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. those are the 32 64s and we

have a number of interns that get placed in paid positions 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 get 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. and i have two names to call up first. vince courtney. [inaudible]. before we go on to our public comment. >> hello, and thank you to the department and ms. callahan for the presentation today. i'm sure we'll have a good discussion today about the apprenticeship program, which i know we all strongly support and [inaudible]. i also think it's important to sometimes step back and just look at where the rec and park department is. and i am very, very positive about the direction of this department. we had a budget hearing on the department's upcoming budget proposal. i think its was last week or the week before. and we were reminded of what we

[inaudible]. in term of the budget of the department, in terms of [inaudible]. general fund support for rec and park, reduction in number of gardeners, totally inadequate park control staffing. you know, in a lot of cities in this country [inaudible]. to a parks department, you would start seeing probably park closures, dramatic reduction [inaudible] of the parks. and i think because of the very strong leadership in the department under phil ginsberg and very strong collaboration between [inaudible] 261 and the amazing employees of rec and park [inaudible].

groups who volunteer and work with our park employees to improve their neighborhood parks. and, of course, the voters who continually and overwhelmingly support investment in our parks [inaudible]. park system has [inaudible]. play grounds and replace broken irrigation system [inaudible]. levels of community engagement and parks that are really -- have struggled and are moving forward. and we continue to have recreational offerings and other programs that very well could have been cut. [inaudible]. and i really want to give a lot of credit to the management of the department, to the women [inaudible]. and to our city for making sure the department moves forward. so, yes, let's all continue to

strongly support [inaudible]. to get on track to a middle class [inaudible]. >> supervisor, supervisor wiener . supervisor mar. >> [speaker not understood]. the presentation was wonderful and i just [inaudible].

[inaudible]. my vantage point in the reading through back and forth [inaudible] department that it seems that the department staff and mr. ginsberg have been trying to work cooperatively to try to find ways to support 261's effort while abiding by our hr rules as well. and i'm hoping that we move forward without the level of antagonism that i sensed in reading through a lot of the [inaudible]. don't quite understand in some ways the lack of trust that's come up over the past few months and i want to understand that more. but from the presentation that we've received, it seems that

we're supporting a strong apprenticeship program and that the staff have really give us a good understanding moveing forward by supporting it. that is my perspective, not only hearing from richmond district residents, but that support the department and the apprenticeship program ~ and also from former gardeners like jake sig and others as well. i'm trying to understand the antagonism that's here because i want to see [inaudible]. >> thank you. let's go on to public comment. vince courtney followed by [speaker not understood]. so, i want to thank supervisor farrell for chairing this, supervisors wiener and mar for your thoughtful comments. and especially supervisor avalos for giving us an opportunity to have a public conversation. there is a lot of information that needs to be covered. we don't have graphics and

we're not going to take an hour doing that. all we can do is ask you to have faith that we're here for a reason. and despite the fact that we've, you know, there are appearances, it appears that everything is being supported. i can get into some specifics pretty quickly, but i do want to give you some background because we did take the time [inaudible]. 2004 we had a dire situation [inaudible].

[inaudible]. fast forward to rec and park, we took that same document. we redrafted it and we began to engage horticultural apprenticeship program. it took about two years to get all the parties around the city -- should i stop? >> no, please continue. okay. it took about [inaudible]. on public comment or if we were going to kind of give you -- whatever you guys want [inaudible]. and i do want to say i agree with some of the comments. i think, i think that the general manager deserves an awful lot of credit and i do have to confess that i recognize that our issues, the laborers issues are a small piece of the pie. we're talking about maintenance [inaudible]. and about fieldwork and that's not an absolute priority for management. so, i will concede that point.

>> [speaker not understood] more of your concerns. please continue with more of your concerns. thank you. when we initiated this program, we do so on ~ only with the permission of our [speaker not understood]. [speaker not understood]. so, we work as a state certified board to administer this program. a couple of issues that came up today [inaudible]. the district captain program. the district captain program was specifically put forward to address concerns that our rank and file had with a level of professionalism and expertise that had gradually gone down. and had been allowed to go down through the hiring practices that management had been administering. so, we've been making every effort possible to raise the standard, raise the professional standard [inaudible].

professional occupation. for a long, long time now and many will agree, the hiring has been so lax [inaudible] your constituents that lack the skill, knowledge and expertise, and ethics, frankly, to serve em them the way we believe they're entitled to be served [inaudible]. and we negotiated this district captain ~ position for accountability sake. that died for two years. only after [inaudible]. where 25 or so district captains appointed to the current positions like last week. so, as much as, you know, we can talk about the powerpoint presentations and everything else. the facts are the facts [inaudible]. [inaudible]. before and after photos get real results that result in a camaraderie among the workers that e