the technical problem. we put costs to the technical problem disps problems and need to figure do that and i love the idea about a committee. and we will do that. i clearly believe that dialogue is important. i thank you for setting up this hearing because it gives us a chance to give the bigger picture and the technical information. it gives the neighborhood a chance to give us specifically the things that they experience and we can share ideas. together we do want to solve this problem. we do have some real challenges here and i don't think they're insurmountable but somebody said you just can't take a piece of the city and say you can't live there i'm not there yet. i think from a policy perspective if we decide to acquire property and convert it into park or collection system or as the

gentleman said low points that maybe the best thing for the city from an overall cost perspective. i will leave that to the policy makers. we'll generate the data and information and work with the community. we do sympathize. i was out there in december and walking through 2 feet of water in some of the residences so i know what they went through, and so i am sorry that we're here but we're are working on it. >> before we go on to 17th and folsom can you say something to the other residents? >> yes, just as stephanie is leading 17th and folsom another staff member saeed is working on that situation. they're complicated by the freeway work there. the woman that spoke her

property is at ground zero and experienced the greatest flooding. technically it should be easier to address than 17th and folsom and have a white paper within the two weeks of the completion of 17th and folsom and somebody referenced the sewer system failure. i take issue to that. it performed to design. the storms are beyond what we designed the system to and that's what we need to address. >> [inaudible] >> thank you very much. >> [inaudible] >> you want to come up? >> [inaudible] >> in you're going to say something i do want you to -- >> why are places like 18th -- castro for example higher than both of these areas i think. why are the main lines feet in

diameter and come to 18th and folsom and what did we decide today? they're 18 inches in diameterral folsom so how does that mean the infrastructure -- it's been replaced back to the original size. i'm not a plumber and maybe i am ignorant in math but that's pathetic. you have that size pipe all the way down 18th street until the corner and in a transfer box that shoots water 16 feet out of the man hole cover and floods the street because of the pipe 18 inches in diameter. that's ridiculous. maybe not your fault either. >> mr. cruz anything to add to that? >> only i welcome the notion of a committee so we can look at the analysis. >> if i may to the folks that came out on the kyuga issue we're certainly happy to

advocate for a response and we will pass it on to your supervisor as well. i think that i appreciate that you came here to raise that issue and i am sure that you will get something not only from the puc but hopefully from your supervisor. on the 17th and folsom piece let me say that i truly feel for the residents and the reason that we wanted and the business owners -- the reason we wanted to have this hearing is this is something i have been dealing with on an yearly basis, and we're happy to work with the community, to work with the puc. as the storm happens but i feel that we need to figure out a short term, midterm and long-term solution here.

and i welcome the idea of a working group . and those that don't know mr. cruz as i know. i have worked with him for years and he's a capable individual you can get and we're lucky he's involved and he really cares. with that said i do think that we need to have a complete outline of what steps the city is going to take. if there is a long-term objective of 2020 that's fine if that is something that eventually will be a permanent solution but we just can't say we will wait until 2020 and that's when something will be done. we have to have a plan that call it is for specific short term and midterm action. i think having a

working group makes a great deal of sense, and i am committing myself and my office carolyn who does an amazing job of putting this together and following up. we're committed to working with the puc and the community to facilitate such a working group, and i think something has basic as throwing out ideas and having a technical response to those idea it is because part of it i think people may not know what's been done or what's been considered and i am certainly not an expert in pipes but i can tell you that i share the frustration. i i've had issues with my sewer system in the last two months and as horrible a situation as can you have as a homeowner. when you're dealing with that is -- i can't explain how fully how horrible it is so

i could only imagine what you've gone through. what i would like to do is to maybe create this working group, and then maybe begin a meeting working meeting with this group and maybe within a month or so, and i look forward to hearing from the community in terms how large you want it to be. we want it to be inclusive of everyone but at the same time we want to make sure that it is a working group that looks at all of the concrete options, and maybe what we can do is hold this meeting -- have this meeting be continued so that maybe in two, three months we can come back to see where we are with this because i don't want it to be we have this hearing and then we forget

about it. i would like to come back to this in maybe three months and see where we are so that there is a concrete set up steps. what i envision to the extent, and again that's the problem with people who think they know what they're talking about, not knowing is dangerous, but i personally feel some of the things that need to be explored besides this long-term solution of the tunnel that you talked about i do think there are properties that probably the city may need to consider taking over and even if having some sort of storage tank is not the solution that you want it to be, seems to me that what i am hearing something could actually help. it's better than what we have right now. i also want to explore the possibility of how this grant program can be more focused on the specific needs of each property and if there are

things that we can do with each property maybe in the end that is -- that's a solution. i do have to say as a lawyer that it is challenging when you're talking about taxpayer money invested in individual property and i think we should do it but it's legally you have to kind of be careful how you do that, but i think we have a lot of smart people here that can figure it out. and then i also think that if there are other things that that can be done that perhaps we're not thinking about -- i mean i think we should think outside the box. i appreciate the sand bags but i agree with folks when the problem is internal to the house and it's coming out of the sewer system i don't care how many sand bags you have it's not going to fix it. although i do appreciate that you have made them more

available, so i think that if anyone can figure this out san francisco can figure it out. if any part of san francisco can figure it out certainly the good folks at 17th and folsom working with the puc can figure it out so i look forward to working with folks but now we're going away and i don't want to keep supervisor mar because we're going to lose quorum and i am happy to chat after the hearing so if we can continue this to the call of the chair, mr. chairman. >> and seems like three months after the community process and do that without objection and continue to the call of the chair. mr. evans anymore items? no more items. >> thank you very much. >> thank you mr. cruz and your staff. [gavel]

>> [gavel] i call this meeting to order. -- oh i see. sorry about that. i call this meeting of the transbay joint powers authority board of directors for thursday march 12 to order. would you call the roll. >> sure. i will note for the

record that director sartipi will not be present and director kim is on her way. >> director. >> present. >> director. >> present. >> director. >> present. >> mr. chair you have a quorum. >> next item. >> item 3 is communications and i wanted to note that the board will meet on 10:00 a.m. on april 9 versus the normal start time and we will send an official notice later this week. >> thank you. go ahead. >> just an announcement from the san mateo transit district. some press went out yesterday. some of you know we were in search for a new general manager for our district and jim harnet

is our new general manager and hired by the board, and his responsibility will not -- only be on managing that business, but also executive director for caltrain as well as the san mateo transportation authority. >> harket. >> yes. he has history with us. he has been on our boards for several years. he's known locally as well as regionally and he has been serving on the high speed rail board as well, and so he's familiar to many of us, so we're very anxious for him to start will be towards the end of this month, and looking forward to some stability with the transition of the you new general manager. >> so he's been at the center of a lot of issues. okay good.

any other communications? >> okay. i wish to thank sfgtv for broadcasting us worldwide and board of directors old business. i have some. i think we will be getting in april but maybe in may a presentation -- i don't know if it's by mtc but sponsored by them. they have been doing a study much major corridors for the last several months and one thing in the study is an idea of a contraflow lane on the eastbound level of the bridge that would be dedicated for a.m. commute and restricted to buses and perhaps trucks and commercial trucks,

and vehicles with more than "x" number of people or something like that. that's just being looked at, and some of the initial stuff has been done and i thought because that contra-flow lane as least as it pertains to the buses would be tied into our terminal in some manner it would be good to get an early indication of the issues around that and probably coming to us next month. we will see when it's ready. it's an interesting study. it has been used in washington, d.c. -- those that have been there have seen it there and some other things and the idea is it might work on the bay bridge. okay. next item. >> all right. item 5 is the executive director's report. >> good morning everyone and happy year of the ram. we had our chinese new parade last weekend and our own supervisor kim was there as well as our

vice chair nuru who was the grand marshal. of course it was always a wonderful event and wanted to make sure they mentioned that. now as we start our year of the ram i am pleased to report that we continue to make good progress on our jobs. we have 9,000 men and women working in 20 states in the united states in the construction area with our project from california, nevada all the way to pennsylvania, delaware, texas, florida. we're proud of the numbers so i wanted to make sure that the board had the recent update. we were honored by a visit from president obama's cabinet from sba and secretary sweet and heard a lot about our project and wanted to know what we were doing as well as our outreach for veterans businesses and

women owned and lgbt businesses and we have paul here, the lead team member to give an update. >> thank you very much. i want to quickly go through a powerpoint presentation and nila will you put that up there? we will go through basically a program update tond what the initiatives are that we're employing in this project and why it's a national model for other agencies to model themselves after and take a look at what are the brass tacks? where we are with measurable results? we have a large project with this construction package. you need mack sure you're innovative and engaging with the communities and the minority women perspective and local and regional and we have the program from the department of the transportation we accept

the certification from all 50 states in the united states, so that represents those three certifications so the lbe, the sbe at california and national level at the do t. we want to be innovative and the bottom line people want to do business with who they go and we try to cut through the noise to make sure that the small businesses build relationships with the larger contractors and we do it with an online tool and small businesses can use this form about their projects and bond and client history so that way we start the relationship off with the small and large companies. another tool that has been great -- in fact this is the [inaudible] line car but we sent outreach events. don't give people a lot of time to interact and we have these cards to help people tell their stories and you have done great work in the past and this cuts

to the chase and tells the larger businesses why they should be employing small businesses. we continue to work with 72 chamber of commerces throughout san francisco and the bay area and some of the california based organizations because we know that information is best received when it comes directly from the source of the san francisco african-american chamber of commerce, the asian american contractors association and so forth so the bottom line we don't leave any stone unturned regarding those 72 chamber of commerces. we wanted to be innovative and we know needs and technical assistance are needed on small business. one of the programs that we have been successful with is the mental program and if bijan sartipi was here he would talk about this and we took the model and with women owned businesses in construction and steel. we're working with a wonderful

african-american business and right now she's seeing great results as communicating her value to large businesses so this long-term six month and one year relationship and the mentor program has been really successful. we worked with a lot of the organizations in the city to kind of up line cards, and help with the interest and so forth and working with them on the local level as well. veterans really are a key component and we have been successful with the number of veteran owned firms. in fact one of our veteran owned businesses,an vil builders which received one of the large contracts of their history to the tune of $10 million was recently recognized by e and r magazine on a national level as one of the top 25 firms to watch in the united states so they started out with a $10 million and received another contract for $15 million so bottom line their business as grown because of this project. they went from 10 employees to now 83

employees and located here in san francisco. they're also a minority and veteran owned business so it's a triple win. they have been able to parlay the success on this to working on the lenar program at the shipyard and they can grow here and take success in other projects. lgbt. this is the first project in the history of the united states that recognized there were lgbt owned businesses that could provide value to a public works project, so two years ago on september 26 2013 thanks to the leadership of maria ayerdi-kaplan and it was so successful and one year later that governor brown signed a new letter into order that recognized that lgbt businesses shall be in the procurement process of the 41 public

utilities company throughout california so what started here is creating jobs across california in a new and innovative way. and as the director said we are proud to be recognized by president obama's cabinet member maria contierra sweet and worked with the department of transportation and housing under the gray davis administration and a key part of making this project happen. she has been in washington, d.c. and tracking the project and wanted to know what is going on and how we're so successful with small business in regards to this project and it was fantastic. it was spent with eight firms and they got to talk directly to the cabinet member to say this is what is working with the project, here's the challenges and here's what we can do better so it was unvarnished input. as you know we track on a monthly basis the participation so we know it's not just promises.

the process that we have seer points out the fact that we have a 17% goal on the construction phase and it's a robust goal for a mega project like this. currently we have $258 million that has gone to small firms. to date people have been paid in excess of $160 million. those dollars are going to creating jobs on the local and regional level so for that you can be very proud. what is exciting from our perspective as policy folks in small business we have 144 businesses, small businesses that are working on this project and some of them have multiple contracts so we have 167 contracts that have small businesses participating on them and what is more important -- you can't tell because of the line there but on the first tier

subs and those operating as prime contractors there are 17 non sbes but we have 14 small businesses acting as first tier subs which other contracts are called prime contracts and that is important because that's the part as a small business you could grow your business. as a small contract you're at the behest of the larger contract and having this is enormously helpful in designing their own destiny and we are providing beyond just promises and with that i ask if there is any questions. >> good news. >> thank you paul. this is a passion of mine working with small businesses and disadvantaged communities, disabled veterans as well as the lgbt community so i want to thank paul for the great work as well on this. we should be very proud for what we're doing. >> thank you for the

leadership of webcor/obayashi and also turner. >> i would like to ask steve rule to come up and give our construction update. >> good morning directors. i am with turner construction. great month. we had no recordable no loss incident this is month in the western area. the focus has been primarily on bracing removal and the bike and vehicle ramps. just quickly on the schedule the milestones remain the same. things are working according to plan right now. the key milestones we're tracking in the short term are the completion of the first below concrete package or the packages everything up to the 30 lift wall as we talked about. that's on track for a early finish from the november date to probably late summer and the structural steel erection a little slower than we anticipated at this point but catching up so we're looking

for good things there. contingency slide that you have seen many times before and there were a couple change orders out of this but no startling changes. as far as our safety statistics as i said before there were no reportables or loss time this period and up over 50000 hours for the year so far. again in the west progress has been primarily on rebracing, the bike and vehicle ramp. in the central section of the project the primary progress is obviously the structural steel. we're go to cross first street. you will see that in early april as a complete write up and move the crane to the other side and that's a bit of a dance with closing a lane during the day and doing most of the work at night and soo and in the eastern zone the focus is on the completion of the far east end walls and concourse work and rebracing and getting everything

ready for steel and the projection being ready in summer for the final eastern zone. in the western zone the next step is steel erection and the crane for that at the western side, at the backside of the steel that we call it as you look at it from our end of the project will start next month. that crane came in and erected last week so that is all ready to go. just some of the pictures here again is the vehicle ramp and the pedestrian ramp being placed, and the bracing removal in the southwest corner. we have the bracing left in the northwest corner. the white braces that you seen for so many years will come out shortly and the bracing be removed from that end. in this zone it's about structural steel. the wells are so great there is preheating going on and you can see that here for final

welding here around the cast node and we're progressing the fourth lift wall now which is separate contract with waterproofing and reinforced steel and you can see that here. in the zone here and concurse and walls going in and rebracing at the lowest level. structural steel fabrication continues. one of the important pieces is the light column we will be getting closer as the erection goes across first street and there are the cast nodes being welded together up in vallejo. as of the end of last week we were shipped 275 and so just a very few left to ship. they all have been cast. they're receiving the final machining and there is a picture of one of the largest cast nodes on the project getting ready to ship. those are 20 tons. on the bus ramp the work is we're above

the ground on the viaduct poring the first column and getting ready to first the first stage of the pylon for the cable state bridge and you will see steel going across first street. we will see more columns pored on the bus ramps and the standard walls and rebracing, much of what you have seen previously going forward for the next 90 days. we will see the start of the [inaudible] trades and with the structural steel as they follow that area. great numbers in addition to what paul brought up is good participation. we're still at 65% level of the local labor for the project. the apprentices are still doing well with 31 coming from san francisco alone and overall about 2400 workers have hit the site specific to the project.

any questions? >> one quick question s there any risk that the east -- that the concrete work on the east side won't get done on time that the steel folks will be waiting? >> webcor is working with the folks on that and we came up with a acceleration plan. this is a strategic use of that to make sure that the area is clear. we are confident the concrete was done. we wanted to make sure it was done far in advance for the rebracing to be done and it will be difficult as we get to the end of the trestle and more congested and need three cranes for the work to keep moving so getting the concrete done early we hope to avoid that. right now we're putting a lot of emphasis on the fabrication and watching the steel getting fabricated so there aren't any delivery hiccups there.