referring to it is the positions in environmental planning to work on a range of projects. the preservation would be a part of it. working on city-related public projects, including rec and park projects, our own work on a general part plan. >supervisor kim: the budget analyst recommendation is that we disapprove one and another would start in the third quarter. >> my understanding is there a recommendation would be only one would move forward. supervisor kim: and it would start in the third quarter. >> i think the third quarter is probably fine. i would just hope that we could get that second position as well. supervisor kim: i think they stated that just because the rec and park bond -- hopefully will pass in november. you had mentioned that there will be a variety of different projects on top of historic preservation that you talk --

thought needed a second environmental planner position. >> that is right. we have had a structural issue in environmental planning. it takes the most time. for any project. part of the reason for that, we believe, is we are constantly shifting attention from privately-funded projects to the city projects. city projects always get jumped to the top of the queue, if you will, when those projects come in the door. this would allow us to devote staff attention solely to city projects so that other products can move forward. supervisor kim: would this be able to assist in some of the work that supervisor cohen had alluded to in visitation valley? >> the mayor's budget did not specifically include that position. we can have that discussion. the mayor's budget did not include a position for visitation valley.

we believe have an fte would do that work. it was not the original intent of the particular position. we can continue to work on that. i think we all recognize the need for it. supervisor chu: thank you. supervisor wiener? supervisor wiener: with respect to the two requested public projects, environmental planners, my understanding is that will be funded through the budget and then they will not be billed out to the other departments? >> correct, through general fund. supervisor wiener: i think i mentioned this last time. having gone through a number of these public projects, it is a real fire drill every time making sure that we can get staffing from the planning department and making sure to

move these projects forward in a timely manner. it undermines confidence in the public spending and capital process when we have a project that is moving forward and then it has a hit but because there is a delay in the environmental review. most recently, and dolores park, the department, they did the timing bet needs, but for a while, it was dicey about whether we could move through environmental review in the way that we had planned. i do think there is a good argument for having these planners. two questions. in terms of -- in reference to the actual projects, whether it is private or another department -- also, the preservation

element, general planned stuff. i would want to make sure that these planners did not get stuck into the general plan, preservation, what ever else, spending all their time there and then very little time on the public projects. these are very important elements, but even more important are making sure these projects move forward in a timely way. could you comment on that? >> i cannot give you a percentage of time they would spend on general plan, but it would be relatively low. the idea is to spend time on the projects, specifically on the city's own physical projects, primarily capital projects from other departments. frankly, so that the departments have a single point of contact to rely on ticket ever done all the time. supervisor wiener: the other request i would make, i know we

have been having an ongoing dialogue about this. in terms of the environmental review process, i think there are probably some process improvements that have to occur with respect to the historic preservation aspect of that. we have seen some issues around the dolores park project. i am confident that we will move forward in a productive and positive way, but it has brought to light the fact that there are some process improvements that can take place. the preservation aspect of the environmental review. i would request that the department engage in some evaluation about how we can make that process work better for everyone. right now, it is not always working the way that i and others would like to see. >> i appreciate that. we will definitely do that. supervisor wiener: i am

supportive of these two positions. supervisor chu: thank you. supervisor cohen? supervisor cohen: i just wanted to thank supervisor kim for reiterating my concerns. especially with the america's cup, and these large private ventures, it sucks up all the capacity and energy, not just in the planning department, but other departments swept up into the monstrosity of major projects like the america's cup. i am really nervous that small neighborhoods like visitation valley will be continually marginalized and pushed down the line. that is part of the reason that visitation valley is in such a fragile position because of the lack of city resources and

planning that has happened. i just wanted to offer a cautious word that we not forget our neighborhood, particularly those that have been historically left off the table, disenfranchised, marginalized, however you want to characterize it. it is important we continue to ensure the neighborhoods that are struggling have that support and the resources needed for it to become a vibrant. that ultimately also helps the entire part of san francisco. this is a recurring theme that i am noticing. >> i appreciate that. we are working with oewd to support their work in visitation valley. supervisor chu: thank you.

mr. rose? >> members of the committee, we would be happy to respond to any questions or if the commission wants me to go over any of its disagreements. we can do that. supervisor chu: any interest in hearing the items that are in disagreement? supervisor wiener: if i could balance the one bursa's the two environmental planners for public projects. in terms of a difference between one and two, i just wanted to know if there was a specific rationale, evaluation that was done on the number of projects in the pipeline, particularly considering the street bond going into implementation, knock on wood, the 2012 park spawned. >> through the chair, we looked at our recommendation last week.

we looked at perhaps more projects with the park bond. we did amend that to move of the timing of that position. the reason we are not recommending the second position is we did that actually see that there was any actual delay that was significant enough for us to recommend another position. you will see in our recommendation that they are currently at the five-year high in terms of environmental planning positions. supervisor chu: thank you, supervisor wiener. supervisor at avalos? supervisor avalos: 84 the presentation. i am actually ok with approving these three positions recommended for disapproval by the budget analyst. i would like to recommend that we go forward with the full

house budget analyst recommendation and if there is a decision about resources into planning, that could be part of the overall priority discussion that we have as a board at the budget committee. that could come back later in the week but i would beg to see if we are going to be looking at approving positions to a greater extent than they are our body plant currently in the department budget, that we make that decision based on our greater priority that we have is the committee. that would be my motion, to take all of mr. roh's's recommendations and if you want to approve, we can do that at a later time this week. supervisor chu: clarification from the department, with regards to the recommended items, i want to understand which ones specifically you were in agreement with. from my understanding, in terms of the first page of the recommended cuts --

>> members of the committee, the department agrees with the first recommendation of planner 3. that is a savings of about $11,000. we agree with the second renovation on page 6 of savings of $53,000.900 $50. the department disagrees with the third recommendation of the planner 3, a saving of 107,034. on page 7, the department disagrees with planner 3. the department does agree with the planner 3 in pharma to review. on the bottom of page seven. finally, on page 8, the department disagrees with the planner 3 in march interview with a savings of 144,555.

supervisor chu: thank you. the department agrees with that assessment? >> that's right. supervisor chu: let us take the areas where there is agreement by the department. this just leaves out the positions currently. motion to take the areas where there is agreement? yes? ok, without objection. with regard to the remaining items, colleagues, my preference, rather than stripping it out and potentially adding it back in, what we can do is come on thursday, we can leave these items out until thursday and look at all of our priorities as a whole. from my point of view, the environmental review positions that are dedicated general fund department items or general fund projects, i think, is an important one. tins to be areas where we fall short when we talk about not delivering bond projects on

time, all the delays, what it means to taxpayers when people do not see their projects come on line. a lot of that has to do with bottlenecks we see at various departments. it is important, as we're going forward, that we have the capacity to live for those projects. terms of being born of the planning area, i support what the department is planning to do, and i think there is a benefit to being able to hold two environmental plan is accountable for their workload. what we see is a lot of shifting. even before the sport, we will see a lot of private projects coming through that will also be utilizing city planning staff at a high cliff. it is important that we do leave some level of capacity at the department to do it complete our city projects. with regards to the two other areas in terms of legislative affairs component and the clerical commission staffing area, i am less certain about those areas. i would like the department to

come back to share with us some specific details about the justification for an additional legislative assistant position, as well as a legislative affairs position, as well as the clerical component. i believe those are fee-based, in terms of the clerical, the commission secretary component? please follow up with us and let us know if that is truly general fund or not. colleagues, if we can, let's we got here is where there is disagreement and come back to them on thursday. would that be ok? do folks want to take action on any one of the particular items? supervisor wiener: if there are members of the committee that have asked for additional information, as the chair just did, it might be best to vote once we have the full information. that would be my desire. supervisor chu: supervisor cohen? supervisor cohen: i, too, would

like to have all the information before making a final vote. supervisor chu: on the three areas, at the environmental position, i know supervisor cohen has asked about the capacity within visitation valley to be able to do with areas where we are not covered them through our redevelopment reorganization. if you could follow up with the committee on where you anticipate those planners to be dedicated, with a direct part father or other items. supervisor wiener: maybe ask for clarification of supervisor colon's question period is the question about planning department's overall capacity to do with important issues in visitation valley or of these two specific positions? i do not interpret these positions as being dedicated to any part of the city but generally as public projects in the street parks bond happening in visitation valley and every other neighborhood in the city. i think it is an important

question to clarify, what is overall staffing strategy for some of these very important projects in visitation valley? i am wondering if it is about that for these two positions. supervisor cohen: specific to the environment of planners. supervisor wiener: the question to the chair is whether these two positions will be devoted to visitation valley -- i am supportive of these positions, but i do not know that they should be devoted to one particular neighborhood as opposed to the planning department focusing on particular things, for example, visitation valley as a whole. supervisor chu: the way i am seeing things is there will be a number of different city needs, whether visitation valley or different capital planning projects, or something we would not have anticipated coming down the pipeline later on. i'm imagining there will be some

level of capacity within the department to deal with visitation valley that may not be these two positions, but these positions could certainly flex to support visitation valley or delivering rec and park bonds, or dpw bonds, are the work we are asking for. what i would like the department to do is share with us, if you can come up by the end of today, so that we can have the information quickly, what is on your area of significant work you are anticipating to need to do work on, and how you envision these two positions helping that? >> the other possibility is to perhaps use the temporary salary money, which we agree to cut for visitation valley. supervisor wiener is correct, the original intent was for these two to be environmental positions, because of the great need in that department. general fund, we can flex how they are used, but that was the original intent. supervisor chu: thank you.

given that, why don't we hold off on those three areas, environmental review, legislative affairs, and the commission, and look for the department to provide us with additional information today so we can have enough time to review before our thursday meeting. supervisor at avalos? supervisor avalos: i would actually prefer that we handle this today. if we need to wait to get more information today, i am willing to do that, but i would like to make a decision on these positions today. if there is discussion about wanting to put back to the department, supporting neighborhoods like visitation valley, that is not necessarily treated directly by these positions, i am willing to look that. but we have to make some decisions today. if we are going to be holding off on every policy discussion that we have four positions on whether they should go forward or not, that will not be a very effective way of going through our decisions that we have to make as a committee.

i am willing to wait for more information today but i would rather make a decision today rather than holding out. supervisor chu: thank you. colleagues, i believe we would be taking a number of actions today. probably just a few outstanding items. if we can pass it over, we will come back on thursday. ok, thank you. we will see you with additional information today and then come back on thursday. thank you. our next department is the treasurer tax collector. i know jose needs to catch a flight before noon. >> jose cisneros, san francisco treasurer. i appreciate your ability to be flexible. we are in agreement with the agreed upon set of reductions that i believe the budget analyst is presenting to you today. supervisor chu: thank you.

to the budget analyst with regard to the tax collector budget? >> no further comments unless the committee has any questions. supervisor chu: just to be clear, page 38, the department is agreement with the two and a $30,000 worth of cuts in addition to closing out projects, correct? >> correct. supervisor chu: any questions? supervisor kim? ? no questions, -- supervisor kim: no questions, but i have to walk out of your presentation last week. i think that is a great step, moving toward, for both the treasurer's office and for small business. i want to thank your office for making that a reality. >> thank you. we have been proud to take the lead on them but we have been working with a number of other city departments as well as supervisors. thank you for your leadership.

supervisor chu: thank you, supervisors. given that there is agreement with the recommended cuts as well with the project closing out, do we have a motion to set the budget analyst recommendations and to close out those various projects? we have the motion. without objection. thank you very much. now let's go to the mta. colleagues, there are no action before us with the mta. we are not able to amend or change any of the budget line items. however, when the department came before us in may, there was news with regards to labor negotiations which led to a hole in the budget. the mta, i believe, has gone back to the board to discuss where the budget will be changing to make the department's budget whole. today is an update from mr. reiskin at about department's budget. >> good morning.

like the city, we set our baseline budget back in the fall and made some basic assumptions about labor cost as well as our other costs. our pulmonary baseline budget that we presented to our board in -- preliminary baseline budget we presented to the board in november showed a shortfall which was made up of assumed labor increases. fast forward to the spring as we develop our budget, with the city, developed our labor negotiations strategy. we agreed with the city to negotiate literally side by side and negotiated at most tables took me. -- jointly. we did so with the same negotiating positions and reached more less in the end the

same agreements that the city did. we did that collaborative lee along the way. the challenge for us is that we are required by charter to submit our budget to city hall by may 1, which is in advance of when the labor negotiations conclude. in order to meet that date, we need to back that up and get it to our board and had developed and advance of going to the board. by the beginning of april or mid march, developing our budget that will be approved, in order to get to city hall under the charter mandated timeline. so what we did was we it assumed in our budget basically our starting position of negotiations. doing otherwise would have compromised the negotiation that were under way as our budget was going to the mta board. what that meant in terms of budgetary impact, as i presented to you back in may, was an

assumed $14.6 million of concessions spread over the two years. i do want to put into context, that our labor budget is on the order of half a billion dollars a year, so $14 million reduction on about $1 billion over the two years is relatively modest. instead of a $14.6 million concession, where we ended up was an increase in labor costs of under $3 million. $3 million relative to $1 billion two-year budget, less than one-half of 1%. that paralleled, for the most part, with the city agreed to with the unions, which is more or less a zero wage increase in the first year, and then some increases in the second year, staggered increases that, in most contracts, came to 1.75% increase.

some of that was offset by reductions in premiums and other working changed conditions and a slight change in health care participation by employees. in all, on our billion dollar two-year labor budget, we are budgeting now for a $3 million increase over the two years, which i think, after the many years of concessions that the labor partners have brought to the table, is eminently reasonable. however, it did create a $70 million swing in our budget from that 14 assumed savings. what i brought to my board last week was the proposal to close that, which is really based on changes in revenue assumptions of three areas. the first is the general fund revenues, working with the mayor's budget office and comptroller's office, we have revenue assumptions. we are able to revise the time

that the budget was passed. the general fund passed through revenues, we were able to project greater than we had originally. the parking tax payment was slightly less, so that offset some of that gain. that change in general fund revenues yielded about $6 million of increased revenues over what we have included in the budget. the second change in revenue assumptions have to do with parking and traffic enforcement. we have undergone some management change and have been evaluating our over all parking and traffic enforcement. we have also been undergoing an audit by the comptroller's office that has looked at how we resources and deploy a parking control, traffic control throughout the city. based on that, determined that we did not have the resources, the staffing we needed, to

adequately enforce the laws and regulations we are required to. therefore, included increased staffing, and as a result, a commensurate increase in revenues. not just from the increased staffing but from improvements, we believe, are to be made in how we deploy the officers as well as the efficiency of their work. the final piece was changing the assumption with regard to taxi revenues. we are adding if you enforcement positions to do with the increase in the number of illegal taxicabs and limousines operating in san francisco. we've also, as you know, are contemplating a change in our medallions sales and transfer process. while we have not concluded that, that will be going to the mta board in august. you're not making any presumptions about what direction that will go.

just looking and what we had concluded in the two-year budget relative to would recent history has shown, we have probably underbudgeted on the revenue side. for those two reasons, under budgeting and increasing the number of enforcement positions, we were able to increase. those two together came to about $17 million. that was how we read balanced the budget. there was a number of other smaller technical things. some what cost neutral transfer from the police department. that was the big overview. happy to go into any detail or answer any questions. supervisor chu: on the parking and traffic and taxi revenues, which were two and three of how you closed the gap, how much were each of those with generally? >> 6.5 million over two years for parking and traffic, $4 million for a taxi. supervisor chu: supervisor

wiener? supervisor wiener: thanks for the presentation. two questions. first with 6.5 million with parking and traffic, it has been a narrative that has developed in the press and elsewhere, that that department, that mta saw they had this labor shortage because of inaccurate assumptions about labor costs. to make up for that, proposing to increase parking enforcement. could you comment on that? for example, the increase in parking enforcement, was this already planned? if so, why was that revenue not in the original budget? this is a narrative, as you know better than i, has been developing out there. it is important to explain to the public how this proceede