recycling in a different kind of way so, you know, and the feeling i got watching that we say live with when we were in bay area at the community meeting remember that young man that talked about what he did you could see people in the audience say wow. this guy's on top of that and this is one of the projects of all the city departments that got the federal money to do the jobs we've got to be the only program in the city that has something recycling from that. and i can't be prouder. i think one of the things we have to continue to tap for all the 0 people that think that you know the whole green movement is about simply some things they're not a part of its everyday stuff and it's also about the stuff

you care about and also about jobs and a good and cleaner environment that speaks to all of that i can't say enough about it about where this could be and how we can position this department. to speak to the city about it's importance for its growth as a city and everybody's moving to those places how do we work together to be sustainable because we've got to do it if? the pattern of immigration for the whole country. thanks commissioner. colleagues >> the only thing i want to offer it it may not be necessary would it be helpful until you

said the head of the sustainability to d.c. from the post office i was going to offer up the colleagues maybe a letter from us i heard about what's happening but it's not necessary. >> i think that's an outstanding idea if i could go a step further invite them to come before you and give us an update on how we're doing. >> maybe if it's the will of the people on behalf of the commission we want a just want on the status of them and invite them to come back in september. >> all right. comments on director's report. >> oh, i'm sorry.

>> in doubt. >> i don't do them. >> ms. flynn. >> jackie with the institute of san francisco i want to reaffirm the warm welcome and i'm totally impressed with a lot of what i've heard today, i see a new direction coming from the department of environment and in the last several weeks i've spoken with several of the staff that reached out on multiple occasions for the different outreach programs and stoop you've got a community affiliate that's still very much wanting to share information directly with residents in san francisco. and again, i'm totally impressed to looking forward to seeing our work >> thank you. >> thank you.

other members of the public wish to speak on the director report seeing none, public comment is closed. thank you if we can hear the next >> update on progress for the coordination of air quality management sponsors raphael director and transportation programs and manager david birch of the principle environmental planner and research air quality management and presentation and discussion item. >> thanks monica director raphael if you know set it up for us. >> sorry i'm learning to press bottoms. i'm thrilled autonomy are you going to hear today from our own colleague bob hadden who runs the program for the department of the environment but in the bayer quality district if we are

ever going to reduce green house gas emissions we're going to have to get people out of their cards it's going to take carrots you you understand what i mean >> and so as i was getting briefed on this i realized the program is at a crossroads but time to come before you and let you know what a goes on you're going to hear there was changed at the state a law passed at the state that engaged the air district that influenced our program it complicated and i thought it was you're aware of that it is going to change our program. >> bob. >> it's a pleasure to be here

i'm joined by dave bickering with the air quality district i'll have him join me we've spoken before about the san francisco's commuter benefits we've given you yugd our representative is not here we're joined if we have questions sue at&t synson will answer those. but i wanted to give you a quick recap of the san francisco ordinance how it works as director raphael said there's a new program that applies to businesses throughout the bay area. it was actually modeled after our city ordinance it overlays our program so i wanted to give

you a quick recap of where we are and let dave go into the detail of the recreational program. the city's commuter benefits program is part of our environmental code adapted in 2009 and it's goal just as debbie said reducing the amount of people that drive in single occupancy vehicles and reducing green house gas emissions it applies to businesses in san francisco to businesses that have 20 or more employees if their located as a business and have 20 or more employees anywhere in the nation our covered under our ordinance. those who are covered by the

ordinance have a choice of 3 things they can provide offer to their employees stirs or first is to administer a pretax benefit for the pretax available through the federal tax code up to $130 in value each month or the employers can provide their employees a subsidy for use of transit up to $130 there's a minimum of '$75 they offer the benefit or thirdly, set up a shuttle system for the employees so they have a choice of 3 types of ways they comply. what we've found since 2009 as we've been rolling this out and doing a lot of education and

outreach and information work with employers within the city so they know what is required and require reporting back from them. we've learned that be a third - well 40 percent of the companies that do offer commuter benefits are doing it it as a result of the ordinance so it is effect of those who provide the benefits in san francisco they're not only providing the benefits to employees here but locations elsewhere they've extended those benefits to employees in other states so it's spreading the local benefit as well as

nationally. we've learned not surprising that the most important of the options that are chosen by employers is to provide the pretax by the people that's one that is the simplest to apply and gives them the benefit of reducing their payroll taxed so many times it cost neutral option for them. as we've - well, we've found to measure how effective this has been in terms of numbers of employees and in terms of green house gas emissions rukdz more than 90 thousand employees from businesses covered in san francisco are getting the pretax benefits about 23 percent of all employees that are eligible to receive them take advantage of them and a little bit over 90 thousand refound are using the

benefits and using the transportation authority formula for the average demands we're saving as much as recurring gives her by 2 hundred and 86 tops per year. as we move into the compliance mode we started last year trying to educate and get the employers ready we started using the warning and the possibility of citations and use that starting to use that last year. we are well as we start to us use that i want to emphasize our motivation is not to try to

collect penalties but we're trying to motivate the employers to offer those benefits to their employees. what we have laid out in the regulations is a teetered effort for enforcement that begins or begins with a warning letter that gives the employers 90 that days after that we can issue a citation that sets off several 90 day subsequence to a fine up to a maximum of $500. we've found the warning procedure itself just getting the word out to employers we don't see any evidence you're in compliance you will be subject to citations that is if u have to get their attention and as we move down the thirty day increments employers who have

not in the past in compliance almost all of them come into compliance just by getting the warnings move into compliance i if the record could reflect having the letters is an effective way to get people to listen to us. so that describes what we have in place and where we stand with it. i'd like to introduce dave ambitious to describe how the region program operates and how we fit into it. >> good evening and thank you, thank you for the opportunity to be here and thrill about what we're doing now with the new program at the regional scale. by way of introduction i'm with

the bay area quality mettle district we're responsibility for air quality throughout the 9 counties bay area we have a board of directors the mayor and supervisor mar and supervisor avalos are on our board. and our preliminary job is to regulate the factories and dry cleaners and gas stations the air resources board is responsible for the tailpipe emissions we have the strictest standard with the standards there are so many vehicle traffic if the city and state we recognize we have to do what we can to reduce the motor vehicle >> that's how we religious the use. when we saw when the saying city was doing it seem like this is

was a good concept based on the low hanging fruit can we expand what i folks have been doing. i'm sorry. i'm not familiar with the clicker. so with that background we went to the legislator and said this was a great idea we need authority to try this. so we took the san francisco program as a model and used that as a item late for a bail called senate bill 1329 and gave the air district the opportunity to develop a commuter scale program on a pilot basis at the end of 2016. toward the end of the pilot

period we'll be preparing a report in terms of how many employers are oh, the benefits and what's the vehicle trips to the work sites and the reduction of green house gas emissions. so what this means we went through a process reaching out to employers and got together a new regulation we call regulation 13 one that was adapted by our board of directors on march 19 and ratified on march 26 and now in effect we're in a six months period of working with the employers to try to get them into guidance by the end of september. there's a lot of similarity with our regional program and the city ordinance and a few differences that are significant.

in terms of how needs to comply with the regional program our they recalled is at a higher level for employers that have 50 or more employees here in the bay area that's based on the aggregate number of employees so if they have multiple work sites of more than 50 employees they're in the program it's for the nonprofits and anybody that has people on the payroll. we've tried to keep the program refrigerates easy for employers to comply we don't want this to be bumper to bumper so pick one of the 4 benefit options registration on an website and then invite the employees about the commuter programs and how

the pleading employee can take advantage of it. so those are the core requirements. the four xhurnt benefit options are similar the first are similar the employer can let the employee to use the tax dollars to purchase their affairs that is a tax savings meaningful reduction and option two a dick subsidy to offset the transit fair and 3 provide transportation directly to the work site through a shuttle. we offer option for the custom

take care benefit our ordinance or regulation being the reason why we're talking about employers in rural areas of sonoma where they don't have a lot of transit and this may not be village. so our option four is designed to provide an alternative more flexibility for those employers provides an opportunity to promote other alternatives like that bicycling and tell uncommonly and those types of things that's one of the differences. at this point, we're in the implementation phase we've not yet hit the deadline september 30th so we're focusing on the outreach and assistance to employers just like san francisco did in the early years we've got a big task because the regional registration applies to roughly 10 thousand employers

and 10 thousand work sites. we're collaborating with m t c and primarily doing that through the 511.org program we've got the materials and staff to work directly with the employers that point assistance. from the beginning we've recognized the city program has been in effect we can implement our program that will minimize confusion i'm going to turn it over to bob he'll explain how we coordinate >> thank you dave where we have recognized from the outset we're facing a potentially confusing

situation for employers we've worked aggressively as dave said with the air district to community as wildly and clearly as we can to businesses throughout san francisco and so they said who they report to and also to make sure that everybody knows who is subject or fell under our scope they fall either under our program or the air district program nobody is leaving the coverage situation. so one of the things that is significant i think to point out too is that for our standpoint we'll continue to work with employers in san francisco regardless of their size if they need help with complying with the regional program or ours

we'll continue to provide consultation services to comply. and as we move into the period after september 30th when the regional program has reached the point where everyone is covered by this program hydrais supposed to be recorded their compliance as we start to move through our compliance process our warning process for the employers covered under our local this year we're working to make sure we do that in lockstep with the air district to the extent we can we know they'll be taking some form of action to let the employers know they potentially

face compliance and enforcement efforts as well so we wanted to make sure there's a consistency among all employers that have presence in san francisco and the momentum we've started over the past 4 years we're bringing large numbers of employers into compliance that sustains within no loss of momentum. i think we'll have a good database to compare note with at the end of this year and look forward to work with the air district and the m t t c that implements the programs in comparing the records >> alrighty. >> i want to emphasize one of bob's slides san francisco ordinance is going to now be

employers between 20 and 49. and if you're 50 and above you're the regional. so it can be very confusing that the only people getting letters with fines if you have 49 you'll get a letter from us 50 you'll get a letter from the regional. we see if we that didn't work closely together there could be confusion it's because we have a program in place that we have the confusion and i believe there's one other city or two other cities that have the same challenge >> in the bay area. berkley and the airport has one of its own >> the city of richmond i wanted to point out if you've heard confusion i don't think if you will we're aware and working hard to easy that transition.

>> thanks bob and david for joining us and colleagues have some discussion and ideas commissioner wan. >> how do the business report to san francisco and how will this new state audience have a different requirement or is that the same. >> employers covered from the san francisco ordinance report to our website. the difference is and this is what we've been going the outreach the difference is if you're employer of 49 or more you'll be reporting to the m t c regional website. >> colleagues commissioner gravanis. >> it goes without saying it is good to hear another example of how san francisco has taken the

lead and our staff has been putting the work in its yes, ma'am last day in other places and the region so congratulations to our staff and congratulations also to the air district for working hard to make that work. >> i'll point out too new york city is working on a come take care for lessons leader for our program. >> i have a quick question if then the partnership and i imagine the answer is question working with david and his take place helps to provide additional capacity to sf to share and support the efforts here mutually and support the

effort of the region it's a win-win it's not like we're expanding and providing additional challenges for rsv staff but as we partner it helps us to provide additional capacity locally as well. >> yes and having the regional plan helps. >> we'll see the numbers continue to steady increase. >> we'll make sure. >> okay. it's great thanks for all the data it's helpful to see the outcomes it's thorough thank you. bob >> public comment on the presentation? seeing none public comment is closed any further thoughts next >> view and approval the 2012 for the city staff and have environmental purchasing ordinance in our packet is a copy of the 2012 annual report

sponsors and the speakers will the commissioner gravanis so this is a discussion and action item. >> commissioner gravanis. >> thanks to quickly put this go would p into the inspection that is one the things we do everyday we heard a wonderful point as the policy committee a debate whether she should come and give the report again but that's not the reason for committees to humanitarian them out and make a recommendation so in short we had a great discussion and voted to recommend we adapt the envelope bio green list that you all have in our packets so ms. raphael

and i can try to answer questions but it's straightforward in a lot of ways and illustrates there's a lot of work to do why does it say 2012 it's hard to get the data in time to be acting on it and in current time. there were a number of questions about compliance why are some of the departments buying bottled water and it's a long slow process but what's working is the only time that our department is giving to other city departments when they do the right thing a positive approach is effective so i'm glad for that >> thank you. colleagues thoughts commissioner king >> great story my brother is out from new york state and he's at my house i don't have bottled

water. this is san francisco man. he's getting it out of the tap. now every couldn't can't say that about their water but once again that's why we're a unique place to live and he says oh, that's pretty good and it's cold too. >> any other thoughts or ideas are questions. you, you know, i'm trying to think back to the conversations with commissioner stephenson she's passionate about i'm trying to think off the top of my head she wasn't at the policy committee meeting shiites sheets into getting into the new purchasing is there anything