and then results were added together to yield a summary rating that ranged from 3-12. and the program identified a rating of 9 as the threshold for actually abating the tree -- meaning removing the tree. so in golden gate park, and we did this citywide, in golden gate park. there were 336 trees overall with a ranking of 9 or above and among those 126 were monterey pines and 78 were monterey cyprus and the rest blue gums. from there, hort science gave us the recommendation to remove a number of the trees. it's worth noting that monterey pines were the largest group and two reasons for this. first monterey pines in golden gate park are what hort science refers to as largely overmature in development, which means that they are really old. which renders the tree for

susceptible to inspects, the red beetle, et cetera. overall hort science found our urban forest to be relatively healthy an only recommending a very small number of trees to be removed. because nobody likes to see one of our big, beautiful, majestic trees removed, but after expensive study these were deem to be at-risk of failure. so i thought some context would be helpful. >> there was no public comment and with that we'll entertain a motion. >> so moved. >> moved and seconded. all those in favor? >> a. >> so moved. >> we are now on item 10, park maintenance standards report.

>> good morning commissioners, general manager ginsburg. my name is steve rockwell a senior administrative analyst in operations and i have the privilege of coordinating the department's park evaluation program. i believe you will be really pleased with this year's controller's report. we have had some up-and-downs in some of the park scores, but largely, we have been able to remedy some of the lowest-scoring historically low-scoring parks and areas in the city. and at the same time, maintain the bulk of our parks well above that threshold mark that has been set for high maintenance. >> i'm going to introduce sarah swanbeck from the controller's office. >> good morning commissioners >> good morning. >> i thought i would just give you kind of a quick overview of some of the high-level finding

from our report and i will turn it back over to steve to give you more details and talk a little bit about what department is doing and is planning to do to respond to some of our recommendations. >> so overall scores this year were incredibly consistent over last year. they did go up from 88.3% on average last year to 88.4% this year. so that is pretty consistent and generally pretty high-scoring. in terms of look at longer term, going back to the beginning of the park's program, you can see that the overall trend park scores have improved and then this also just breaks down for you -- you can see kind of orderly how the park scores vary. some of that is just variances by season and to be expected. again, this can just show you the average over last year is very consistent. this chart here shows you some the distribution of the scores

across the city. so the red there is parks below 80%. the yellow is parks between -- i believe it's 80 and 90%. and then the green there is parks scoring above 90%. and so overall the distribution has been fairly consistent and actually improved a little bit over last year. you can see fewer parks scoring in that red-zone there. and then overtime you can see there is a general improvement in the distribution of scores. this map here just shows how parks in various districts across the city are scoring relative to one another and overall, all districts are scoring above 00%, which 80%, which is good and again, fairly consistently the southeastern part of the city, districts 10 and 11, although i will say

district 11 went up 3.3 percentage points this year. and then this again just shows you kind of the breakdown across districts. and i think what is interesting about this chart is actually you can see from fy'06 until now, the disparities between districts is narrowing and overall it's showing more consistency which is a very good thing. >> excuse me. as you know, we manage our maintenance activities through a different level of organization, through park service areas and through the golden gate park area itself. this slideshows how the breakdown came through those organizational units. the last column indicates the low number of parks now that

are getting those low scores. and that is quite an achievement for us. on the change column, a little bit to the left, you will see that the margin of scores that changed from last year is somewhat small. we think most of the scores are insignificant statistically and the big point that we can see from the chart is almost all of the psas are able to approach or are well-above the 85% threshold we aim for. what we're trying to do for the public, of course, is to present outcomes that they can appreciate. you know, to provide parks that have great facilities, and so when we do our park evaluations we break them out into 14 features. these are the various aspects of the park the benchs, the children's play areas, hard scapes, lawns, that really denote the various types of

maintenance and types of experiences that the users have. again they have been very stable. the changes since the last year are fairly small. and over the time you can see that the department is has really different focus to the area s where there is high use, the gardens, restrooms, athletic fields have improved. there are low use areas, wider in acreage and harder to maintain, but also, it reflects the park evaluation process itself. and something that we're working on. the open space is only graded on a single score. and as a result, it can vary in its score greatly from

evaluator to evaluator and from time to time this. kind of oscillation is part of what happens in a park evaluation. partly it's due to the season in which an evaluator goes out. when we have more people in the parks it's harder to keep up with them and when an evaluator goes out, they could arrive before maintenance has occurred and those things will change the nature of the score. we consider this always a snapshot evaluation. so these rankings are ways to average together the snapshots and give us a better image of the park. as we go through this, one the things that we have discovered that because we don't rely on professional evaluators, because we send out actually members of our team and only once a quarter to visit parks that most times that they have not visited before. there is a great deal of

training that needs to go on with the evaluators and we spend time customizing the forms and limiting the discretion that people had, to try to direct them to the resources that they needed to evaluate and help them understand the things that weren't available at the park or weren't our property. so shouldn't be part of the evaluation process. so with this, we have done a lot of changes to the materials we give out to evaluators and we have more and moring more closely that they do rate the items pertinent to the park and done quality control, sending out two people at once to evaluate the park, so we can see how they are doing.

finding out that the acts that staff is taking in response and work orders and changes that they make to the routine and assignment of the parks. and crew projects that they might develop. so these are the controller's news recommendations, they have asked us to continue assessing how we use the park scores, to evaluate the consistency of our parks scoring methods for the larger parks like golden gate park. so continue to retrain our evaluators to account for excused absences in our measurements of when staff are at parks and to strategically plan for improvements for those districts that are lagging behind. we have done that already this year and taken some initiative to jump on these things. we're in close collaboration with the controller's office.

this is an example:we have displayed on the website for a number of years the number of times or the percentage of times that we can find park employees at a park, according to the posted schedule. we thought that number was lower than we wanted and adjustments naturally employees go on leave and have vacations and hillsboroughs and sick-leave and we never accounted for that amount. so we adjusted those numbers and that is in the right-hand column, it brought the numbers back into the column. it's hard for an evaluator to

apply standards equally across a large area that may take 3-9 hours to walk. and it's difficult for the park staff to use the results, because they don't really know where the issues are located. this quarter we have broke up golden gate park. it was originally 6 evaluations that will be now 20. that concludes our presentation and if you have questions, we would be happy to take them. >> thank you very much. very good presentation. >> do we have any public comment on this item? being none, public comment is closed and commissioners as a reminder that was discussion only. now we're on item no. 11

recreation and park budget fiscal year 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. >> good morning commissioners. >> good morning. >> katie petrucione and i'm pleased to be here this morning to ask for your approval of our budget for fiscal year 13-14 and 14-15. this is a reminder of the challenges that we faced entering this budget process. all told we are solving for a $3.4 million base budget reduction in fiscal year 13-14. and a $6.6 million reduction in fiscal year 14-15. to give you a little more detail on both the revenue corrections and the non-salary cost increases that we're absorbing in addition, to the base budget target that we received from the mayor's

budget office, as i outlined in january, we have to adjust our general fund revenue by approximately $560,000 over each of the next two fiscal years. this is a slight reduction from my initial estimate in january of $660,000. half of this reduction in the general fund is related to a change in the payment that the department evidence is from the san francisco zoological society. $120,000 results from changes to our facility rentals including balboa and kezar stadiums, and $180,000. we have a planned project to

renovate the green as the harding next winter, as well as reflecting actual levels and mix of play at harden currently and also some changes to the greens fees and concessions budget at both sharp and lincoln to reflect the actual levels of play that we're seeing at those courses. northwestern salary cost increases that we must absorb crime scene in three primary areas. in the next two fiscal years we anticipate a $110,000 increase to the lease for the equipment that our gardening staff uses to maintain harding golf course. in 13-14, we have budgeted increases of $220,000 related to vehicle repair and increases in the cost of gasoline. additionally we anticipate that the city' garbage rate process is going to increase higher

rates for garbage service over the next two years and we're going to see increased cost for software licensing over the next two years as well. in '14-15 we expect our work orders to increase in the amount of $880,000 and i want to know the reason why the increase in '14-15 is significantly larger than the increase for $13-14 is that '14-15 is actually the first year of a new two-year budget cycle. so that the increases we're seeing are incremental as departments adjust their budgets according to factors that they are seeing in the current year. the work orders for '14-15 are brand-new and we're seeing increased costs for vehicles and gasoline and also for water and sewer costs a reminder of the of the

principles that staff use, as we are making our tradeoff decisions in balancing the budget. so to get to the meat of the matter, as i said, we faced a $3.4 million base budget reduction for next fiscal year, and a $6.6 million reduction for the year after. we have been able to generate $4.8 million and $4.6 million in revenue and savings in each of the next fiscal years and this has actually left the department with $1.4 million available in each of the next two years to restore some prior cuts to our budget. of this $4.8 million, we are able to generate $4.5 million from revenue growth. so the vast majority of our solution to the budget over the next two fiscal years comes from revenue

. so this is an overview of our various revenue sources, including our earned revenue, golf, the marina and the open space fund. you will note that this slideshows the budget, the approved budget for fiscal year 12-13. the base budget, which was the budget for '13-14 that we created last year during the two-year budget process and the proposed budgets for '13-14 and '14-15. you will note on this slide we're seeing growth in our parking garages, program fees, permits and facility rentals, a slight increase to the stadium, and then also some growth in the open space fund. you can also see on this slide the changes that we're making to the golf fund, the reductions in revenue. golf does rebound somewhat in '14-15 as the greens renovation project at harding completes.

and revenue comes back somewhat as a result of that. i do have to note that the open space budget projections slide are very early projections for '14-15. we'll get better numbers from them in april and may. so to get to the details of the revenue that we're using to solve our budget. so parking garages are budgeted to generate approximately $1.6 million in additional revenue in '13-14, as well as in '14-15. and that is the single largest slices of your revenue solution. we think between recreation programming, increasing recreation programming and aquatics programming we'll generate $200,000 in additional

revenue the next two years and $300,000 from concessions and attractions and the biggest slice comes from the coit tower elevator and primarily as a result that tourist traffic in the city is continuing to increase as the economy has been improving. $300,000 in increased revenue from additional use of our fields and facilities. $350,000 in increased permits for special events and then $300,000 in additional revenue from the newly negotiated lease for the outside lands festival. stadium rentals is outside of the revenue that we received from the 49ers. it's for rentals of the parking lot, and for the stadium. we are budgeting $500,000 in each of the next two fiscal

years in playoff revenue that we have received from the san francisco 49ers this year from the 2012 playoff game. $240,000 in '13-14 in revenue that we received from the pga tour to back fill the revenue we lose when we close harding park for the schwab cup tournament, which is this coming november. $400,000 in additional revenue from the open space fund. and then as i mentioned the last time i was here, $200,000 in additional revenue from continued philanthropic support to the department. we have been very successful, our partnerships division has been very successful in the last several years in getting out there and finding gifts and grants to support our operations and that ranges from funding for additional hours at joe lee recreation center for funding to a gardener at the

polo feels in golden gate park. we also have a comparatively small amount of expenditures saving that we're budgeting for the next two years. there was a retirement at the zoo. we are down to a very small number of recreation and park department staff who are left working at the zoo. so we were able to eliminate that position from the budget and save $150,000. as phil mentioned at the beginning of the meeting we have been doing some really good work on our workers' compensation through transitional temporary work assignments, through some additional focus on workplace safety. and we are seeing savings in our workers' compensation expenditures. so we're reflecting some of that in the coming fiscal year. as i said we have enough

revenue to cover our base budget reduction and cover our non-salary cost increases and cover our revenue corrections and this is going to allow us to begin to restore some of the cuts that the department has made to the budget over the last five or seven years or so. about $1.4 million in each of the next two fys iscal year fccks we have had conversation s where that would be best fund. we'll be able to fund two additional gardener apprentices, as well as two environmental service workerss for gtk park.

we have supplemented the budge for our structure maintenance yard and added materials and supplies funing for harding park golf course. we have added transportation funding for recreation programs and this is funding to allow staff to safely transport kids from recreation programs across the city to different activities. and then finally, we have funded an accounting position for my woefully understaffed revenue unit and have added a recruitment and examines position that will allow you to back fill our positions in the department a little more quickly than we have been able to do. in a nutshell that is our budget proposal for the next two fiscal year and my budget

is actually due to the mayor's office today by close of business. we will submit to the mayor's office and then spend the next couple of months talking to them about a variety of issues, among them candlestick park. you will note that the base budget we are submitting does not assume the revenue from the stadium or the elimination of any expense and one of the things that we need to work through with the player's office is how we reflect those changes for fiscal year '14-15. that concludes my presentation and i'm happy to answer questions. >> thank you very much from a woefully underfunded department. [ laughter ] we'll open it up to questions or public comment. >> do we have public comment on this item? if you would like to make public comment, could you please come forward.

thank you. >> can i give you -- -- do you need one for every commissioner, even though they are not here? i think i have enough. thank you. hello commissioners. maybe president buell this will be the one remark that is not entirely a cheerleading remark, but actually i hope it lens lends some support to the department. >> we welcome your comments. >> thank you. a group of us recently wrote a letter to mayor lee asking if there was a plan for the sufficient funding for the department? and i want to read the letter into the record. so

i will just read the letter. dear mayor lee: in it's 2011 report, seeking green, spur states that the san francisco rec and park department needs approximately $163 million. to fully fun its operation, maintenance and recreation programming. current department funding is proposed at around $142 million for 2013-14. a shortfall of about $21 million for the year. now as a department, that is in charge of 12% of the city property, it is afforded less than 2% of the city budget despite being heavily utilized by the public. other than the muni, the recreation and park department is dependent upon by the largest number of residents and we believe it deserves full funding. so here is our question to the mayor. is this a plan to sufficiently fund the recreation and park department for operations, maintenance and programming

without further fees, privatization and commercialization? and we look forward to the mayor's response. and in this context of the budget, we and many, many others who were involved in this discussion, but not at the meeting when we decided to send this, urge that the department be more sufficiently funded without basically prioritizing or commercializing every open and available space. and that is the essence of the concern and given that we have a very large budget in the city of san francisco, it's over $7 billion and given that i think recently the police department got an extra $80 million and yet, frankly, more parks, more money for our recreation in our parks means probably less need for additional police enforcement and i would urge the commission in its discussions with the mayor's

office definitely push for sufficient funding. there is apparently only a $20-$21 million. >> i would put that testimony in the category of "support." and we would agree with you. thank you very much. >> thank you. [ reading speakers' names ]. >> hello commissioners. i am here -- linda lighthowser and the mother and stepmother of children of native san franciscans who grew up in the city and used the parks and now the grandmother of 13 grandchildren, but not one of them lives in san francisco and this is a big part due to the economic conditions of our city, which drive our families out of town. so i am here to talk about how we have to prioritize our city parks. i echo what dennis has