questions you may have about the current year's budget should you request. first i want to talk about three major budgetary considerations to take into account when directing budget guidelines for the department. the first is the upcoming expiration of the harvey rose contract. the second is the third legislative aid position added to the department's budget this year. and the third is the youth commission position, and i'll just touch briefly on each of them. the budget analyst contract expires on december 31st, in 2013 which means that the department must pursue either a request for proposals process to select a vendor, or bring the services in-house. either of these options may have an impact on the department's draft budget. regarding the [speaker not understood] position, the salary cost for supervisor increase 1.3 million during the current year due to the [speaker not understood] position. new cost will be incurred the next fiscal year as the annualization will occur -- will be providing for salary for 12 months rather than i

think the 8 or 9 months that we have in the current year's salary -- budget. and the third factor is the youth commission. staffing. as a pilot program, the department is l telling the coordinator of community outreach and civic engagement youth position. we will continue to do that through june of 2013 at which case we will be able to demonstrate the position's impact. we intend on collecting data. we'll be able to provide information to the committee about the efficacy of this position beginning in the spring 2013. if there aren't any questions about the current budget, i can move to the action items that are before you. i have put it up on the overhead. there are about four questions there. there is a committee support drafting 13-14 and 14-15 in your budget a approved in june 2012 as a baseline to start from.

budget analyst the committee can authorize me to bring it in-house or to rfp the services. contemplate the third a position and annualizing the salary and fringe for those positions and the youth commission, third position. so, perhaps i can jump right into it. >> in terms of the budget analyst services, in terms of that one, can you tell me a little bit about what it would take? * this is a question that has been asked time and time again about whether or not we can actually bring this in-house or not. i think there is a fair amount of members on the board who are interested in exploring that idea. in terms of the logistics of it, would we be able to do that immediately in time for this budget? can you help us walk through that? what would be sort of your recommendation? would it be to go through an rfp process first and then to evaluate another time? can you just tell us logistically how it would work to do this?

>> yes, madam chair. it's my advice that the committee directs me to competitively bid these services. i am happy to at the end of awarding that contract, be able to take some further time and investigate the actual details around the independence issue, the chain of command and who the budget analyst would report to, how our office would interact, how they would interact with the members of the board, where exactly they would be housed here at the board of supervisors. you could also direct me to investigate other jurisdictional cities. los angeles, san diego, new york to look at how they are provided budget analyst services. so, i think it's from the comfort of actually having a contract that you could then further direct me to provide that information to the committee. >> okay. and if we were to go forward with an rfp and eventually that rfp would have to come back for

approval, could we have it be flexible such that if there was a decision by this body at a later time to actually do a contract, any type of proposal we would be flexible enough to make sure that contract is not existing at the same time as we bring in folks? >> yes, supervisor chu. there is currently in the contract the ability to cease contracting with the joint venture at the board's convenience. we would, of course, have something in the new contract once approved for that same convenience for the board should they choose to go in that direction. and, of course, we would dovetail service -- we would allow for the dovetailing of services to occur if the board chose to bring the house. >> okay. for this item, i'd like to hear from my colleague as well, in terms of the budget and legislative analyst services it steams to me to make sense to take your advice so we are able to secure services [speaker not understood] during the time we are actually analyzing the

policy to whether or not to do something in-house. i think if we were to try to do that immediately in this coming budget year, i think that would be too fast, in addition to kind of figuring out what the structure would look like. we would have to do the hiring. i think that's just not something that we could do in time anyhow. that would be my preference. and for you to come back to us at a later time to report back on how it is we might proceed forward, thinking through the prowl is choices of bringing it in. so, whether that might mean direction from the board and the future to go with other jurisdictions ask what they do, what that looks like, we would look to you for some guidance on that. >> happy to do that. >> that would be my preference as well, that we would rfp and have a contract in place in the next fiscal year for at least certain duration of time. i've always had the discussion about an in-house budget and legislative analyst in a vacuum. it's really hard to know what

we're talking about. what we have to compare with is what we have the current situation with our budget and legislative analyst. but can we expect the get the same level of service whether -- i think there are situations that harvey rose's shop has where they were able to actually bring in staff or keep times during the budget season. do we have the same kind of flexibility with an in-house staff? how would we actually know how to make the best comparison between the two to make an informed decision? i think that having an analysis and a report before us to compare will help us to decide in the future about bringing in-house and we can also ascribe to -- in developing a plan for an in-house operation for budget and legislative analysis services. we can create a menu of options as well that we know we're actually getting ourselves into by going down that pathway.

so, i'd like to create a similar pathway to make a decision around in the future in-house versus contracting out that service. so, in the meantime i'm happy to support contracting out and moving with a contract for at least a couple years before making that decision about bigger change. >> great. if i could make a suggestion, just to follow-up on your point, madam chair, that once we award the contract, it isn't until that point that i'm directed to begin the informational hearings which could [speaker not understood] how we can bring it in-house. >> that would make sense. that would limit staff in terms of having your folks focus on completing that and doing that well and moving forward with the next step. >> okay, thank you. >> okay. and then on the second or the first bullet point which is designate the board drafting

13-14, 14-15, [speaker not understood], i think i would support having our current budget as our baseline. i would just be cautious of if there are any one-time monies put into place we would kind of strip those things out because they're not intended to be baseline. >> yes. >> okay. on the third a question, do we continue to support drafting the budget to include third a? my preference to have it as a priority for the budget, but that being said i think during the budget process last year a majority of the board members did vote to make sure that third a was in there and we budgeted it, it was also included in the second year budget as well. so, i would actually say that to be consistent with the budget we would want to include the third aid in the budget. >> yes, that was actually thinking about a fourth aid. just kidding. a third aid, i think that's the right way to go. i'm actually very happy with

our decision last year to do that. so, we can continue that as part of the baseline. that will be great. >> okay. finally, the committee supporting the draft budget salary [speaker not understood] engagement position, can you just explain to me a bit how many folks are there at the moment, kind of what the trajectory has been on hiring, and how you're paying for it? >> thank you. currently there are three positions in the youth position. there are two that are filled probably in a year and a half ago, we removed the salary from the third position. the position is actually still in our department. we have unexpected salary savings that we are willing to scrape together to actually fund this position for the next six months. and we are currently in the recruitment process. we have the director of youth commission who has just finished reviewing the applicants and is now sending several of his highest candidates to me for a final hiring.

>> okay. and in terms of a salary savings, i guess what are you foregoing to do that? >> in the department this year we have had and last year several high profile retirements which we have -- with huge endeavor tried to work with the department of human resources to fill these positions. but because there is a new system in place and things are taking a significant more period of time as everybody gets trained on the new system, it's taking us longer than we expected to hire into these positions. so, some of these positions have been just delayed hiring and it's from -- it's that extra salary that we're taking off the top of several positions. one is in it. this youth commission position is being funded by a position in our accountant or payroll personnel. we have a clerk position that was vacant for a while.

there are various positions we're hiring later than expected. >> got it. it's being funded by one-time salary savings for positions -- >> yes. >> -- that we would be paying for on an ongoing basis? >> that is correct. >> okay. i may differ on this one, but i actually would not include that as a priority for me. if we are talking about one-time savings supporting from another as an ongoing expense, that just doesn't fit. but also i think in terms of a third position at the youth commission, there are existing two positions or two full level staff in order to support the youth commission. i know that there is a large need in term of being able to get policy or to have people and have the engagement of students and that tasectiontion a lot of efforts. but i also recognize that within our own clerk's office we have a huge amount of needs to do more things like being able to digitize our records, something that we have been woefully behind in. * takes so, if it were my priority, i would not use your salary savings to actually pay for an

ongoing position, a third position in the youth commission. personally, i would rather see that money actually go towards getting more ahead of our digitization programs. and, so, that's my own preference. i think that that may be a different opinion among different supervisors and i'm not sure we're going to have a definitive direction for you on that one. supervisor avalos, any comment? >> i would support the position to be included. i think the work of the youth commission, deepening the voice and strengthening the voice of the young people, play a key role, this is a good position to make that happen. i think all too often we make decisions that don't really incorporate a lot of input from young people and this is key for making that happen. so, i would like to -- at least have it before us that we can see what we're talking about in terms of cost. >> so, madam chair, if i could, may i ask for the permission to fund the position from my

salary savings for this current yearv, placing the full salary in the draft budget, for the board then to determine the efficacy of the position in june with some measurements and we will show you in advance to get your approval on. and then come june if the position does not hold as much value as you would expected it to, that salary could be removed from the department's budget. >> that is a problem i see. once you hire someone, it is very hard and very difficult to actually not -- to say that you're going to terminate that position. >> we can hire them with the expectation that this is a pilot program to be determined by the board. >> right. i guess the other question that it raises for me is what metrics are we using to say what the value of that extra employee would be for this purpose. and, so, not kind of understanding what those metrics would be would be hard. would it be the number of engagements that they have, the number of additional legislation that they put out? there is not really -- and i

think people will value that in a very subjective way. so, i just don't think that you're going to get direction, unified direction from this committee on this item because i truly believe that in a place where we have scarce resources to deal with all the money issues that we have, that currently being able to have two members support youth commission is a good place to be, knowing that we have the possibility to help with digitization of our records that go back so many years that we are woefully behind in. so, you know, personally, i can't, i can't agree that that's the best thing to do, hire someone and say we'll keep you on, maybe we won't. i don't think that's the best [speaker not understood]. so, i think you may have to go back and speak with the majority of the members of the board and just get your feel from those conversations. >> thank you, supervisor chu. >> just a question.

are we looking to get additional support to do the digitization of our files? is that something that you could actually have here before us as a recommendation? you're looking for additional funding for it? you only do that within your existing budget? >> every year the last five years i have brought the issue of digitization before the committee [speaker not understood]. last year's budget i received approval from the committee and the board to hire a position to start the process. and what we have is a position that we utilized previously for it services is actually going to assist us as well. so, we'll have two in-house positions to help us with this, which will be just a part of the it's duties. we will be bringing a proposal to the board in the next year to do that digitizing the board's records. madam chair, i appreciate you bringing that up as i didn't

mention it today, but we are on track to bring a proposal to the board to do that. probably -- possibly in june or the following year. >> is that a project of a certain duration in time or one we expect to be permanent -- >> i understand the puc has 10 years ago started digitizing their records and they are at the precipice of doing that work. we have 2000 boxes in storage. i'm not sure how that compares to the puc's load, but i cannot at this point put a time frame around how long it will take us until we investigate how much time it takes to digitize our records. >> okay, thank you. does that provide the information that you need to move forward? >> it does. thank you very much. >> okay. and then do you need to prepare a file -- >> yes. thank you for bringing it up. clerk young has already done the research for me. he's pulled out a motion, the

original motion that it took to competitively bid these services. we are going to amend it together. we'll show it to you and to you, supervisor avalos, before submitting it to the board on tuesday [speaker not understood] and adopt without reference to the committee. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. with that, can we file this item? >> [speaker not understood]. >> sorry. why don't we open this item up for public comment. are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? >> no one here but us chickens. >> seeing none, public comment is closed. thank you very much. and can we entertain a motion to file this item? okay. we have a motion to file the item with the direction to the clerk to prepare an item for the adoption without committee reference that reflects the conversation we've had today. and we can do that without objection. thank you. do we have any other items before us? >> that completes the agenda for today. >> thank you. we are adjourned. [adjourned]

>> well, good morning, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. here in the outer sunset on a, what is looking to be a beautiful day, my name is joaquin torres, with the work force development lead intion mayor lee's program look tog coordinate city resources both existing and new to serve our

neighborhoods in need and to serve our small business commercial corridors. one of the things that has been so important to the mayor is making sure that we're attentive and listening to the streets and there is certainly no one better to know that than mayor lee who has been both our director of public works, then moved on to being city administrator, and now our mayor of our city. so, to make the announcement of this new program that will benefit merchants and small businesses up and down corridors like the one we're here on today, i'd like to invite further direction, mayor lee. thank you, mayor. (applause) >> thank you. it's great to be out here in sunset out in irving street. i should come out here every week, the dpw folk are cleaning the streets pretty well. [laughter] >> it's great to see all of you here today. you know, earlier this year, particularly during the budget negotiations, supervisor carmen chu and i and a number of other

supervisors engaged in a lot of discussions about what our neighborhood small businesses could benefit from as we saw indications of our budget recovery. and clearly we understood and have always understood the role of small businesses. and they're the backbone of the city and our office of economic development was headed by todd who is here and joaquin is helping out with the investment neighborhood strategy. we wanted to really demonstrate that, our commitment. not just by saying it, but actually doing things that would really support our small business. scott and henry and many others, benny and others who have been around us know that my favorite thing is to go to a neighborhood commercial corridor like terra val or out in the sunset noriega and have meals or breakfast or a cup of coffee and really find out all the distinctions that each neighborhood has to offer. i've been a big supporter of

our commercial corridors. historically and all my different capacities. but as mayor, i think we get to do something pretty big. so, with the small business commission and regina is here today to be part of this effort, along with building inspection tom huey is here, public works as i mentioned earlier are here. all of the agencies working together with our supervisors and mayor's office have come together and put this program together and we want to announce and launch it today in front of martin lam's good will shop here because he's been a real great leader in helping many of the small businesses, and particularly those that don't speak english owned by proprietors that maybe english is not their first language. over the past couple years, supervisor chu and i have been talking about these drive-by lawsuits that have been occurring and how shocked some of these businesses are to the

sometimes abusive process that are used by litigators to get at them. but in the context of overall our city's willingness to comply with a-d-a, with title 24 of the state, and our own access through our mayor's office of disability. we want everybody to comply. we don't want them to be victims of irrational and abusive lawsuits. and at the same time, we want to give them the help that they so well deserve. and, so, with the extra monies that we have, with the extra monies that supervisor chu also had and making sure that we used it wisely, we decide that had we would create this a-d-a small business access program in conjunction with asian neighborhood services and northeast credit union. we would not only provide some free assessments by certified access specialists that would come out here to the commercial

corridors like irving, like noriega and taraval in our investment neighborhood strategies, they would offer these free assessments that would do the inspection and allow the small businesses to understand what all the challenges are. so, it begins with that assessment. and then with the monies that we do have, we wanted to follow-up with our sf shines programs and other programs that we have and offer a combination of grants and micro lending loan programs that are available to these businesses so they can make the corrections in an affordable way. this is our city's attempt, it is fully supported by the board of supervisors, and this program i think now has its ability to be launched and have -- really meet these access challenges in a positive way. so, we're not just avoiding lawsuits. i think we do want everybody business to be compliant, as they should be.

but we're caught up sometimes with businesses that change hands. people don't know whether or not they're grandfathered in or whether or not -- how accessible it is to everybody. but we also know that there are many people who have disabilities that have also -- want to have access to the businesses all around these corridors and enjoy it as much as we do. so, i think full compliance is the goal. and to have education, to have free access assessment being done. and then to follow-up by those that are challenged economically, to have loans and to have grants that are made available to have all of them participate in this program is incredibly good for the city. and i think it will help many of the small businesses understand their obligations to respond to these better, but also help them get into compliance better. so, i'm glad to launch this program here on irving street

with supervisor chu who has been a really big champion for this. but we have many members of our business community that have also been asking us to do something positive about this. and not let these small businesses become victimized in these drive-by lawsuits. to do what we can to make it a positive thing. so, i'm so glad that joaquin has come aboard to help us. he, having headed up the neighborhood services program for years, now has his talent with todd in making sure that all of the small businesses along these commercial corridors have access to our programs, have a higher degree of understanding, along with our carla johnson and our mayor's office of disability, and all the different agencies working together, we're going to make this successful. this is a family of agencies that care about our small businesses. last time i looked, there were over 71,000 businesses who registered that had less than 100 employees.

that's an incredible sign of businesses that have -- that are our backbone, that hire a number of people. they're not the biggest employers, but they do hire the largest number of employees. over 51% of the city's employees are hired by small businesses. and i want to continue supporting them, nurturing them, have them increase. i hate seeing vacant, vacant buildings, vacant spots. benny knows every time we walk down there, what's going on with this site? what's going on with that site? char men chu knows that as well. we've done a lot of walks together. i want to see every one of these vacancies filled with small bustling business necessarition. we need them to hire more local folks. and one way to do it, one sure way to do it is to make sure that they meet the a-d-a requirements, the federal requirements, the state requirements, our local efforts to make sure that those that have disabilities can also shop and be a participant in our local economy.

so, with that, joaquin, thank you for your leadership. we get to launch this wonderful program right here. there are three streets in district 4 that are going to benefit from this. we're going to roll this out to all other 85 neighborhood corridors in the rest of the city. it's that many? 25? [laughter] >> all right, christmas must be coming early. i'll talk to supervisor chu about any more monies we can release. thanks very much. >> thank you, mr. mayor. (applause) >> thank you. and now i'd like to bring up the supervisor, the district that we're in today, someone who is no stranger to the importance of supporting our small businesses whose family used to run a restaurant. and like to invite to speak now supervisor carmen chu. (applause) >> thank you, everyone, for being here today. i want to thank the mayor so much for coming out and launching this pilot here on irving street. as you know, when i came on

board in 2007, one of the most important things we wanted to relay was how important it was to not only support our downtown businesses, but also to support all the small businesses that are located across the city in our communities. for many of the folks who come down to irving street or noriega or taraval or jude a a lot of the times people who come here who own the shops are locales are debttionv . they are people who live in our communities who want to help make our neighborhoods thrive. in 2007 when we first came on board and subsequent years, one of the things that we noticed was that there were a number of different businesses that were being targeted with some of these drive-by lawsuits. many a times when i spoke to businesses, they did not know about the requirements that they had to meet with the federal a-d-a laws. once letters came in, they didn't really know how to respond. they sort of put it away. and it was more egregious especially for our mono lingual communities and our merchants who really didn't understand the correspondence that they were seeing. and, so, it really left them in a bad position. some of the businesses found that they had to close down

their shops because they simply could not afford to make the a-d-a improvements and could not afford to pay the penalties associated with that. that's something we don't want to see. especially in the last few years, i think san francisco, we have really powered through some rough years economically. i hear with many of my merchants on sirfing street here who stuck with the neighborhood, stuck with this community and have gone through tough economic times and weathered it with us. we just want to make sure that we do everything we can as a city to support them. and, so, this issue about a-d-a com playboytionv fa public libraritionv is something that been going on for quite sometime. people say in san francisco how big is this problem? we know that since 2005 there are at least 300 lawsuits that have happened about a-d-a on a-d-a compliance issues in the city and county of san francisco. this is not insignificant for a city our size. and we know that these are things that we have to address. since that time with mayor lee who has actually done a number of things, we've worked with the bar association to make sure that we have legal ace