>> welcome to the san francisco board of supervisors meeting, of january 28, 2014. >> supervisor avalos, avalos absent. breed present, campos absent, chiu present, cohen present, farrell absent, kim present, mar present, tang present, wiener absent, yee present, avalos present, campos absent. mr. president, you have a quorum. >> could you please join us in the pledge of allegiance? >> i plead allegiance to the

flag of the united states of america. and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> colleagues, we have our december 17, 2013 minutes. motion to approve minutes, without objection, minutes are approved. >> we are in receipt of a letter that it is in best interest of the city to and request the board continue its discretion over the process. i will place a reoccurring motion on the immediate adoption calendar for february 11, march 11, april 8, may 6 and june 3 or until the

emergency is terminated. >> can you read the consent agenda. >> these items are routine unless a member objects. >> would anyone like to sever any of these items? colleagues, let's take a vote. >> on items one through 13, supervisor kim i, mar i, tang i, wiener i, yee i, avalos i, breed i, campos i, president chiu i, cohen i, farrell i. there are 11 i's. >> those items are approved and ordinance a passed. next item.

>> to approve a 60 articulated trollly buses not to exceed $95 million. >> can we do same house same call? >> thank you. i wanted to -- i just had a number of questions and i wanted to ask the mta if they could come forward. . >> john hailey, director of transit. >> good afternoon, thank you for being here. this is a contract which, i think that in terms of the need to buy new trollies, i don't think that anyone questions that and we want to move expeditiously to do that, but the reason that i wanted to ask you to just provide a bit more information is that, as you

know, the contract before us for $95 million involves the same company that was involved in a prior contract and in fact, i'd called a hearing on that contract and that's new fire of america. i'm wondering if you can just talk a bit about the differences between the two contracts and how is this different from what we had done with respect to the other contract. >> thank you for the opportunity to respond to that. as you know from, and with your help and support, we've undertaken a program to replace the entire rubber tire fleet, which is among the oldest in the nation. and part of what we've done -- we've done it through a combination of federal and local money and we've looked for ways to replace the fleet in the most expeditious fashion

while getting good value, so in the case of the initial replacement on the rubber tire, the first contract you referred to, we did that through the minnesota consortium, which was a statewide thank sanctioned by the federal transit administration. when we turn today look for trolley coaches it's a very different market. there are only four cities, i think five cities -- excuse me -- in north america that use trolley coaches. by joining with seattle who was already well into -- they were already three months into the beginning of a procurement process. and by joining together with them, it made

sense for a number of reasons. number one, from an engineering design standpoint. limited number of agencies and manufacturing, unlike a typical diesel bus. we also saved some on the timing in terms of when the vehicles would be here and by going into the process in seattle, by agreeing to allow us to have the options transferred, did a lot of the heavy lifting when it came to administrative support. their processes were sanctioned and they followed all the federal guidelines. in these first two procurements, which were both done through different competitively bid arrangements, one through the minnesota consortium, the second a competitive process by king

county. and for example, this friday you will see an advertisement for additional rubber tire buses that will be purchased through the traditional city of san francisco process so we are moving as some forthrightly as we can to reduce the age of our fleet, improve the reliability and we're looking at any methods that are available to us that are sanctioned by our funding partners and follow all the necessary processes and laws. >> one other thing that sort of stood out for me was that, to the extent that we're doing a piggyback contract by piggybacking on what king county has done, we benefit

from the rfp that they did, but we're actually paying more per vehicle, per trolley than king county is and i'm not sure as to why that is the case since we're relying on the same requests for proposal. >> yes, sir. you're absolutely right and we are, and there is good reason for that. first, we're buying -- our initial need is for 60 foot trolley coaches, which cost more, but the key reasons are that in our particular needs, for /khapl example -- one of the reasons that our price is higher are for additional cameras on the vehicles, which provide security features. another major reason is a communications package, which

includes announcements in the bus which is particularly helpful to disabled community, but also led destination signs for example. we have gotten tremendous feedback and specific feedback from people with vision or sight problems on the buses that we brought in for the destination sign particularly at night. that's something that we think provides customer service. the other thing since seattle has air-conditioning in ours, we had to make some differences with ours. i think we have as part of the package a side-by-side of what items we've requested that are different and what the cost of each of those options are, but we believe both through the institutional arrangement and the features that we feel are essential to the bus to perform

in our environment, which is very similar to seattle, but still there are differences. >> when you use the piggyback process you do it when you're buying the exact same thing and to the extent you're talking about pay inging $109,000 more per vehicle, i'm wondering if there was consideration for doing our own process, given that the king county rfp was done in 2012. in fact, may of 2012. it's almost two years old. >> well, i think when we started this process we never anticipated to have the exact duplicate of the bus or the trolley coach between the two cities. i think there are some key features that the power source -- the type of propulsion

package that we talked about, but i think the cost benefits as far as what we looked at and i think the offset for perhaps of what you're saying is the upfront engineering costs that we avoided by working with seattle -- because again, this is a much smaller and tighter marketplace than the general bus so a lot of the technology that's coming -- one of the things that everybody's interested in is the off wire capabilities. seattle has a very different approach than we do on a day-to-day service. there were some of these features that were different, we anticipated those, but i think in terms of the cost you're absolutely right. we're paying more per vehicle and we can provide an itemized list of what those features are

and each one of the justifications for that. i think again, had we started on our own, we would have had to incur additional design costs, engineering costs and then administrative costs that seattle -- to set up a whole selection committee and panel that took months for complicated and competitive evaluation, king county picked all of that that saved us money. >> just a couple more questions. do you have any concerns about the fact that when the king county process, as i understand it, of the three bids that came in, only one was deemed to be responsive, so in that sense only one was really considered? >> i'm -- there were -- if i understand the question, and please correct me if i don't. there were three bidders and one of them was deemed non responsive in the initial

stages prior to the best and final -- or the technical evaluation stage. they were deemed to be not financially secure. there were two bidders that went to the end of the process -- new flier and nova. our role during the evaluation process -- we didn't vote, but we provided technical support and evaluation throughout the process. >> i think that answers that. someone asked me this question and i think it's clear in the record that it's different. one of the issues in the prior contract was the fact that the buses were delivered before the contract was voted on by the board. as i understand it in this case, nothing has been delivered. in fact, the prototype is not going to be delivered until 2015, as i understand it. >> that is correct that -- in

terms of the second part of your question. it is correct, nothing on the trolley coach has been delivered, but i will say, if i may, in the first part on the first contract that you refer to, which is the second one, no buses were accepted until after the notice to proceed was issued. >> thank you very much. thank you. >> i see no other questions. can we have a vote on this? madam clerk? roll call vote. >> item 14, supervisor kim i, mar i, tang i, wiener

i, yee i, avalos i, breed i, compos i, president chiu i, cohen i, farrell i. there are 11 i's. >> thank you. the item passes. should we call items 15 and 1 together? >> yes, mr. president. >> thank you. >> together they are the ordinance calling and providing for a special election to be held in san francisco on tuesday, june 3, 2014 for the purpose of submitting to the voters a proposition to incur $200 million of bonded dead for the county of san francisco for a resolution to de/kpwhraeur that the public interest demand the improvement of neighborhood and police stations, water system, facilities for the medical examiner, police

department, traffic company and the police department forensic services division. >> thank you. supervisor chiu. >> thank you. on behalf of the capital plan ingning committee, the mayor, i appreciate you consideration of item 14, which is a $400 million bond. it would fund critical repairs to our fire houses and police stations, our emergency fire fighting water system and our other aspects that our first responders need to safeguard our city everyday. this is in response to what we know will be the next big earthquake that will hit us over the 30 years. this continues the work of the 1 bond that was approved in 2010. i want to thank everyone for

their work over the past year to refine this. i want to thank our budget committee that approved this out of committee a few days ago and ask for you sue /p-rt. support. >> thank you, supervisor wiener. >> thank you. i want to thank president chiu for his continued representation. i've said this publicly before and again, that our capital plan is one of the best things that has happened in city government in a lot of years and it's added enormous value in terms of our being able to catalog what our capital assets are, what their needs are and then putting a plan in place to address those needs. i want to commend the capital planning committee and commend brian strong who's here, who does a fantastic job on that committee.

i'm very supportive of this very important bond. with that said, we are ultimately the policymakers who need to make decisions about the capital needs and financing those needs and one of the unfortunate items deficiencies of our capital plan is that class of very important municipal assets is missing, and that is our streetlight system. as you know over the last year and a half, i have called for two separate hearings on our streetlight challenges and you all -- many of you have cosponsored that hearing. we know that throughout our city, we have huge problems in terms of reliability of street lights. these are classic capital assets that this city has neglected for many, many years.

our streetlight system has huge capital renovation needs and we have neglected those needs. the pfc we learned at our last hearing, spends approximately $250,000 a year on the maintenance capital needs of the 25,000 streetlights that it owns. that is not acceptable. we also know that, as far as i'm aware, there is no plan in place to actually fund the huge capital renovation needs of these streetlights. recently in my district we had a streetlight that collapsed on to a car. when they looked at the street lights in the area they all had the same problem. this is not acceptable. it is capital work by tree i

treeage. triage. i am proposing and have distributed amendments to you that would add additional $25 million to this bond to renovate on our streetlight system. it is not all of the capital needs of our streetlight system, the number is higher, but this will be a very solid start. i also know, and i have been having many conversations with the capital planning committee, mayor's office and controller's office that we -- i totally respect our capital planning process and i know that there are a lot of different views about how bonds should be formulated and how they should move forward, but i would like for us to consider this amendment. what am i proposing, since any amendment would require a one week continuance is that we duplicate the file for both

items relating to the bond, that we make these amendments to one set of items, but not to the other set and that we then forward both the amended items with the $25 million for streetlight work and the original version without the $25 million for streetlight work, continue them both one week until next tuesday and over the next week i look forward to dialogue about how we should move forward with the capital needs of our streetlight system and we can make a decision next tuesday about whether to send the current version of the bond to the voters or the slightly larger version that will help begin the investment that we need in our streetlight system. >> you move to duplicate the original version to the duplicated file that has the

amendments? >> yes. it would be to duplicate the file to amend one version and to continue both versions by one week. >> first of all, i wanted to say i appreciate supervisor wiener's support of making sure we have a plan for our street lights, given that this was not something we discussed at our planning committee, i'd like to allow for questions from that committee. i'm hoping brian strong is here. my understanding is the reason they're not considered is because it's not a general fund item given that these are managed by pc and while we want to make sure they're working, that's the reason why it hasn't been considered in the past and typically we reserve our go funds for our general fund liabilities. could you talk a bit about how you view the

discussion around streetlights? >> thank you very much supervisor chiu. brian strong, executive director. streetlights are part of the public utilities commission, they do fall under the ten year capital plan. they have not been called out specifically in need of repairs or renovations. they are listed in there. and what we would do is assume they are part of the public utility commission asset that they have in control. the general obligation bond program has been generally focused on items that are timically covered by the city's general fund, not by enterprise departments, however there have been some exceptions. notably there is some money that went to the port of san francisco in the 2008 and 2012

general obligation bonds that were to address some of the parks so it's part of the parks bond where they added some open space items there. >> what's your perspective about whether we should be adding this at this time. >> i mean, my perspective is certainly -- and i appreciate soup upervisor wiener's comments and the needs to address the streetlights. my concern, i think goes to the process that we've had and that we do have a capital planning process. we've had, i think somewhere close to five meetings on the emergency response bond just since november. we've had the capital plan update that happened last april and we've actually had meetings in between then so my concern would be how do we make sure that we're living up to that process and making sure we're not introducing things late in the game that haven't been

fully understood or considered by the capital planning committee. >> thank you. i also have a question for our controller. i think one thing we appreciate about our bond measures is we made a commitment in 2006 that we would really try to ensure that new bonds as they cycle on wouldn't go over the 2006 tax rates and i'm wondering if you could make a statement about the impact of the additional expenditure on the tax rates. >> good afternoon, ben rosenfield, controller. as you know, when you adopt a capital plan, you adopt as a financial constraint the assumption that new go funds will only be authorized and issued as old go bonds are retired or the property tax grows. this is a constraint, not subject to charter limitation. but based on our current

projections of property, amounts over $400 million at this time would push up the tax rate marginally above the tax rate in several years. i should say, of course, that's based upon a projection and we update that projection frequently as it's related to very long term property taxes in the city. factors that do influence that projection include growth and assessed value at the time, the pace at which bonds are issued, future interest rate environment and assumptions regarding what the go bonds, the board and the mayor may subsequently put before the voters, which are not factors today. there's a lot of factors that influence that tax rate, but based on these factors, it would marginally push it above the tax rate. >> we wo