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 would likely be considering additional financing options. if we wanted to keep under the 2006 tax /raeutd rate in november, could we think about this as a trade off as transit money we'd want to think about in november. >> if the board chooses to live within that policy constraint of the tax rate, and nothing else changes, and we will know more about the property taxes over the next several months, but if neither projections /-r , nor the assumptions change, yes. dollar values today would mean less in the future. >> then the final one or two questions to the mayor's budget

director. i know we are all being asked to think about this on the fly in the last few days, but could we hear from you your perspective and the mayor's perspective all the funding authorities and this earthquake preparedness and safety bond, this is something we have to tackle now, and what is the perspective of the administration -- how we take care of our streetlights and the puc situation. we want to be adaptive there to make sure that the needs of the puc are taken care of. could you give us some thoughts? >> certainly, thank you. mayor's budget director. generally, i would say that you're correct. that just in the last few weeks we've all learned about the challenges associated with the power enterprise and one of the particular challenges that the

puc has raised with us is a challenge of maintaining streetlights. in terms of whether this belongs in the earthquake safe tiff safety and emergency response fund, the mayor's response is no, this is not the appropriate place to deal with it for a couple of reasons. one, we have typically not funded these kind of enterprise assets using general obligation bonds to -- we've worked very hard to stay true to our capital planning process. and three, there is a lot of work to be done on the issue of streetlights and supervisor wiener and i have spoken about this. we're eager to work together to come up with a strategy to address streetlights over the coming weeks and months, whether that's through the capital

plan, the puc's capital program or whether through the general fund program. i don't know the answer to that yet, but i think there is a need for time to develop the scope of the problem and some proposed solutions. >> thank you. i just conclude my statement since i had discussed briefly with supervisor wiener. in part because this had come up so quickly and we hadn't had a chance to vet this. i wouldn't be prepared to vote on this today to support this. in particular, because i think we have to think about whether streetlights belong in an earthquake safety bond and the fact is, we have not been considering this over the last few years. that being said, if there's a majority of this body that want to think about it over the next week, i understand supervisor

wiener's motion is to amend it. to give some conversations to this, i think it would be entirely appropriate to think about it. i just have a lot of questions right now about whether this is something we should do at this moment. >> thank you. supervisor avalos. >> i would like to second the motion brought to us by supervisor wiener. i really welcome the establishment of it, which is done back in 2004, but i think there's a flaw in the process. mr. strong talked about the process, five meetings, that

they had about discussion about the easter bond, but there was no feedback mechanism for the board. i mean, i think the president of the board is taking part in those discussions, but now it's to the board and we're hearing about it for the first time and we're having a conversation that is probably more appropriate to have in the planning committee. one thing i'm thinking about is is there a way to build up a structure so we can have these discussions in a place where they really should happen and hear where the board should be finalizing and adding to what should be in a bond. in my district, the issue of lighting the huge. i have very dark streets, i don't have a large commercial corridor that illuminates other parts of the district. street crime is something that's real. lighting is one way that we want to get to be able to resolve those issues. i'm

considering greatly thinking about how we can increase the lighting facilities we have. this could be a good process. right now, the capital planning process is one that's very archaic. >> supervisor wiener. >> thank you. i just have a few follow up questions. first, for mr. strong. a couple things, in terms of whether it's appropriate to fund a capital need that's technically in a enterprise department with a general obligation -- i appreciate your acknowledgment that that is something we've done in the past and we're planning to do

it again in november by having a bond for muni, which is an enterprise department. i appreciate that acknowledgment. i guess my question is also, with streetlights, you made a comment about how this has somehow been an issue, but the fact is we have a capital asset that happens to be skidding inside the puc and enterprise department, but the department has been completely unable to care for this asset. not because of lack of desire to care for it, but because they have no funds essentially to take care of these beyond a very basic maintenance program. i guess the question is how do we think about that when you have an asset in an enterprise department that has just deteriorated. and i would add to that, that i

have heard from the puc particularly giving some of the capital needs that they've known about for a while, that they don't know how they're going to pay for, that the puc has been talking about the possibility of transferring streetlights over to the general fund because they cannot take care of them. it seems to me a perfect fit to say out of a general obligation fund bond we would pay for capital needs of those assets. i mean, in other words, just because it happens to be an enterprise department -- if you're a resident of san francisco, you don't care if this is a general fund obligation or enterprise. these are lights that are falling apart and making your neighborhood less safe. >> mr. strong. >> i agree with what you're saying. when i was saying -- i'm not suggesting it's not an issue that the city shouldn't

be undertaking, but it's an item that's not been brought before the planning committee. our ten year budget lists what we're going to fund and what we're not going to fund. this is an item that has not come before the committee in any shape or form. , which is part of the reason why i think we're struggling a bit to understand what it is, what the problem is, how we can best address it so that's what i was referencing when i was talking about an issue. there certainly are areas where the city wants to make sure the enterprise departments, as well as general fund departments are doing a good job taking care of their assets. >> in the end they're all city assets. i was surprised it's not in the capital plan. i think this is a communal responsibility of taking care of these assets and it's odd that it's not in the capital planning because these are

important capital assets. thank you. >> yeah. >> to the controller, just to clarify, first of all, in the past my understanding is there have been situations where we have a bond that comes out of capital planning at one level, and i think for example maybe even the last parks bond was increased in size. it's not unprecedented to say we have a little bit extra that we want to do in the bond and so the size goes up. >> there's certainly been amendments made by the board. we are asked to update these projections very frequently and every time we have new information we do that. >> and also to be clear, i am extremely supportive of the policy adopted a number of years ago that general obligation bonds should not increase property taxes above,

i believe it's a 2006 property tax level. and i support that and my understanding of how that works in terms of what actually determines cal bond impact property taxes, is the issuance of a bond, which is why we have a policy that we only issue bond as we're retiring the equivalent value bonds. >> that's correct. authorization of a go bond is somewhat equivalent to having a credit card is authorized. when we are putting together these projections we need to make assumptions regarding assuming the voters approve it on this date, we work with departments to determine what the likely sales dates are and it's upon those draws that we're making -- >> right, but typically we make a decision about when to actually issue the bond and that determines the property

tax rates. >> a number of things determine the property tax rate. one of the significant ones is when we sell the bonds. >> there are also situations where the voters will authorize bonds issuance and sometimes some of those bonds aren't issued for years after the fact. >> absolutely true. at sames we have voters authorize bonds and the departments take longer to implement the bond. we found recently that the latter seems to be true. we've had stresses working the other way where a department has intended to implement a program in five years, is now able to do it in four. >> one of the criticisms we received in 2012 is you haven't spent your '08 money quickly enough. i just make these points -- i don't think that this rather modest increase of

this bond, given all the other factors is going to somehow explode the property tax gap and i would not support violating that property tax cap and i think that has more to do with theish issuance of the bond. >> looking at the 30 year life of these bonds being paid off, there's certainly more impactful things than the amendment you're talking about. >> thank you. i think one of the -- i think the conversation today is actually demonstrative of why our streetlights are in such poor condition. they've been ignored for far too long. this is a classic bonding situation. all the bonds have been labeled in a certain way and titled in a way that streetlights don't

allegedly fit into any of them, that's not a reason to avoid investing in these streetlights. we don't have to make that final decision today and i would encourage you to pass this motion so we would have another week and be able to make the final decision in a week. >> thank you. i have to support the motion that's on the floor. i too, have -- don't want to get caught up in the semantics of the title. i just want to remind people it was just over a year ago where there were a few breaks that happened in the mission district, largely because it was dark. i've worked for the last year with the puc on increaseing light output for the existing lights that we have on the street, but also getting lights that are underneath the

overpass of the freeway that have been not working, getting them working. i just want to echo the comments that i'm hearing today from supervisor avalos, supervisor wiener, as well as supervisor chiu about the concerns around lighting. like i said, they're inextricable in my mind. i am also happening to support the motion because i want to continue the conversation. it has happened suddenly, but i know that i have had conversations, at least in the last year, if not the last two years, with the budget office, with miss kate howard about increasing puc's budget so we can increase light representing the southeast part of the city that has now transitioned from light industrial to homes and new development, there is, again, a sense of this gross development, this concentration

of new people coming, and our infrastructure is not in sync with having new residents living in the area. i have had conversations from my district captain about the correlation between crime safety and light. again, this is a pertinent conversation that's happening and very timely. it concerns me that we haven't heard from the puc. i don't know if there's a representative here, but this is certainly -- i guess in the week that we begin to have this conversation, hopefully we'll hear more from the puc. i'd like to understand their needs. i know the needs in district ten, but i'm curious to know the needs across the city. i know the puc has an interesting pilot program they'll be unvailing sometime this year as

it relates to the technology and the grid and keeping track of the lights, particularly those that have burnt out in getting their replacement bulbs in a more timely manner. >> thank you. supervisor yee. >> thank you. i want to thank supervisor wiener for bringing up this issue. the -- i get in my district actually concerns lighting or the lack of lighting or broken lighting and so forth are many of the calls i get. i appreciate you're bringing this issue. i think it's very important and we need to have discussion around it. i would, at some point, that we need to put some resources into improving our streetlighting. i'm a little concerned about that it is being brought up at a late time. i would have appreciated more if this had

come up a lot earlier, but like supervisor avalos, i believe that this is only a week, it's worth having some focused discussion around this issue. i don't necessarily think that i might be supporting amendments at the end, but i'm willing to listen to the arguments. what it does for me is that we're making a statement that this board believes that streetlighting is very important as we move forward and i hope that's a message, if nothing else, to the capital planning committee that they need to -- we need to start addressing this issue so that's where i stand. >> thank you. supervisor campos. >> i'm not going to repeat a lot of the comments that have been made. all i can say is that i'm actually surprised that the capital planning committee has not discussed the issue of streetlights before

because it is such a basic issue in terms of what i hear from my constituents in district nine. and in terms of public safety, streetlighting is actually among the most important factors in terms of the safety of a neighborhood. more effective in my respects than things like cameras and other tools that law enforcement can use. beyond that, i think we have to get past the semantics of who gets to pay for it and under what program, because at the end of the day for the people that we represent, they just want the lights to work and supervisor cohen, thank you for mentioning some of the things that have happened in neighborhoods like the mission and supervisor wiener and i have actually done work in terms of rapes that took place and immobilized the community. but one thing is clear is that we all needed to make the

lighting issue a priority and so i will be supportive of the motion and i would really ask the capital planning committee to figure out a way of let ing ting members of the board provide input about not only this issue, but other issues because if we're not talking about streetlights, i do wonder what else has been left out because i think it's important to be as thorough as we can and at the end of the day, you know, we've done a number of walks in the mission with puc and it's really frustrating because you have responsibility on the puc, but also pge, and i think that for the residents there's a great deal of frustration that the city cannot do something as simple as getting a light to work. i think if we're able to issue parking tickets within a minute of the time having expired, i

think we can do what we need to do to make sure our streets are well lit. i'll support the motion. >> supervisor cohen. >> i'm sorry -- >> okay. our clerk, angela, informed me according to our board rules, a single supervisor has the power to duplicate. there's four files before us. now our deputy city attorney has a comment. >> just one tweak to supervisor wiener's proposed amendments. because any amendment requires a continuance, what i would suggest is that you further /aeu members amend the resolution and the ordinance today to put a place holder in place for information about the seqa findings. my office will work with the

planning department to draft this specific language and we'll get that to the clerk by tomorrow, but to ensure that the amended version is good to go next week, i request you add that language. >> i'll accept that into the motion. >> okay. president chiu. >> just a couple concluding comments. as i said, i agree with all the comments that have been made about the critical nature of our streetlights. and the fact we need a plan. i think the issue for us is to include this at the last minute and the real question comes up is our commitment to voters around our property tax rates. i want to address the comments made around the capital planning committee. just let folks know we know that capital planning and thinking about capital infrastructure is not sexy, but there is a lot of work being done by them and they have done a lot of

outreach to all of us. there are numerous document that we receive on a regular basis from the planning committee. staff offers us regular briefings on activities. we approve on a rolling basis the ten year capital plan and we do this on a regular basis. in fact, my recollection last time we did it last year, supervisor wiener had made an amendment that we prioritize transit fund and that was what led us to the yearlong transportation task force that is proposing similar bonds for november. i just want to ask colleagues that we all know how important infrastructure is and would hope that if there are issues that are of important that we all work with our planning staff. there is a lot of work that goes into this to make sure we 're addressing all the needs of our city. >> thank you. thank you to the mayor as well for bringing this forward.

so we have four items before us. supervisor wiener and avalos have made the motion and seconded. can we take the four items without objection, including with the amendments? is that right? >> mr. chair, you would want to specifically amend the duplicated items first. >> okay. with the amendments from supervisor wiener, and then the tweak from deputy city attorney, can we take the original items first without objection? >> and just to be clear, mr. chair, you would be amending the duplicated items 15 and 16 as stated by supervisor wiener and stated by the deputy city attorney. that would be without objection or a roll call. >> okay. >> without objection. >> can we take these items

without objection? without objection? and now we have the original items as well that we've already have been moved. can we take those without objection as well? >> you would be sending all four items to the february 5 board meeting as a committee as a whole? >> as i understand it, all four items are going to be continued for one week to a committee of the whole on february 4 and we'll hear public comment at that time. can we do this without objection? great. thank you. madam clerk, can you call the next item. >> thank you mr. chair. >> we now go to our special accommodations. we have quite a few today. what i'd like to do is recognize supervisor yee for