>> the meeting will come to order. this is the regular meeting of the government and over sight meeting. i'm supervisor breed and to my right is -- to my left is supervisor david chiu and cohen. the committee clerk is major and i like to thank sfgt for staffing the meeting. >> silence all cell phones and speaking cards and any documents should be submitted to the clerk. items acted upon today will appear on the february 4th agenda

unless otherwise stated. >> thank you. are there any other changes to the agenda? >> there are no changes. >> madam clerk, can you please call the first item. >> item number 1 is ordinance amending the business and tax regulations code, by adding article 15a "public realm landscaping, improvement and maintenance assessment districts," to provide for establishment of assessment districts to finance landscaping, improvements, and maintenance of public realm areas, including parks, parklets, sidewalks, landscaped areas, plazas, and gardens; to authorize the purchase of real property with assessment funds, where property will be a public realm area and the district will provide landscaping, improvements and/or >> item number 1 is ordinance amending the business and tax regulations code, by adding article 15a "public realm landscaping, improvement and maintenance assessment districts," to provide for establishment of assessment districts to finance landscaping, improvements, and maintenance of public realm areas, including parks, parklets, sidewalks, landscaped areas, plazas, and gardens; to authorize the purchase of real property with assessment funds, where property will be a public realm area and the district will provide landscaping, improvements and/or maintenance; and making environmental findings. >> thank you. i'll turn this over supervisor cohen. >> thank you for your interest and today's agenda. i want to thank you for hearing this item today. i have been working on this ordinance for a year now. this ordinance mirrors our city's successful community benefits district area in dog patch and

we have a number of open spaces that are not owned by the city. they are either held in trust by a non profit organization or held by cal tran or resident have taken upon themselves to improve. in the city we've developed a robust grant opportunity for communities to improve and in some areas acquire open space, but we have no consistent funding source available for long term maintenance. this enabling ordinance establishing a process and the procedure for accomplishing a district is maintaining and improving open spaces other than the public -- other public realms which we're calling the green benefit district. so you're here and have heard it first. green benefit district. that's a new term. this ordinance is identical to the

procedures and process that are currently used to form the community benefit districts focuses on commercial district, so many of you are aware of that form. this will allow for the first time residential property owners to vote to tax themselves, there's an interesting novel concept, willing to tax themselves to pay for maintenance and improvements to neighborhood, open spaces. this ordinance before us today does not form any particular district. it sets the framework and requirements of potentially interested parties must comply with to form a district. interest in this mechanism is not limited only to dog patch and portions of patrol hill and there are several neighborhood organizations that have expressed an interest in formatting something -- informing something similar to better maintain their own neighborhood open spaces. now, you should have received a copy of some technical amendments that i'm

asking the committee to adopt in accordance with this ordinance today. this is non sub sti tifb and seek to clarify. first, that the majority of the governing board for the funds for an assessment district is for property owners in the assessment district. the funds can be used for recreation improvements, he can logical system improvements, pedestrian and bicycle amenities. it would provide better clarity on the role of the management plan and changes to the legislative digest to clarify the process for dissolving an assessment district. now, i'd like to provide an opportunity for mrs. tono from the work force development to briefly describe to us the formation process for these districts. >> good morning, and thank you.

>> good morning, chair breed supervisors. i currently oversee the city's community benefit district program. currently the petitions -- the cbc process takes about a year. currently the cbd program which will be a plowed to the project which says that they're collect 30 percent of waited vote. upon receiving that petition, we take this through the legislative process where we have a process include the department of elections and require that of all ballots submitted, 50 percent are in favor of forming the district. owd is in favor of article 15a, kurnltly our cbd legislation doesn't allow for residential areas to form community benefit districts so our current cbd law is limited and the gbd would allow for many

communities in your own neighborhoods to be formed through the gbd program. if there are any other questions, i'm available to answer them. >> thank you very much. seeing there's no colleagues with questions, i would like to bring up sarah ballard who was hand our partners in this effort. good morning. >> thank you, supervisor, and good morning chair breed. sarah recreation parks department. i'm glad to be here to support this legislation. this krd of -- this idea of neighbors coming together to support their park and open spaces have been something that has been kicked around in our world and we have struggled to figure out the appropriate mechanism to end able them to do that. we're grateful to supervisor cohen and andrea and working through the details to do us and enable us

to give a vehicle for neighborhood and park groups to come together to support their open spaces. we are familiar with working with bids and cbd's. we have property in some of the existing spaces and look forward to working with the green benefit districts that are formed in supervisor cohen's neighborhood and hopefully throughout the city. >> thank you. >> well, at this time, i'd like to open up for public comment. i see we've got a couple of neighbors here. do we have cards? are there public comment cards? no. okay. are there any members of the public that like to talk. i want to remind everyone that we have two minutes. they'll be a pel at -- they'll be a bell at 30-seconds. >> northwest patra and vermont street and it's a neighborhood that was split in half by the 101

freeway in the 1950s. some homes are owned by families who parents owned the property before the freeway built. some are turned into condos and some are single family homes. the neighbors surrounded by potential developments enabled by the eastern neighborhood plan is lacking in green space, but it contains two acres of green space that can be used by the community. the green space is the 101 freeway and the work has improved to improve the park and to plan meetings with a landscape architect that the city paid for with money that they earned to create an urban area for the loop which surrounds the freeway and bounded by 17th street. week working with san francisco alliance and dpw and cal trans on this provide. some neighbors

are willing to provide volunteer efforts to maintain the property. that's not enough. more is needed. creating a green district will put together a management structure and a source for small capital funding that will care for these areas and provide by green street skate and other green projects that will benefit the environment. thank you. >> perfect timing. very good. next speaker. >> hi, i'm alicia holloway and i'm a homeowner in dog patch. this legislation is important to me because in our neighborhood we have -- we don't have a lot of large spaces to develop traditional parks and so the legislation will be allow us to form a gbd so we can develop and maintain these smaller spaces that we've been working on and provoid a consistent -- provide a consistent framework and infrastructure and source of

revenue. thanks. >> thank you alicia. next speaker, please. >> my name is bruce and i'm a dog patch property owner and as alicia is. we've met with a number of property owners in the district or dog patch as we call it were they've supported this idea. there's a big appetite in our area for it. we have neighbors come out to create the largest park and we like to continue that trend through the district. thanks for your support. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> hello supervisors. i'm tony kelly and on the board patrol neighborhood association. thank you for the hearing and thank you supervisor cohen for doing the hard work to get this before you today. i want to undermine a couple of points that the supervisor mentioned. one, this is a very

unserved area in terms of open space. there was a report that came out from the parks -- it talks about how under served the eastern part of the city is. what neighbors have done over the past 15 years is really a gorilla gardening. plan first, and ask permission later and we've created more than a dozen open spaces in the neighborhood and this is really one -- one of the only ways to do this after the founders move on. it came up through the mayor's open space task force and i want to credit elizabeth wade and then later in the mayor's office working in the benefit district. it took those partners as well as supervisor cohen who will a

tremendous amount of work and the neighborhood work to get it to this point. it's a good model as long as we keep it home grown and affordable to residents. we're grateful and it's great that mrs. ballot shows that, at the same time this is not for rec and park spaces, but it's for the grown spaces because they're not under city ownership. thank you. >> ron miguel, is that you. wow he can !. >> thank you for hearing this. i'm a member of the gbd steering committee. while on the planning commission, i constantly heard from neighborhood groups and rightly concerned citizens to the lack of green space needed to serve our rapidly expanded neighborhood. i understand the problems of rec and park and appreciate mrs.

ballards concerns. the situation that would occur if any land or obligations were added to their charge. i know green san francisco. i shared the open rec and park open space and recreation to prozach. i was on the community that wrote the golden gate park and master plan examine i shared the concord at gate park. as president of the neighborhood organization, the richmond district, i was intimately involved in the rehabilitation of nine parks and recreation areas. what's interesting is the richmond district and pa tril hill and dog patch has eight rec and park locations but the richmond which consist of low density, single homes has a

three and a half mile border and a whole park boulevard and the green needs. the green benefit district will come into play that it can provide green which is needed now and for the next 20 years. there's a huge density coming in to patrel hill and dog patch. 1300 maybe 2,000 units. we need this for the next 10 to 20 years in order to maintain dpreen in the district. i appreciate your support. >> are there any other members of the public that like to speak on this. mr. yep. >> good morning, supervisors. i'm douglas yshg ep and i've lived in san francisco for 61 years and i'm familiar with this neighborhood. first, i would like to thank this committee for holding this

hearing. for the record, in my opinion, this committee has had way too many cancellations and that's enough said. secondly, i'm opposed to this idea. in my opinion if you're going to involve direct and park department, if you talk to activist in other neighborhoods in the city, they say it's not that interesting working with them because obviously park and rec has their own agenda rather than the neighborhood's agenda in my opinion. i've driven throughout the neighborhood and based on what i heard this morning, you seem to be making prodpres so i think you'll be making more progress without this item. in my opinion, park and rec has had noticeable difficulties maintaining other projects that was supposed to be high priority in other neighborhoods especially in the richmond districts. it took a lot of behind the

back discussions in order to get those two areas cleaned up from the way they had degenerated over the past ten years. so in my opinion, i think that the neighborhood would have more control and ultimately more benefit by doing it the way they're doing it now. let's put it this way, if the neighborhood supervisor's behind it, whatever you decide to do as a neighborhood will succeed. having park and rec is going to stifle things and make it a bur democratic mess. thank you. >> any other members of the public that like to speak on this item. seeing none, i think we can close public comment at this time. and i'd like to just take a moment to say thank you to our partners that have helped us, rec and park and i like to callout the neighbors have had numerous meetings in the

community on the weekends, in the evening, on the weekends and on the evening, and i think the weekend of mother's day if i'm not mistaken. that's commitment. i also want to acknowledge michael and handy who have provided technical support and doing the writing and the neighbors, thank you for coming out. it has been a pleasure to work with you on this item. colleagues, i hope you'll be supportive and accept the amendment. >> supervisor cohen, are there any other member that's would like to make comments. >> i'm happy to move in if the supervisor like to move in. >> it has been moved and without objection, the amendments pass. >> thank you. >> colleagues, can we take this without objection? okay. the motion passes. congratulations council member cohen and patrol hill.

>> madam clerk, can you call the next item. hearing on the budget and legislative analyst's performance audit of the fire department. >> okay. thank you all for being here today. we are calling this hearing, supervisor cohen and i to address issues in the fire department. supervisor cohen has taken the leadership on this issue and i commend her for the work that she's done on this as well as the budget and legislative analyst for their detailed report and looking forward to this hearing, but i want to get started with supervisor

cohen who will provide opening remarks for this hearing. >> good morning, just a few couple -- a few opening remarks and thoughts. last year was the chair of this committee for gao and that's a government audit and oversight committee. i called for this hearing because many people including myself have heard from several current and former members of the fire department of their significant concerns related to the department's process for recruitment, testing as well as promotion. specifically i had concerned about the testing and hiring process, lacking transparency and the decisions on how was being promoted seemed to be based on a series of secondary criteria that's not specified or evenly weighed in the hiring process. additionally this audit takes a look at one of the often forgotten

components of our fire department and that's the emergency division and their concerns about ability to transfer from ems positions from fire positions. it's my hope to discuss it with the budget and analyst that's here today and the members of the fire department so we can make sure the hiring process is fair for our future and our current fire department employees. this will be a friendly, honest and spirited conversation. i'm looking forward to hearing from the department and the representatives. thank you for being here today. thank you for taking this very seriously. madam chair, i turn it back to you. >> colleagues, are there any other opening comments? we're

going to get started with hearing. we'll start with the budget and legislative analyst report, and we'll move onto the fire department and then we'll move onto the human resources department for the presentation. and go from there. so -- >> good morning chair breed, and supervisor cohen and supervisor tang. budget and analyst office. i'm going to present a project manager for this audit on the city's processes to recruit and on their over staffing process. i want to introduce smith who is a key part of the audit team, so i'll turn this over to amanda.

>> thank you. thank you chair breed and supervisor cohen and members of the committee. my name is amanda guma and i'm here to provide a brief presentation on our audits and findings recommendations. on 9th, we were directed to conduct an audit with the effectiveness of recruitment, hiring and promotion at the san francisco fire department as well as to look at the overtime staffing practices at the fire department. we are initiated our project on july 23rd. our report was released on january 13th, it includes 6 findings

and 19 recommendations. the fire department of current structured has 43 fire stations and three stations at san francisco international airport and station 49 which the station from ambulances are deployed throughout the city. they're currently as of october 2013, ,131,393 unformed employees at the fire department. 1,070 are in fire suppression and 323 are in emergency medical services. the fire department has the fifth largest department budget in the city. and its resources are derived from the general fund. total projected expenditures for the fire department and fiscal year

totalled on -- >> we're having a technical glitch here. in 1997, the city's ems emergency emergency function was relocated from the department of public health to the san francisco fire department. and today the fire department continues to provide both fire suppression and emergency medical services to the city. the table presented here shows the total calls for service broken out by function of ems and fire from 2005 through 2013.

over the past few decades the courts and the elector has taken -- in 1988 in response to civil litigation, a federal judge ordered a consent decree which had work force requirements for the san francisco fire department. this was a requirement that the department achieve 40 minority representation in the work force and 15 percent in the female work force. after about ten years, the courts terminated the terms of the consent decree through a stipulated order which called on the city to use best efforts to maintain the diversity requirements established in the consent decree.