whether it is a puc-owned light. and mention the california public utilities commission controls the rates. these rates are low -- allow pg&e to recover their maintenance expenses and their costs for capital investment. so, we pay them over the life of the asset for the operational maintenance fees. that includes enough for them to set aside to perform the improvements we talked about earlier on their series of loops. -- series loops. and that comes to about -- for

the distribution of the power we provide for those lights -- i mentioned that it is our power, but pg&e is delivering it to the lights. we pay pg&e in distribution charges to use their power distribution system. here's a quick snapshot then of the annual payments pg&e, where we have the maintenance fees, the distribution fees, totaling almost $1 million a year. and then, finally, i just want to talk a little bit about where we see improvement recommendations here. we have been asked over the years whether it makes sense for us to become owners of pg&e so we will have more control. i think what makes a difference

for residents is the level of service. is not -- it is not really an ownership issue. is the light on when they are walking their dog or back from the symphony? i mentioned earlier, we have electronically-owned asset management of our street lights. we are able to look up whether it is our light or a pg&e light. we do not have access to the assets that pg&e has, so it is a "if it is not ours, and must be therirs" scenario. if pg&e says it is not theirs,

then that is probably a light that has not been accepted by the city. there is not a lot out there. it would be better to be able to definitively say looking at the map, this is pg&e, as the"post tohmm, i don't see it -- as opposed to "hmm, i don't see it on the map. it must be pg&e." it could be a great learning process for both departments to figure out how to improve. we would like to keep that effort going. and it is an option for the city to consider establishing lighting assessment districts. we have a lot of capital maintenance out there in the street lights and limited funds. one of the ways to address

president concerns would be to allow them -- resident concerns would be allowed them to establish alighting assessment district with a fund that will just be spent on lighting improvements in their neighborhood. those are our four recommendations. i am happy to take any additional questions. supervisor wiener: thank you. just a couple of questions. maintenance on the puc-owned lights -- to the cost estimate? >> i don't. i can get back to you with that. it would be sizable. supervisor wiener: what if we were to go in and convert the entire system in san francisco to pedestrian-lighting for puc lighting and pg&e? it would be a larger number.

is there any idea what that would be? >> i agree with you, it would be a large number. hundreds of millions is what i would guess. supervisor wiener: thank you. the adequacy of the lights that are cast from the lights. there are different kinds of light. the yellow lights and the white lights. >> yes. puc observes the lighting standards established by national street lighting standards. when we do our photometric analysis, our target for the amount of light hitting the street is an industry standard. i would agree with you there is quite a bit of variation in the quality of the light. some is whiter.

some is yellower. as we go through our elie the conversion project, we will be converting -- our led conversion project, we will be converting the cobra head-style to be dark sky contras, if you will. it is compliance with concerns. we will see more uniformity in the quality of light with the neighborhoods that have that overhead style over the next two, two and a half years as we complete that conversion of 18,500 lamps. is the national standard that we observed for the amount of light that should be hitting the streets.

pedestrian lighting that comes from streetlights on most of our streets today is a secondary benefit. the street light system when it was designed was not designed for pedestrian lighting. it is the street lighting onto the sidewalk. that is a secondary benefit. that is part of what we're trying to improve upon. supervisor wiener: thank you, ms. hale. colleagues, any questions? supervisor elsbernd: one question -- do we have any active street lights? >> we may have in the past. supervisor elsbernd: i think i may have a neighborhood in my district that is intrigued at the idea. who should i sit down and talk to about that? >> we would be happy to sit down

and discuss. supervisor elsbernd: truthfully, i think the motivation is they would like to have some decorative, historic lights, and that is something that could be funded through this? >> yes. supervisor elsbernd: great. supervisor wiener: thank you. colleagues, any further questions? supervisor chu: one final one. is the puc coming forward with standards that you're going to be using it moving forward? >> yes, we are. we're putting together a catalog. thank you for prompting me to talk about something i forgot about. we have had public outreach for the last year or so to develop a catalog to sort of corral the options out there so we could have a more reasonably maintain

a bowl inventory and look on the streets. we will be coming to the commission with recommendations on the catalog. thank you. supervisor wiener: thank you. next, i would like to invite up the representative from 311 to talk about the process from the 311 perspective. first of all, i want to compliment you on having dramatically simplified our city services. i remember when my predecessor supervisor dufty had 15 different numbers to call for different things. it has been a real success from my perspective. >> thank you. i am nancy o'hara, director of the 311 center. i will talk a little bit about

the process of the caller reporting of streetlight problems, and talk a little bit about the background of were we were to where we are today. there has been vast improvement since then. as ms. hale has described, it is difficult for the public to know whether a streetlight is a pg&e or a puc lights. we would ask when we started, and if they knew, we would provide them with pg&e's number for them to call. and if it was the puc like or if they did not know, then we would automatically send it to puc through our software system. to our customer relationship management system. there were a lot of problems with that, because a lot of times, pg&e lights were being

sent to puc and there would be delays with puc getting it to pg&e, or vice versa. our focus is on customer service. we wanted to make sure we helped the customer when they called us. if it was pg&e, we would take the call and have our staff pg&e into's on my system -- into pg&e's online system. however, it was difficult to know whether that request was serviced by pg&e. it would be a duplicate from our part, because we would have to enter it into the system and free internet for pg&e -- and re-enter it for pg&e. so, it was very cumbersome.

it would take longer, especially if it had been routed incorrectly to pg&e were puc. we decided to work with pg&e said they could access our customer relationship management system, so we could then customize an intake form working with pg&e and puc, so we could then route streetlight requests directly to a puc queue or a pg&e queue. there are still issues with that. though we do have a gis layer for puc, if we do not see it on the puc said, we assume a it isa

pg&e request. what is nice about thecrm system, -- about the crm system, puc can route it pg&e. we do based our determinations a lot of times on whether it is a certain street light pole. some wooden poles are at treasure island, which is really puc. some of the improvements we see that could take place are just a better identification of the polls.

you could have it have a reflective color sign on the pole itself or a person could easily identify whether it is a pg&e or p you seeole -- or puc pole. having that number very easily visible for the public to see would be helpful for them to identify the right poles. overall, because we do have good reporting, we see the improvements on both sides in terms of the response. we do meet with them regularly on any open cases. we have seen huge improvements in the number days they are taking to repair street lights, as well. although there is no standard for service at this level with the agreement that they have

puc. but we have seen improvements in that area and we are able to provide them that report on that information. if there are any questions that you have, i am happy to answer. supervisor wiener: just in terms of the number of the discrepancy of the number days between pg&e and puc, is that something that everyone experiences? >> in terms of -- supervisor wiener: puc takes a shorter number days on average to fix it reported broken street lights been pg&e -- than pg&e? >> we have seen that, but we have seen vast improvements. they have shortened the number of days quite significantly in our reports, especially in the last quarter. we do talk about it a lot.

a lot of times, i think people 311 call -- i think people call 311 and they think that 311 is not being effective. supervisor wiener: i think pg&e deserves a lot of credit because they do not have to connect to 311. the communication is good. so, you know when a ticket can be closed out because it has been prepared -- >> that is why it was important for us to eliminate entering into their online system, because it was not allowing us to see from beginning to end. i would like to credit them for being cooperative to work with the customer relations system

that we have. they close it out through our electronic system. if it is not theirs, they transfer it to puc. we then know it was puc-owned. that has been very helpful. supervisor wiener: is there anything that would improve the process in terms of getting these lights -- >> for us, it is more on the gis side. especially where there are both puc and pg&e areas. that would make it easier for us to identify. there might be some delay time if we do send it out and appropriately. there might be some days gained by routing it to the appropriate agency to begin with.

i know pg&e has said if we could get a them beingpole #-- if we could get them the pole number, that would be helpful to them. supervisor wiener: thank you very much. colleagues, any questions? thank you very much. i also want ttalk about planning and the better streets plan. >> good morning, supervisors. i am from the planning department, project manager for the city's better street plant, which would apply the efforts of the planning department, the puc, and others and create a comprehensive guide for how we can design for our pedestrian environment.

this plan was initiated, actually, by the city in 2006. and it was adopted by the city in 2010. now we are working with our partner agencies. what it really is is a holistic guide to how we design our streets. how the different elements of the streets are managed and administered throughout the city, and what we really try to provide would be better streets plan about how the different elements should interact. a particular element in the streetscape would be cognizant of the other elements, and they work together to a greater whole. the plan includes detailed

guidelines including street lighting. we have worked very closely with the puc to develop the street like guidelines. street lights are of fundamental organizing element in the streetscape, both creating identity, as you mentioned, for the daytime and the nighttime visual environment, as well as serving the more utilitarianism functions of providing safety and security. we have kept the street lights guidelines at a very high level , touching on concerns such as light level, claire, like color -- glare, light color, with the understanding the puc was going to be developing a catalog of street lights for the city, and these guidelines and performance criteria could help inform that catalog. i think ms. hale mentioned that,

and we have been working in partnership with them to develop a set of guidelines for street lights to provide a streetscape environment that will fit the other st. elements out there. we continue to work with the puc on at informing and developing the street like catalog and implementing the overall recommendations. thank you. i am happy to answer any questions. >> how optimistic are you that we will move in the direction of pedestrian-grade lighting? obviously, it is a huge project and very expensive. working with pg&e, working with the puc, what do you see for

that path forward? >> what i would say is, we have been working with them, and the first step is on development of the street like catalog, ensuring that it includes pedestrian lighting types so they do not have to go outside of the catalog in order to approve of a street light in the city. i think, as ms. hale mentioned, there needs to be funding for that. supervisor wiener: there are situations like i mentioned before -- if a light pole is down, or if there is an entire block and it is a major street scaping project, or a major development in the area. are we making sure that in those

situations people will always go to>> that's an interesting question. i think there are efforts to do that, particularly design instances, if you go through valencia's street, designed where there were lighting or the street scape avenue design to make sure both light of the roadway and a sidewalk and it doesn't necessarily mean a separate set of polls, but i think we have seen examples of that. i don't know if i'm qualified to answer whether systematically that will work. there are a lot of instances in the city to make improvements so if there were thresholds', we

don't have this right now. supervisor wiener: planning is always involved in the conditional use process and we often impose obligations on developers that they have to do streetscape -- one of the things they have to do is install pedestrian great streetlights because even though it's a huge expense to the whole city, we're talking about one area. it is not necessarily the biggest expense in the world and i'm wondering if that's on the checklist for planning when you are evaluating these things? >> there are two scales. you have a comprehensive streetscape plan that would include all of the elements of

the street and we would be consciously looking at the street lighting and working with our partner agencies on that. we adopted language into the plan that would require credit -- greater development to submit streetscape plans which previously they were not required to do it. we would look at what are the appropriate streetscape elements they have to provide additional materials or lighting. we will start looking at those with a greater consistency than we have. we aren't looking for the ad hoc, having patchwork along the block. we want consistent streetscape along the area. >> some of the major projects we have approved for treasure

island and mission bay, some of these new neighborhoods, are they all pedestrian great lighting? >> i can't speak for certain about that. i believe they have that in the plan. >> it seems that any time we have any kind of major project like that or even a project that's a block, i think it would be a huge mistake to miss that opportunity in terms of converting the lighting to pedestrian great. that seems like a planning function to me in terms of planning taking the broad vision of the neighborhood to the city. thank you. next, i would like to invite pg&e up. i would like to thank you for

attending the hearing. >> good morning, supervisors. i want to make a few comments. like all stakeholders and san francisco, we are aware well functioning street lights are an important portion of a functioning streetscape. what you're going to hear today reinforces our mission that it be maintained through those assets. my presentation will focus on three areas -- one is the current pg&e practices and services, the other is the capital improvement program to replace more than 1000 lights and spending $25 million, and the last is the future plan to install led's in additional

areas. thank you for having us again and mike will take over. >> i am the restoration and control director. i have the group that does the repairs of any street lights that have failed as far as burnouts are concerned. i would like to give you a status update on where we are with us streetlight burnout than near-term strategy and long term as well. as of today, about three hours ago, we only have 98 streetlights currently out of the 19,000. of those, only to have been out 14 days or more. we've made significant improvements in the amount of time it takes us to make these repairs. supervisor wiener: when you say out -- there are two situations -- one where they are out and

one where they are off for a little while, off, on -- do you mean totally out? >> it is actually both. these are the number of tickets we have in the queue to be repaired either from the burnout or and on off situation. it was stated at earlier that there were 30 days to make repairs. we did have significant opportunity to improve but i'm not sure that accurately reflected the time it took to make the repairs. i think there were some reporting back to 311 as well as our own internal reporting as far as the maintenance man making the repair and getting into the database. for simple outages, the simple streetlight outages, we are currently looking at and internal metric of seven days to make those repairs.