tv [untitled] April 10, 2013 2:00pm-2:30pm PDT
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is a threat that is presented to the city. it is beyond a doubt for us that the long-term financial health of the city is in the interest of city employees as well as the people that live and count on the services in san francisco. that is the perspective that we bring to the work that we do. so, we have our everyday concerns about the problems [inaudible] now, but long-term problems like this are of equal if not more concern to us representing career city employees. we have a couple of people that are going to speak today that go a little deeper on this than i do that will give you a little bit more detail about our perspective. so, thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. muscat. any other speakers, please? if anyone wants to line up on this, you're welcome to do. so. thank you, mr. chair, members of the committee. peter salts man, council for iftpt local 21. i just wanted to speak very
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briefly to encourage members of the committee to genuinely study this issue and study it carefully before adding to or responding to the what are often misleading media headlines on the subject. as the controller i think very accurately and fairly emphasized, retiree health liabilities are unlike any other labor related liabilities that you deal with. they are not like pension liabilities. they are very dramatic differences. they are not like workman's compensation liabilities, vacation liabilities and so forth. they are not subject to the same statutes, the same regulations, and they do not i pact the city's cash flow and finances and financial projections in anything like the same manner as those other labor-related liabilities. in particular, as the controller mentioned, ~ the kinds of liabilities you're
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dealing with depend more than anything else on health care trends, health care costs. in fact, they really depend and are really most sensitive not just to health care -- not really to health karin flation itself, but to the difference between health care inflation and ordinary inflation, the spread. that's what they're really sensitive to. and it's a very different kind of long-term calculation than you deal with in any other setting. ~ we think that the good news with the recent valuation and the bond rating company, fitch, shows that you -- the city is moving in the right direction with the assistance and really initiative of labor and encourage you to -- and the other members of the board -- to move forward with that process. all the gsbe and bond rating areas look for in the area is a responsible approach, long-term approach to funding. and we believe that the city
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has already done that to a substantial extent and is on the way to improving that situation even more. that part -- i'm almost done. that process must include not just the city and labor, but also in the same room and meeting with them the actuary, the controller, and the health care providers, kaiser, blue shield, because -- >> thank you, sr. sir. thank you very much. thank you. next speaker, please. ~ good afternoon, supervisors. thank you so much for the opportunity to comment. my name is sally covington and i am the executive director of community campaigns for quality care. we're a nonprofit public charity working with unionses and purchasers on health care cost control as opposed to cutting benefits, and i'm speaking briefly today on behalf of both seiu local 10 21 and the public employees committee.
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and i guess really what we wanted to say and just to try and broaden the perspective and acknowledge some of the comments that relate to that broader perspective, you know, 4.4, 4.3 billion is obviously a big number and as many have said, the thing that is most going to determine if that number goes up or down is the rate of medical inflation which a we -- almost all of us know is far surpassed the rate of general inflation economy and also workers wages. and, so, that's going to be the key issue here. so, from the standpoint of defining the problem, we must ask what's driving this medical inflation rate so high. and on that there's not a lot of dispute. experts widely agree that, first of all, health care spending is so high because provider prices are high. just a reality in this country, we have to address it, those
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market it disfunctions contribute tog that. second, unsafe and ineffective services according to the institute of medicine comprise 30% of total u.s. healthcare spending, 30%. so, from our perspective, we go to employers and to unions and say, let's join together to address these problems with city officials rather than continue to fight over who is going to pay for those costs. we must find ways to identify and reduce unsafe and ineffective care in the system. actuarial projections, it's worth noting, are [inaudible] don't take into account what portion of those costs relate to waste in the system. and if we reduce that, then that actuarial projection gets -- becomes very difficult. >> thanks. i'm going to wrap up here. everyone has two minutes. okay. just the last point, then, is that we can't control health costs unless we establish greater transparency in the health care market. we lack information on provider
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quality and cost and we also lack payer collaboration to drive costs down. and, so, on behalf of public employees, we look forward to working with the city on solutions to a medical inflation rate that is causing the city, its public employees and taxpayers significant problems today and into the future both for active as well as retired. thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker, please. good afternoon, supervisors. my name is kiersten [speaker not understood]. i want to follow sally's comments the focus of our conversation related to health care costs needs to begin with the actual core of the problem, which is the rising -- the current state of health care costs and the rising inflation rate as has been previously mentioned. we believe the best way to do this is to focus on transparency and accountability measures which will require all providers to release the data necessary so that we can
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accurately assess cost drivers and work together to actually bringing costs down rather than just shift them. and we look forward to continuing this discussion with you and hopefully finding solutions that work for everyone. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. good afternoon, supervisors. my name is [speaker not understood], i'm a retired city employee. i put in my 39 years here. you might think that retirees don't have a dog in this race, but we are interested in the financial well-being of the city and provision of services. what has been said before and if the controller [speaker not understood], yes, there is a problem, but i think it's important that we not get caught up in how much it is, whether it's 4.2, 4.4 or 2.5 billion. the issue is it's a problem that needs to be solved and the issue, part of the resolution is the city has already taken steps to start to address the problem. and if the city will resist the
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urge to capitate the retiree health care trust, let it build up until there is sufficient funds in it to take care of the current city employees, not withdraw money early, then i think you would have a fully funded plan that will be of benefit both to the city and also to future retirees. i think if you look at the cost curve as the -- as [speaker not understood] parts go away, then the new folks come in and there is a lessened curve to the contribution for the retirement. so, i would urge you to keep doing what the city has already been doing and work to solve the problem. thank you. >> thank you very much. any other members of the public wish to comment on this item? all right. seeing none, public comment is closed. [gavel] >> supervisor wiener? >> thank you. and, mr. chairman, i just want to thank you for your leadership on this issue. you have really i think taken
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the bull by the horns and i am very appreciative of that. i think a lot of people were nervous when supervisor elsbernd [speaker not understood] there would be less focus on these unsexy but critical issue, and i appreciate your work. i also think that even though i think as someone noted some of the press headlines can be rather dramatic and $4.3 billion is a rather sizeable amount of money. it is, of course, a pretty long period of time. i am actually -- i'm optimistic because we know that there is a path forward. this is not one of those, you know, you get a horrible number, this horrible situation and there's no real way of solving it. this is an absolutely solvable challenge. and one thing that i think we've shown as a city over and over again, the pension reform was the most recent example, is that we do take a responsible
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approach when faced with these challenges. our partners in labor are incredibly collaborative as we saw with prop b and with the other prop b before that. and i am optimistic that we're going to be able to work together and come up with a solution and move forward together. so, i look forward to participating in that. >> thank you, supervisor wiener, and thank you for your co-sponsorship today and working on the issue together. and i want to thank all those who spoke, members of labor, to our controller, and certain to our mayor's office as well. you know, i think, again, the purpose of today was to identify the issue and to talk about the and really layout the financial terms based upon the report that was issued last year. you know, we do have an issue here. this is unlike pension as was mentioned. this is a longer term problem. but a problem no less and it is going to come due at some point in time. from my perspective, i believe it would be irresponsible if we
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don't attempt to fix it. i think as universal agreement the more we can get to less as a pay as you go and more pre-funding the better off we'll be as a city. it's in everyone's interest. we don't want to be paying in 20 years, 40 year, paying 500 million dollars a year on a pay as you go basis here. we want to solve the issue so future down the road, next generations can pay for more social serves, do other thing we want to do with our budget. we've done a lot to address the issue and we need to acknowledge that with proposition b and proposition c. ~ services as supervisor wiener mentioned, that was a lot of shared commitment across the city and that is the spirit how we want toful so this issue. moving forward we'll be about finding a solution. and we'll do that, i am also encouraged by our discussion so far and look forward to working together to find something that can solve the issue for the city in a responsible manner and also something that works for everyone here in our city
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government. so, i appreciate everyone's time today and look forward to our continued discussions. and with that, colleagues, i would like to take a motion or if i can make a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair. >> so moved. >> we can do that without opposition, thanks. [gavel] >> okay, mr. clerk, can you please call item number 2? >> item number 2, hearing to receive an update from the capital planning program on the city's ten-year capital plan. >> sorry, we're going to do 2 and 3 together. do you want to do 2 and 3 together? yeah, okay. >> item number 3, resolution adopting the city's ten-year capital expenditure plan for fiscal year 2013-2014 through fiscal year 2022-2023 pursuant to administrative code, section 3.20. >> all right, thank you very much. mr. strong? >> and good afternoon. thank you very much.
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going from one of the city's liabilities to another which has been the capital plan and a lot of our infrastructure and how we fund it. thank you very much, supervisors, for having me here today. i'm representing the capital planning committee and the capital planning program for the city and county of san francisco. the plan that we're sharing with you today is really the -- it's the work of a lot of different people and a lot of different departments across the agency coming together to share their needs and to share solutions and how we can address -- how we can address the city's infrastructure over the next 10 years. behind me or with me there are representatives from several departments. if you have other questions, including, you know, the mta, the puc, planning, dpw, of course the mayor's office who is helpful, animal care, as well as others, so. having said that, we just want to start the presentation a
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little bit with talking about some of the recent accomplishments. i mean really, over the past 5 or 6 years since we've had a capital plan, we've made some -- we've made a lot of ground. we've made a lot of headway. there is still a lot of work to go, but just in this slide alone you can see 5 25 golden gate, a lead platinum building that was recently opened. we just opened the bayview library. that is the penultimate library from the 24 branch librarieses in our system that we're addressing. ~ so, we will have actually complete and had renovated all the libraries across the city. and of course there is also the new cruise ship terminal out at the port. the next slide also follows up on the amount of work we've been doing with park and rec centers across the city with [speaker not understood] parks, balboa, helen diller playground out at dolores. and the more recently completed, you can see the before and after picture of the benny young chinese rec center.
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we're also moving forward. part of the earthquake safety and emergency response fund, the fourth one that passed to address fire stations, here are six stations where work is in design or actually in construction and we do have the project manager from the [speaker not understood] facility program that includes fire facilities as well as criminal justice facilities. [speaker not understood] is here with us if you have other questions. but again, we really think this is significant and we're going to be coming back with another earthquake safety bond in june 2014 that i'll speak about later. and finally, there's also the new public safety building as well as the new hospital. so, on the left we're going to be having a topping out ceremony that's coming up. it's next thursday, which is the anniversary of the great 1906 earthquake. we certainly invite you and the public to attend, but we're making real strides in getting
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that project toward completion. and the same can be said for the s.f. general hospital rebuild, the new trauma center out there. this is -- our understanding they're doing these hospitals up and down the state. this is the one hot that is on schedule compared to the others. a lot of that was the early investment that this board and the mayor and that the city made and the city voters made in doing predevelopment funding and supporting this effort. ~ hot equals hospital next we should also mention the street improvement bond, roadway safety improvement bond that again was passed with a lot of your help and leadership, especially from supervisor wiener and others, around not only addressing our street repaving needs for three years, but also making critical streetscape improvements. and you can see these are some of the diagrams that we're looking at for the castro street sidewalk widening and streetscape improvements there as well as some of the
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proposals around terra val street. so, when we talk about this upcoming capital plan, there really are about, you know, four major changes that we just wanted to highlight right here. first off, it is the first time that we're doing a biannual capital plan. so, we were doing this every year, updating it every year. now we're doing it every other year. we do come back. we did come back last year with with sort of an update on what's happening, but that has actually been a really good process ~ for us because we are thinking more long-term in our budgeting as well as our capital planning by coming back every two years. we're also -- this plan also recognizes significant changes at the state levels. there is considerably more detail on the new office of community investment and infrastructure, which is the successor agency to redevelopment as those projects are moving forward.
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we also are really pleased that we have been working with the sheriff's office and the mayor's office and other folks around addressing the issues at the hall of justice. and this is really the first capital plan, we've been trying to tackle this issue since 2006. this is the first capital plan where just about all of the functions -- there are only two functions remaining in the hall of justice. all the other functions are going to be out of the hall and we think we have a good solution for one of those two that still remains there. and then the others that are monumental effort we're introducing the strains pour thaition streets infrastructure package which is really responding to -- following up on the streets bond effort and responding to what we had informed voters when we went forward with that street bond around finding a permanent source for repaving, but also beginning -- i should say this as a beginning because this is really a first step to start to address some of the transportation needs across the city at some of the muni safety repair needs that we have.
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just for a little bit more information on the tsip before i go into some of the other aspects of the plan, this is really a joint effort where we worked closely with the department of public works, the mta, the planning department, and then the controller and the mayor's budget office to come up with a solution where we thought we could take advantage of some potential new revenue, especially run a vehicle license fee to address some of the streetscape and transit improvements across the city. we're also looking at new growth and the impact of the growth in particularly the eastern side of the town where we have a lot of -- where we're expecting large population increases and the infrastructure we know is going to -- is going to be stressed and needs to be improved to accommodate that growth. and i should follow-up on this. the idea that the strategic investment to make it easier
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for people of all modes of transportation to travel safely throughout san francisco, it's safe and complete streets. the goal is really for street repaving which affectses all modes of transportation we know to reach a pavement condition [speaker not understood]. we were really not too long ago we were fluttering around the 06 range and going down to 59, now we're at 65 and that's sort of been a number of different efforts including, you know, the geo bond in the past, but prior to that we had one geo bond that failed, one that didn't get on the ballot. we also had efforts around using certificates of participation to do some short-term funding for the streets and we had some one-time surplus revenue. so, it was really a number of strategies and some of it bandaid to get to where we are, but that we're confident this is the right way to move forward and i'm looking forward to your comments in support on that. and we're also recognizing the limitations and the needs for
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the transportation system and especially muni and the state of good repair challenges that they face and how we can, how we can work, again, to start the conversation. and this is the first time that we're going to be investing in general fund dollars into muni to begin to better understand the capacity, but also begin to make some real improvements around the state of the repair that they have. sort of an overview of the general plan -- >> excuse me, brian, one second. supervisor wiener. >> sure. >> thank you. asking questions about [speaker not understood] you mentioned in terms of munich re liability and state of repair, i know we have spoken about this and i'll preface this by saying i'm i think our ten-year capital plan is one of the very best things that we've done in recent years in san francisco in terms of getting a handle on our
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unending massive capital need, the capital planning committee has done an extraordinary job year in and year out sort of moving this forward and guiding us in a much more professional way than in some decades past in terms of how we bring bonds to the ballot and how we prioritize capital needs. so i'm a big fan of the committee. i do have concerns about the level of support for state of the repair of our transit system in this plan. now, as i understand it, the plan devotes or proposes i think $210 million over 10 years to state of the repair. am i right about that number? >> the general fund -- so, that is the number that the pay as you go program that we have in this committee, state of good repair, that's the number i was referring to that we have never used before. this would be a first, the
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general fund capital dollars to go to -- there are other muni dollars, i think there's $4 billion that are part of the muni's capital plan, capital program. >> right. but in terms -- and that $210 million includes the 120 million from the geo bond or it doesn't include it? >> no, it does not. >> does not include it. >> it does not. the geo bond would be on top of that. >> so it's about 330 million, then, in additional state [speaker not understood] over the next 10 years? >> right. we do get that on a further slide. there is some additional money that would go toward transportation -- streetscape improvement. some of those are related to growth, but they're also related to muni as you know it can be hard to sort of parse what the muni improvement, from what the streetscape pedestrian movement. >> but in terms of muni, in term of muni's actual physical,
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you know, assets, the system itself, that's about 330 million proposed on top of what muni has already planning as part of its enterprise functions. >> right. >> okay. and the -- what is the total amounts of the sfmta backlog or the muni backlog in terms of its extraordinarily, i think, large deferred maintenance? it's significantly larger than that, right? >> oh, yeah. >> and that's as of today. do we know what that is? >> well, [speaker not understood]. i want to say around 800 million. yeah, so, the total asset replacement backlog is 3.2 billion. >> that's including street meets, too? >> no, i think that's including
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street meets. we can get back to you. i believe the number is around 800 million. >> that's the deferred maintenance today on the muni system. >> right. >> so that those needs are actually over between now and 10 years from now are probably going to be significantly larger than $800 million. that's 800 million, if we put an 800 million check today to clear muni's deferred maintenance today? >> right. i believe that's the right number. >> so, the needs will actually be greater than that between now and 2023, right? >> yes. definitely. >> and muni itself doesn't have enough capacity to deal with all -- they have capital program, they have capital plans for the future. but in terms of muni on its own eliminating that, that's not -- i don't see that as part of muni's actual plan moving forward.
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>> i think, i think that's a fair statement, though they're -- that's why we're working together on this. this is why we have this proposal together. this is like to start to get a better handle on that. >> and i'm not -- i'm not criticizing you or the capital planning committee. frankly, i'm not even criticizing muni. this is really a city policy maker thing that we've systematically de-prioritized transit funding in san francisco for decades and so we have a situation now where we have a transit system that is in some ways floundering. we don't have -- to the point we don't have enough vehicles. we have vehicles that are broken down. we don't have the funding to repair. vehicles take an extraordinary long time to get them back into service and it is having daily impacts on many people's quality of life because muni is not meeting their needs. and we also know that in the
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next 10 years we're going to have population growth in this city and we're having trouble -- we don't have enough transit capacity to meet the needs of today's population. and, so, we currently don't have the transit capacity to meet our population's needs. we are going to have a growing population. we are going to have muni infrastructure that will be older in 10 years than it is now and, so, be higher than the current $800 million in maintenance and state of good repair needs. and to address that in the capital plan, we're proposing over 10 years $330 million which, don't get me wrong, that's absolutely better than what we were doing before and i applaud the capital planning committee for going from basically zero to that number. but i think it's important for all of us to understand that that is not even close to what
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we need, even to improve service levels today, let alone with the growing population and the ten-year-older system. so, i think it's very important for all of us to really be very cognizant of the fact that even though this is an improvement of our past capital plans in terms of treatment of transit, we have a transit system that's not meeting our needs today. it's just going to get worse. i don't see this as being i think adequate to meet that -- adequate to that task in terms of the number. and i just wanted to put that out there. and i'm just wondering, do we have -- what else is happening to actually do that? because i have very grave concerns. when i look -- even just the subway itself, that people physically cannot get onto trains frequently and they're
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breaking down and the system is melting down, and yet we're adding thousands and thousands of housing units along market street. and beyond how muni is going to accommodate that growth. i don't think -- i don't think anyone has a plan for muni to accommodate that growth. and this capital plan doesn't do that. and, so, how are we going to come up with that plan? i'm not putting it all on you, mr. miller. this is a city problem, you know, and it's on all of us, it's on everyone in this building to come up with that plan. but we have not done that. and that is going to be a real problem for our city. >> yeah, no, i understand. i'm not sure how to respond to that. i mean, i think that we're -- again, we've had challenges and i think this is going to be an ongoing challenge. it's the other thing we're
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