>> hi, good morning, i'm lidia, analyst in the operation's division, i am going to take you deeper into these results. you see the psas and that is how reorganize the units. the next slide, second from the left shows you that she straddled the districts it was to make them equal for each of the managers and the park service area. and then, of course, ggp is the regional park on its own, if you look at this, the scores are pretty much consist at or above the threshold and we are pleased to see that. our goal in that column to the extreme right, the parks scoring less than 80 percent is to minimize those as much as possible and we are pleased to see what happened and the psa five service area. where that scores went up 2.67

percent and the manager had no low scoring parks below 80 percent and so we intend to use that operating model as a model for others and what we notice with this particular manager and very timely and attentative response to the deficiencies that were pointed out in the park evaluations. then, again, this is digging deeper, so that was kind of looking at over all scores and we rate 14 features in each park. those are the list on the left tells you what we are looking at and again, a good news story over all, with rates, you know, at that 85 percent mark or above, we have one, excuse me, inconsistentcy in the little of the screen is the open space, that is the non-landscape such as the interior, it is only rated on one quality, which is basically whether or not trash is present, that can fluctuate wildly and since it is not

actively man taind nothing else is rated that effects the volatile nature of that score. the other three things that i wanted to point out since 05-06 and we have had that trend for the fields and rest rooms and oern mental gardens and the rest rooms are important for the users and we needed to bring it up to the field as most people that are residents know high demand and so that really reflects that kind of attention to those things that we want to provide the park users. one other thing, we have focused on throughout this rating process especially when they were lower are cleanliness ratings and basically in the report you will see an oscillating trend. this is also a quality in a park that when it is rated really again reflects the volatile nature. on a monday after a long

weekend and the custodian has not been there and you will get a poor rating and come at a different time in the week and this really is a snapshot and again, the peaks are the winter when there is less usage in the parks. >> and then, to focus on some of the things that we actually already started doing in 11-12, in terms of continuous improvement collaborating with the controllers office, there has been a variety of process improvements that we have undertaken. the first three are really guidance to evaluate ors and the next two are monitoring quality assurance and the last is looking at next steps and we have customized the forms and if you get a chance to look at the form it is a long form so we can shorten it to the features that evaluates a park and made it easier for them. we suggested target times and we had a lot of fluctuation that they were spending at a particular property and we averaged them out and went out

and took a look ourselves. that is from a new staff member that has taken on the new process to a new level. you know that it is in a park but there may be something special about something in a park that the evaluator should know. and 4 and 5 is monitoring the submitted evaluations and did they put in all of the answers and did they rate something that is not in the park, why did you do that? what happened. really a lot of quality assurance follow up and dual evaluations, we are trying to keep the people more honest and a lot of times it is someone that we have on the watch list that i am not sure that is quality, let's send them out with a good evaluator and make sure that they are looking at things. no matter how subjective you try to make it, we are all human, when we go together it works well. this is something that we did with the employees going out with the controllers office and

that is useful in terms of making sure that people are on the same page and observing the same kinds of things. regular reporting action plans and we had always acted on the results of park evaluations but we did not document that process. so there is a new process to document the response to a park evaluation. and then, here we have specific recommendations that came from the report that you have before you. and to just, you know, we have actually already acted on quite a few of them, and so assessing the park data to improve the maintenance that is talking about the action plans that we are documenting, we get an evaluation and there is a great lag between the data entry and the results getting back to the manager. we scan the original and give it back to the manager hopefully in a three day period and so they know what was seen in the park and they don't get the information with a lag time. consistency, for the larger parks, rating regional parks is not easy and in the subsequent

slide i will explain that more, but again it is about standardizing the area that people are looking at. the retraining of evaluators has been discussed and do it once a year with the controllers office and also actually this year, 2013 undertaking a significant revision of the standards, looking at best practices and what questions have perhaps consistently been misunderstood and changing wording and so we will have a special retraining later this year when we have the standards and building on what we have already. and excused absences you may recall in the prop c language we need to post-schedules for main nens and then observe whether or not the staff are there maintaining as per the schedule and record that and present that rating. so we changed that methodology a little bit more and a little bit this year to make it more adequate and i will talk about that in a subsequent slide. we have a watch list for those

performing parks and we are really following up each quarter with those particular parks to make sure that we can get those scores up. so that main nens schedule this way, we had for all of the previous years posted what you can see there is labeled as the base compliance rate and you went to a park and you saw the staff member there as schedule or not. what this did not take into account is excused absences. they may have had to be absent for a staff meeting or for a required safety training. they may have taken a vacation day and may have been out sick. any legitimate excused absences are now accounted for and it represents a more accurate picture of whether or not the staff are where they should be at the time schedule. we will be posting it in this manner from now on. here is the slide that basically describes what we are doing with the regional parks. this is mcclarin park and used

to be divided into two sections. huge land that is difficult to look at in a reasonable manner, so the goal was it divide this up into sections between one and a half to two hours. and so that people are looking at the same about of land as much as possible. we were trying to time things for evaluators so it was much more palatable. and as a example i had golden gate park section six which was the area down near ocean beach and i ended up doing it three hours a day five days a in a row, a little bit unreasonable and that is how we functioned for a year. so we are splitting up the lake into smaller sections and further smaller sections to make it consist he want and to get the mark evaluations that have results that are more consistent and responsive and report on the actual condition in the parks. that concludes my part of the presentation. we thank you very much and we can take any questions that you

would like. >> thank you, very much. i see supervisor tang has a question. >> yes, i have a question here, regarding psa four, which includes the outer district, for example, we have one of the highest member of parks lower than 80 percent also the lowest number of parks higher than 80 percent. i wondered if you could see how when you see this data how you address the main nens and whether you beef it up for certain parks and so you could talk through that a little bit. >> district four also had a long term absence of a manager and so that was one of the challenge theres and so now district four has a new manager. we actually received a lot of complaints that you are familiar with what is going on at lower great highways i think that you have seen recently a lot of effort in terms of maintaining that and looking at and i know that there was potential legislation about whether or not people could park there and i don't know the status of that but i don't know

if that was something that was discussed. the great challenge, specifically for district four was a personnel issue that has been rectified. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> supervisor campos? >> thank you, very much. you know, i was happy to be a co-sponsor of this item and i want to thank supervisor now assess or chu for bringing this forward and it is great to be part of the first meeting that tang participates and i just wanted to briefly go over some of the numbers for district nine and i know that phil ginsberg told me that district nine was going to be his priority and so i appreciate that. >> oh, really? >> he told me the same thing. >> i think that he tells that to every supervisor. >> you are caught. >> but, if you look at the

presentation that is attached to the agenda, i am concerned about this district nine in particular, i think that we have seen a lot of improvement and a lot of good things happening. if you look at page 12, none of the d9 parks are among the top ten performing or scoring parks in the city. if you look at page 13, 2 of the district nine parks are among the ten lowest performers. you know, rolf and garfield. and if you look at page 18, district nine actually has the lowest cleanliness in terms of any district in this city. and you have a number of decreases in terms of scoring with some pretty, you know, ski parks, jose coronodo 20 to 18.8

which was a 30 percent reduction. 84.3 to 91.1, 5.1 reduction. and nenos from 93 to 90. so you can see that there is this trend and i know that you talked about having a list of parks that you are looking at. so you know, is that a document that we can so and what are you doing when you have something like this? but there is a trend where you know there are lower scores in a district like district nine? >> right. >> what is your strategy? >> absolutely we can get you that list of the parks on the watch list and that is the value of this report is that it draws our attention to what you draw our attention to and that is the further follow ups and the information goes to the supervisor and the directors are extremely interested in this kind of a trend as well. these parks will go on the watch list with extra special attention both in terms of the

park evaluation process but more importantly in terms of the maintenance and the frequency of the maintenance and also refers to the action plans that we are talking about, why we are documenting. what we need to give to you is the action plans to document how we are responding to these kinds of scores. >> i think that this is great information and it allows us to have this conversation. i think that having more detail going forward on some of the strategies for bringing the scores up for some of these parks is really changing the trend would be very useful. >> mr. general manager. >> sure, supervisor. again, we are not particularly defensive about the data. >> no >> it is sort of helpful for us and we do guide it. >> i think that district nine, you know, in every district is a little different and the parks are a little different and each park has a unique set of challenges and one of the

more encouraging stats are over all cleanliness and district nine remains as one of highest rated districts and i think that the over all scores were about 11, 12 or 88 percent, and while it was a two percent drop off from 10-11 it is up from where we started in 56 and 67. so i think that we are keeping an eye on it but one of the things that we need to understand is that these scores are snapshots in time as i think that they explained. and i would be concerned if there were a continuing downward trend. i think that 9 seems to be sort of kind of right there for the most part. garfield has its particular set of challenges as i think that you know and off a little bit too and sometimes, higher performing parks have more

robust friends groups or volunteer groups. and we do try, you know, we can't, we do encourage volunteers and we very closely with the parks alliance and the other organizations. our approach when we do get requests for corporate volunteers, we do try to assign them in parks where they don't already have an institutional base of volunteers to get the extra help and we will continue to do that. >> so, if i may add, and i appreciate that, thank you. and you guys are always very responsive, that is one thing that i would say. that any time that we have a concern, you guys are there. >> if you do look at the issue of cleanliness in rest rooms. d9 has the best score if you look at page 18. i guess that the concern that i have is that i think that at some point d9 was the highest performing district in the city over the last few years we have seen a progressive decline in

those scores and my fear is that we it is just assumed that district nine is okay when in reality, i think that the trend is going you know, in the opposite direction that we want to see it in. i want to make sure that we don't, you know, think about it in that way. because, the longer we wait for something else that i know that you know, the longer you wait to make some of these repairs, the more expensive that it becomes down the road. >> yes. >> thank you. >> sure. >> okay, and i just like to close out. expressing my appreciation for the change in park rating score for the district ten neighborhood and also leave a statement of encouragement to continue moving that trend, moving the needle up. when i look at ten, nine, ten and eleven. these three districts have a

lot of similarities not just in ethnic make-up and the economic make-up of the neighborhood, but, in park scores there are many things that we have in common, and rest rooms, cleanliness and supervisor campos and i are talking about a difference of 0.5, 0.5 percent. and so, it is so i guess that my point is that as you continue to focus on nine, you can see and continue to share love, not against anything against. >> we are going to be focusing on districts nine and ten and eleven. >> and four. >> and in case anybody else is listening, we are going to definitely focus on 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 11. >> you left 8 out. >> and 8. >> not the king of the parks themselves. >> but in all seriousness, particularly as we know the three of us rally around

mcclarin park and the second largest park and that is important it touches a lot of people. so it is a huge priority. >> and obviously, we would certainly encourage the board to, you know, think as the economy has improved in recent years to think about reinvesting a little bit more in parks. you know, i think... >> you mean, in terms of the budget? >> yeah, in terms of gardeners and staff, i mean that we are really short and so we tend to move sort of pieces around the chess board and we have gotten better at deploying staff rather than having a mixture of fixed post assignments that gardeners cover and we are doing more group projects but as our park superintendent likes to say and remind me that our staff performs a small miracle every day and we have an old park system and a park system that is loved to death. and we have as we should,

extraordinary high standards for how we want our parks to be and we need to make the commitment to invest in the park system that we want. >> all right. thank you very much. >> mr. director. >> well, supervisor taning? >> since you are here, one more question for you, i know that you mentioned the apprenticeship program and it has done a lot and a lot of the residents have noticed a positive difference and just curious to know if the future any plans to expand that program or how to utilize them. >> so the program really has been successful and the program is an example of sort of groups, where you have a particular problem or a challenge where we are able to take, you know, 12 or 14 really hard working people and have them attack a particular

problem and we do deploy the apprentices they go all around the city depending upon the need. it is a fabulous program and i don't want us to forget about the program of the supervisors and our assigned gardeners who work with them to help deliver the results. it is a program that we want to continue to grow and the best thing about the apprenticeship program which has contributed to positive scores over all. we are creating a workforce pipeline where we know when an apprentice graduates and we are working with the department of resources to insure that a person that complaints the program will always have a job as a 34-17 upon that completion. where the apprentices are getting the academic training and the on the ground training. it makes a difference for someone who has proven their success and commitment and have

a test and a list where you are hiring someone that you don't know their work history as well. so, in each of the last three budget years, we have added apprentices and so we will now have a total of an increase of two more apprentices in this year's budget. >> so it would be 27, which is pretty good and don't forget that it is a basically a 2 to 3 year program and when it is done, then they move on to fill a vacantcy as a gardener and then we are able to backfill the spot. so, we would welcome any additional apprentices that you feel are appreciate to keep, 4, 10, and 9 clean. >> supervisor campos. >> i have a question and i appreciate the program, and i think that is a very important part of this. i just had a question about mcclarin park and supervisor cohen noted the importance of

that as a regional park and it involves three different districts. i was looking at the score on page 38, and there was a pretty significant change in terms of the scores in the first quarter as opposed to second quarter and then quarter and fourth quarter and i was wondering is that because of additional work was done. or i was trying to understand that. >> you know, lidia you might know more but that is one of those things supervisor where you see on any given day that it is a snapshot in a moment in time. >> yes. >> and so i am, you know there is subjectivity with the evaluator and who knows what they saw that day and what was happening out there. but i think that if you look at the other 2, 4, 5, scores from that year, including two from the controller in mcclarin park because they covered different areas. you know, it is a slightly better story.

you know that mcclarin park is really, i think, it is certainly been under appreciated and certainly below the radar but i would argue no more. and i think in part that is because of some really incredible stewardship and leadership from the neighboring communities from around that park and several of you know because it is three districts. and we are very proud that that 2012 parks bond includes over a total of about 12 million dollars of investment in mcclarin park or we just recently completed the philosopher's trail which supervisor cohen and campos you were there. which is amazing. the 2008 bond, opportunity program has saved mcclarin park applied for a grant to reno vait the playground which is getting done, we are in

conversations right now with an organization about renovating the ball field down at sutter. we have renovated and cleaned mcnab lake. we have uspa out there and it has done a great job of stewarding the tennis court area by (inaudible) so there is a lot of good stuff happening there. >> thank you. >> thank you, very much. >> are there any members of the public that would like to speak on this item? >> mr. douglas you have residency for 61 years approaching. >> good morning, supervisors, my name is shat, and i will attend when i turn 100 too. >> i was wondering in this maintenance report there is going to be any discussion about the ongoing program to cut down dangerous trees throughout the city and there

was a recent call article saying that there was going to be an active cutting of the trees, which you know, will prevent people getting hit like at sigmond stern grove and i wonder if it discusses the privatization of the public facilities and recreations of parks departments and i am a little disappointed and i did not see the codray of demonstraters that i have seen in the past whether or not park and rec has a hearing. there is usually some elderly women demonstrating in regards to the accessive private use of public facilities. also, i am going to thank this committee for having this hearing. as usually, i feel that in the recent past, too many committees have canceled meetings, and my opinion short changing the public because in

effect we are paying for not getting any service. and i was even impressed this morning and it seems like this committee seems rejuvenated there was a different feel and atmosphere to the way that the discussion was going and i think that is a big improvement because in my opinion, it has been pretty laxadasical under ferel and chu. >> thank you for your opinions. any other members of the public? >> no, seeing none, public comment is closed. >> all right. i would love to entertain a motion. whether we can file this? >> i don't know, does the park council want to speak? i asked if there was more public comment?

>> good morning, supervisors, maradeth i was running late. thank you for having this hearing, the parks alliance is really interested in making sure that the parks throughout our parks system are clean and safe and well maintained. and we are pleased to see that parks scores are sort of maintaining. we want to continue to work with each of you to improve the differences in scores and make sure that every neighborhood can enjoy the same level of cleanliness and activation and injoyment and also want to say at a certain point as density increases and we put more and more pressure on the system we need to think about the way that we fund main nens so that we are not afraid of adding new parks and creating custom and enjoyable playoffs and parks for fear that we will not be able to maintain them. i look forward to working with you on the budget issues related to park maintenance and the bonds will get us a long way with the parks that are

falling behind but it will not take the step to maintain the facilities in the way that the department with manage. and supervisor tang i just wanted to say welcome and we look forward to working with you more. thank you for allowing me to speak. >> are there any other members of the public that would like to speak on item one? >> seeing none, public comment is closed. if there is know more public comment, may i have a motion to continue or file? >> should we file it? >> we would like to file. so sounds like supervisor tang has made a motion to file this item. is there a second. >> second. >> fantastic, thank you very much. item has been filed. madam clerk, are there any other matters for us to deal with? >> there are no other items. >> thank you very much. this meeting is adjourned. thank you everyone.

>> okay, good afternoon and welcome to our first city and school district meeting for the year. i am jane kim and