teach our children the connection to the earth and environment it's truly >> good afternoon, everybody, i would like to call this meeting of the san francisco public utility's commission, to order at 1:38, would you call the roll. >> president courtney n >> here. >> vietor. >> here. >> and moran. >> here. >> torres. >> here. >> and commissioner caen is excused. >> we would like to approve. >> moved. >> any public comment? >> seeing no public comment, i

will call a roll, signify by saying aye. if there is no objections from the colleagues, i will call item number eight out of order and i am going to hang it over to the general manager, kelley. >> and thank you very much. and and i just wanted to provide this afternoon to talk to you about proposed legislation, that supervisor weiner is presenting. from the conversations that we have been having about the financial situation, and we have been as we presented to the commission and the mayor's office and to the board, at that time, we had some consider concerns about our financial situation, and a couple of things that we were highlighting was that one, we

were concerned about general fund departments and raising the general fund rates, and two we were talking about, mount tunnel and that was a major concern, that impacted our ability, or our financial situation. and we rec, which is a regulatory issues and then, the other final one is looking for new customer and also, maximizing and so we talked about those challenge and we wanted to have supervisor weiner come up to talk about the legislation, that he is currently proposing. thank you for joining us today. >> thank you. >> thank you commissioners for giving me the brief opportunity to talk about this today and this legislation, and i want to

thank general manager, and puc staff for, having been really helpful in making sure that we, know the facts and we are appreciative to that. and so, to briefly discuss with you the legislation, and that i, or that i along with supervisor breed that we together, are sponsoring at the board of supervisors, to help the puc address, its lack of retail customers. and resulting lack of efficient resources to maintain the infrastructure of the power of enterprise including the street lights and as i know, kelley you have been discussing this quite a bit in terms of these massive unmet, capitol needs and since i have been on the board, we have done a lot of hammering around it. and i thought that it was important to finally take a step to give this agency to

give you, the ability to actually starts addressing that and so that is what this legislation is about. and as you know, commissioners for nearly a century, the puc has provided clean, hydroelectric power to the city departments from the airport to the muni and the san francisco general hospital and the other very critical agencies, in our city. and the energy is 100 percent greenhouse gas, free, and it is clean energy. and there are many benefits to having this public power clean hydroelectric, enterprise. and including local control, and lower rates, transparency, etc.. the power enterprise as you know has massive unmet capitol needs. we know there has been a lot of pressed around the mountain tunnel and there are other infrastructure needs as well and i know

of refusal, to be the power provider to the new development in san francisco. and it did not require the puc, to become the power of the provider under the charter.

the puc will obtain that discretion and i know that there is a lot of discussion about what projects that they may believe or appropriate or less appropriate, and our less beneficial to be the provider for and the puc will set up the standards and make those determinations. but with this legislation, will provide the agency with the space, and with the ability to decide which projects warrant the agency stepping in, as the power provider. and i know that particularly, some of the larger development projects, could easily fall, into that category, or it would make a lot of sense. the currently, as you know, excess hydroelectric power, generated at hetch, hetchy gets sold on the wholesale market at one quarter of the price that would be charged to a retail

customer. so if we give the agency the ability to have more retail customer and there will be more revenue from the power and that can be reenvested in the agency's infrastructure including street lights. we are continuing the discussion with the staff with the particular of the language in the legislation and we have an open dialogue, and we want to make sure that the legislation is passed in the right form. and i know that the staff has proposed a few amendments, some of which were open to and others were not quite there and i am sure that we will continue to talk and so with that, i am happy to answer any questions. and i appreciate the time. >> commissioners? >> yes, mr. torres? >> i just want to say thank you for your leadership and you are my supervisor, and i am your boss and so i vote for you. >> thank you. >> and you have been doing an incredible job and i think that

this effort that you are trying to incorporate, i am grateful that you have come to the commission to share your thoughts, because i think that input is always so good for building con census around an important issue. >> thank you. >> vietor. >> thank you, for helping to address the shortfalls that we have been struggling for a long time and it is a long way. and i just have a couple of smallish questions. and the development would it be maybe it is sort of the staff, but also what you envisioned, you said any and all development or do you have a certain size and scale is it first right of refusal for anything that comes on-line. >> i can that ultimately it will be a decision for the agency and you will be able to set the standards and in the legislation we talk about any project that is ten units or greater. and i understand from the staff

that the agency is probably a lot less interested in the small projects, which have, you know, in terms of the cost benefit, of what you have to do to become the power, but it may not be worth it, but we know that the agency will, it appears be the power provider for hunter's point, and candle stick and for treasure island, and you know, i think that pier 70 coming on-line from the mission bay development and there are other developments that use the large projects and as i understand it, from the staff, is what would be probably the most, interesting, to the agency, and i would love to see the agency be the power provider for the cathedral hill hospital for the park merced and i don't know if it is too late for that, but as the larger projects are probably the ones that make the most sense, but i will let him address that. >> so one of the things that i have been in conversations with supervisor weiner's office, is that we wanted to make sure

that we based on our strategic plan identifying customers we feel best suit our needs. we want to maximize our hetchy power, because we have excess hetchy power that we are actually selling into the grid, which if we have customers for, and so we have been very successful in pursuing the customers that we have been pursuing and i think that we need to be a little more active in pursuing those customer and so i just wanted to make sure that the legislation is clear that we want to pursue the customers that we feel are appropriate for us to pursue, and not to require us to pursue every little customer and that is the dialogue that we are having. so, we are going to propose, some changes to the legislation, to kind of hopefully be consistent to the direction ha we would like to go as a power provider.

and so, those are the comments that we are probably going to move, and give you some copies. we are working on it internally right now. >> and yeah, from, and to be clear, in terms of it, and it does not and we will have a conversation about this, in terms of what the threshold is emphasized and it does not necessarily need to be in the legislation because the agency has the discretion. and one thing that i want to point out is also, this is just, as you know this, but for the benefit of the members of the public is that sometimes, whenever we are talking about any version of public power, we get a response from some saying, oh, you know, this is the government and you know, that can't, and you know, muni is not doing what it needs to do and you know this and that and the other thing are not happening and so why would we want you to be the power provider and what i try to remind people is that this is the same agency that for many, many, many years, has provided

services, to the entire city, with the very old sewer system that works. and the agency delivers the services beautifully, and that is the water provider for all of san francisco, and other parts of northern california. and it works and it is the best water in the world and to suggest that the puc is somehow not cap able of providing great customer service, in my view does not have any merit, the puc will need to develop more of a customer service component and right now it is mostly municipal and we know that they are capable of doing that and so i am not concerned about. nae. that is the second question and the final question, which is a perfect segway from what you just said is that i know that there is some board director to really, look at the choose ago aggregate and that i would love

to hear your thinking on how this legislation might fit into that or what you are thinking is around that. >> sure, this is not mutually exclusive from the cca. as you know i was one of the eight votes that the board of supervisors that passed the choice aggregate and i also have been support of exploring ing collaboration or joining the power, and so i am support of the cca and this does not, impact that. they are not mutually exclusive. and in fact, from the pg&e perspective this is a different thing, because these are new customer and a new development, i and understand that it is the existing customer and so it was not surprising that the private utility might have the concerns about that and a push back, but this is not that, it is that new development, and the new customers and so it is a different animal and two our not mutually exclusive. >> thank you.

>> did you very much, supervisor weiner, for being here, thanks for all of your work, city wide and thank you for your remarks to the staff here at the puc. >> thank you. >> thank you very much, commissioners. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> general manager kelley, i am inclined to move through the agenda and then come back to the general manager's report and i am also inclined to take the public comment on this occasion, and then again on that occasion, if there is no objection, from my colleagues, i will go ahead and do that. if you see that is? >> sure, that is fine. >> then i am going to go ahead and i am call for public comment on this item and i do have a speaker card, fransico, ducasta? >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i thought that the puc was an enterprise department. and i have a pretty good understanding of the general

fund. and before any legislation is passed, i think that it needs assessment. and now, we had conversations before and the financial fer and your consultant. and then, they just projected that we could get hetchy power to the transbay and so on and so forth. and but just for the financial office has said, that one of the factors that we have to factor in is the amount of water that is there, for example, in our drought. what guarantee do i have that you are going to have this water for three or four years, and i mean undocument in terms of continuity. so, what makes assessment, and so this is listening to the supervisor, and maybe, he means well, but he has no clue as to who repairs our pipes, it is

not sfpuc, he has no clue as to what is involved when it comes to the main nens of the high infrastructure it is a different department. and they used to make for it, and but there is no guarantee that if you control the power, and some needs the things to be done with the maintenance of the power, that you are invest in having workers or a maintenance crew to maintain the standard. so, are you saying now, sfpuc is going to compete with pg&e, not that i like them. many times the legislator can write whatever he wants in the legislation. but, how many legislators when it comes to this type of infrastructure understand the practicalty of maintaining it? >> when i looked at the procidio for the infrastructure

department, i have been understanding about that and standards and i have an understanding about the maintenance and i have a understanding of how you supply something, in demand and supply. and then i have an understanding about standards. and so, in 1996, many created the sfpuc and i had to go over there and read the chapter, and say exactly what it means to be an enterprise department, and ask yourselves, whether you all want to get bothered in this type of legislation, without a needs assessment, without any power tout and the work, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> thank you for being here and so as discussed we will go ahead with and suspend item number 8 and also suspend that corresponding public comment, and madam secretary, would you

call the next item? >> item 4 is general public comment. >> i have no speaker cards, is there any... i do? >> coster? >> item number four. > (inaudible) the mta or whatever

department and that you have a checklist and without it, million and millions of gallons of water are leaking because it just, a litter or one of the workers decided not to be cautious and created a mess. so, other san franciscans are monitoring these things and i take notes. and i also figured a lot of photographs just in case you have some promises that doubt about it. now, i have come here many times, much before, the governor has come up and said, do this and do that and do something else. but, we, sfpuc, we have not been very cautious to inform those entities, huge, and entities that use huge amounts of water for cooling, use water

for the swimming pools. we need to caution them that this is a real drought, even though we had some rain today in july. so, i have also been watching conferences on water, put on by the state. and gathered a lot of information. some of you are not watch those, but i request you all to ask the state government or the state of california to provide that with the videos and so that you can watch those videos, and see what the experts are saying. water is becoming a very, very, very precious commodity, and it not only involves california, it involves the neighboring states. we used to be the fifth largest economy in the world. we are now the 8th largest economy in the world. one of the things that makes us what we are is the production

of food. and we play this role. and san francisco plays a role. just because we have hetch, hetchy water does not mean that we can waste it, we are wasting it. but we can put into gear some checklists, so that the people who work with the infrastructure are very cautious and pay respect to it. >> thank you very much. >> and so we will go ahead as discussed we will suspend public comment on item 8 until we return to it and madam secretary, next item please? >> communication? s >> five communications. >> commissioners? >> is there any public comment on communications? seeing none, public comment is close $. next item. >> item 6, other commission business? >> commissioners? >> seeing no other business commission, i will go ahead and call for public comment, if

there is none i will close it. madam secretary, next item. >> 7, a staff presentation and discussion on sewer system improvement program, communications 2013 annual report. >> hello. ellis assistant general manager for the external affairs and we are really excited to have the opportunity today to discuss the puc's efforts around the out reach and engagement tied to the sewer system improvement program and specifically spend a little bit on a deeper into where we are headed into the future, karen is the project program manager for the sewer program and that in her quarterly updates, she talks quickly around what has been happening around the community out reach and engagement tied to the program, based on your interest and commitment around kind of ongoing effective out reach and engagement to all of the different stake holders that are paying attention to this programming wither going to benefit from the program.

and we are asked to do a deeper dive with you all today about the specifically how many folks that we are reaching and what are the methods that we are using for that out reach and engagement. >> so this update will serve as a snapshot for our team to really describe the accomplishments since the program was validated in august of 2013, up to december of 2013 and share with you the projects tied on you are biggest ssip projects that are coming under way, and out reach and engagement efforts that will be happening with that. and so we will quickly highlight the main out reach focus for 2013, and the principles that we have been using for out reach and engagement that you have all seen in a couple of meetings before and the types of engagement methods that we are using and somehow about the learn about me campaign, which might be new to some you. and then we will look at the

next steps for involving the community and stake holders, types of ssp projects that are coming on-line, with that, i will turn it over to marie who you have met who is doing a lot of the out reach communications for the sewer system improvement program and we have asked ty who is the communication's director to wrap up talking about the next steps. >> so thank you. >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon. >> thank you for having us. what i am going to do today is basically go through what in the packet are regarding the communications around our first year. and where we are going this year. really where we started was a

road show last spring, what we called a road show and we reached out to the community groups throughout the community. and in the west side, and in the bay side. and we are able to reach more than 70 in that period of time, and final, we are doing a lot of innovaive out reach with the projects and the urban water shed assessment and those were more programs that enabled us to really bring the people in, to just start a new approach to out reach, and to have it more interactive and so you could actually work with us, and give us input, if you are out on it or if you were joining us at home, or following up afterwards and so this was a good pairing, and where we ended last year, was with our learn about me campaign, which you probably saw on our bus sides, where we are in the newspapers or on-line, and it was really received very well and helped us to cut through the clutter and really lay the

groundwork for this following year. and the principles of engagement as juliet mentioned i know that you have seen these before and offer refers to them, and what they have really done is let us connect with the people wherever they live work or rec create here in san francisco. and also this community based participation, has been a more collaborativive effort, and has let us, really, i think, get more input and in the end it will help us to build better projects. innovative communication tools and you hear a lot about that and you know that some people are living on-line these days and other people like to go to meetings and if that is where you are, you people have a lot of other things to do, what we have done is media, social media platforms, or the website, intercept surveys in the like have allowed the people to get involved, wherever they are and also, many times what we find is that people go to a meeting and they are excited by it and so they say, that look at this link

on-line and you can also contribute and this was particularly true with our green infrastructure projects and it was a real opportunity for the people to share in what we saw from the second and the third meetings have even more people at them because of this. and educational programs, and our community out reach, it is a very strong audience, we believe for us. as you think about the ten or 12-year-old today, and we are finished with the projects they will be the young adult who are the future and the stewards of the system and so we feel like the investment that we are raising today, working with them in the schools through the community organization ss going to be hefful and it has proved to be so. and as we said, what we have done is a combination of traditional, and innovative, traditional, of course, community, workshops and we have, we have done with the usual meetings is had a little spin on them so that we have stations as you approach, and or after a presentation to go around again and talk to the

project manager and seeing, you know, what we or what were the problems and how we are trying to solve them and this has been very helpful and the bike tours and plant tours as you know are also very popular and i think that to a person, people who come out of those plants tours say wow, if everyone in my neighbors or my friends could do this, everyone will be behind what we are trying to do in improving the sewer system. >> and innovative again, whether it is our urban planning, water shed gain, which you know, i know that some of you have been present there or you have helped to kick these off, this is a really interesting, opportunity for the people to really sit down, with our staff, and to look at what it would take with green or gray infrastructure to solve the problem with the budget or the time frame and people find this enlightning and in the end it felt like three and a half hours is really worth their time and we are actually going to show case this game and we have been

asked to at the rough tech national meeting in october in new orleans and the staff will be going there and showing other people how this has worked and i think that one of the most successful of all of our last year's out reach, was, at the south east community facility when we held this planning game, and we had over 100 people there, from all aspects of the channel and this is just the water sheds and each, actually had the people on the sides and because, some people didn't realize that it was three and a half hours and they had to go and pick up their kids or whatever, and other people came in and played, at these table to help us to solve these problems and then the people reported out, you know, what they thought about it and so it was an interesting experiment. on-line surveys, again, enewsletters and i hope that you get yours every two weeks and you are probably now

getting one called dten, this just highlights, really where our out reach was and i think that it is pretty obvious that we were able to cover a good portion of the city and we keep doing that and we will be growing on that, as we go forward. again building a following, and i think that one of the platforms and priorities is what we can do on-line. the history and the project statuses. but more importantly, i think that it mirrors what we are doing in the community and that is what we want it to show. on-line, again, we are lucky that we have young people who are living on-line, and ar keeping us current in that report, and so we have, and you may see,