says

>> good morning, this is the regular meeting of the government audit and oversight committee. i am the chair of the committee,

supervisor london breed, and to my right is the vice chair, kate tang, and to her left is david chiu. today the clerk, is erica major and thank you to sfgov tv. >> items will be stated on the agenda than stated. >> okay, call the first item. >> item 1, ordinance amending the park and police codes to ban convicted graffiti offenders. >> today, i am proud to

introduce this comprehensive overhaul of graffiti here in the city of san francisco. this is a month-long of collaboration with various city departments to discuss things that are both administrative as well as legislative. the police department and the department of public works and the 3-1-1 board and advisory board, so many folks that have participated and bringing us together to make sure that we are taking a responsible approach towards dealing with graffiti ban throughout the city. i want to thank city attorney, herre herrera, in particular that will spend a lot of time collecting restitution and dealing with issues with this legislation. and i want to thank ed miskin,

from the eta, and mohamed urer, and mrs. kelly, and chief of police suhr and director of finance. and the san francisco police department that is in charge of managing a lot of graffiti cases, and the gab members, the san francisco arts commissioners and staff and artists and san francisco beautiful and its members. thank you all for helping to craft this proposal. i want to give a little background about the reason why we came together to really address this particular issue. according to our knowledge and legislative analyst, it costs the city close to $20 million annually to abate graffiti on our buses and property and all

throughout the city. and the city could use this money to use for other things. as former director and supervisor now, i see the huge cost of graffiti incur. and i hear from property owners that paint over offensive graffiti and to return the next day. i have seen people wait for the muni buses. many trying to remove graffiti, and needs solutions. i didn't want to use those who view crime as a harsher punishment. but yet to research best practices in jurisdictions all over the country, new york and chicago and san diego, and to create a nuance plan to reduce

graffiti and provide better outcomes for offenders. most of our proposal is administrative, not just legislative. but i want to explain all elements. we will pursue repeat offenders. we estimate that over 90% of graffiti in san francisco are tagged that are by serial offenders. pursuing a criminal case for one act of graffiti, one tag, is an effective use of resources. but the criminal courts have proven that it's not a medium for the same tag. the proof beyond a reasonable doubt is difficult to achieve unless you have many incidents. civil courts have preponderance of evidence and they recognize that a unique tag is specific to

an offender. we will collect and tag evidence, we will as a result centralize evidence collection of tag employees, and particular particular particularly photograph offenses with their smartphones, with their reports to the san francisco police department leveraging existing resists. we have customized the 3-1-1 office to give san francisco police department the best data possible. and so reporting employees don't have to make estimates on each offense. chief suhr is providing for analysts to catalog offenses and reports of unique tags.

and another expert officer would be needed on as-needed basis. for serial offenders, not withstanding the last item, all of this is administrative and several on the way. other jurisdictions in california are using a similar system. in east los angeles they saw a drop of 55% in the first four years of implementing this program. if that happens in san francisco, we expect to save over $11 million. now the second element of this legislation before us today, it tightens graffiti controls and codifies new procedures. i have a few amendments that i will ask my colleagues to support today, just clerical

related. i want to give you what we are trying to accomplish with the legislative piece. we will revise the city code evidence public code 1300 so it can be exercised against the perpetrator and not just the victim. we want to use rules for public and private property and provide for spray paint and eching tools and slap tags in any city park. and revise the code to provide for any conviction of carrying spray paint and eching tools on any city vehicle. and finally for graffiti evidence and to pursue all effective avenues. i want to thank anyone who has

worked on overhauling this system. it's been a long time coming. we have a lot of support, not just from supervisor tang, and chiu but also the mayor and chamber of commerce are all in support of this legislation. over all we are to reduce the cost of graffiti removal, not costing the city much additional dollars. and we want to intervene in the lives of those folks committing these graffiti offenses, so that those things don't elevate into more serious crimes. i think restitution and community service could make a

big difference. overall we want to be sure that the city is better for graffiti victims, and yes, better for graffiti offenders. we have a lot of speakers here today and our public works director, i will start with you. i know you have another appointment to get to. >> i don't know if that's a promotion or demotion, but i run the department of parks. but i work closely where my colleagues in the department of public works. thank you, i want to voice our department's support for supervisor breed's proposed graffiti prevention and abatement ordinance. as we have discussed in previous

discussions about this. the department spent $300,000 last year to abate graffiti in san francisco parks. it's more than the parks, it's just sightfully painful for our staff to work as hard as we can to keep our parks beautiful. and to come in almost every morning to find our most beautiful and precious assets tagged with spray paint. whether a playground, a tree or building or ball field, it just stinks. and to put that amount of money, that amount of cost into perspective. that $300,000, is equivalent of more than three arborists to maintain the health of our trees. we don't have enough arborists to touch our trees once every

300 years, we could invest in more officers to help keep our parks safe. or it's worth four additional swim instructors to help meet that demand. there are just better uses for money than cleaning up after other people's bad behavior. we appreciate this board's effort to give us another tool in the tool box to take this on. >> thank you, next speaker, officer herrera from the san francisco police department. >> good morning, supervisor, i have been an officer for 13 years, starting in 2001, i have been with the graffiti abatement officer for the last three years.

and i think, i just wanted to thank you first and foremost for your hard work on this program. i am really excited about it. i am ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work, and looking for the resources that you dedicated and for your interest in graffiti vandalism. do you have any questions for me at this time? >> supervisor chiu? i think we are good to go, thank you. >> thank you. >> nancy alfaro from the 3-1-1 center please is next. just want to start thanking you and your team for working hard on revamping the 3-1-1 system to make this so much easier to report. >> thank you, supervisors and thank you supervisor breed for taking leadership on this issue. we are really excited to make

enhancements to our 3-1-1 mobile app, and at no extra cost to report graffiti. and we are leveraging existing data platforms so we can centralize reports and provide reports to the police department, that will include maps and pictures and cost estimates and size and tag i.d.s, so they can identify trends and use this valuable information if taken to court. we are happy to be a part of this and collaborate with your office and all the various departments so we can improve on this important issue. >> thank you. and thank you again for helping us with this. i am going to ask larry stringer to come up from the department of public works. so many different departments involved. >> morning, supervisor. >> morning. >> larry stringer, department of public works and deputy of

operations and chair of the graffiti board. i want to thank you supervisor breed for bringing this ordinance forward, it was definitely needed and overdue. the department of public works currently processes 50,000 issues regarding private and public graffiti, and spends close to $3 million in efforts to deal with that. the thing i would say, it's not fair, the public and the city are victims. the private property owners are victim, and there is no means to rectify that. this legislation will help not only deter but hopefully reduce the overall graffiti within the city. and i would like to say, i think it's fitting because the

graffiti advisory board sponsored its first international graffiti conference in your district last year. and you were there, that's right. and i think it's both fitting and right that you bring this legislation forward. hopefully that we get to the goal of zero-graffiti for san francisco, thank you again for that. >> and shall i say that it was a very well-done conference and diverse people from the community and arts community. and what bothered me the most, the challenges that artists go through the process of permits for these murals and now their work is vandalized. and this is out of hand and glad that we are working together to get it done. >> much appreciated. >> i will ask john hanley from the mta to come up and say a few words.

>> thank you, supervisor. good morning. i will focus on what we need to do at the sfmta to help ensure that the legislation that is proposed will be effective and make an impact. and i would also point out there is no better timing than to introduce this than right now. because as you can see from the photo here, we are making over a five-year period a billion dollar investment in our rolling stock fleet. and one of the things that you heard and we have looked at best practices for doing that. we expect when we are making the public investment that we are making, to keep the vehicles in

the kind of condition and prevent some of this kind of stuff that has happened over the past. just a moment you talked about kind of the impacts of all of graffiti. it's not just on the money in particular. it has a severe service impact. we have to pull buses off the street, or hold buses in to take care of graffiti. certainly erodes the public confidence that our riders have in our ability to take care of the system, and create an environment that is user friendly on the vehicles. as pointed out earlier, we are taking a number of crafts at the sfmta, everything from grazers to painters off of their regular work to deal with this problem. and it's also a great morale problem for the employees.

that you are asking them to operate a vehicle that is less than it should be. that has an impact on the way that we deal with the public. this is a quick snapshot and i emphasize here reported incid t incidents. i say reported is what is in our log. at the bottom of the chart that is not visible on the screen, but we will pass around the paperwork. as i said this 220 incidents is reported in our control center log. but a division like presidio division that runs along the mission street corridor, on average has 12,000 tag hits annually. and many occur on the back of the bus and overhead panels and

many are not reported until the vehicle pulls in. what we are showing here is a snapshot of what we are reporting. but the bigger problem for us and i will get to what changes we need to make to make sure that everyone is in a position to report graffiti incidents. and again i won't highlight that. for us this is a direct cost to clean the vehicles and the facilities. it's $15 million, it doesn't include things like lost revenue or loss of service. it's simply direct clean-up costs and people leaving other activities to deal with this problem. some actions we have taken, the cleaning techniques. we have looked at all kinds of things, many places if painted over and over we have to replace

interior panels and that has a cost. what we are doing and back to the timing. first of all with the two-year budget for july includes an additional resources for cleaning. and also we will introduce first at the two division operating, woods and kirkland a zero-tolerance program. what that means and basically, that's where the new vehicles are and the rehab vehicles. vehicles will be held in if they have any kind of graffiti. we are reinforcing standards in that regard. we have employed 12-14 hours a day at this point mobile cleaning crews. so we are encouraging people to report it and see if we can clean it up in the field. we have made a huge investment in upgrading the onboard videos, that will help us in