visitors came to the zoo which puts us at 30%. one of the reasons for the high attendance is the appearance jack hanna. he appeared to a sold-out, standing-room-only crowd. many had paid money to see and receive autographs from him. he focused on 20 animals from the children's zoo and call the san francisco zoo a diamond in the rough. we thank him for being here. we recently lost a male lion. the silver lining, he left behind a female companion that would have been by herself. we had the idea to copy a pride, which you often find in the wild. we carefully introduced the female to the couple next door.

it has turned out to be a wonderful trio and pride. they are now napping together and it is an incredible sight. i encourage you to come and see them. a squirrel monkey has been returned to his exhibit. with a few minor hiccups, he is acclimating well with his 17 companions. a visitor brought him a valentine's day card and receive $1 off. our annual zoo fest gala is underway. our chair would like to make this a black-tie affair. this will be interesting at the zoo. that is my report. >> hass is there any public comment on this item?

seeing none, public comment is closed. this was discussion only. item seven, golden gate concourse part garage. -- park garage. >> good morning, i chaired the board of the music community partnership. the garage was opened in 2005. construction was funded through a combination of $36.4 million in private philanthropy. $26.5 million in bond anticipatory notes. in december 2010, we refinanced with a big-qualified tax-exempt loan. debt is schedule to be retired 2039. at such time, the garage will be transferred to you. use has steadily increased after the de jong opened in 2005, and

that significantly when the academy opened in 2008. use has now leveled off and someone declined. it is a common pattern among new cultural institutions. peak use is in the spring and summer, when tourism is high. usage is also heavily dependent on events. maybe the weather. our revenue is way down for december and january. they were all at the zoo. expenses are very basic. we have debt service, staffing, city rent, utilities, and insurance. we are and non-profit with their responsibility to operate in the most prudent way possible for the visitors to the institutions in golden gate park. currently, we are not able to cover our expenses, even though they are right on budget. we have a revenue problem.

the rate increase is necessary to carry the garage in winter months and between special exhibits. rates. -- initially were said by ordinance in 2003. there have been two increases since then. a 25% colon increase in 2009 and a 75 cent increase approved in august of 2010. the proposal before you today is to increase the weekday rate by $1, up from $3.50 to $4.50 an hour, a dollar increase per hour on the weekend. from $4, to $5 per hour. after our even parking would increase to $15. that is pegged to the for the performing arts garage. the daily maximum rates are unchanged. that would remain at $25.20 $8. monthly rates are also unchanged.

-- $25 and $28. there were 20% fewer parkers in december 2011 than in 2010. the impressionist was at the de jong in 2010, not in 2011. december 2011 revenue was 36% below the revenue in 2010. january revenues were 27% below january of the preceding year. your to date, we are 17% behind on revenue. i will say there has been a little bit about take lightly. -- a little bit of up to take

lightly. the proposal is before you for your approval. >> maybe we will have public comment and then questions. >> it is there any public comment on this item? thank you. >> it good afternoon, commissioners and members of the public. golden gate park concourse. traditionally, the heart of the park. here we are, living in times of scarce resources and we have one of the greatest architectural examples of a non-motorized, non-fossil fuel transportation

concourse, the carriage concourse. that is what the music concourse is. it has been diluted down to a museums' car park or an academy of science car park, a drive in utopia when we're trying to get people out of their cars. we drive everywhere. we don't have to get out of our cars. we don't even have to look for a parking spot. we have a grosz built right into the carriage concourse -- we have a garage built right into the carriage concourse. yet we are getting run over and it should be non motorized. once again, 180 degrees from where we should be.

we drove carriages in that park and around the concourse for over 100 years, a perfect example of classical, non- motorized, non-fossil fuel dependent transportation. what do we see going around there now? zero of that type of activity. of that type of community. because we have had our community stolen and it has been occupied by you people, who really do not belong here. except politically, you belong here, because you are living in the past. retribution for a past you don't like. you don't like history. but i tell you what, it's coming to bite you back. thank you very much.

>> is there anyone else who would like -- richard? >> at the good morning commissioners. i was looking into this garage issue and what we could do to gain additional income. one thing i look at would be would we ever have a row tear off of people who go in and pay road tear off and this would have a bonus to it such as a lottery at the end of the month, maybe somebody would get free parking for a month. but i would not look so much on the prize of it, i would look to the legality of private alone

property and people going in and out of the park and people using the garages. another has to do with places like district 3, chinatown, around there, they have a lot of garages there and i thought it being that there are some there, there should be a consideration when it comes to budgeting. what i understand is when the budget comes out, we're going to have a lot of facilities, but not many people to manned the area. if we can look into something like that, if you have the financial area road tax and a prize, of more directly what they could do to the department and not the general funding, that is what i want to bring in

for future consideration and it might make a big difference in a lot of kids being able to play around chinatown and being able to participate in the available scholarship programs. >> is there anyone else who would like to make public comment on this item? public comment is closed. >> regarding the rate, we're getting up to $4.50 an hour. i gather one of the main problems is that at times there is plentiful street parking. people will at some price points, this side they will try to find a free parking as

opposed to parking in the brush. by raising it, you may end up pushing cars and out onto the streets. i am wondering -- i see that the rent is flat 15. have you thought about increasing that and perhaps increasing the weekday rates of little lower? >> my response to that is that it is for special events. when there are large events, we extend the hours and so it is not dollars captured every night by any stretch of the imagination. i cannot pull out and it varies by the month and the year. we have tried lots of different possibilities. in terms -- do you offer

overnight parking? >> you could leave your car there and it would be locked in and you could get it tomorrow morning. >> it is not serviced 24 hours? >> i don't know if i mentioned it or not, before we did the rate increase request, we went back to our expenses and i said there are very few and very limited. we have decreased the hours of operation and we did that in connection with the institutions. when they have a lecture, they are required and we work carefully to make sure of the garage and opens an hour past the end time of those events. we are trying to service the public and also trying to keep our costs as minimal as possible. >> it is hard to judge because given the information we have, we do not know where your

revenues come from in terms of events and weekdays and weekends. what we have in front of us is a proposed rate increase with out any kind of financial balance sheet to show what kind of revenues a 50 cent increase might bring. >> here is a couple of more details. it varies incredibly, not so much from day of the week. we have unbelievably detailed reports -- a it's a wonderful colored graphs -- there are a few facts i can give. the average ticket price is $12 and that means people are staying not quite three hours.

part of the data that was generated by the new report allowed us to go to the institutions and say we have five cars that are staying later. can we work with your staff to figure out another way because there is an hourly cost in their garages that is difficult to rationalize, particularly when we are squeezing right now and we are in our readers to the people who operate the garage. >> i don't know if my fellow commissioners would see in the future, more financial information regarding -- >> you do get quarterly reports that are detailed. maybe they are not disseminated to everybody, but i would

appreciate a response to what additional detail and you would like. they are quite detailed. >> i would be interested in seeing be analysis on the price points and what the weekend brings in, the price increase and so forth -- that would have been helpful. >> thank you. >> how do the institutions that use the parking garage feel about the increase? >> nobody is happy about it. this is a job i would rather not have. there is a debt service and it's in all of our interest to make sure we make that and then we have to pay taxes for the operation of the garage.

we would all love to have that at $2 an hour. but the cfo who sits on my board for exactly this reason so that the communication is as open as it can be. >> i would like to thank you for being here because we did have a detailed presentation at the operations meeting and at that committee stage as well as along the way, we have tried to get our heads wrapped around how to get away from this. i just want to say there was a very detailed presentation made, but perhaps going forward, i would be interested to see how on a monthly basis -- is it wednesday or rainy days? >> if you guys can't find patterns, we would be thrilled. >> i think the analysis has

been thorough but the conclusion is still the same. >> one thing i can do is forward a report so that you see the level of detail we actually get. the challenges, everybody said we are going to start this and in two years, we will have a model that we can project going forward. we have our hands around the expenses and even when you put the exhibits, we're trying to guess how many people are going to come, we're just not good enough added. what happened before does not project except in broad strokes what's going to happen going forward. >> has there been any talk -- at

some price point, you are going to figure out the question whether your partner is going to look for free parking as opposed to parking in the garage. have you talked to the cultural institutions? keep in mind this was built with private philanthropy, and in that spirit, have you looked at going back to cultural institutions and asking for some support for the private philanthropies, since they are the beneficiaries of the grosz? >> absolutely. they are squeezed just like every cultural institution in the city is squeezed right now. one of the things about parking rights is that the users help

support the process that helps to support these institutions. a million dollars comes in that the city would not have had prior to the grosz. there is $100,000 of rent that comes each year from the presence of the garage in the park. i'm not trying to dodge, i'm just trying to give you the facts. >> if you are operating at a 17% deficit and increase their rates, there will be some fallout, and you can analyze what it is, but i think that conversation is probably the next step. >> one of the last conversations i had was about the rise and the spirit of it was that it was to benefit the cultural institutions and he had hoped it

would follow in his example, if there was a time where the gap would come in to pick up the gap. >> he was a singular individual and i cannot imagine and other individual who could have raised $36 million for a parking garage. he understood the larger role that it was going to play in terms of the health of both institutions and golden gate park, but he is missed. >> thank you. we have had public comment. can we entertain a motion? >> so moved. >> all those in favor? it is unanimous. >> we're now on item 8, the golden gate park golf course.

>> good morning, commissioners. on the acting director and property concessions. the item before you is the selection of san francisco to operate the golden gate park golf course. the golden gate park golf course was built in 1949 and primarily serves used, seniors, and after work golfers as well as a beginner golfers. it is currently operated by global golf management to has a

lease for the facility which expired in 2011. the commission approved the issuance of an r s p soliciting a new operator for the course. that required respondents have three years of golf course management and two years a food service experience. it additionally required day enhanced programming for the targeted at user groups at the site. particularly beginning golfers. it required respondents to submit a proposed base and respondents were encouraged to propose capital improvements to the course. the department received two responses, one from the current concessionaire and the second from the first tee of san

francisco. the proposals were reviewed and based on experience and the proposed financial terms, after their the liberation, the panel sought first tee as san francisco to operate the course. they are a national organization whose mission is to provide young people of all backgrounds and opportunity to develop through golf and character education, life enhancing values like honesty, integrity, and sportsmanship. the san francisco chapter has provided opportunities for low- income and at risk youth. in the first proposal, they proposed employing a class a pga professional with six years of experience, recently at the

half sunday golf course. they proposed a quarter million dollars in capital improvements to the shipping area and then submitted an extensive programming plan to bring the programmatic elements to the golden gate golf course, which was one of the key components of the lease and proposed a minimum rent payment of $225,000 as well as they presented rent payment. the next step, should the commission approved, we should diligently negotiate a lease to operate the golf course and we would bring that back to the commission for their approval. i do want to address a question

raced by a concerned citizen at the committee hearing on this. the question was is there a potential conflict because they operate programming at harding. we had numerous conversations with the city attorney's. the city attorney has advised us there is no conflict. their reasons for saying so is that the rfp did not provide anyone for having a presence at the golf course. to the extent the proposals were reviewed on the basis of their programmatic offering, it was what they were proposing to do rather than what they do that existing city-run golf courses.

the first tee is setting up a separate legal entity to operate the golf course. that is common across all of our leases. we would have a parent company that sets up a legal entity that we enter into a legal agreement and the city attorney is confident there is no reason not to move forward. additionally, we want to be including in the least we are presenting back to you, a clause that any subcontracts with the pga or first tee of san francisco would not require the city's approval. just to make sure there is none of the conflict, we will review

any contract for services provided or any other golf course operators and the city attorney has advised us that we can proceed. >> was it the city attorney's recommendation that you take the extra step of transparency? >> yes. they did not feel it was required, but thought it was advisable. >> we to have public comment. -- we do have public comment go ahead and start. >> my whole speech is on there.

>> just start and they will. >> i am back again to bring to your attention the issues on the overhead having to do with conflicts and i would like to read what the issues are. the city attorney has not resolved the problems i brought up. we have a possible commingling of purchases that are going to go through the pga tour to tournament players. let me start with the beginning issue. they are romancing -- have contracted for a managing agreement. but to use the space for office and that classes -- second, they are reimbursed for all of their operating expenses. that is where one of the problems comes in.