that our office provides. we're a civil rights office and civil right laws are not affirmative action laws and they don't say you have to do more for people with disabilities. you have to provide accommodations, particularly if requested, but because we have members who sometimes have participated on the bridge line, we have allowed that. i will get into a little bit of weeds here, we're a passive meeting body. we're not a policy-making body. the city attorney of the berkeley and state- the city of berkeley fought having a bridge line for their disability council and were successful with the state. they said that having a bridge line for council members to vote is a violation of the brown act and that to have a bridge line you have to declare the individual council member's home a meeting place. that anybody from the public could go there as well, which was goofy, but that is the law.

but in any case, we have that. other public bodies don't and they don't have to. >> so they are not obligated to have these phones? >> that is correct. they are not obligated to have those phones that. is an extra benefit you are getting from your mayor's office on disability. >> thank you for answering that for me. >> sure. anyone else on the bridge line? >> no. okay. before we move on, i want to encourage those who have joined us since the beginning of the meeting to fill out a card, if they miss to speak at the public hearing coming up. you can find cards at the front of the room here. thank you. agenda i'm item no. 5, report

from the director of the mayor's office on disability. carla. >> thank you. i'm carla johnson, the interim director of the mayor's office on disability. the first announcement that i would like to make is that as we were listening to the reading of the agenda a little earlier and the discussion about the accessible meeting information here at city hall, i just wanted to provide a quick update for people who are using mobility devices to let you know that right now the lift at the carlton goodlett street entrance formerly known as the polk street entrance is not operational and we're ordering a replacement for it soon. so if you are coming to city hall, please come by any the other three accessible entrances which would be the van ness side of the building,

the mcallister or grove side of the building. we do apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused. it feels like a really long time i have seen all of you. it's been a month since we met at city hall -- actually it's been a month since i have seen you and two months since we have have our last mdc meeting. i have a quite a bit of information. the first thing i wanted to brief you on is our office move. our office move is coming up a lot sooner than we originally antpated. it looks like we may be moving to our new location at 1155 market street. possibly as soon as the end of february or early march. i think the contractors are working around-the-clock to try to finish up all the construction. i will certainly keep you posted as i get a better

move-in date, but a couple of key features about our new spaces. we're going to be located on the ground floor at the lobby-level, which provides a lot of accessibility. we will be having a large conference room in our new space, which might be a good place for us to start meeting with some of our different committee groups. certainly i would hope that we could use that space for that. and what i'm planning to do is as soon as we get moved in, i will schedule an open-house and i hope to see everybody there at that time. it is budget season in san francisco. the city operates now on a two-year budget and so that means that we are developing the budget for fiscal year 13-14, as well as 14-15. now the good news in the city and really at the state actually, state-level is that we're in much better shape financially than we were a few, short years ago during the

financial meltdown, but we're still not out of woods yet. at this time the city does have a deficit, i believe it's been $129 million, but don't quote me on that. it's more than $100 million. and for this reason, the mayor has given direction to all of the different department heads that when we submit our budget, we need to include some budget reductions, approximately 1.5% per year. and so our office is cooperating, of course, with that citywide effort. during the budget season, our office also participates in capital planning for the really big projects, like new buildings or ada transition plan work for barrier-removal. and a little bit later in the meeting today, i have asked our deputy director for architectural access, john paul scott to give us a briefing on some of the big projects that

he submitted for our capital planning budget. now i wanted to tell you about a couple special probings that our office worked on recently. we just finish a project to develop accessibility guidelines for park lifts. -- parklet. if you haven't seen a parklet, you should walk or drive down valencia street or hayes valley, because those are the biggest concentrations that we find parklets. parklets are built out into the street. they are an expansion of usable public space next to the sidewalk and they are a good place to sit and talk and maybe have a cup of coffee. by developing accessibility guidelines, we're ensuring that these spaces are also going to be accessible to people with disabilities. that there will be turning circle radius.

that there will be accessible counters and seating built into the design and also that they provide the right kind of warnings for those who are blind or low-vision to make sure they don't actually step off a parklet and into traffic. so these accessibility declines were developed as a collaborative effort with the planning department, and the department of public works disabled access coordinator, as well as the folks at dpw who issue the permits for these park/parklets. and coming soon at the planning department website, you will be able to see the accessible guidelines up on their page. it's still under construction, but they expect to launch those very, very soon. another activity that our office is part of, i think i might have mentioned it last month is that the municipal

transportation agency or the mta has convened an accessible parking advisory committee to look at our current state and local laws and policy as round parking placards. and the goal is to look at possible legislation or policy development in order to increase the availability of accessible parking. because we have heard many complaints that you can't find a place to park with your placard. the blue zones are taken up. we started to meet in october and we plan to be finished with this project towards the end of march. i am the co-chair of that committee, along with the mta director ed reiskin and committee members include our -- a pretty broad representation across the disability community. including our council member roland wong. independent living center director jessie lornez. activist bob planthold and

represents from the department of motor vehicle, and so on. it's a daunting task and we talked briefly before the meeting started about good luck with that. [ laughter ] we're actually making some progress and so far, we have been reviewing what other city and states have done to try to get a sense of best-practices. we are just now starting to discuss possible changes to current law. but we plan to bring this project before the mdc soon, probably starting with the physical access committee. next i wanted to go through a few highlights of 2012. we have accomplished a lot. on the program side, at the mayor's office on disability, the work done by joanna fraguli and ken stein and heather kittle, we resolved over 100 ada complaints. these complaints could be

anything from denial of service to people who use service animals, who use our transportation system or public health services. they could be complaints about issues with accessible housing, or the homeless shelters. or they could be about requests used alternative mobile devices in city facilities. something that we heard about in public comment a little earlier. we processed over 70 curb ramp requests filed by people with mobility disabilities and we responded to over 1,000 and provided assistance to over 2,000 city employees and contractors. our program group provided training on the fair housing act to city contractors and the san francisco housing authority

and you just heard marty godard from the library telling us about the wonderful training yesterday for the branch library workers. we have also helped the san francisco international airport to develop training for their staff that assists people with disabilities. this is the group that is known as air serve and joanna actually will be in that video that will be shown to the staff at sfo. on the architectural side, the work that is done by jim whipple, who does plan check and field inspections, he did that work on 51 projects. and the majority of those projects were for accessible and affordable housing. this resulted in 435 new dwelling units at various locations such as the rehabilitation of the central ywca. which is a project that includes an on-site health clinic and community services. not to mention a pool down in paymenbasement we also worked

on the veteran's common project which we're very excited about at 150 otis for formerly homeless and disabled veterans and a quick plug, we put evacuation chairs in that project as well to make sure every floor was served with safe emergency egression. and last of all another key project is mary helen rogers a new facility that opened at 701 golden gate. some highlights from our ada transition plan work. this is the work that is done by john paul scott include the completion of several health care centers including sunset mental health, potrero hill and curry health centers. and maxine hall health clinic is currently under design and will be moving into construction very soon. we'll be starting work soon on barrier removal work at the san francisco generate hospital in the emergency room area, clinic and patient restrooms.

and bibeding 89d at san francisco general hospital got a makeover at the parking lot. most important we're moving forward with the el elevator modernization project. it's going to be providing redundance amongst the three elevators in case one has to be taken out of service for repairs. the lethalon of honor underwent a makeover. golden gate park repaved manufacture their multi-use roads. and we finished the accessible passenger loading work at the school district. that was the subject of lopez lawsuit. we're go to be doing some phase

2 work for the cultural center and the mission cultural center for latino arts. that concludes my director's report. thank you for your attention. >> thank you, carla. moving on to item no. 6, new time sheets and payment processs for ihss. we have a presentation by megan elliot. in-home supportive services or ihss. she is the program director of ihss, which is part of the department of aging and adult services or daas. for those of you who are unfamiliar with these programs, let me explain about them for just a moment. in-home supportive services or ihss is a program of medical, which is california's medicaid program, the federal medical insurance for those with fewer

financial resources. ihss provides the administrative support and training for personal care assistance for folks who have disabilities. by qualifying for medical, the state's medical insurance program, individuals with disabilities may also qualify for a personal care assistant through ihss. ihss pays people to work as these assistants. ihss workers or providers are frequently family members or friends of the recipient, which is the person receiving assistance. these are people who are already known and/or trusted and with whom the recipient feels comfortable having in their home. ihss may also train and provide an assistant for someone who can't find within on one on their own. i am personally an ihss provider and i help my friend in his home. i may prepare his meals, do his laundry, accompany him to the

doctor's office or run err ands for him, which may be difficult due to limited mobility. ihss sin stalling a new payroll system and will be changing the format of the time sheets that the providers use to record and report their hours. megan is here today to explain the changes and answer questions. san francisco will be adopting these new time sheets and procedures soon. megan. >> thank you, chip. good afternoon council members. and thank you so much for that introduction. that really is helpful to kind of explain a bit of about what is going on. in san francisco, we have over

20,000 -- actually over 2 1,000 ihss. in this room i would just like to see if you know -- if you are an ihss provider or recipient or know somebody who is? yes, most of us here today. this change is a big change and it's going to be impacting a lot of folks we're doing everything that we can to make people aware of it before it actually happens. as you may know, ihss is a statewide program. so all of the counties in california have to use the same database to pay providers. to issue time sheets and also

issue paychecks. in the current system, counties and san francisco we process the time sheets locally. and anyone that is at all aware of our system knows that this system currently has lots of problems with it. the database we use i think is over 30 years old. so it's long overdue for a system upgrade. and this system upgrade has been in the works for over 15 years. and it has been delayed over and over again. but we are actually after a lot of preparation and time coming towards actually going live with this system. and san francisco will be changing over to this new system on march 4th of this year. that is pretty soon.

and so what providers and consumers of ihss need to know, there will be a new ihss time sheet, with new rules for filling it out. very difficult rules. very complicated rules. providers now instead of mailing them to the local san francisco department, they will may time sheets to a centralized processing facility in chico, california. where a computer will scan the time sheets. and it will take longer for providers to be paid. now some things that are the

same, paychecks are still issued within ten working days from the time that the facility receives the time sheet. that is also true today when we have to have ten days to process a time sheet from the day we receive the time sheet. and paychecks will still be mailed as they are today from sacramento. so it takes two additional days for the paychecks to be mailed. however, the system -- the new system will take longer for providers to be paid, because when the system changes first of all, we have downtime, when the system changes over. so there is going to be three working days where no one will be able to enter anything into the system or change anything in the system at all. and then it will take longer for paychecks to be mailed to chico than it is to just mail

within san francisco. also the computer, when it can't read the images that are on the new time sheets, it will send an electronic image back here to san francisco to our office, and we will have to troubleshoot that and work it out. and as only three counties have gone live with this new system before us, they had a lot of growing pains with the system and we anticipate there will be some other things that will happen. we're concerned about the impact about the impacts this will have on the providers and consumers. we are working very closely with the ihss union and the

ihss public authority, senior and disability action and also the aging and disability resource center to do outreach and education to providers about the new process. and all of our outreach, and all of our materials are being translated into chinese, spanish, taglaw and vietnamese. i will share with you some of the outreach things that we're doing. i will put this up on the screen. >> can we have the document camera, please? so first of all, to find out more about how to fill out these new time sheets -- by the way,, i have given this information to staff.

and they will distribute it later. and it will also be posted on the daas website. we're doing workshops in the community. we have already done one we have one on february 14th at the bayview police commission from 5:30 to 7:00 at 201 williams. there is one on february 20th from 4:00 to 5:30 at the ihotel at 868 kearney. february 22, from 12:00 to 2:00 at the main library at 100 larkin in the auditorium. february 26th at 5:30 at union hall at 1338 mission street.

at those workshops we'll show people how to fill out the time sheets. if people want to practice filling out time sheets, there are practice locations. providers can go to the union hall at 1339 mission and ask for assistance with practicing. they can come to the ihss independent provider enrollment center at 77 otis. they can get receive practice experience there and public authority is also willing to assist with practice and they ask that you call first. and their phone number is

243-3120. we have developed a powerpoint time sheet of those that have been accepted and rejected from the chico processing facility and that is up on our website. the website is also on the screen there. www.sfhsa.org/137htm you will be able to get into our powerpoint presentation and also access practice time

sheets there right now the presentation is in english. it's almost finished in spanish, chinese and russian, but we haven't posted it yet. tagolog will also be up there. finally for people who have questions about the new time sheets, and the new process, you can call the ihss provider help desk at 557-6200. or the union at 1-866-554-3120. and daas also has a tty line at 355-6756.

>> we have a couple of questions. >> you mentioned some of the presentations would be interpreted. will you be providing asl interpreters? >> yes. >> and megan, you mentioned that time sheets that can't be read in chico will be sent back to san francisco. is there a procedure in place for dealing with these and will the provider be notified about the time sheet and there will be a delay with the pay? >> so currently, when there is an issue with the time sheet, there is some problem with it, what happens is our staff will look at. they analyze the problem and if they can pay it out, without going through too much trouble, we pay it out. but if we can't, we contact the provider and work through

whatever problem it is. and sometimes we have to issue replacement time sheet. and in the new system, that is largely what will happen. the can time sheet processing facility is much more sensitive than our staff are in terms of things that it doesn't like. for example, you can't write in any other kind of pen besides black ink. and you can't stick a sticky note onto the time sheet. and you can't fold the time sheet. various, little persnickety things that are bad design in my opinion. [ laughter ] a lot of those rejected time sheets will all come to us, but they come back to us quickly and electronically. we'll see an electronic image and then we'll be able to look at it and again, we do the same

thing. if we can pay it out, we will before we have to involve any provider. >> if you do have to get a replacement time sheet we're talking another couple of days then. >> exactly. >> and the mail? >> that is what we're trying to avoid, as much as possible. the delay -- additional delays in the payment is what we want to avoid. and that is what the workshops and the powerpoint presentation focus on. how to avoid additional time sheet delays? sorry, paycheck delays. any other questions? >> i guess not, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> is there anybody on the bridge line? >> no? okay. any public questions?