>> thank you. any other members of the public who would like to comment, and seeing none come forward, i will close public comment. thank you, everyone, for your comments from the public and thank you for the presentation from the public utility commission and our lafco staff. i think it's important to really emphasize, you know, long-term, we're looking at creating our own renewable energy generation system and currently we have to operate in the current system which includes people who are maybe on the fossil fuel side and the renewable side like shell is and that's the reality we face right now, something similar that i'm looking at this last year, there are municipal quality around the city, we want to make sure we're not dealing with some of the banks with a bad track record with

foreclosures, we're operating in the same system that doesn't really, you know, offer a lot of choices. well, ultimately, we're creating our own choice that is going to be based on fully renewable power and to get there, we have to get through the current system, so we are experiencing what i believe are real growing pains, but i know we can get there if we work closely together. i want to thank you for your efforts. okay. let go on to our next item, please. >> item number 4, status update on the study on how jurisdictions fill vacancies to elected offices between election cycles. >> jason fried, lafco staff, at the last meeting, you instructed to start this study of figuring out how when elected positions become vacant mid cycle how we fill those. we have since then brought on

an intern research intern from usf, spencer who's sitting there with us today, we're at the stage right now, the goal just to give you a very quick brief overview of what we're looking at doing is we're looking at various different types of systems because there's no place like san francisco, which is a city and county in california and that has an independently elected mayor, what we're doing is breaking this study down to multiple categories to try to find similar things with san francisco, so we're looking at other locations that have large populations that are about the city and county, other places in the country, there are places like arlington, virginia, colorado, we're looking how they replace their positions in the county there. we're also going to be looking at the top 10 cities across the

nation to see -- that have independently elected mayors to see how they replace position ins the top 10 cities, we're going to look in california, the law dictates how most places do the replacements unless you're a chartered city like san francisco, you can have a different set of rules so we're going to look at all of those locations as well, and determine what is everyone else's practices and present that in a report. my hope is we'll have a draft available for the march meeting so people can think about what it is, i don't have much more detail than that because we haven't had a chance to analyze all the data that's been collected so far. >> i think what's good to look at is how long positions stay vacant, right now in the city, we have kind of an assessor post that has been vacant i believe since early december and now we're approaching march, that's three months,

that position not being filled and we've had all the 800 thousand people, people that are probably eligible to serve are probably 250 thousand people in san francisco and not one of them has been chosen yet to replace either be in the assessor's office or to replace the district 4 supervisor, that's taking a lot time and hopefully we'll have a a decision made soon, i'm curious other places around california, is there a time frame or a certain length of time they should have that decision made by. >> we have been collecting that type of data, if a seat is vacant for a certain amount of time, there are places they have in the rules, someone gets to choose a seat, if it's left vacant for a certain amount of time, it goes through a different process for reporting, we're planning on including that in the notes. >> glad to hear that. er >> supervisor campos? >> thank you, mr. chair. i appreciate the question and that's the thing that i was

thinking about, it would be interesting to see what other jurisdictions do, do they have a requirement that a vacancy be filled by a certain time. in the vatican, you're going to have a conclave happen 10 or 15 days after the vacancy is done, i don't know if a concave is required here, you do avoid a situation where you have a vacancy longer than you should. >> i'll make sure it is the highlight of the report that we will make sure to pull that section out a little bit and talk about that a little bit more. >> i'm sorry, it's the catholic in me that had to say it. >> any other thoughts on that? >> okay. >> thank you. >> thank you for your presentation, this item, we can open up for public comment. >> good afternoon, again, eric brooks, san francisco green

party and local grass roots organization in our city, i do too many of these, so at any rate, it's really good to see the lafco taking this up. i'm not a fan and i don't think -- i'm not going to explicitly speak for them but i think most of the folks in the green party are not a fan of this strong executive that's able to just appoint people that leave offices like the board of supervisors or the assessor. i see no reason whatsoever that whenever someone leaves a position in our city government that we can't immediately call a near term special election to replace that person by a vote of the people, that's the way we should be replacing people on the board of supervisors and to other elected positions. and just to kind of also dove tail on what some of you already said, we also have this situation and this whole assessor thing where, you know,

god bless and i mean, i find him to be a little more positive than his predecessor from the start point of a progressive, but mayor lee did do this thing that the board of supervisors are going to squeak through and serve for ten years instead of the normal 8, we shouldn't have little games like that going on in our democracy, we need people that are serving our community to be appointed by the democracy, by the people of san francisco who should be going to the polls and rank choice elections to make these decisions, not the executive branch of the city. thanks. >> thank you, any other member of the public who would like to comment? and seeing none, we'll close public comment. just from the one comment that came through, i'm also reminded of when we had a vacancy for

the mayor's office, there was no real public discussion with any of the candidates that they didn't come before the board of supervisors to say they were interested in becoming the interim mayor, in fact, when we came to the first vote on january 4th of 2011, the first vote for the interim mayor, the person who being selected wasn't even in the country and hadn't told anyone he was interested in being mayor and i couldn't stomach a vote at that time, so it seems like though a lot of different processes we need to look at, having some transparency of how we're doing the voting is needed and having some formal presentation, some formal discussion with the candidates that are coming before us, there could be a decision left to the mayor's side, but anyone else coming forward that could get appointed or fill a vacancy

should have some public expression of their interest as well, just my thoughts. okay. commissioner breed? >> yeah, i just wanted to know, mr. brooks brought up a good point about a special election and i just would like to know and when researching in your report, if you could maybe look at whether or not there are special elections that are done to fill some of these vacancies as well, and that would be really helpful information to have. >> yeah, we will report on whatever information we find. this is based on some of the information we've gotten so far, we've put it into a big broad basic, there are basically two type and is a high dried of the two types, some places appoint, some call for a special election and some allow for some kind of hybrid where there could be an appointment or some kind of special election, that's when

time comes into play, we've noticed that there are some places if there are some time left before an election, the seat could remain vacant, in the report, we'll have a spreadsheet that has every location we've looked at, what it says in the city charter or the government code or how it's located of how it works, we will have all that information and there will be some sort of report on top of that that gives the basic explanation of what's written in that chart. >> commissioner mar? >> and mr. fried, are you including the community college board as well? >> anything that the general public elects, and we know what is elected here in san francisco, when we're looking at other places, some of them have health districts so we're trying to figure out, does it make sense and maybe this is a good question for the commission, how far down the list of offices are we looking, school board, college board, board of supervisors, what is

it, five city offices, or do we want to go farther down with some place that elects a health department person or something like that, we need to figure out how far done we go, and that will probably determine what's available online because mostly all of our research is going to be online, we're not looking to go and start talking to every single county of department of elections, and if we can get enough information from that, that's what our report will be based on. >> okay, thank you. no other comments from the commission, so we can go on to our next item. >> item number 5, executive officer's report. >> no report. >> jason fried, lafco staff, i wanted to bring up a couple of brief things, we're going to be doing a joint meeting on monday the 25th, we would have meet the friday before that and after talking with chair

avalos, we determined that it doesn't make sense to meet on a friday and the following monday so we're going to cancel that friday meeting, there will be a couple of quick item that is we will need to do after the joint meeting, one of which after march [inaudible] to be in line before the city finishes its budget so they can know how much money they need to have in the budget for us or not have in the budget for us, we will have to have a discussion abthat and i'm assuming we will have a little bit of a discussion about the draft report as well. thank you. >> okay, thank you. >> we can open up the director's report for public comment. and seeing no one come forward, we'll close public comment. and clerk, our next item, please. >> item number 6, public comment. >> this is an opportunity to talk about anything related to lafco and our work, and seeing no one come forward for this public comment, we will close public comment, and do we have

any other items before us. >> item number 7, future agenda items. >> future agenda items, colleagues? okay, public comment on future agenda items? okay, we'll close public comment, and our last item? >> adjournment. >> colleagues, we're adjourned. thank you very much. >> the weekly buzz, it is the last week of march mark your calendars because there is much to see this week in san francisco. this friday, march 29th comes to the museum for the season opening of friday night's

young, each evening takes a unique scene tied in with the special exist and permanent collections, this week after hours art event changed every weeks and includes a mix of dance performance and lecture and more, walk in and experience all of the public programs for free. and after art night, come dance yourself into shape with a free outdoors zunba class, get a great work out at the sunset rec center and enjoy the great outdoors, the class begins at 11 and rsvp is required. also this sunday is a 72nd annual spring celebration and easter parade. this is not your average street far. this is fabulous with everything from roller blading, and slopes, come and join in on the fun from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and that is the weekly buzz. for more information, on anything of these events, visit

us at sfgovtv.org and while you are on the web, check us out on you tube and stroll through some of our original programs. see you guys next week.

>> welcome to our regular rules committee meeting for thursday, march 21st, 2013. i am supervisor norman yee and i will be chairing this meeting. to my left is supervisor malia cohen and to my right is supervisor london breed. the clerk today is linda wong. and the committee would also like to acknowledge the staff of sfgtv, nona and craig burk will be doing the recording of each of these -- of this meeting and make the transcript available to the public online. madam clerk, are there any announcements? >> yes, mr. chair. please make sure to turn off all cell phones and electronic devices. completed speaker cards and documents to be included as part of the file should be

submitted to the clerk. items acted upon today will appear on the april 2nd board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. >> okay, good. if committee members don't mind, i'd like to take item 4 out of order as the first item. can you please call item number 4? >> item number 4 is hearing to consider appointing six members, terms ending november 18, 2014, to the urban forestry council. there are 7 seats and 6 applicants. >> okay, we will be hearing from the candidates in order as they appear on the agenda. is john [inaudible], is he here? okay. >> good afternoon, supervisor. i [speaker not understood]. i'm not sure they got the

message that they were moved because i don't see one of the councilmembers here. >> okay. next person, then, is dan kida.3 if you keep your comments brief. thank you. thank you. good afternoon, supervisors. i am actually dan flanagan. i am speaking for dan kida. we were noticed on this meeting fairly late and we had two conflicts. dan is the potential new member to the council and he has these words. he has been a certified arborist for the past 10 years. most of his career is spent working with the urban forest and pg&e. this involves working with diverse customer base who care deeply about their trees. the challenge is to ensure trees adjacent to power lines are kept safe distance while

trying to satisfy their customers' expectations. he actually runs the crewses that have to inspect every single inch of pg&e wires every year, and he runs about four or five tree crews. so, he has probably more intimate knowledge of san francisco urban forest than many folks. i strongly recommend his candidacy for the urban forest council. he's been highly recommended by many people. >> okay, thank you. i noticed that he's not a resident of san francisco. >> i just called him at that. he lives at 1200 17th avenue number 304 in the inner sunset. >> okay, thank you for clarifying that. i'll take these speakers unless you have questions for that particular -- go ahead. supervisor breed.

>> i need verification of the residency requirement since it's listed here that a waiver is required. and i'm not sure how the information was obtained for his current -- how the information was obtained to list on the agenda that a residency waiver is required. so, i just need some sort of verification. and, actually, i need that from either the city staff or city attorney or someone internal, please. thank you. >> i guess we can move on to -- dan flanagan, would you like to talk about yourself now? sure. dan flanagan. i am chairman -- i am the executive director of friends of the forest. i have served on the urban forest council for the past two years, served on the planning and if you hadvtioning committee.

i am currently the chair of the council. ~ funding i plan to be the chair hopefully again when we have our elections in may. i am deeply committed to the urban forest. it's my career. i spend five days a week working with all sorts of challenges that the urban forest presents us. i am deeply committed to the urban forest and to the urban forest council and i hope that i get reappoint today this position. >> okay. any questions? madam clerk, should i have all the speakers come up before i ask if there is any public comments? >> yes, mr. chair. >> thank you. thank you. >> next person is sandy sherwin. [laughter] >> ah, let's see, a man of many -- exactly.

sandy sherman is in atlanta. she had a business meet thattion she could not cancel at the last minute. she actually responded immediately upon notice of this meeting. she has been seated on the council the past two years. she also has been a member of good standing, a very helpful member of the planning and funding committee. she works with the public. she has had almost perfect attendance at all council meetings and she wishes to be reappointed. >> okay. any questions? seeing none, are you also william -- that's it. i'm done. >> [speaker not understood]. okay. mr. brook? i'll speak for myself. okay, good. my name is william [speaker not understood]. i'm a bay area native and an environmental attorney here in san francisco. and two years ago i researched and wrote a white paper, a policy paper on urban forests in california. what i learned was pretty surprising. i was impressed by the value that urban forests provide to a

city, particularly in adaptation and mitigation to climate change. and, so, i'd like to bring my expertise out of green biology from harvard and law degree from berkeley to making sure that our city is sustainable, healthy, and a great place to live. and i see serving on the urban forestry council as a way i can help achieve those goals. so, i thank you for considering me for this position. >> are there any questions? seeing none, is rose hillson here? good afternoon. rose thought she was going to be late. you know you all are going to be here later on this afternoon. i'm sorry. [laughter] sorry about the confusion

there. [speaker not understood]. good afternoon, commissioners. i'm a resident and native san franciscan. i grew up in the richmond district and i'm currently eminently qualified for the position, seat 7 on the seat [speaker not understood]. i am a board of supervisors appointee on the council. i'm currently chair of the landmark tree committee. i have been serving the community for over 20 years in the jordan park improvement association, jpia, which puts me in touch with my neighbors. jpia is also one of 48 neighborhood organizations and the coalition for a san francisco neighborhood, csfn, and it afford me a ability to work with citizens, [speaker not understood]. i am a housewife with diverse interests. i started by volunteering in the public schools and i am a product of the public schools. i wanted to work with the youth in this city because it is our

future and they are our future. i would love to see more youth involved to be apprentice to even work on greening projects such as the one i am currently working on with rec and park on a very sustainable plant restoration project. rec and park's volunteer director has been wonderful in signing up folks from larkin street youth, one work, et cetera. through making contacts with people with various ethnic backgrounds, cultures and disabilities, as well as the elderly, i think about being sensitive to these people's differences. it is also about coming to understand their philosophy about the trees in their lives and the role that trees play in this city. some of the considerations include addressing tree issues for those whose first language is not english and making them feel more comfortable approaching the council. i want to ensure that the community seat has a real community person on the council to represent their interests. it is a diversity and unique

flavors of all of our neighborhoods that make this city special and different areas have their own special charm. it is about being inclusive of all their opinions rather than being exclusive. i have volunteered on the japantown organizing committee and have provided my personal input on some of the landscaping and greening issues for japantown. i have worked collaboratively with the japantown task force and key decision-makers from the fillmore district in this area as well. i spent additional volunteer time to attend tree related meeting such as the one supervisor wiener held on the dpw street tree relinquishment matter to contribute my own personal opinions and solutions for this issue. [speaker not understood]. i have attended -- i know, hurry up, hurry up. i have attended the commission on the environment meeting for certain issues related to the urban forestry council and have run into tireless activists

from other areas of the city. one of the people i have come to know is dr. espinola jackson from the bayview district. she has great concerns about environmental justice for the people in her exhausted. community. speaking of the bayview district, after december 2011, i found myself to be the only councilmember ~ who attended mayor lee's press meeting to applaud the efforts of the neighbors who worked on the model block project on newcomb avenue. it may be tough for somebody on the urban forestry council to attend these events who has another job. i think to the greatest extent possible since we are automobile volunteers, a community seat member should go out and look at what other people in the neighborhood are doing. i have staffed the usc urban paper table to field questions and concerns from the public. i am also the only person, by the way, who has a landmark tree on the council. i work with scientists, experts from state university and my

arborists to plead my case, and this is really pleading my case, to get my tree landmarked. i learned much about the urban forestry council which was created by the board of supervisors in 2001 and how it is charged with many things including watching over the canopy of the city to protect community interests and let the citizens know about the full range of tree benefits. it is hoped that the urban forestry council becomes a place where everybody feels comfortable to discuss tree issues, no matter what their socioeconomic or ethnic cultural background. as you probably know from the attendance record for the council, i have a 100% attendance record for the full council and committees. this shows you that i take this volunteer role seriously. i think it is important that any candidate who wishes to apply for any position on the council actually attend various and multiple meetings before they are considered for any position. it is also very important that

councilmembers have an excellent attendance record to move the business of the council forward. i do ask for you to allow me to continue my work with the community on the council. thank you very much for your time. >> thank you very much. [inaudible]. i think there is a misunderstanding. >> he is registered in san rafael to vote on his application. and also on our agenda it was listed that a residency waiver was required. so, i need to make sure that that information gets verified internally. thank you. >> so, any public comments on item number 4?