>> good afternoon. welcome to the land use commission of the san francisco full board of supervisors i'm supervisor wiener the chairman of the committee to my left is

supervisor malia cohen and our vice chair supervisor kim will be joining us our clerk a andrea ashbury i want to thank sfgovtv for broadcasting today's hearing specific jessie larson and jennifer lowe. >> madam clerk, any announcements? >> yes. electronic devices. all files and documents to be submitted to the clerk. items acted upon today will appear on the november 18, 2014, board of supervisors agenda otherwise stated. >> item one is an ordinance ordinance for the administrative code for a street light policy. >> i'm the lead authority of item one and i want to thank supervisor cohen and supervisor kim for covering this item it is legislation to reform and improve san francisco's approach to street lights

and to make sure that we have that we have a high quality street light system that works for pedestrians and consistent with our better streets plan the street lights and the level of lighting open the situation have a disconnect impact on the lives of everyone they incapable the quality of life and support the night time activity unfortunately, our street lighting is failing they're old and were installed in an and/or when the streetcar were like freeways and my office and i'm sure every office at the board of supervisors frequently gets e-mails from constituents concerned over a lack of lighting in an area or a street light that's been burned out or

keeps go out after fixed unfortunately, we don't have a pro-active program in place to modernize or up grade our system one of the challenges for the public is knowing what agency owns and is responsibly for a street light whether the public works or the pg&e currently about 60 percent of the street lights will be maintained by itself puc and about 40 percent by pummeling offer the last 3 years i've held 3 oversight hearings which is the genesis of legislation today one of the things inconsistent maintenance practices and the challenges that our residents often have in trying to figure out who to call in a lighting service we've seen schajz within

the city whether knowing the street light is pg&e or puc and taken time to example that out last year on gerrero center the in my district fell over into the middle of the street luckily no one was hurt when the puc locked the rest of the corridor caesar chavez all the policies were heavily corridor and fortunately all those poles were replaced unfortunately, when those lights were, in fact, replaced replaced with l making them pedestrian like sidewalks not just streets and not replaced with led technology this is an example of a major missed tint we should be jucht leads to increase the light level and increasing on the

pedestrian lighting not only open streets we're a walking city but go acknowledge this when it comes to street lights we've not looked at the necessary resources to think long-term how to bring the system into a state of good repair go the 21st century i've worked with the mayor's office to identify $9 million in new fund for the puc street lights before then the puc budgeted less than $400,000 a year for citywide maintenance needs of more than 20 thousand street lights i want to thank the mayor and puc for their commitment to begin on a path to resolving the issue today's legislation b will create a framework how the city approaches the vision it is all

a vision when we look at the design a legislation clearly sets forth the official policy of the city of san francisco regarding street lights making an official street for one municipally located streets program 40 percent of the lights for the puc and the sole owner of the entire street light system as out of heard pg&e didn't appear to object it that long-term transition that will land use & economic development committee make it an official policy city to include the pedestrian level lighting wherever there is a need to so and not installing and replacing lights that only focus on lighting streets and not sidewalks that will be city policy to just want the street

light to led that lighting and have a clear and consistent t for responding to light issues revolved within 48 hours and improving the 311 system and so forth this legislation is long over arguing did you but, of course, it is one step we need to insure we're adequately funding the system and updating the system so street lights are up is to the task in making our city safe and quality of life so with that, supervisor cohen if there's no opening comments i'll call up audrey from the puc to make some opening remarks. >> thank you, supervisor wiener

bashing hail at the sf puc i do have a brief presentation to go through if i could have the slides please similar to other presentations i've made as you've been investigating the street light issues in san francisco supervisor i'll be talking about ownership our service and performance goals and what our maintenance and capital improvement plans are as you mentioned street light ownership is here in san francisco the 40, 60 percent split is reflected and other owners between the state and federal agency and city departments it is shown on this slide with san francisco ownership bye bebeing reflected

in the shades of blue and gray and pg&e ownership in the green colors are there were darker colors in 2, 3 and 5 and 690 terrace of the ownership the lighting in san francisco in particular, the puc's with the change in daylight saving. >> supervisor cohen. >> excuse me. >> i have a question bring me back historically how did we have the cities ownership split between the city and pg&e how did we get there today. >> it's history in the way that san francisco puc didn't exist when some of the original lighting was installed in fact

that was gas light lighting and pg&e owned those when it was converted to electricity it was city the ownership of the pg&e and it was xhernd to wooden policies and historically the policies have been owned by pg&e it's kind of how the city evolved. >> so over 7, 8, 9 puc has acquired more of pg&e assets just natural through and because of the if unknown program as the utility used to be above ground were converted to underground sources the street light was assumed by the city and by puc in particular so in neighborhoods the utility facilities i know tell

consumptions and electricity are underground those lights are oftentimes owned by the city base when underground occurred we assumed ownership. >> can you refresh my memory what, if anything, technology underground. >> larger in districts two to three 19461926 and 5 and 6 and parts of 9 district 10 is primary above ground with mandatory utilities there's both ground facilities. >> now at a later date i'd like to have a growing communication so we can talk about district 10 please continue with our presentation. >> with daylight saving ending

we'll see the folks awareness and their sense of safety on the streets it will be reinforce we typically receive more calls about street light outages i take a moment to refresh the folks recognize what i did when you want to call dial 311 and the 311 staff manages a tracking system and conveys the information inform the puc and pg&e and we also have a puc developed app that is assessable through android or i ton devices when you're standing open the street and notice a street light flickering or not operating the smart phone will locate and you

can easily send a not through the stoplight sf app download it tb the app store or sf and what do we do with the information the street lights we own we have performance goals that are delayed on the slide if it's a simply pole knocked detain within twenty years to 48 hours we've corrected the flickering or burnt-out lamp to the extent the repairs are more expensive not completely knocked down but wires enclosed that can take for time our goal to restore services within the 48 hours for simple repairs we were successful in this last cycle at

the california puc arguing for service levels to be imposed on pg&e with respect to the puc lights at the respect and asked for an increase two-year for the revenue to operate the street lights they own the the california puc granted that request we said that we felt it was important to have service performance levels associated with those payments and the california puc agreed so pg&e is required to produce a formal written goals the goals their processing is though the is a as strong and rapid for the outages for the sf puc but we're happy they now have performance

goals their regulate our is holding them to and we'll be able to request reports from them on an annual basis to know we won't have to wait for the 3 year case cycle to find out what's going. >> backing up even though pg&e owns 40 percent of the street lights the puc pays pg&e to maintain those street lights; is that right. >> that's correct under the regulatory structure that pg&e operates the california pg&e has a takeover for city's like ours pays the one for san francisco is specific only to san francisco and that tariff is for the physical aspect san francisco provides the

electricity for the lights. >> for pg&e's lights. >> but the light we operate. >> but when pg&e goes out to repair or maintain the system is charges the puc for the work. >> we're charged a monthly fee per light and so they receive payments for us open a monthly basis to fund their operation and maintenance. >> including our overhead. >> correct that's profit. >> and their profit and so one of the benefits of and there are various benefits of moving pg&e's lights over to the puc pg&e public conversations and otherwise didn't obtain to this obviously there will have to be

a negotiation around the purchase price but ultimately not only will it be much more easy to figure out who's in charge of the light a if it's a puc or pg&e light we can move past that but also it will be more efficient because puc will no longer have to be inducing pg&e's light in san francisco. >> thank you so, now to move to our capital plans one of the more challenging areas for both us and pg&e are the street lights systems that are quite old their operated in a series their referred to as series loops like old holiday light which one strangled burns out we have 8

series loops it's 3 hundred and 39 street lights in particular we have funding to convert those series loops into a more modern circuitry and to convert them to led pg&e's series loops has been opportunity through their last generate case with our you're going in the rate case the puc it requiring pg&e to track 9 spending and keep the project on the projects on track and the good work that the sf puc together with the city attorney did at the puc on those issues really goes to the good work of jonathan cherry and michael from the sf puc and from the city attorney's office i

want to give them a shout out this 3457 shows where the series are and who owns them their 13ri7b8d throughout the city and most of them are owned by pg&e the 8 that are currently being designed and improved and supervisor wiener in our opening remarks you talked about how street lights are funded and supervisor cohen you mentioned you know how come they're a hodgepodge you know when improvements are undertaken on a larger scale in city blocks perhaps a whole block is being reconstructed the project proponent are responsible for improving the street lights and bringing them up to code so for example, octavia blue cross blue shield and mission bay and hunters point shipyard those systems are all part of the

project and they're being funded by the project proponent and turned and inspected by the city for ownership we say also have funding be for capital light improvement in the puc budget this is what you see we went from a repair budget to about $300,000 in repair and improvements and 2013-2014 to now having over $2 million just on those line items so when you get a 311 call those are the fund we tap to take care of those situations then we have an additional over the next 2 budget years 23 almost $24 million for capital improvements like the serious

loops we're digging up the other circuits including new policies and lamps and complete new systems a much larger set of fund vairnl available to us they don't come from taxpayers but those who pay us for their electricity services. >> supervisor cohen. >> i love this stuff this is so wonderful i literally have e-mails from a defy that lives in the area in visitacion valley looking for wanting to know exactly what is the process and hester we can talk about that in visitacion valley near the freeway near the 280 and 101 going south how do you get in street lights where an and/or that is dark not to jump the gun

but high crime where the lighting is poor and in the southeast part of the city i realize that smash and grab would be significantly distributors the reason why i'm bringing up to comment the $23 million you talked about budgeted rightfully and you and i worked on left to right projects last year but i still have a demand for needing more lights particularly paying attention to the industrial parts of the city that are part of the transformation you have people living were there was businesses before and so the less of a demand for lighting so, now that we are here in 2014 and going on

looking forward the process maybe detail how one can engagement i know if i can go to 311 applications and say this light is not working but here's how do i identify a spot that is dark and the infrastructure doesn't exist how do we start that process. >> certainly using 311 for that is also curled up we take calls directing ourselves i know that supervisors do as well along resident that have concerns about the lack of street lights entirely in san francisco and, yes oftentimes areas that used to be light industrial that have been converted and rezoned and residents are aware of where the businesses used to be and concerned about the level of lighting we've been talking with planning on some the circumstances to

better coordinate planning and dpw to make sure that as prongs are approved to the extent they've reached the planning level of attention that lighting element is included really catching it at that point would be ideal. >> so before we get to the entitlement process before the planning commission votes on the project. >> right. right and making sure we have the right levers in place as the lovely appropriate level of street lighting so, of course, situations where it is already built i've got folks contacting i once we know there recent a need we put it on the list and look for other city projects happening in the area one of the biggest expenses so far