nursery plant cultivation, urban forestry tree planting and reforestation, just mention some of the things we call upon our gardeners to do in our 220 parks throughout the city. within the 34 17 classification, we have a ~ -- an appointment or an assignment. it's called the park services captain. these are 34 17 gardeners who then receive an additional assignment or appointment from the general manager and they serve in an assistant supervisory capacity. and we select our park service captains from their merit-based performance record, from their demonstrated potential for supervisory duties and we check with 261 to ensure they are a member in good standing. we assign these assistant supervisory duties to build supervisory capacity in the department and also to establish supervisory experience for promotion. currently we have 24 park

service captains assigned. the next step in the pipeline is our supervisory class, the park section supervisor. we have a budgeted fte of 34 of those. and this is a supervisory class working in a complex in our 22, 220 parks throughout the city. they will have a complex of anywhere from 15 to 20 parks and they will supervise the gardeners that are working with them in that area and all the duties i just described to you. importantly, i want to point out historically and currently all of our park section supervisors have been promotional opportunities from the gardner class. the last stop are the culmination of the park maintenance pipeline, is the park services manager. we currently have nine fte and -- that manage the class and they supervise a whole service area. we divide the city up into 7 park service areas. plus we have a manager for all of our golf and turf operations

and one for our natural areas program. and in addition to the horticultural path, an accomplishment of that mission, they're responsible for 311 responses, for achieving the park maintenance or repair throughout the crafts in our structural maintenance yard. they work on capital planning or capital division on park renovations. out at the parkman jerk servicer class, i said we have nine. five of those are former park service supervisors. that is how the pipeline culminates at that end. the one thing i left out of the pipeline, of course, is the number two step, the apprentice gardner program. very important, and i'm going to turn the mic over to anna alvarez, our open park space superintendent to walk you through the apprenticeship program. >> thank you, denny. good afternoon, supervisors. i'm anna alvarez. i serve as the superintendent of parks and open spaces.

as the general manager mr. phil ginsberg stated, the department takes great pride in the gardner apprenticeship program as one of the partnership we created with local 261 to establish the very first ever state certified gardner apprenticeship program in california. and most importantly, to sustain it throughout difficult economic times. the program was instituted in june of 2010 and, in fact, the first apprentice staff was appointed out into the field in december 2010. there are 25 budgeted positions with a classification of 34 10, and we currently have 22 of them working with us. the department has invested $2.2 million in the overall apprenticeship program. and just to make the point of how critical and how important the program is to us, the $2.2 million investment is equal and very comparable to the

department's preparatory unit which has a 24/7 city-wide coverage responsibilities and public safety park security functions throughout the city. the [speaker not understood] budget is $2.5 million project. the program -- >> is the park control in comparison, how many ftes? how many in comparison? >> 25. >> the [speaker not understood] apprenticeship program is a model of professional development in the state of california as well as through the urban park systems nationwide. and thank you, supervisor avalos, you really well explained the breadth of the spectrum and the breadth of the disciplines that is very integral for us to be able to sustain vibrant and beautiful parks in san francisco. and we pretty much intend to continue to cultivate and grow the apprenticeship program. it is joined by laborers local

216 via a joint apprenticeship committee made up of three representatives from the rec and park department as well as two representatives from the department of public works. ~ 261 and six representatives from local 261. in fact, we meet every other month and to highlight the importance of the partnership, we alternate the board meetings or the committee meetings between the union hall in local 261 and the historical [speaker not understood] in golden gate park. the program is acquired 4,000 hours on-the-job training as well as an academic component which is provided by city college. 360 hours of course work. in fact, we are very proud of the fact that the apprentices having a difficult day at work, they go to school at night and then they come back and they are actually partnered with very skillful and very creative workforce that we have that

maintain the parks in the highest standards that we have. we have, we have and intend to be able to grow our professional development in the parks operation. and through the leadership of mr. ginsberg, in fact, we have now created a system with hr where we can place the 34 10 class or the apprentices after completing only 50% of the required job -- on the job training so they can be ready to be placed in key positions at the 34 17 classification or the gardner position level. to date, we have placed -- we have appointed eight apprentices into gardner positions within the san francisco rec and park department. while we have not graduated any of them yet, we did place them if they met the minimum qualifications prior to the program as apart of the civil

service requirement. >> ms. alvarez, could you say how many within this time, how many 2417s you've actually brought on? separate from the eight that you intend to bring on as 34 17s? >> the current recruitment process that we have for 34 17s, we have 17 positions we are anticipating to fill in the next three months. >> in the next three months, 17. >> um-hm. >> and prior to up to date and the past few years, how many have we brought on, would you say? >> 34 17 gardner positions, approximation of probably 20 positions. >> you brought on in the past? >> yes. >> okay. >> these are not new positions, but in fact they are positions through retirement and other reasons [inaudible]. >> and those recent hires that have been made, how the percentage came up through, through the ranks of workers

within the department? they're not all going to be 34 10s. >> the 20 positions i shared with you, 8 of them came from the 34 10 a ~ apprenticeship program. the rest came from different programs within the department. >> thank you. >> in addition to the gardner apprenticeship program, the department also enjoys and we continue to promote our partnerships with other community-based organizations and other programs that we have internally within the department. one of them is the green ages program which is a service learning program for teens in the southeast neighborhoods of the city. and this is also done in collaboration and in partnership with the port of san francisco as well as the san francisco parks alliance. we also have the enterprise for high school students which are students between the ninth and 12th grade -- 9 and 12 grades and they come in and they do

horticulture, practices within our gardens and parks. we celebrated 25th anniversary this summer. needless to say we also have a very fruitful partnership with the jewish vocational services and downtown high school to provide students with paid job training in a wide variety of positions within rec and park. and i think we are proud to say the jds program actually is one of the critical components for the little library and the [speaker not understood] complex that is also partnership with our local community. and the san francisco state university is one of our partners that -- and we provide six paid internships through the department of recreation and parks tourism to place interns within the keg department, professional spectrum ~ which includes park maintenance, renovation, management of natural resources as well as cultivation and conservation efforts. and with that, i'm going to

introduce mr. bob who is our superintendent of recreation and community services. ~ >> good afternoon, supervisors thev. bob pelosi for the [speaker not understood]. in 2010 the department undertook the complete reorganization and re-engineering of how we deliver recreation services. our organizing principles are still stated were recreation industry best practices ~ as evidenced by nrpa and cprs. our inclusive strategy was to accomplish the design and implementation of this new recreation to service delivery process through a labor management working group comprised of recreation field staff, seiu representation, and management. this year alone process resulted 234 what is now titled our new recreation model. ~ and it was implemented by fiscal year 10-11 with great success. the model has five recreation

competencies which are cultural arts, sports and athletics, leisure services, community services, and our business department support services. an integral to the recreation model is our career pipeline that comprises the following. if you take a look at the slide, folks enter into the recreation and park profession through our teen work 99 10 position. there's about 200 of those positions. 150 in the summer, 50 during the school year. we have hundreds and hundreds of kids that actually apply and are turned down because we just don't have enough funding for additional positions. we also use these positions to help employ the kids that go to work to camp mather through our probation teen outdoor experience program that we do jointly with juvenile probation. so, it's an integral part of getting kids started into the profession. we also have seize nail staff which are campus assistants. p throughout the department and i'll talk a little more about

them. the next step is the 32 79 recreation leaders. we have three steps within that classification. ~ tion we have rec leader 1, 2 and 3. 1s are folks that are basically entry level that do facility management, set up tables, front 69 house type stuffer. rec 2s are folks who actually teach courses, coach teams, stuff like that. rec 3 require certification. those folks are the ones that we create a position that requires a certification and they already have that certification, we do recruitment and they come and fill those positions. the next step is 32 83 recreation specialist. most of those folks work in after school. we felt it was important to have parents have the feeling that they were seeing the same face all the time at our after school programs. so, we have a number of those. we also have 32 83s in therapeutic and inclusive recreation working with folks with special needs. and we also are introducing

some 32 83 positions to work with our youth force and extreme sports as well. coming up. the 32 86 recreation coordinator positions are the next steps. we have two sort of tracks for those. one is facility coordinator. they are the people who are responsible for our major full-purpose multi-purpose facilities which are similar like to mission rec or st. mary's, [speaker not understood]. we also have recreation program coordinators who are responsible for putting together all of the city-wide programs that happen across the city. and those numbers are in the thousands, quite an undertaking for the number of folks that we have. they are supervised by the 32 89 recreation supervisor positions. we actually have 10 of those. they are the people who make sure that we have quality control over our staff as well as our programs. the 0 92 2 recreation managers, there are five of them. four of them oversee the

competencies that are actually out providing program and one oversees the support services division which provides our business aspects. just some of the numbers that go along with that, so you have some perspective on how many folks we're talking about. there are 6 20 active 32 79s. it's a lot of people to manage, a lot of moving parts that are happening throughout the city. ~ as i stated earlier, there's 10 32 83 recreation specialists. ~ that are happening right now. we will be adding a few more of those positions as we move forward into some of the other areas. there are 48 recreation coordinator positions. they are doing program planning, implementation, and facility operation. the 32 89 recreation staff as i stated, there are 10 of those folks currently that are on staff. we actually have two vacancies. we'll be hopefully filling those shortly. that one's been a tough one. and then we have the 509 22s.

just to give you some of the workforce development programs that we do have, i mentioned work creation. it's in its 52nd year. i think it's the longest standing youth program that's going right now. and we have 200 of those 99 10 positions budgeted. summer camp assistance, as i stated, the 32 64 classification, many 6 those folks go up to camp mather. they also work at our day camps in the city and they are an imperative part of us pulling off each and every summer. our internship program, so, we offered paid internships. we have a great partnership with san francisco state university where each year we identify six projects that take place throughout the department. it can be in var i didn't say areas, parks, golf, capital, recreation. it can be anywhere throughout the department, but there's six of those positions. we have city hall fellow this year and we have 11 student design trainees which are working in capital and planning.

we also again have youth job opportunities that we actually employ the folks or they work in san francisco recreation and park but they actually come through other agencies. we have 41 kids that are placed in our department through myep and we also have another 49 that are placed through youth works. so, for us, we try to t the kids as young as we can. we feel that getting people in their teen years into recreation gives us the best chance of having people that choose recreation as a profession moving forward. thanks. >> great, thank you. that's really informative. >> i'm just going to wrap it up quickly, supervisor. just two small points that i left out when we were talking about the scope of our workforce. i think this board is well aware of some of the departments' financial and budgetary challenges since 2009. and as we sit here today, while things are getting better, we are still probably a net close to 50 positions, full-time

equivalent positions less today than we had in 2009. we have not reduced a single 261 represented position. the point of our presentation was really to talk about the importance of investing in our workforce and all of this pipeline, at the end of the pipeline are results. and we wanted to spend just a little bit of time talking about our results because we actually think that they matter. bob just spent some time talking about on the recreation side. our new recreation model and some of our workforce pipelines and our new way of delivering services and getting people into the system at a young age and keeping them in the system, our recreation program is, although under resourced, thriving. if you look at the differences in registration opportunities between 2008, which was last year of the old model and today, in 2008 we registered 54,000 people or we had 54,000 program registrations.

today this year in 12-13 so far, we are at 72,678. that is a 32% increase. that's the number of registration opportunities, meaning the number of offerings. the total number in it '08-'09 was [speaker not understood]. in 12-13 we're at a 57% increase. our programs a popular. we are seeing more people wanting to sign up for them and as a result our wait list is growing. we don't know if this is a good number or bad number or we need to invest more in recreation to accommodate the folks on the wait list. in 08-09 we had 3,000 people on a wait list for some of our most popular programs. today we have over 9,000 people on a wait list for certain programs, some programs are more popular than others. ken mather some of our skateboarding stuff. that just shows the popularity of what we do. with our model, even though recreation fees have not increased because we've got more people in the system, we're generating more revenue.

and this is part of the sustainability of our new rec model. more programs, more funding than we can scale up and invest more in staff to teach more programs. and it's a positive cycle. so, you can see the increases in program revenue and significantly the increases in scholarship opportunities. this is one of the things that i'm personally most proud about in 2008. the department offered $64,000 in free and subsidized programming. this year we will hit about $800,000 by the time the year is over. and that is a combination of philanthropic dollars raised and just subsidies from the program revenue line that you see above. 60% of all respondents in the 2011 city survey rated the quality recreation activity as excellent or good. we just rated our winter programming and 90% of 400 respondents to our winter programs said that they would definitely refer a program or class to a friend or relative.

turning on to the landscape maintenance side; and again, i think, supervisor avalos, you said it right. our parks are cleaner today because of our apprenticeship program. at least that's certainly one of the reasons. because of our partnership with 261, because of the incredibly talented staff at the 34 17 level, 34 22 level, 0 92 2 level, it is a team. ~ and i've now worked in the city a long time and this is a group of extraordinarily dedicated men and women and the results are telling. in 2005-2006 our prop c maintenance standards scores administered by the controller's office averaged around 80%. and you can see the growth in fiscal year 12-13 where we're hovering around 90%. the 10% increase in city-wide parks was over a 7 or 10 year is also corroborated by the results of the biennial survey.

in 2011 which was the last city survey, 70% of all city respondents rated the park grounds as excellent or good. this compares with 66% in 2009, 57% in 2007. so, you can see we are trending in the right direction. and it is worth noting that only 34% of respondents in those city surveys in 2011 rated overall government performance as excellent or good so, we are tracking above average there. the last thing i would like to touch on and i think it's a good segue to having our human resources director mickey callahan close it out, because she's been very involved in the development of the apprenticeship program and has a lot of experience with the apprenticeship programs statewide, take a stab at your very good question, supervisor avalos. so, how many have you hired -- how many 34 17 or gardeners have you hired that haven't come from the apprenticeship program?

and unanswered, there's a reason. the apprenticeship program just started in 2010. we have yet -- we are going to have our first graduation in a few short months. we have been able to hire apprentices in the program that have otherwise net the 34 17 -- the qualifications to be a gardner. those are the eight that we've placed. we placed them as gardeners when we had vacancy was they met the qualifications to do that job independently. local 261 has appropriately said, hey, you know, our apprentices are getting well trained. we want to make sure that they're getting placed in vacant jobs. we agree, which is why we sat down with 261 and dhr and actually pushed for rather progressive rule changes, not just to the apprenticeship program, but to our merit system that allow us to focus on committing that 34 10

apprentices get playstationed as 34 17s. so, there's a process by which they're not actually going to compete with people from the outside. if you have completed 2000 hours or 50% of the apprenticeship program, you you are eligible as an apprentice to be placed in a [inaudible] because we [inaudible]. the best indicator of future success is past performance [inaudible]. working, going to class [inaudible]

>> experiencing technical difficulties; please stand by >> good afternoon, supervisors. i won't take much time. mr. ginsberg alluded to one of the challenges we have when we look at everyone from local hire to targeting specific communities for employment in the public sector. and that is that we have under

our charter and under our civil service [speaker not understood] we raised requirements about merit hiring. driven largely by [speaker not understood] local 261, [speaker not understood] and his staff, we met with -- started meeting with the union and rec and park to determine if we could increase further while still within the civil service rules, whether we could [inaudible]. it goes as close as we can to the edge of what would be acceptable. [inaudible]. the civil service for gardner position is considered entry level or journey level gardner as are many [inaudible].

joe public cannot apply for that job and access that job. however, we [inaudible]. the advantages that you get from the apprenticeship program and have agreed through our recruitment services director's assistance to make sure that we value every moment of the apprentice time in rec and park so that they will receive full credit and be able to be placed while -- placed while on the list without excluding the opportunity for an external candidate who is meritorious [inaudible]. it will result [inaudible]. being able to fulfill the commitment made which i think is also groundbreaking that every apprenticeship -- that every apprentice who is reachable and is successful, that they will be able to provide employment to those

individuals. that they will have enough positions available, their planning and their budget have enough positions available for these individuals. so, it's very exciting. i think that while we cannot, again, preclude external people from applying in the same way that the state constitution precludes us from having residency requirements, we can certainly recruit and make sure we're valuingal the apprentice -- we can recruit locally as has been done and make sure the time as an apprentice is sufficiently valued to ensure that those individuals ~ will have access to apprentice civil service jobs, what we would call career appointment, and really be able to fill out their career [inaudible]. >> thank you for that. what are the eligible requirements for 34 17s? there's a civil service exam and other things for consideration? >> you have to be hired -- for permanent civil service appointment, you have to be hired off an eligible list. what we did is rethink the way

the eligible list is created. we've allowed a substitution [speaker not understood] to have x number of years at the journey level experience. we also have what we call a substitution, and that is at least 2000 hours in the apprentice program. [inaudible]. very unusual, i don't think it existed any other hiring in the city is that individuals who have not yet completed the program, which i believe is a 4,000 hour program, at 2000 hours, they can actually gain an appointment [inaudible]. subject to completion of [inaudible]. program and the class work, et cetera. so, it's a very novel [inaudible]. it will lead to great results for both the apprentices and the department. >> [inaudible] established now, it's going to be the law of the land or -- >> yes. >> is it still being worked out? >> presumably some person could appeal it, but we don't think that they will. some external person might think it's unfair.

we have -- we signed the agreement january. we're in the process of implementing it. >> thank you. thank you for that. okay, i really appreciate the presentation, very thorough. it was informative for me, especially that there have been very major changes within rec and park department and the positions within rec and park, especially in light of the budget. and i clearly have seen tens of millions of dollars have been shrunk from rec and park department over the years and has been forced to do a lot of work with less [inaudible]. around, you know, how [inaudible]. our staffing as best we can and provide resources for [inaudible]. the rec and park. i see the ruttion. i actually believe they've been really sound around places around the city. you can always point to problems that exist in terms of maintenance.

~ result but what i see in the world around me, district 11 [inaudible]. the crocker amazon park which is right close to my house was never up kept the way it is now. never. there were always overgrown weeds all around, outside of the park, moscow and geneva, well maintained and visibly pleasing all the time. so, i know that's a lot of work that the laborers do to make happen, and the gardeners do to make happen and i just want to say that it's really appreciated by what's happening. i do know laborers do have concerns about how this program is functioning, how it works, and it is important to hear from them. [inaudible]. perhaps we can make improvements on, we can consider those moving forward based [inaudible]. from the laborers.