased revenues by a small percentage. we felt confident that the revenues are achievable. we looked at the current year's revenues that we have been reporting in terms of the financial report, looked at what has come in and reprojected, and this will be discussed when the finance reports are done in the meeting later. we have also gotten feedback from the municipal finance advisory committee, also known as mfac.

they had a meeting. that consists of several different departments. and a large part by the controller's office, and they meet with people in the city and the bay area at large. experts in the various fields that impact the city's revenue. so there is always a person from realty, you know, real-estate developers, and basically, they're all so seeing growth in revenues for the general fund. we are trying to be very conservative in making sure that we do not overestimate our revenues, as was done several years ago, so we do not have a situation where we have to cut staff. but we are recognizing that there are increases. we also know, and i think you're all fully aware, that filling

positions does take a long time. so, you know, not only do we have the normal attrition, we are forced into attrition by the fact that physicians do not get filled right away. so we feel pretty confident. on the subject of positions and representative positions, we were successful this last week in getting 15 requisitions through the mayor's office under the department of human resources. now the trick is going to be being able to actually being able to bring somebody on board through the recruitment process, including the eight clerks who have testing requirements. so we're doing everything we can dehere to make sure that we're being responsible in terms of what we're proposing in the budget, that we are being responsible to our customers in

providing services and working with others in the city family to try to keep our department moving along. the other change that we are making, we had a vehicle that was involved in a hit and run on city property. since we have gotten approval to replace vehicles and this of the gulf, the cost to fix it was roughly 50%, the cost to get a new one, and it is an old vehicle, we have gotten approval to add another vehicle. due to additional information we have gotten on with the actual cost of the vehicles would become a we have a benefit that within our budget that we have for the vehicles.

and i guess the last point i would like to make this that, you know, the budget gets submitted to the mayor's office next week. and then we have a long period of time where it moves through the mayor's process, and there are a lot of things that could occur during that time. french rates could change. salary rates could change based on the fact that we have 27 mou's, agreements with the unions, up for negotiation, including some of the large ones. so we will see some up and down as we go through the process. and we will report back to you when we can. commissioner hechanova: thank you, pam. commissioners, questions? >> the issue i had at the last commission meeting s stopping for certain services. since then, the president set

down with the director, and she assured us of the necessary funding. and for the fifth floor, the over-the-counter. she assured us that tom, who will run the department, will be adequately staffed. i just wanted to say that for the record. commissioner hechanova: commissioners, additional questions, comments? >> no, i do not have a question -- actually, i do not want to start by saying, thanks, pam, for clarifying the new staff persons in the budget for me. thank you. i appreciate that. you also mentioned that 15 have been approved. are those to fill the vacancies for this year or next year?

>> yes, there is going to be a challenge, especially with the clerk due to the testing process. but we are working through that throughdhr, human-resources department, and whenever we need to do to ensure that those are filled quickly. commissioner hechanova: i additional questions? commissioner mar: given how difficult it has been to fill positions in the past, have we also looked into bringing back some retirees through prop f, so we contemporary l-- we can temporarily fill some of the positions while we try to hire some prominent ones? >> you have to have a position vacant that is approved. now we have those approved. but the second issue is that, for the most part, the

individuals who have retired have gone out with very large salaries. and when they come back for prop f, they go to the lower salary. so to attract people, it is rather difficult. we continue to look at the feasibility of doing that. but if we can, especially with the engineers come and get those on board quickly, then in makes more sense -- and then if it makes more sense to keep pushing on at that. commissioner murphy: dbi is a real cash cow, as everybody knows. i brought up -- i urged the new commissioners to ask lots of questions regarding the budget, where the money goes. as far as the public needs to

know that. regarding a certain $1.7 million on that budget that i asked questions on last week, i got one of our commissioners very angry about that. so i should not ask these questions. i just want to put that out there. i urge you to ask questions. and, pam, you have done an excellent job. thank you. >> thank you. commissioner melgar: thank you, pam, for that. it is really great. you had come under the budget priorities, a bullet point that i just wanted to have explained it, which is to increase housing and code enforcement activities using resources found in the communities in which they occur. i am not really sure what that means. what does that mean? >> that was actually, there were

two words left out of that sentence. that is, not only by the contracts we have with the community based organizations in the community, but also by our staff. so we have two large programs that we administered for code enforcement in housing-related activities. those are the single room occupancy collaborative, and also we have a program called the code enforcement outreach program. so we continue to have -- to use all the possibilities we have of being -- providing those services, not just through our type of regulatory, but also through people and organizations

that are close to the community and can provide more direct information about what we do and how we can help their individual clientele. it is a partnership. commissioner melgar: thank you. another question was that i was looking at the actual budget for training of staff, and i know a while back the department phased out the lead program, and the inspectors themselves aren't forcing lead in construction -- aren't for sing lead in construction programs. but i do not see that in the training. is that anywhere else in the training? >> the lot of the lead training program is still done by dbh,

the environmental, as far as i know. >> it is under the housing code. it is on complaint. most of the lead abatement program is handled through public health. we have one person on the sixth floor that does go on health- related issues concerning lead paint. commissioner melgar: my question was about training and maintaining the certification so that folks who do enforce the building code side of the lead in construction activities. i did not see it in the training budget for the staff at dbi. i just did not know that was under a different training. so that one person gets trained or keeps up their certification through a different line item? >> there is more than one person that has the certificate in the

department. once they achieve the certificate, there are class es that can attend. to my knowledge, we do not have any planned in the budget. however, it is up to the individual chiefs on wide education that they want for their individual sections. so what would be up to the chief to provide that an additional education. commissioner hechanova: additional questions? comments? i also want to add here, pam, terrific job that you have done. the category that i would also like to ask is on the proposed organizational chart that is currently proposed relative to what is being amended and all

the appointments from the first, second, and fifth floors, and the appointments that director day has recommended, i fully endorse. the category of that action will be in lieu of being covered within the budget. am i correct? >> well, actually, having tom go into this as acting deputy director for permit services, that is a budgeted position. and the of the people that are put in acting are all budgeted positions. so it is always in the budget. commissioner hechanova: thank you. i just wanted that clarification. >> i also want to thank my staff for helping me through the budget process and for being able to help me answer your questions now. i welcome them as we go through

the process and on to actually implementing the next two years budget. commissioner murphy: i would like to ask a question of tom huey, related to the budget. >> good morning, commissioners. my name is tom, from a fifth floor, over the counter services. i am starting next tuesday, and will be the acting deputy director for another service provision. do you feel you have the necessary staff -- commissioner murphy: the fill you have the necessary staff? >> first, i want to thank the commissioners for helping me get all the staff. i appreciate director day and pamela trying to help me get all

those positions, because i was crying out loud for the last few months because of the amount of work coming up being substantial. i was disgusted on my next topic -- i will discuss that, next topic. commissioner murphy: and do you feel like you'll be able that fill those positions? >> personally, i believe we will have sufficient staff to perform the jobs right now. commissioner murphy: do you feel bad business is picking up in your division? >> yeah, that is why wanted to give you the update. commissioner murphy: ok. >> anybody have any questions? ok, thank you.

commissioner hechanova: tom, thank you very much. pam, anything to close up or button up before we take action here? >> i just want to ensure the commission -- a sure the commission and i am doing everything i can to keep the positions and requisitions moving through the process, and our mayor's budget analyst has been at these meetings and recognizes that it is very important to you, and it is important to our ability to provide services. so i am contacting them on a daily basis. commissioner hechanova: ok. commissioner mar: i would like to move that we approve the budget. >> second. commissioner hechanova: before we take action, i would like to thank not only pan am, but dhr,

who is essentially the sort of had been department that has been reference to a locked in the category of dhr, financing, and executives as a team has helped to move the department for work, paying attention to staff, but also to the public. i would like to commend everyone's collective efforts here to make and keep the wheels rolling in the challenges of our current economy. i think there is a threshold by which i think the moving forward with the economy is going to be a tremendous for san francisco. so there was a second. an additional comments? discussion?

>> is there any public comment on item number four? >> i am nancy. i want to add my compliments to pamela for preparing a wonderful budgets. she has been very responsive to meet with my requests for detail on things that nobody in their right mind would ask in detail of, but i like that stuff. i appreciate when we have a responsive and caring bookkeeper and accountant and cfo. i really appreciated as a member of the public. i have one question for you, which is to ask, what is the reason for having some in the acting positions in the budget as opposed to having full appointments? maybe i am just ignore it on the process, but i hope you might ask ourselves why we are having acting positions. thank you.

acting appointments, i should say. >> any additional public comment? seeing none, there is a motion and a second to approve the department's budget. and just wanted to clarify that five votes are needed to pass the budget. i am going to take a roll call vote. commissioner hechanova? >> yes. commissioner mar: yes. commissioner clinch: yes. commissioner lee: yes. commissioner murphy: yes. commissioner melgar: yes. >> the motion carries unanimously, and the budget is approved. commissioner hechanova: thank you very much, pam, and your crew. >> onto item number 5, directors

report. 5a, update on dbi's finances. >> good morning. i am with finance services that the dbi. i wanted to talk about the finance report. i put their revenue chart up on the screen. so our revenue projections are actually quite similar to what we have been talking about in the past. we are continuing to receive more funds than we expected undercharges for services. that is pretty much our main surplus in revenue projection. everything else is coming in fairly close to what we had budgeted for this year. we do expect it to continue to come in very close to budget. so we are not projecting a surplus, except for in charges for services. we do see increased amounts there. everything else, like i said, is pretty much what we expected. we are seeing less refunds than

we had anticipated. we were anticipating getting around $300,000 in refunds, and we're not going to -- at this point, we do not see that we will get that much in refunds. we have lowered that to about $200,000 in refunds. the main difference in the financial report has to do with expenses. if you look at our expenses for this year, we finished about 58% of the year. you can see that in terms of expenses, we have not spent 58% of our budget. we had been leaving our salaries and fringe s alone and not projecting an increase. as pamela said, we did get approvals this last week, but we are getting fairly late in the year. because it is so late in the

year, we are starting to project some savings in salaries and fringe. we're projecting about $1.3 million in savings. hopefully we will be able to get these positions filled. but because we're so far in the year, we will have some savings. we are projecting a little bit of savings in on personal and materials and supplies. a very small percentage of the budget, but we expect to have some savings in that area as well. we are continuing to see more issued permits, both in volume and in the evaluation of permits, which is why we are seeing an increase in charges for services. but everything else is pretty much what we expect to see this time of year. in terms of the financial report, we are in good shape. commissioner hechanova: commissioners, questions? >> that was an excellent update. >> i