>> good afternoon everybody i'd like to call this meeting of the san francisco public utilities commission to order madam secretary next item, please. >> item number 2 is roll call. >> commissioner courtney. >> here. >> commissioner moran. >> commissioner torres is excused today. >> can you call the next item please. >> approval of the minutes of

april 22, 2014. >> are there any comments on the meeting of april april 22, 2014? >> i'd like to call for public comment on the meeting seeing none public comment is now closed. all those in favor please signify by saying aye the ayes have it that motion carries. next item please. >> matters within the jurisdiction and not on today's agenda. >> i do have speaker cards thank you donna i'd like to call doctor jackson to the front please. good afternoon doctor. >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon i came to request that today you change from the fact that when there's

items pertaining to different subjects, we would like to speak on it. it happened to to me at the last meeting because the director have to make the report and you have to wait until he makes the second and third because that don't give us enough time. i'd like to say i received a call the fact i requested that she come her name is rosemary cambra the chairperson for the alaqua tribe i'm going to put this card so maybe you can see it on the over head. i have been the spokesperson and liaison for the tribe for a long time and in fact i'm also a member of the tribe and rosemary brought to my attention that some of your staff that's working with is trying to do something with

the olone's here in san francisco so what i came here today to request is that anything that you want to do discuss about doing anything in san francisco concern the olone tribe give me a call or you can also call mr. decosta who he also represent and i told her you would be meeting today maybe your staff don't know who's who i wear many hats and have been for many years and i don't just represent bay view hunter's point i represent the whole city and county of san francisco as well as the east bay. now, i want to thank you because when i come before you i give you respect and i'm going to demand respect from your staff. thank you so very

much and you all have a blessed day. >> thank you doctor for being here the next speaker card i have is from francis co, decost a. >> good afternoon i spent 2 weeks in new york lived in long island and man oh man i love san francisco. [laughter] let me talk a little bit about water commissioner as you know, that plans are made to build over -- i would say 40,000 units in the next 15 years and it's very easy to say they are going to build this high-rise buildings do this and do that, but then you all were watching

the tv screens and there was a huge huge humongo u.s. fire in mission bay believe me 8 or 9 huge structures could have been burned miracle lo u.s. ly there was no wind what am i trying to say? whether you like it or not you commissioners are responsible for advising and making sure that when people say they are going to be building these high-rise buildings and there are human beings in these buildings that we have to provide our fire fighters and our law enforcement and our emergency teams all the amenities linked

to safety and we have a couple of supervisors and you always have supervisors that bid the horse again revive it as they know the -- what is required in the standards of our city thank god we have a very good fire chief who is a woman and thank god we have a very good chief of police who's a man and thank god we have good people and we have to support them. we need to know exactly when the new planning is done, what type of high-rise buildings are going to be placed and in in an emergency, if there's a big fire, that we have the best type of firefighting equipment to address those fires because we can not afford to have a

huge fire and have hundreds and hundreds of people lose their life but some talk about new york, and i've been there, some talk about boston, and i've been there, if you want to have smaller fire engines, go to new york and go to boston: san francisco we need the high standards, the standards the fire department has adopted which are the international fire standards thank you very much. >> thank you francisco thank you very much for being here the next speaker card i have is from ann clark hello again ann. >> it's really a pleasure for for me to be here and i'm ann clark a resident of san francisco and vice president of friends of camp mather and i want to see you all at camp

find your volunteer leader and look for me when you are there. we're so grateful to all of you and to everyone who's here for everything you did and are doing to protect camp mather. it's really a miracle that we're opening on may 31st st and we'll be able to hold camp open all summer until we close august 16th and from the deepest part of our hearts and from everyone we talked to we really want to thank you and i hope you hear that message loud and clear it was tough it was rough and it was hot and for you to go and keep going and protect things and now do the restoration work it's beyond our imagination that we're

opening camp. again our and my deepest appreciation look us up and again i hope you really understand how deeply appreciative we are for a really tough job. thank you. >> commissioner vietor. >> i want to extend our thanks to you at camp mather as you thank us i want to be sure to appreciate you as well and thank you for all the work it takes your efforts and all the work you put in to keep the camp going and active and vibrant so thank you. >> i have one thing i forgot there's volunteers of the friends of camp mather going up next week a lot of things melted because of the heat of

the fire and making sure we can do what we can do to get the camp ready for the first group of campers. >> so please extend our appreciation to them. >> before you go i think it's curious that we had linkage between yourself and the last speaker it's important to acknowledge the great work being done by the men and women in san francisco fire department because to francisco's point and to your point -- they are our local heroes and i'm glad that camp is opening and glad that the recreation and parks department gets to do all that programs thanks for travelling here. >> one comment we've never ever done this before we do raise

money through raffles and t-shirts but we're having our very first gala we're very nervous never done this before but we want to honor all the people that did all that work to save camp mather we'll get an announcement wish us luck it's our very first gala we wanted to do it so we could publicly say to all the firemen and fire women to say thank you. >> that's exciting thank you very much. >> i'd also like to add that commissioner vietor is a regular camper. >> i am my 9-year old especially is a big fan in the family so i thank you on her behalf as well. >> thank you ann thank you for being here the next card i have

is from my sister melissa, macdermat. >> good afternoon. >> hi thanks for having us i just wanted to say thank you again for your support support of the commission mayor ed lee and supervisor chew as some of you know that program transformed my life so i just wanted to let you know that i'm very grateful that you are dedicated to continuing that so other people's lives can be transformed as well and all the good things the program brings thank you very much. >> thank you very much for being here. the next card i have is betty awn. >> good afternoon counselor.

>> afternoon. ed die echoing the comments just made again wanting to thank this commission and leadership in helping ensure full funding for go solar sf each year for the next 2 years will go a long way in creating over 400 jobs and demonstrate hopefully the power of the partnership in in the solar industry and apri and as well as solar installation company goes to show this pathway that we can build to green jobs to the state of

california as it continues to be a model for everyone. >> thank you for being here you have to give a shout out to the electricians who are with us today. please forgive me is it tony lee how about mr. lee for now? >> thank you, sir actually i came in for the meeting next room i saw you had a meeting i'm chinese been here for years we had a water crisis now we don't have water only and properly you need to compare with lots of countries san francisco do very well the price is reasonable and it's fine very good but i use very little water only when i was young every water we had to carry physical bring home to

use it even now i've been here 27 years already i don't make money now i can afford to live in the city we have a lot of asians that live in in the city we all come together. i think that you should tell the people now i tried to put a lot of container trying to save the water so i can use for the water so i don't need to pay my bill plus. now water in china look at the news only 2 hours the whole region is flooding every where flooding flooding i was so sorry california no rain look at the sky every day it's hot very nice but look at china flooded with water. it's monday for chinese so you are

going to not only -- i know you have a lot of big projects more and more tower coming our main industry in san francisco is tourists and hotel and restaurant they use the most water in industry so i hope that you can teach some of the family make a very simple system tell the people in the wintertime they can put it out collecting our water on and on teaching the people how to use it. they had a system. we had a lot of engineer and a lot of public relationship you can tell the people how to collect the water from the sky the free water for us i'm a taxi driver i'm trying to complain about uber next meeting room so --

>> thank you mr. lee thank you for being here thank you. i do not have any other comment cards on this item is there any further public comment? hearing none public comment is now closed madam secretary next item please. >> item five the communications the formal protest letters received the commission has on the table all the letters received since thursday's publishing and we have a letter from david and elizabeth frias. >> thank you. any comments on the communications? i do have a speaker card for item 5 i can i please call lorraine lucas? >> hi lorraine. >> hi. >> good afternoon my name is

lorraine lucas coalition for san francisco neighborhoods i testified at the last hearing and received a response from the puc, the staff, and i want to say they have been very helpful in responding to my inquiries and i thank them very much. we're having a difficulty in terms and what i meant in the last resolution was policy expenditures and some of the things that we think should not be paid with puc by the rate payers are capital projects and one example the wastewater treatment facility on treasure island we think should be paid by redevelopment money and

capacity fees and the redemption project should have been paid by recreation and park and large conservation programs should be paid by recreation and park and the youth employment should be paid by the mayors office of community development and the sheriff's budget i'm not saying these projects are good or bad i'm not making a decision or -- that they should be paid but i think the rate payers don't know these are in their rates when they are paying for water -- they are not aware of this and also community benefits programs when i talk to people they are very surprised that these are in water rates and i think the commission what they should do is look at the total ity of the projects and community benefits and i think

those should be taken out of the rate payers and if we need, as a city, to fund these projects we should fund them as a city, not through our water rates. thank you. >> thank you very much for being here today. so on this item there is no action i'll call for further public comment on item 5. >> good afternoon joan girardo i wanted to comment on 5 l and wanted in particular to comment on the response by mr. pearl to miss ann moller caen's question on why the 2-tier wastewater rate was being delayed for 3 years. and he states because the change disproportionate ly impacts customers with low water use and they want to make it more gradual for those customers, i just wanted to

state that i'm having a little difficulty with what the true cost of service is for treating a unit of residential wastewater and i know that in the corollo report they recommended a 9.93 cent uniform rate and before you is to delay that for 4 years but i wanted to point out that right now the current rates -- people that have families that are in tier 2, for the tier 2 units are paying $10 and $0.53 that's 6 percent higher than the recommended uniform rate going out 4 years so it seems that families households are larger and therefore using more water and are in tier 2, have been

subsidizing tier 1 users for many many years and we used to have 3 tiers now down to 2 and going to 1, but i think you should take another look at this point why would the uniform rate being proposed in the future be less than the tier 2 right now thank you very much. >> thank you again for being here. >> is there a short response to that question? >> thank you commissioner vietor. >> todd rydstrom assistant general manager and cfo we have in the past looked at our rates both water and sewer to provide indicators to conserve the water and so this, under new legal -- not case law but legal

practice -- has been discovered that we should move towards a uniform rate and this is one example where we're proposing to smooth rates over the next 4 years to move to a single uniform rate for sewer that will level ize rates and make the calculations easy but however on the other hand it takes away the price signal for water conservation because we have a combined bill never the less it's before you and to make it gradual we proposed it as as a 4-year smoothing. >> commissioner moran. >> thank you also on 5 l we are talking about the proposed regulations for admin ist

ering -- the rate let's just make one observation in the enforcement section as i read it the penalty for not reducing or not curtailing your your usage during a drought is that it would revert to what it would be otherwise ends up being a free bee so when they don't interrupt it goes up to the regular rate seems as though there ought to be some other provision in there. either trying to recapture the difference between the regular rate and interruptible rate for the period they enjoyed that and something that makes it not a free ride and the other part i didn't see basically a shut off provision my assumption is

these are metered services and they can be shut off if somebody is not complying and that should be in the regulation as well. thank you. >> thank you commissioner moran all right so we're still on item number 5. is there any other public comment on this item. seeing no objection and no public comment public comment is now closed. >> next item please. >> item 6 is other business. >> first of all i did get a communication from the public during the course of last week about mission delores related to underground water going on at the construction site for anyone who's for anyone who's been there there's a renovation on i believe it's the south side so i did reach out to

recreation and parks department staff as well as our own staff, so i'd like to get a report on the status of the ground water and if there's any plans related to the ground water there, i'd like a report at the next meeting if that's possible so communication has been sent in anticipation of possible public comment today which i don't see any public comment. >> commissioner torres? >> the other item is fast approaching is the joint environment commission and public utilities commission meeting scheduled and noticed for may 27th. we did have a discussion actually a couple of discussions about that meeting it's a pretty important meeting it's just about upon us and i'd like to engage the commission on topics starting with the notion that while often times we receive a lot of

attention for the things that we don't do for the environment there's an awful lot of opportunity to talk about the things we do do for the environment and we already heard from francisco, decosta and friends of camp mather so i'd like to open that to possible reports at the joint meeting commissioner vietor? >> i would also like to take advantage of this opportunity to congratulate the new director of the department of the environment that has been appointed debbie rafael and we could do that also when we have the joint meeting and i'd be happy to work on the agenda in advance with you and contribute some thoughts on that and debbie was someone that when i was the director from the

department of the environment i recruited from santa monica and she was many years later recruited by the govern er and coming back to san francisco to head up the department and i think it's a wonderful appointment and i'm glad that she will be in place to help and i'd encourage us to as we put together the agenda to ask about her thoughts and ideas what would make for a productive and fruitful meeting. >> thank you commissioner vietor my interest is along those lines but in addition to that to provide staff with an adequate opportunity to prepare presentations i envision a number of different brief but hard hitting presentations coming from puc staff related to wastewater management, our 100 percent renewable objectives and some of the other water conservation that we have going on and jobs

exponent and i hope you and i can have a more robust conversation about it off online and we have city staff and outside staff basically applying a lot of chemicals in the local environment i'd like to shed some light on that but if we're in agreement on some of the basic concepts then we can t up staff to do that thing they do and begin to kind of expose some of the good work that we're already doing related to the environment and begin to talk about the objectives and common areas and any other initiatives that we may be able to agree on. are there any objections to at least giving staff an opportunity to make a few different presentations related to some larger topics that are directly related to the mission of the environment and the environment commission?

>> yes. general manager kelly. >> what i would like to add or have you consider as you identify the topics maybe staff can talk about the opportunities that we can have or some of the challenges so that that it can be more of a dialogue versus just a presentation. >> right and do my colleagues agree with that? commissioner vietor? >> i'm interested in what they are going to talk about. >> they are interested in telling us what we're interested in talking about we have 2 hours commissioner torres and i think what we can t up for ourselves is what we already know we have expertise and we have a record of accomplishment and i think you know, i would like to see more regular engagement with this department and with this commission i