>> good morning everyone, welcome to the supervisor's budget and finance subcommittee, for march the six and, thank you for your your delay today. >> i would like to thank the sfgtv as well as the clerk of the board, mr. victor young, do we have any announcements? >> question, silence all phones and papers should be submitted to the clerk, items after today will appear on the march 14th,

supervisor's agenda unless otherwise stated. >> could you call number one. >> resolution to authorize, recreation and park department to retroactively accept the expend the cal recycle tire derived product, grant in the amount of $150,000 from the california department of resources recycling and recovering from the purpose of tdp materials for the various cities park sites for the period of june 2, 2011 through march 31, 2013. >> my name is tony maran and i am with the capitol division, the item is a recommendation to accept and spend the grant in the amount of $150,000. >> this is administered by the california resources, recovery, i am sorry, resources recycling and recovery department.

they promote the purpose of materials that are derived from recycled tires, from recycled tires. the park has been awarded $150,000 and we would like to use that money to offset costs that have occurred in the playground projects this is used in a cushioning layer of plate ground resurfacing as well as synthetic fields. and we have identified three playgrounds and five synthetic fields that could benefit from these materials. the grant will expire march 30th of this year and we are hoping to get an extension to spend any unallocated grant funds and i am available to answer any questions that you may have. >> supervisor mar? >> thanks. >> i wanted to ask you if the other alternative to recycled tire rubber are being considered also for some of the

synthetic fields, whether it is cork or coconut or shell, and i know that came out in the synthetic field task force and other reports that i have seen, are we looking at other sources for the sponginess of the fields. >> this grant was originally awarded to the ocean view, athletic field. and they are considering the alternative for that project. so right now, we are looking at, using these materials at sin synthetic fields that be already under warranty and require the use of crumb rubber. >> thank you very much, any other questions, colleagues? >> okay, seeing none, thank you very much. we don't have any budget analyst report for this item. so this point i would like to open it up for public comment, any member of the public that wish to comment on item number one, step forward? >> seeing none, public comment

is closed. >> callings? to make a motion to approve item one >> so moved approval. >> and we have a second and we can do that without opposition. >> mr. clerk, could you please call item number two? >> resolution authorizing the recreation and park department to retroactively accept and expend the grant in the amount of $776,500 from the california department of housing and community development for the recreation and park department's boeddeker park project for the period of november 28, 2012, through june of 30, 2016 >> miss moran? >> i am here to ask the committee to recommend that the board of supervisors retroactively accept and extend the parks grant. in the amount of $760,500. this is administered by the department of housing and community development. the program is designed to encourage the cities to develop affordable housing, by

providing grant funding for park-related projects. and grant funds will be used for boeddeker clubhouse and a portion will be in the housing for the promontory park project which is being developed in hunter's point. at this point, those projects are in construction. i am happy to answer the questions and the staff from the mayor's office of housing is on hand to answer any questions related to the promontory park project. >> colleagues, any questions here? >> okay. seeing none, thank you very much, miss moran. we also don't have a bla report, at this point we open to the public comment, any members of the public that wish to comment. i believe that i do have one card to show on item number 2?

>> you can use that one. >> yes. >> it is still on, excuse me. >> maybe they can't. >> sorry about that. >> good morning, supervisors. i live in the park, i mean i live in the part of the city that boeddeker park, where the money would be going for the park, which is boeddeer park and i would appreciate if you would send the money so that it could be retroactive for the park because i need a park to sit in and read a newspaper and drink coffee, because the neighborhood that i live at on turk between tailor and joins we have no parks, for me to sit in at least as an adult. i can sit in the alley. i think that somewhere in the alley, but i would have to go south of market or union square. so thank you. >> thank you, very much. >> any other public comment?

>> seeing none, public comment is closed. >> motion to approve item number two? >> so moved. >> we can do that without opposition. >> mr. clerk, could you call items three and four together? >> yes, item three, ordinance proesh ating $3,194,677 of fee revenue for the planning department in the physical year 2012, 13 to reduce the backlog of planning cases and building permits required review. item number four, ordinance and amending ordinance number 1 65-12, to reflect the ad dish of ten positions in the planning department to focus on reducing the backlog of planning case and building permits requiring review. >> thank you, very much. we have a number of speakers including mr. john ram, the head of the planning department. welcome and the floor is yours. >> thank you, supervisors. we are here to ask for a

supplemental appropriation request of this year's budget of $3.2 million in general to reflect the dramatic increase in permit application and volumes that we have seen this year that are well beyond the current appropriated budget. >> this chart gives you the case in the trends over the last few years and the last decade. you will see the low point in the o8 and 09 recession and it has been climbing steadily since then. in the department, 12-13 adopted budget, the over all volume was projected at 3 percent and we have met that volume, we met that case volume, that the original revenues have gone up substantially because of the size of projects that have come in. many very large projects have come in for approvals. i should point out that the construction that you see in the city right now when projects that were proposed a few years ago. it is a new round that are

coming. we are experiencing because of this a fairly substantial backlog in our caseload and because of the time that it takes to actually bring people on board, i am hoping to get this done quickly so we can move this forward. and so we are asking for about ten ftes in this fiscal year. that would carry over into about a two-year period where we would hire a temporary staff to specifically address the backlog. we are projecting about a 4.3 million dollars of additional fee revenue. again, beyond what was projected in this year's budget. what i said is primary factor are the new large projects that are coming in for approvals. we are proposing ten positions and it is primarily planners to deal with the backlog and the admin staff to reduce the load on planners and help to move that backlog forward as well as some technical and kind of

logistical help to help with the 400 projects that have not done any work done on them. we are looking at things besides the positions the office space configuration, to accommodate the new staff. we are looking at additional corridor for looking at digitizing our records and we are looking at, improving some of our sequa procedures and some of our preservation work in the goal of looking at the backlog as we move forward. a couple of smaller items related to the permit and project tracking system which is on-line to go live later this year. and the funding for the central corridor plan eir as well.

in terms of, the total we are requesting $3.2 million. i will say that we have been working with the budget analyst office on this supplemental and we do have a disagreement about a couple of positions. what we are trying to do is move all of these positions forward so that we can get a handle on this backlog in light of the fact that the longer we delay in getting staff on board, the more the backlog does move forward. we will be looking at next year's budget closely in the next couple of months to see if the friends continue in terms of new value increases. but at this point, we do think that it is important that all ten positions move forward and we would like to request your support of moving those forward at this time. thank you. >> thank you very much, colleagues any questions for director ram? >> okay. supervisor mar? >> actually, i would like to hear the budget and legislative analyst recommendations on why they feel 8 positions are

sufficient. but i did want to ask mr. ram, i know that the housing analysis tool the dashboard is being implemented and many community advocates are saying that there are other positions within planning that should have a high priority as well. and is this, i think that there is definitely the need to reduce the backlog and i see the need for this. but i am wondering if you could talk a little bit about how your prioritizing the need for data analysis, unit, and the implementation of the housing dashboard? >> thank you. >> yeah, that is a good question, we talked a lot about that. we initially pulled some of those position into his this request as well. but in discussions with the mayor's budget office and the budget analyst office. we thought it more appropriate to focus this particular request in the supplemental in the backlog in getting that addressed. what you will see in a couple of months is our proposed budget for next year, which is does have additional positions for public out reach for the

data analysis group to do those monitoring groups and that sort of thing. so we are proposing that in next year's budget. but there was a feeling among all parties that this proposed supplemental should only address the backlog. >> and will you be meeting with the advocates that brought the housing dashboard, the community advocates that can have some input into to ensure that there are strong staffing for the implementation for the dashboard? what happens what mr. demartini as well? >> sure. >> absolutely. >> thank you, any other questions for director ram? >> okay, seeing none, do you have something separate that you want to talk about? >> okay, at this point we will go to the budget and analyst report. mr. rose? >> mr. chairman and members of the committee. first of all, let me comment that the budget analyst office is totally supportive of reducing the backlog in order to expedite the permit process in the system. we understand that problem. and we are totally supportive

of that, as stated in table, or shown in table 7, on page 11 of our report, we are recommending approval of 8 of the ten, posted tenure positions and we recommend disapproval of two of the ten positions. with respect to the one planner position... so we can recommending eight of the ten. 80 percent. the one planner position that we are recommending approval of is very simple. there are 3.28 vacant positions. we believe that any department, not just the planning department, but any department should first fill their vacant positions before they go to the board of supervisors and ask for new positions. if after that is done, and the department can still justify additional positions, of course, we would look at that if that is referred to us by the board of supervisors. and recommend approval if it is justified. but prior to not filling 3.28

vacant positions, and our professional judge. makes no sense and that is why we are recommending the approval of the one planner position. with respect to the clerk position, the director just stated that he was only asking right now for positions relative pertaining to the backlog, well, in fact, the clerk position that we are recommending disapproval as absolutely nothing to do with the backlog that is why we are recommending disapproval of it. so our recommendations supervisors are on page 13 of our report. and we recommend that you amend the annual salary ordinance for 12-13 that all limited tenure positions are limited tenure positions whatever number you approve for no more than 2.25 years. secondly, we recommend that you amend the annual salary ordinance and consistent with what i just stated by deleting one 1401 clerk in the city-wide

planning division and one 5291 in the current planning division and we recommend that you amend the supplemental ordinance and that would be a saving of $420,453 and our recommendation is to reduce it by $1 million, and we recommend that you approve this legislation as amended. >> thank you very much. any questions for mr. rose, colleagues? >> okay. >> seeing none, we appreciate mr. ram, giving the opportunity to come back up. >> thank you. >> i appreciate the budget analyst discussion of this. on paper is he correct, it looks as if the clerk position is working in the what we call the city-wide division and is not working on the backlog. in reality what is happening is the city wide division is down to a half of an fte in their clerk support and admin support and that division is