and what that cost looks like long term, we may not be able to necessarily deal with that in the current budget cycle, but it's just something i defnetly am interested in seeing us address. thank you. >> supervisor wiener. >> thank you. and i just want to thank supervisor breed for her comments. i know i think supervisor avalos and i, we want more and more company on this issue. it is an issue playing out throughout the city. and one thing i'll say is i think the best course would be to resolve this entire issue and not do it piecemeal. i know it will be probably tempting in budget discussion say put a little money here, little money there to try to deal with, with parts of the problem. but this is a pretty deep systemic issue. and ideally we would find a way

just to resolve it and stop having this sort of patch work of maintenance which results in some trees being healthy and wonderful and others deteriorating. >> supervisor mar. >> i wanted to thinkthv to the apprenticeship program enhancement request. and it looks like it's 1.7 million and it would help to fund this apprenticeship program, which would provide 12 new apprentices and training for 52 apprentices. was that previously funded by federal stimulus dollars? where did the funding come from to initiate it? >> so, most of the stimulus dollars that the department gets, fund pre-apprenticeses. so, most of the individuals you see out on the streets or helping, those are pre-apprentices. the request here is for the apprentices program themselves. we have several apprentices within the department. we have a laborer's apprentice,

we have a gardner's apprentice. we are just starting a cement mason apprentice. we have worked with pretty close to working an agreement with the carpenters. we're in conversations with the electrical union. and these apprentice programs, the apprentices are paid but funds that would be actually performing the job. but what comes along with these apprentice program is a lot of training. for example, the laborer's apprentice program is a eight week apprentice. [speaker not understood]. that is an additional cost for each individual to go and receive that training. and, so, what we're asking for is -- and that costs the department has not got within its structure so we're always scrambling to figure out how we can pay for those costs. the other -- some of the funding we ask for is for new apprentices, those are specifically to the trades that we can actually put certain

[inaudible] to the workforce and support them through the training while they become [speaker not understood]. >> i think it's great that a number of the trades are participating. and are most of them, though, laborers? what's the breakdown just generally? >> right now the bulk of the apprentices, we have about 30 in the laborer's training program. we have about 10 in the gardner's training program. we are in the process of bringing on sick cement masons. and i think that's what we have. pre-apprentice, we have over 300 people out there. through pre-apprentice and screening them, [speaker not understood] we're asking for this relief because we'll be able to pick up some of the pre-apprentices. ~ six >> and then the last question is for the san francisco residents that are eligible for these, are there specific

[speaker not understood] a city-wide program? >> it's a city-wide program. through pre-apprentices, you are selected by how well you perform, how frequent you work, and how ready you are for the program that is opening. >> thank you. >> supervisor breed. >> i just want to add just a few comments about the apprenticeship program, especially since many of the kids who i've had challenges in assisting with employment opportunities have fortunately had the opportunity to participate in this program. the challenge comes [speaker not understood] with once the program is completed. what i really appreciate is that the program is more of a long-term program. i think probably the minimum amount of time is six months and the maximum i think is two years. and the difficulty, i know that you may have, is the capacity to transition many of these

young people to tangible opportunities. and also, what process is involved and just spending the time to get these young folks prepared to apply for job opportunities. so, i think that we have an opportunity here with this program to take it to the next level and having the trades and other labor organizations actively engaged in supporting your department in transitioning some of these young folks to long-term opportunities is definitely something that i'm hoping that you're looking at. and if there is something i can do to be supportive of that, it would be great because once the program ends, then i'm faced with young folks who are coming to me and saying, well, what do i do next? what's the next step? how can i get a job? and i think part of what we want to do is take the skills that they are learning and

apply those to real tangible opportunities. and what i'm also hoping for is the ability to prioritize many of these young people for opportunities to actually be full-time employees of the city in some capacity whether dpw or any other department. there are a number of these young folks who actually live in public housing. and the places where we want to make sure that they are gainfully employed, which of course we know cuts back on crime and the number of other issues that our communities are faced with. so, i'd like to see us move into a direction of long-term employment investment and how we get there is just really what i'm looking forward to working with you to do. >> thank you. is there anything else? >> just a few more things. some of the challenges that the department or opportunities that we're working on. we talked about the trees. to green our fleet. we are looking seriously on

converting quite a good number of our fleet to electric and cng. the cost of gas has been going up quite a bit. it's been fluctuating. it definitely impacts our fleet and the cost of doing business. and, so, we have two proposals to move some of our smaller cars onto electric cars and start looking at alternative vehicles. we are also coming to the board to increase some of our fees. our fees mostly around the permitting area, [speaker not understood], development areas. we are not recovering. and that has created a little bit of backlog for us and so we'd like to increase some of those fees. and we have a complete package of what those fees are. they're mostly permit fees, sidewalk, construction, thing of that sort. 320 fueling station, the -- a

lot of our trucks [speaker not understood] diesel, b 20 is the trend. they are assembly bills that are now requiring that we upgrade and meet certain types of [speaker not understood] using certain types of fuel. so, we would like to look at an opportunity to convert our station to be able to provide 20 fuel which would meet the state standard [speaker not understood]. we're getting into quite an expense. as you know, in my business, a lot of my fleet is trucks. either street sweepers or trucks that go out to do street repair and other thing. and then, of course, the big project i think before all of us is the better market street project. any kind of work that would happen on market street is not a small task. so, those are some of the challenges ahead of us.

i'll keep it short. >> sorry, supervisor breed. >> i just had a quick question about vehicles. are you eligible to apply for any federal funding? i know that the fire and police department have the ability sometimes to receive federal grants for replacement of equipment. >> we are, and we work very closely with the mayor's office and with the ta and apply for quite a bit of funding for clean air vehicles. we have been able to receive some funding, but i have 600 pieces of equipment, so -- and so. >> i have a few neighborhoods we can clear out the street cleaning and move fines frequent in some of the neighborhoods -- just kidding. thanks. >> lastly, obviously we have a few bond projects that we're working on. two that i'll highlight today is the road [speaker not understood] bond. that bond was for 248 million.

the first sale was for a little over 76 million. we have resurfaced over 150 blocks. we are pretty much on schedule. three projects have been completed, 11 in construction, about 12 -- 2 award and had 12 in design. we've also done over 524 programs and about 330 in design and 800 plus in planning. street structures for projects have been completed and four are in design. quite a number of streetscape projects are starting to run out -- total of 75 streetscape projects. 24 of them are the largest projects, but the streetscape, there's quite a few. and on traffic signals, there's been almost half of the traffic signals have been replaced and the other half are in design. and then, of course, with ease of bond, the public safety building. tomorrow we'll have a topping

ceremony so steel work will be complete. we are moving nicely on schedule, and performing pretty well. that project should be delivered on time and on budget. the trade package -- more than half of the trade packages are up to date. the project is running smoothly. awsf ~ awss, water supply system, is upgraded. between peak reservoir and ashbury, as well as jones street tank and station number 1. in addition, we'll be fixing some of the system and then you have the neighborhoods. so, our project is moving along smoothly. and finally, quite a number of fire stations are being upgraded or repaired. some of them have work -- paint jobs or bathroom jobs or roof repairs.

and some are going to be rebuilding. so, those are -- in terms of other bonds, general hospital, we're about 50% complete. general hospital, that's moving nicely. many of you know a few weeks ago we finished a crucial turn around and. and work on our north beach library is going along pretty good, too. that concludes my presentation. >> thank you, mr. nuru. colleagues, any questions for mr. nuru? supervisor wiener. >> mr. nuru, on the topic of [speaker not understood], one of the -- i think the department of public works in general over a number of years has been really negatively impacted in terms of staffing reductions in some areas over time. and the department i think has been very effective under mr. reiskin's leadership, under

your leadership in adapting to those resource challenges and still doing, i think under the circumstances, a pretty exceptional job of doing what it needs to do. but i really, i really think that you need more resources. and two areas where i and my colleagues were able to get some resources to the department in our process last year are cleaners -- cleaning crews, i'm not talking about street cleaning, but just general cleaning crews to keep our spaces clean. and also we have gardeners because we have all these miscellaneous rights-of-way that look like park but they're not rec and park property. they're random green patches all over the city that are under dpw's jurisdiction. and if you don't have neighbors that are really taking care of it every day, dpw just doesn't have the resources to be out there all the time and you're more responding to particular problems there. can you just comment on the

department's level of staffing and resources with respect to those two areas, cleaning crews and gardening crews? >> so, as you said, many of the medianses in the city and many of the plazas in the city have become, some by default or other way, the department of public works' responsibility. so, and many of these plazases in particular, are pretty well used and they need quite a bit of upkeep because of the use that they get. we have never really been staffed to provide that level of service for the plaza in particular and during the economic hard times, we did have -- we lost quite a number of our gardening staff that maintain many of the medians that the city has. we've been able to make up a little bit of it through our

programs with volunteers and partnerships with corporations. but as you can see, it's not steady all the time, the extra hands that we get. so, we can't give you certain [speaker not understood] for the amount of space that we are responsible for and what number of bodies we would need, but we are -- in those areas, we do struggle. >> i would be interested in getting that data from you in terms of outside of the streets themselves, the other -- what public spaces you're maintaining and what the resources that you have to maintain them so that we can see what that gap is. i'm not saying it's something that can be solved in a year or few years, but structurally, i hope we think long term and strategically and gradually addressing that over time. >> i'd be glad to give that to you. >> thank you. >> colleagues, do we have any

more questions at this point in time for mr. nuru? all right, seeing none, mr. nuru, appreciate your time. at this time we'll open it up to public comment. if there are any members of the public that wish to comment on item number 4, please step forward. okay. seeing none, public comment is closed. [gavel] >> colleagues, can we take a motion to continue item number 4 to the call of the chair? we'll do that without opposition, so moved. [gavel] >> okay, mr. clerk, can you please call item number 2? >> item number 2 -- >> sorry, excuse me, we have item number 1 we didn't get to yet. >> item number 1, hearing to receive an update on the fire department's budget for fiscal year 2013-2014 and fiscal year 2014-2015. >> okay, and we have chief hayes white here. and mark as well, the cfo. >> good afternoon, chair

farrell, supervisors. i wanted to briefly review and give an overview of our department's budget as well as highlight a few of the major changes we have going into the next few years. at the conclusion of my presentation, even along the way, i'm happy to answer any questions for you. let me get started. we're going to put our slides up. the first slide gives you a high level look at our overall budget. in total our operating budget is approximately $332 million in fiscal year 13-14 of which a little over 300 million is general fund operating budget dollars. this covers the fire department's fire suppression, emergency medical services, specialized units, fire prevention investigation units, our training division, as well as our administration and support services bureaus. the nongeneral fund portion of our budget is made up of the airport and [speaker not understood] which is fully

funded in the port of san francisco. as we look the at our overall budget source he, you can see we are funded by two-thirds of our funding. we receive [speaker not understood]. the department is limited in what it can charge for fees, but we do collect on ambulance transports as well as fire prevention services and that makes up a portion of our budgetary sources as well. there's two mainstreams of revenue fire prevention and [speaker not understood] prevention. as we look at how the program funding breaks down, the large majority of the budget is for operations which directs fire suppression and emergency medical services provided by the department to the public. this includes the staffing of all of our fire stations as well as our ambulance tier. the department has mandatory daily minimum staffing

requirements it must meet for fire suppression. and in addition to that it has a dynamic ambulance model. our ambulance is on the street 10 hour shifts or 12 hour shifts. outside of fire operations the budget covers all administrative and support functions including workers' comp for the department and the department's training division and bureau of fire prevention and investigation. as far as our budgeted expenditures go, about 92% of our budget is set aside for salary and benefits of our department members. that leaves only approximately 8% of our budget for all other functions needed to keep the department operational. this would include fire station maintenance and utilities, maintenance and repair as well as fuel for our vehicles, and all administrative functions of the department including workers' compensation costs. so, that's what we're challenged by over a year, that 8% to cover everything else. before we get too far into the next budget cycle, i wanted to give a few updates on the current year. thises was the first year of

the mayor's public safety hiring plan and the department welcomed 48 new graduates into the workforce in december of 2012. however, due to our already existing low staffing levels, the department has seen an increased reliance on mandatory overtime especially during the summer months. the department has worked closely with labor and the department of human resources on a few overtime policy changes such as modifications to our overtime policies as well as instituting a hard cap on individual overtime. so, this -- while it affect the distribution of overtime, it doesn't change the overall amount of overtime. that can only be done with the addition of personnel which comes at a cost. while appreciative of the mayor's hiring plan, the currently scheduled hiring will not completely resolve the issue given additional retirements over the next few years, but we are making incremental steps forward. >> so, chief hayes can you explain more about mandatory overtime and how that gets implemented and why? >> certainly. so, we do have a voluntary

overtime plan for wdo work your day off. after that list of volunteers is exhausted, we then need to move to the mandatory overtime program that we have, and it used to be very -- used very little. it's not something that i'm interested in doing. it's not a good sustainable way to run an organization, but we do mandate if we don't have volunteers to work overtime due to our low staffing, that there will be hold overs for our uniformed members. >> okay. supervisor breed. >> thank you. thank you, chief. just, colleagues, i wanted to mention that it had been 10 years since any hiring was done in the department until last year when new recruits came through a class. i know this year i think we're scheduled to have two classes graduate. but it's clear that we are not bringing in enough firefighters to deal with the needs of the city as a whole.

and i think an additional, at least one additional class this fiscal year would be something that could really help, although it won't solve the problem. but i do know this is a real major problem in the department and i think that additional class costs about 1.5 or 1.2, somewhere -- >> right around that. >> and, so, i just -- a someone who served on the fire commission in the past, people look at overtime as being -- well, the firefighters are making a lot of money in overtime. but the reality is in many cases, many of these firefighters don't want to do this overtime work. they're required because of minimum staffing requirements of the department. and i think that when we look at our capacity and what we need, we need to take a hard look at long-term planning for the department so that we are staffing up the department in appropriate levels. and, so, i just wanted to

mention that because this is a real major issue and is creating some problems for the department, i'm sure, in terms of some people who are taking off and maybe using sick time because they might be exhausted and can't do the mandatory staffing. i mean, there's been a whole host of issues and i know the chief has been working really hard to deal with this issue, but it is a serious issue that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. i just wanted to make sure i mentioned that. >> thank you. let me adi appreciate supervisor breed's comments. she is very well aware of the operational issues and some of the fatigue issues the mandatory overtime creates ~ not to mention family issues. oftentimes we have firefighters that are married and have children. and when you have a mandatory and you have a planned day off, but you're mandated to stay at work, it does create some difficulty. so, we appreciate that. we also appreciate the work of the mayor's office and mayor ed lee to commit to hiring classes

to begin restoring some of our staffing levels. we did typically and we did with a lot of knowledge go to a higher overtime model. but at this point our staffing is such that it is creating way too much mandatory overtime. and, so, we look forward to having these classes come in every year. we started with the class that entered in august, graduated in december. but our goal is that if there is anyway we can somehow accelerate the hiring as suggested by supervisor breed, that would do -- go a long ways in i think the morale of the department as well as operationally not holding people over for mandatory overtime. >> and, chief, i think it's important to highlight for the public because i think we do have a lot of overtime issues in the city in many very many departments. i've certainly been a hawk on it the last two years and will continue to be. the mandatory overtime is a different thing when people are forced to do it. and oftentimes people get a bad

rap for taking overtime. sometimes it's reasonable other times when it's mandatory overtime that's a completely different ball game. i agree with you it affects families and we have to take a look at that long time as supervisor breed mentioned. supervisor had a question. >> thank you. [speaker not understood] improve the overtime protocols. you mentioned a hard cap on individual overtime. what are some of the examples of how you're trying to control the overtime expenses? >> okay. and i know next week sub poed to be this week. next week i'll be prepared to give you a full comprehensive overview of that. but in a nutshell, one of the thing we've worked with with the department of human resources, director mickey callahan, as you know, there was an ordinance of an overtime cap that use to be 30% dropped to 25% which means in our department, because the uniform members work in excess of 0 40 hours a week, they work 48, 7,

that cap went from [speaker not understood] for fiscal year. what we were seeing again because of our low staffing levels was we had some exceptions that were granted by the director, but we have some people that are double that amount of overtime. and they do meet the criteria that was granted in the exemption from director callahan. but just this year we decided to work together. we presented it to local 798 and collectively dhr administration and labor agreed to a hard cap of 1100 hours which is still in my mind way too many, but it begins to not reduce our overall overtime, but it sort of distributes it more evenly across the department. but what that also does is potentially it has the ability to, once again, increase the mandatory overtime. so, next week when we talk about -- we'll be coming before you and technically it's called for supplemental request, we don't like supplemental because we're not asking for additional funding. we're basically asking because

of the overtime legislation that was passed in 2011. we're going to ask for a reallocation within our own budget. so, we have to have 4.1 million from salary to fringe to cover that overtime. i'm happy to cover that policy for you and present next week. >> thank you. >> supervisor breed. >> chief, i just want to put something in context. i think there were over 80 retirees last year, and he we brought in 40 -- the new number is, what, 48 recruits this year. ~ and maybe you can bring these numbers with you the next time, but we are definitely -- people are retiring at higher rates, but we're not bringing in enough people to staff up the department as a whole. and, so, i think this is more of an urgent issue than we think being in it and seeing it and experiencing or talking to

many of the firefighters about their experience. i mean, they're happy to do the work. they're happy to be a part of the department. but it's clear this is a serious issue. and i think we need to take action more immediately to bring in enough classes to begin to restaff up the department and maybe next week, chief, you can bring us the numbers so we can get a clearer understanding of what's happened over the past 10 years based on the number of retirees, the numbers as it relates to the department in term of when we're bringing in recruits. and last thing that i want to mention is the institutional knowledge that comes with people who have been a part of the department for many, many years. i mean, i would prefer that they have an opportunity to work with folk who have been with the department. new recruits have the ability to have that relationship over the years in order to adjust and understand, really, the

do's and don'ts. this is a challenging job as we know and i just want to make sure that we're looking at a long height and bulk term solution to a problem that now is getting or has gotten completely out of control and we are addressing it appropriately fort meade needs, but also the future needs of the department. >> thank you. if i could just comment on that. you are absolutely right. we were experiencing retirements in the range from 60 to 80 nearly every fiscal year for the last several fiscal years. there is a bit of good news in that between the years of 1982 to 1987, the department did no hiring. and, so, we are seeing a bit of a deceleration of retirement. nevertheless, we have a lot of catching up to do, to your point, supervisor breed. and obviously the more we bring staff in, the less we'll have to rely on mandatory overtime. if i could just put up on the screen here the historical uniform