scale? >> mr. richter is selling it. we are going to put a plug in for cold hardware. they are not available. it's a rather complex. >> in fact we don't even use the richter scale anymore. we use a moment magnitude. the richter scale was early technology. >> probably a myth that i hear most often is my building is just fine in the loma prieta earthquake so everything is fine. is that true ? >> loma prieta was different. the ground acceleration here was quite moderate and the duration was moderate. so anyone that believes they survived a big earthquake and their building has been tested

is sadly mistaken. >> we are planning for the bigger earthquake closer to san francisco and a fault totally independent. >> much stronger than the loma prieta earthquake. >> so people who were here in '89 they should say 3 times as strong and twice as long and that will give them more of an occasion of the earthquake we would have. 10 percent isn't really the threshold of damage. when you triple it you cross that line. it's much more damage in earthquake. >> i want to thank you, harvey, thanks pat for

>> good afternoon, everyone. welcome to the san francisco board of supervisors budget and finance committee meeting for wednesday, may 1st, 2013. my name is supervisor mark farrell. i will be chairing this meeting. i am joined by committee vice-chair supervisor eric mar as well as supervisors john avalos, supervisor scott wiener and we'll be joined momentarily by supervisor london breed. i would like to thank the members of sfgtv covering today's meeting jennifer low and karen lubert as well as the clerk of the committee, mr. victor young. mr. clerk, do we have any announcements? >> yes, please silence all electronic devices. copies to be to be part of the file should be submitted to the clerk. items acted upon today will be appear on the may 17, board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. >> all right. mr. clerk, can you please call item number 9?

~ 1? >> item number 1, ordinance recognizing small business month in may 2013; amending the planning code, sections 302, 355(a), and 355(e); and amending building code, tables 1a-a, and 1a-e, to waive fees for the month of may for certain facade improvements; and making findings, including environmental findings and findings of consistency with the general plan and priority policies of planning code, section 101.1. >> thank you from supervisor katy tang's office who is the sponsor of this legislation to speak. >> good afternoon, supervisors. thank you for having me again. my name is dee anna keson, representing the office of supervisor katy tang. we are introducing an ordinance brought before the board last year for implementation of pedestrian level lighting for small businesses. last year the impetus for this ordinance was real toy help support our small businesses in making a small but tangible change to the vibrancy of corridors. we found that a lot of small business owners didn't know that when they had to replace an awning that was already existing on their store fronts that they had to go through a permit process and pay a fee. so, we thought that this would be a great way to really recognize small business month and allow them to make those changes to their store fronts without that fee in place.

one of the things we really wanted to do is to make sure that since this is city-wide ordinance, that we let a lot of people know that this will be in place for may. and, so, we've been really trying to create an education and outreach strategy. in front of you you have a packet, a draft packet of informational materials that we'd like to pass out to small businesses to let them know. in it we have a fact sheet that is translated into three different languages, english, spanish, and chinese along with the fees that are related to awning replacements and pedestrian level lighting. we also want to work directly with your offices as well as the office of small business, oewd's job squad and neighborhoods and other agencies to really get the word out about this program. we understand it is a very short time frame since it's already may 1st because of the transition of our office, we weren't able to get as much outreach before hand as we would like to.

but having this continuous program, we hope more and more people are educated about improving their corridor spaces. and we've been getting a lot of great feedback from different committees and commissions. in line with that, we would like to submit small amendments to the original legislation and so you have that in front of you as well. we've vetted this to the city attorney's office who is the [speaker not understood]. so, online 15 you'll see the addition of local permit fees because the code advisory committee wanted to make sure that people knew these would waive local fees. they're supposed to be our state fees that are associated with improvements of awnings. also, the planning commission wanted to make sure that the signs had to be attached to awnings as opposed to a blanket fee waiver for all sign improvements on buildings. so, we made those changes. and then on page 2, line 25, we

reduced the definition of small business from 500 to 100 or fewer employees just so that we really target those small businesses that would really benefit from this fee waiver. one other addition that was just brought to our attention, line 4, we would add the retroactively waived fees since it is already may 1st. >> and just to be clear, are those amendments already been introduced or we should be adopting those today? >> adopting those today. and if you have any questions, i'm here to answer any of those. >> colleagues, any questions? okay, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> at this point we will open it up to public comment. we don't have a brae report on this item. any member of the public wishing to comment on item number 1? seeing none, public comment is closed. [gavel] >> so, colleagues, we have a few amendments suggested by supervisor tang's office. can we have a motion to adopt those? we can do that without

opposition. [gavel] >> we have a motion to push item number 1 forward with recommendation to the full board. >> so moved. >> and we can do that without opposition. [gavel] >> mr. clerk, can you please call item number 2? >> item number 2, hearing on recreation and park department labor practices and status regarding program with laborers local union 261. >> okay, thank you very much, mr. clerk. this is a hearing request called by supervisor john avalos. i will turn it over to supervisor avalos. >> thank you, chair farrell, and thank you for scheduling this hearing on this important topic about great program with the rec and park department. i called this hearing about the current status on the rec and park department apprenticeship gardening program with laborer's local union 261 and efforts we might take that we as a city are fully supporting the program and the local community workforce that it promotes. the laborer's apprenticeship program recruits local community workers for training and education in preparation

for long-term employment of our parks and open spaces. program participants earn a living wage with benefits with a raise for each 500 hours of service and completion of course work in landscaping, botanical science and park maintenance. after 2000 hours apprenticeship, apprentices are eligible for employment as a full-time recreation park gardner as they continue to gain cutting edge skills in natural resource management. one of the reasons that i called this hearing is that the landscaping apprentices have reese lently become challenged in their efforts to secure full-time employment as gardeners. i also heard there are challenges providing the necessary equipment for apprentices to do their jobs and continue their education and their growth. i have asked representatives of the rec and park department to give us background and history on the program and to also provide data with respect to apprentices who have been engaged since the program began in 2010. i can already tell you based on my familiarity with the program that it is truly one of a kind

and always state certified horticultural apprenticeship program in california. our parks are maintained for the enjoyment of san franciscans and their families because of the education and training that goes on into the program. that more than 70% of the program participants have been local hires means a big plus 230er our local community workforce. we will also hear from the laborer's union local 261 about how we as a city can increase our support for the apprenticeship program and fully promote full-time long-term employment opportunities for program graduates. i understand that we are joined by community-based organizations who work to recruit and prepare [speaker not understood] for the apprenticeship in their local communities, particularly in low-income and economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and their perspectives on the program. ~ finally, i expect we will hear from environmentalists such as the sierra club who has reesen'tly expressed their support for this program both because of its impact on our

parks and open spaces and based on the c-l-u-p support for local hiring and sustainable employment policies. ~ finally, i expect that we must touch upon related issues such as whether the department promotes the apprenticeship program and collective bargaining wages and benefits for landscaping, tree trimming and maintenance services and what plans we might develop to secure long-term funding for rec and park in light of continued staffing shortfalls and department challenges in promoting the apprenticeship program. we have various people from city departments. certainly we have our general manager from the rec and park department, mr. phil beginsberg who has been a big supporter of the apprenticeship program. we're also joined by vicki callahan department of human resources as well who may have issues to touch upon in terms of our civil service requirements and hiring. so, i'll give the mic over to

mr. ginsberg and thank you for being here. >> thank you, supervisors. you actually summarized the program extremely well, supervisor avalos. i don't even need to present -- >> great talking points. [laughter] >> you are correct, the department is a very big champion of our apprenticeship program. it is a part of our workforce investment program and that is what i wanted to give some context for and give a short presentation about all of the ways that we are trying to focus on local hire, on investing in our workforce, in training our workforce, and in creating a workforce pipeline for our local 216 apprentices, but in other sectors as well. and joining me today are our director of operations danny kern who oversees park and recreation division. he will do part of the presentation. our park superintendent anna alvarez who oversees and directly supervisors the apprenticeship program.

and bob [speaker not understood]. we have investment and workforce pipeline programs on that side as well. so, i would get into it if you can hit the slide presentation. >> thank you for sharing a copy of it. >> can you just turn it on? there we go. go back to the first one. this is about again our workforce investment. just to elevate the conversation a little bit, a reminder about our department's mission, which is to foster the well-being of san francisco's diverse community by maintaining beautiful parks, preserving the environment, and providing enriching recreational activities. last year we were blessed when the trust for public land named san francisco as the number one park system in the united states of america and reported that we have the highest performing and best urban park system in the nation. and that, no doubt, is a credit to the men and women that work in our department.

our department is only as good as the folks that are on the ground that are keeping our parks clean, that are taking care of our kids, that are -- make sure that our play grounds and buildings and facilities are safe, and that our parks are safe. our success is team success. just a reminder of the breadth of the system that we steward and for which you lead. we have over 4,000 acres of recreation and open space, 3,400 of them within san francisco, approximately 12% of the city's land falls within the jurisdiction of the recreation and park department. we oversee a marina with 6 71 slips. we have over 220 neighborhood parks. ~ 180 play grounds, 150 tennis courts, 82 rec centers and clubhouses, 72 basketball courts, 60 soccer and play fields, 44 ball fields, 35 community gardens, 27 off-leash

dog areas which is one of the highest per capita in the country, nine swimming pools, five golf courses, and at least for a little while longer, three stadiums. >> must take a lot of resources to take care of these parks, right? >> it does. so, let's look at our staffing. we have 850 budgeted and full-time equivalent positions, 106 active job classifications, 15 labor unions. it is important to note that over 93% of all of the people hired within the recreation and park department are front-line workers, work in the field. we have actually over the last three or four years had some very, very good labor relations and dispute resolution programs, processes,

communication and dialogue with our labor unions. in fact, since 2009 we have had but three grievances which reach arbitration. which means they've all been resolved at earlier stages. of those three grievances that ended up in arbitration, the department has lost one of them. we do take accountability very seriously. all of our staff are expected to participate in the department of human resources performance planning and appraisal process. we do hold our staff accountable to the highest professional standards. since 2009 there have actually been about 150 different disciplinary actions including 17 releases of people from probation. we take workplace safety extremely seriously. we have a very robust transitional assignment program which our goal is to get people who have been entered in the field back to work in a manner consistent with our physical

limitations as quickly as possible and as a result of that program we have saved over $500,000 this year. we are $500,000 under budget in our workers' comp costs. supervisor avalos, you talked about the importance of the apprenticeship program as contributing to your leadership on local hire. we agree, but i think it's also worth noting that the department through a lot of its youth employment programs, a lot of the different employment pipelines have really emphasized local hire. from march 1, 2010 until march 15 of this year, we actually hired over 2700 people, and that is because of the extraordinary amount of seasonal youth and workforce development type staff. that's a combination of full time and part time. and of those 2700 people, over 2000 of them were san francisco residents.

that's nearly a 74% local hire rate. in our apprenticeship program itself, we have hired since the program started -- successfully hired 20 apprenticeship residents. 20 of them are san francisco residents. our overall hire rate significantly exceeds the city-wide inter agency average of local hire which is around 40%. we take our human resources programs and our commitment to investing in and recognizing our workers extraordinarily seriously. you'll hear more about it shortly, but we are incredibly proud of our partnership with local 261 and their leadership and their vision in creating with us the first statewide gardner apprenticeship program in all of california. we have also simultaneously reinvented the way we have delivered recreation. it is considered a national

best practice model. we have something which we also partner with local 261 on, something called the william hammond hall gardner recognition awards which again i think are coming up in a short amount of time, another way in which we recognize the men and women in field in partnership with 261. together with 261, we just successfully implemented and launched the recreation and park department captain program. again, a product of a labor management partnership with 261, a product of the collective bargaining process with 261. this is a program which contributes to our pipeline which you'll hear more about in a second. it is a way of recognizing excellent field staff and future leaders in our department. we also have quarterly pier nominated employee recognition programs and quarterly workplace safety awards. ~ peer workforce development, and that's the construction -- crux of why we're here.

i'm going to invite denny kern up and he and anna alvarez are going to walk you through the pipeline on the park maintenance side. bob pelasio will walk you through on the park and recreation side, and i'm going to close. i'll bring up denny. >> good afternoon, supervisors. the slide you see before you is the pipeline for our park maintenance part of our mission. we have developed this along with the career path pipeline for recreation as well to build professional expertise and support promotional opportunity in the two broad areas of our department's mission, parks and recreation. i'm going to walk you through it very briefly here. you can see the six steps. i'm going to address 1850s of them and since there is a particular focus on the apprentice program we're going to break that one out separately. the pipeline begins with our 99 16 public service trainees which are funded through hsa

and they are part-time one-year term workers. they work 32 hours a week in a variety of unskilled labor tasks. and hsa initially screens those and then our local 261 represented supervisors go down to interview and make the selections for those nine f-16s who will work in the park system. next is a 24 10 apprenticeship gardner which we're going to come back to in a moment. i'm going to skip over that now and go next to the 34 17 gardner position. this is the backbone of our landscape maintenance mission in the department. our gardeners perform a wide variety of horticulture tax, [speaker not understood], field turf [speaker not understood] 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.