commissioner moran: good afternoon. i would like to call the may 8 meeting of the public utilities commission to order. >> [roll call] we have a quorum. commissioner moran: 90. commissioners, the minutes have been distributed. additions or questions or corrections? -- thank you. if not, can i have a motion? >> so mode. >> second. commissioner moran: all those in favor? >> aye. commissioner moran: opposed? the minutes are approved. the next item is public comment, a chance for anyone who has, if they want to make before the commission, not on anything on calendar today. if it is on a calendar, this is not the kind of talk, but if you want to talk about something that is generally commissions

business that is not on calendar, this would be the time. do we have any public comments? seeing none, communications. we have a lot of communications. this week. we have two cip reports. we have a climate action plan. we have a street light update and quarterly audit and performance review in addition to the advanced calendar and letters summary. any items that the commissioners want to talk about? >> i do have something. commissioner moran: ok, commissioner caen. commissioner caen: the quarterly audit. let me collect my thoughts here. first page about the internal

controls. are we carrying forward with this? it is the third paragraph down. the audit also includes consideration of internal controls. >> a sari, which audits are you referring to on which page? the large report or the memo? commissioner caen: i just pulled this page out of my book, so it is the memo. them and that have the name of the report or the arctic? i'm sorry.

i'm sorry, what is the question? you are wondering if internal controls are considered as part of the other report? commissioner caen: no, i said, are we moving forward with those suggestions? >> yes, we are. we are working with the cfo to ensure that these internal controls are implemented. in current practices right now, the team has been doing it out -- individual managers as part of the budget process -- doing outreach to individual managers as part of the budget process to make sure that charges that have been posted our for the proper account codes. going forward as well, in regards to interpretation of the water supply agreement and possible differences, we are

working with finance, the city attorney for legal expenses and others to make sure we have discussion on these items. commissioner caen: thank you. commissioner moran: any other questions? commissioner vietor: i have a question on the street lights. thank you so much for responding to that, and it looks like the recommendation is not to move forward with purchase, but that is in fact primarily because of the age of the lights. is there a plan for pg&e to update? it would seem to be in their interest as well to at some one have an upgrade plan for the lights that they own. >> good afternoon, commissioners. utility services commissioner. let me kind of address one of your points at a time. yes, our recommendation is not to purchase the pg&e

streetlights. one of the major reasons is because most of them are past their useful life. the second primary reason is as a result of their series loops -- they have 25 in the system that are 50 to 90 years old. they are failing, and the cost estimate on our part is approximately $42 million to replace those, and that is the full board replacement from underground conduit cabling, full boxes, falls, fixtures, you name it. so we would be buying that burden. in a nutshell, those are the two reasons. in terms of pg&e upgrading their system, we did just meet with them recently -- actually, just after i wrote this report. the gist of the conversation as they plan on upgrading those loops over the next five years, which was new information to us. so they have budgeted $25 million to do that with

approximately five loops that represent 80% of the street lights on those lives this year. >> might that change the recommendation a year from now or whenever they are completed? >> no, because we would basically have to pay pg&e back, minus depreciation at that time, whenever we chose to buy those street lights from them. the ball of the streetlights would still be passed their useful age, and yes, the lives will be fixed in a five-year time, but the cost they spent to basically renew those -- we will have to reimburse them on some negotiated amount. it probably would not be the $42 million or whatever their actual construction costs. it would be something less than that, but it still would be a big amount. >> that is also why in the memo it talks about what we are trying to accomplish with that,

and what we are trying to accomplish is that they respond quickly to outages and have lights that work in the city. we can do that anyway, and the board of supervisors are having hearings to try to set that up, and pg&e is coming up with at least better bowls for how fast they can repair streetlights after they get complaints. some of the reasons for wanting to own and control them is to provide service. ways besides having to buy it. >> we understand that pg&e will be for dissipating in this streetlight hearings. willingly. >> all right. any other questions? >> it would be great to get an update again after the hearings are done to sort of see where it has landed. i know this has been an issue for a while, the operational maintenance aspects. short of buying it, hopefully, we can create some efficiencies. it would be great to get an update once that is all done. commissioner moran: but also,

revisiting, and that is probably the right thing to do. we have a bunch of repair work to do ourselves. as that work gets done, we have capacity to do more at the janney has not stepped up and down the job. we may want to revisit that. but i think taking a look at it from time to time is the appropriate thing. thank you. any other questions on the communications? ok, seeing none, other commission business -- i have one piece of business i would like to introduce. samuel sandoval soliz, who is with us today, part of the water education class. he is spending the day with this. emphasis on financing and utility infrastructure. they figured maybe we had

something to say. >> good afternoon. quite unexpected, but i'm really happy to be here. i am is very new faculty member at uc-davis. basically, what i do is provide educations -- education for californians and also try to tap water resources year. very happy to be here, and i have been here today following and the -- andy moran, saddling him. i am very happy, and it is my pleasure to meet him. >> we're glad to have you. thank you for being here. any other commission business? moving on, report of the general manager. mr. harrington. >> good afternoon,

commissioners. we have three items on the report today. the first is the community benefit update with juliet ellis. >> thank you. i will call up the powerpoint. again, juliet ellis, assistant general manager for community affairs. for the purpose of this brief presentation, i will provide an update on the community benefits program. it provides a good opportunity for the commission and public to get a sense of how the commission moves from policy into implementation of policy. as you know, in january 2011, the commission adopted an agency-wide community benefits policy. it reflects the commitment of the commission to be a good neighbor in places where our operations have and that spirit in many cases, developing the policy is actually the easier part of an implementation. we've been spending a lot of time putting the foundation in

place to think through how we move this policy into action. much of the work has been focused on putting the foundation into the program around a key priority areas. over the last year, many of the priority areas have come before you in discrete pieces. you saw the management land use free work came before you. the arts enrichment resolution came before you, and at the last commission meeting, we brought the mou with the san francisco unified school district. the community benefits policy has multiple components, and one of the main areas of focus is our work force development and maximizing workforce opportunities at the sfpuc. this slide is to give you a flavor of what we have been doing over the last year. the puc played a central role working with the office support for the development in

developing an implementation plan as it relates to a local hire ordinance. external affairs staff have also been working closely with the power enterprise to develop a job strategy as it relates to the energy efficiency program, and this builds off of interest from the board of supervisors, who asked us to explore these opportunities as part of the budget process last year. finally, we're working with each of the different enterprises to begin a conversation about working with the development rfp's that would allow us to have a pool of consultants to work with each of the enterprises as it makes sense to build our capacity to maximize jobs in the different enterprises. another area of work as part of the community benefits program that we have been a very excited about is incorporating community benefits requirements into our professional services contracts. we are piloting this with the source system improvement program, and again, it is on

the professional services side. there have been two professional services contracts that have been awarded as part of the source system improvement program, and both of those contracts as part of the rfp process had community benefit requirements included. those commitments are commitments that are made by the professional services firms as part of their proposal to do the work. the puc is not paying any additional cost for those commitments. there was a separate panel that reviewed those proposals, the community benefits components, and it was individuals that have expertise around community benefits and work force initiatives. the things we are seeing that the firms are prioritizing in their proposals tend to group around issues like job opportunities, internships, on the job training, adopting schools, doing environmental cleanup. there's interest at the puc to scale this up so it would go beyond current project and be in all of our services contracts,

so we are working with the city attorney's office to think through what that would look like. there's also enters from the mayor's office and the board of supervisors around exploring opportunities to legislate this city-wide. the education component of the community benefits worked has come before you as part of both the joint task effort as well as when we presented as part of the budget hearings for the pc, we talked about moving forward as part of the programmer and education, so over the next year, we will be working with each of the enterprises to develop a more comprehensive educational initiative that focuses on increasing the public's understanding of the puc's core issues. we will partner with the school district as well as increased access the public has to puc facilities. we have increased the number of stores we are offering the public to the hetch hetchy reservoir. we're talking with recreation and parks about institutionalizing, allowing tors of individuals and families

to go up and see the hetch hetchy system while they are up there over the summer. many of the other initiatives we have been working on -- you are probably more familiar said the work we have been doing with the southeast community facility. another program we are getting ready to watch is the contractors assistance center. that will be a center that will be housed in bayview hunters point and be focused on increasing the capacity of smaller contractors to bid on puc and other city-wide work. this slide, really quickly -- you are familiar with the pieces of work we have been doing. the work we have been doing with the arts commission to realign our arts enrichment funding. the urban agricultural pilot program. and then, with the infrastructure of the program, again, we are excited that we are staffing up. we are developing a benefits proposal that will be focused on a sewer system improvement program and what that scope of

work will look like as it relates to ssip. the last piece, as i close, is focused on how we track and monitor what the impact is as part of the community benefits policy, so how many jobs are being created, how much economic stimulus is happening. so i am happen to answer any questions at this point. commissioner moran: thank you. commissioners? commissioner vietor: i want to commend you for of limiting -- because i do recognize that there is a big divide between policy and passing policy and resolutions and even legislation and implementation. i think we see it throughout the city. there's all kinds of unfunded mandates and things that do not ever see the light of day. a lot of these things happen on the commission's agenda for a long time. in relation with the arts commission. the contractor's assistance center -- i think it is great

that that is finally coming on line. i think this whole body of work around community benefits -- we have just seen lennar, who has given a big chunk of money for community benefits programs in relation to the development activities, which is a huge opportunity for the community, and i think there will be much more of that coming on line, especially in the private sector. i just want to commend the puc and the public sector for taking the lead and developing a policy and moving forward with the implementation. those are, sort of, my initial thoughts. i guess at some point it would be good. i know we have talked about it through the whole budget process, but it is a relatively big body of work, it would be great to figure out what it is going to cost. i know we have broken up pieces of it, but to really implement it in a way that makes sense and use that as almost a pilot, so when we pass it, to say we do know that there is an associated

cost. i just think this is a really fertile ground. appreciate your work in this area. commissioner moran: adding to that, we did adopt a budget policy that said -- it asks the question of staff as they bring forward a budget, "have you fully funded the policies of the commission?" this is one of those, obviously. as we pass policies, it is easy to think of them as words without consequences, but they do have consequences, and that is a good thing. otherwise, we would be wasting our time, so this is something a lot. one of the things i will be interested in watching is how we deal with the nexus between community benefits and the projects that we do. if it is providing jobs on construction that we are financing, that is very obvious what the nexus is. as we are doing community arts programs, it gets a little bit farther, and i think we need to think through how far we go. how we know what our community

benefits -- how do we know what our community benefits we would want to sponsor? >> because we are required by the city to set aside the arts management money, the realignment of the arts money to puc core issues actually shows so much more in taxes this is it all going to city hall and the embarcadero and places that had no relationship -- or the art itself had no relationship to the puc. >> that probably was not a good example. >> it was a great example. >> the other example as it sets an amount. we know how much, and we have established the linkage. four other community benefits, the linkage may not be as strong. >> i think it will probably be a bit more complex. the urban agriculture work that the puc was undertaking came from a male or let their -- directive -- came from a mayoral

directive. batting in -- i think it is an interesting conversation have. >> commissioners, the second item is the report on the a solar water supply system. as you recall, we were able to take over the system working with the fire department about a year-and-a-half ago, and we have been upgrading the system and working on the bond-funded portion of that. >> thank you. steve ritchie, assistant general manager for water. go to the slide please. talk about the of sillery water supply system, the giggly relative to the earthquake safety and emergency response bond. a lot of this was prepared by our project manager, but also on the operational aspects, the director of regional operations

contributed to this presentation. this is a photo of one an -- what an awss fire hydrant looks like. by comparison, across the street, you can see a traditional fire hydrant. it is much smaller, and those tend to get broken over when they get hit by cars. awss does not. it is designed to withstand a big earthquake. that really is a large, complex system that i will talk about more in a moment. in 2010, the awss was transferred from the fire department to the puc as part of our water operations in support of them. they fight fires, we manage water systems. that was the purpose of the transfer. we have since been coordinating operations with the fire department, which includes both the regular water system and the auxiliary water supply system. we've responded to two w-alarm fires and above.

on sunday, there was a four- alarm fire in the city. we had three gateman respond to two working the regular system and one that was on standby at one of these banks to make sure it could go into operation immediately if needed -- at one of the tanks. and it is a typical fire, but it was certainly a typical response for a high-level event. in 2010, there was the a quick safety and emergency response bond that was passed by the voters that had about $104 million in it for the of solar water supply system. as we implement that, we are engaging first in a planning study to assess the status of the system and assess levels of service we think we can provide for the system. maybe take some pieces of it out of operation but maybe beef up some. we are also looking at a lot of pipelines in that, which is about 135 miles of pipelines, but these are bigger, beefier pipelines. there's also a physical plant.

we have about 199 cisterns scattered throughout the city that fire tankers can pull up to actually fight fires. in terms of overall program management, a lot of coordination with the fire department because they are the customers in this ultimately. we have a steering committee that includes the general manager and the fire chief, but also the head of public works and myself, and a technical committee of experts to advise on it. we have a pretty tight schedule and budget we are working to that i will get to in the last slide. this is the physical plant of the system. the red lines are all of the distribution types that are in the awss system, and it calls up the twin peaks reservoir in the center of the city, and the jones street tanked. there are also two pumps stations, stations one and two, that are connected to the bay to pump bay water. those have been unusable for

some time because they are clogged with sediment. you can see an operation we have under way to remove mud from the intake so that station can become usable. that is under way right now. >> what is the address? >> literally, it is the foot of van ness. there is a white building in van mason, playstation #to the wheel. we also have a number of cisterns. the green dots are the existing cisterns. the sisters themselves are not that big. each of those represents about 1000-foot radius out from a sister and that represents the area that a fire can be far. the red and purple dots -- you'll notice the green dots are more heavily in the northeast area of the city, and the red and purple or on the west and southern areas of the city. we are also looking at seeing if we can feed some of those through groundwater and/or recycled water as a way to fight fires.

this is a total of 26 reservoir on top of 20. it was just recently cleaned out. we added a large new intake from some reservoir that we could put water in rapidly and also cleaned it out. the voter does not show the large pile of debris which came out of this. unlike our drinking water reservoirs, this is uncovered so it does accumulate stock over time, but we found it to be in strikingly good condition. it is actually in pretty good shape. lastly, the schedule, we are looking at designing about 15 cisterns, developing the cost for pump station one, conceptual engineering on pump station two, and a draft study report, the implementation study that i referred to. all of that willnext year, desiw sisters, looking at proposed language for a november 2013 bond to follow up on what we have found now that we have looked hard. finish additional designs.

we expect to be in construction on a number of these things in 2013, so we're doing things to improve the system, just like we started with twin peaks reservoir. i would be happy to answer any questions. commissioner moran: thank you. commissioners? we do have public comment. >> my name is dick martin, chair of the spur disaster planning committee. i am represented myself today. when the bond was being considered, i met with amy brown, the assistant cao, and brian strong, because as you saw, my neighborhood and many other neighborhoods were totally protected by awss. it is confined to the northeast. i am here is a strong advocate to the program and want to emphasize too hard in the system, to expand the system for

emergency water supply -- to pardon the system. the high-pressure system as we talked about. in our meeting with amy and brian, i suggested that we're not tapping some of the major water resources in the city. lake merced. sunset reservoir. merced manor. other ones that are adjacent or very near existing awss pipelines and should be connecticut -- connected. sunset reservoir is about four short blocks to 19th avenue, where the awss system is. interestingly enough, i recommended 26 to 32 cisterns, and that is what ended up in the bond. because out in a lot of those neighborhoods, we have a constant at least 10 mile an hour wind. it is an uphill slope, and it is pools of tar on the flat roofs

out there with very little protection. i would like to accelerate the cisterna program so we can really begin to cover it. steve mentioned connection to the west side basic ground water system. i think the puc needs to look beyond just awss and see where the other supply systems are, where the other connections can be, and let's integrate awss clearly into the overall water supply. lastly, asper has sponsored a couple of meetings with dr. richard allen -- jasper has sponsored a couple of meetings with dr. richard allen, who was part of the california earlier earthquake warning system. and he has met with a lot of city staff. within the last 10 days, he met with ann, the director of the department of emergency

management. they would like to call together various key city departments to become a demonstration of how this early warning system could work. [bell rings] they need bart as one of the participating groups. they would like to get city agencies to participate. if you can maintain continuity of service by having even 15 or 20 seconds of warning, which would enable you to may be shut it down, started up, do something, rather than just have it slam. that is what it is 4. thank you. commissioner moran:. -- thank you. any other comment on awss? >> the final report is our wsip quarterly report. >>commissioner moran: ms. labon?