f it's possible to just, as more people are hearing about clean power sf and the web site is up and active and the sign up is working, if we could just get an update if we have people that are signing up as well. >> you're right, commissioner, we can make that part of our regular report. >> thank you. >> okay, this item we can open up for public comment. any public who would like to comment, please come forward. . >> good afternoon, commissioners, eric brooks, san francisco green party local organization our city and san francisco clean energy advocates. first want to thank sfpuc staff for accelerating the rate, the not to exceed rate setting. that's really important because, as you heard, pg&e is going to put out its green power rates on the 7th. that's going to be sort of a competing program with

community choice so we need to get our rates out and reported in the papers before then so the board needs to be able to take action before then. that also gets to the legislation you were discussing about the charter and other things. we need the board to go ahead, someone on the board to go ahead and move the legislation to committee so that by the time the sfpuc is done doing its work the legislation will be ready to move forward instead of getting a delay. our timeline can't afford any delays when we've got a competitor like pg&e breathing down our necks. so in my final minute i want to talk about the energy efficiency and the relationship with san francisco department of environment. this is a crucial relationship and this really gets to what the advocates have been asking for the entire decade or more we've been working on this, is that the type of things that in their solar shares program and their efficiency program that the department of the

environment have been working on are the type of build out that we have been asking for all this time. it's very important for the board to give direction to the sfpuc and sf environment to maximize the local build out of these behind the meter resources and the one thing i heard that's a bit of concern is that everyone seems to be depending on staff on the funds we get from pg&e. we want funding to come directly from the program for energy efficiency, not just the pg&e funds. that will open it up a lot more. we need the lafco and the board to give direction on that as well. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> hello, commissioners, jed holtman, 350 san francisco. i would also like to thank staff for making this move forward. it's really great to have all of these dates when actual important things are going to happen. i would really like to thank the puc staff for

monitoring all of the regulatory action because i know that pretty much no one else is and the cpuc is really opaque to almost all parties. obviously what goes on there really circumstance um scribes the boundaries of what clean power sf will eventually be able to do and a lot of those things are happening in 3 and 4 letter acronymic proceedings that none of us are participating in, so i hope that they are fighting for us over there. i would like to point out that at the most recent sfpuc meeting the commission was very firm about this timeline. if you haven't had a chance to see the meeting, commissioners were very robust on sticking to this timeline, so i think we have support from the commission over there which is great. part of that original presentation of the timeline was that i think commissioner

avalos and maybe mr. fried had talked about accelerating the timeline by up to 30 days in this power procurement reform process. since we're going to be getting the legislation late, i think that would be now waiving the 30 days would be almost required to stay on schedule, so just to flag that. and, lastly, i think not only these programs (inaudible) the department of the environment their basic function is going out into the population talking to communities, doing outreach, trying to get folks to live more sustainablely and i think they have a very natural role to play in the kind of behavior change and program adoption elements that we're going to be trying to transition san francisco to over the first few years of this program, especially related to behind the meter resources, not only efficiency but also hopefully

behind the meter generation. thank you. >> thank you very much. any other member of the public who would like to comment? and seeing none, we'll close public comment and this is an information item so i don't think we have, we don't have any votes and we can go on to our next item, item no. 4. >> item no. 4, consideration and approval of the proposed lafco budget for fiscal year 2015-2016. >> jason fried, lafco staff. if we can have the overhead? so we have our proposed budget coming up for this year. i have actually this year decided, normally we do a very quick overview of the budget because we have had a very robust large reserve. we have finally sfepbt that reserve

down and we're going to needing to go back to the city and county of san francisco. we have a couple new commissioners but also, b, we have a new way of approaching things. so the budget process for us is actually dictated by the court knox local government recognition act. that budget process actually has a 3-step process. it starts off with a proposed budget which needs to be presented by may 1st. today's hearing was properly noticed and can fall into that category so we are counting today's hearing as our required budget hearing. we then transmit it to the proper groups which in our case is just the city and county of san francisco. every year we do this, i will let the clerk

of the board know we held a budget, in past years we haven't requested any money and that was noted in there. we have to have a final budget completed by june 15th. it is staff's plan to use the april meeting to present and have our final budget taken care of. beyond that, we have the -- lafco is separate from any of the funding bodies, as most people would be considered in san francisco, so although we do contract with the city and county of san francisco to do a lot of our back office services and our clerking we contract with them, we receive funds once a year. we don't have a process to go back to the city and county and say, oops, we need supplemental funds. there isn't something in the process right now that allows us to occur. so what does this mean for our budget. we currently have a annual budget of $297,303.

that amount was established. we had different amounts in previous years but working with the clerk's office we determined that was our fiscally responsible number that we can be requesting. for the last 7 years we have been returning that full allocation, reserving our right to it as we spend down our reserves. early years of that was the big downturn in the economy where there were huge budget deficits. >> that went back to the clerk? >> it went back to the city and county of san francisco. i understand the city and county of san francisco deals with this item --. >> excuse me a second, if the people in the back of the room could keep their voices down, it's distracting. thank you. >> the city and county, from what i understand, has our budget as a line item under the board of supervisors so that's how it works within the city and county's budget. from our perspective it's the city and county, it's not where the line

item exists. and then outside of the general fund money that we have, we also have the mou with the sfpuc for our cca monitoring activities. that money also exists but that is not part of our budgeting process that is required by the act. on the screen in front of you you have our proposed budget. there are a few changes and they are all described in the memo that's in the packet, describes what all the changes are that we're looking at doing with the budget. first off, we were paying at one point one price for both our half clerk and a whole bunch of administrative items. i have broken them into two different items because i think it's important to distinguish between the work done here by our clerk and all the other work that is being done because the work by the clerk is based on a union contract and salary, the other one is more set on a fee we are charged, so it's two

different items. we also rolled some of those items into the clerk's administrative costs, they are rolled into line item 2 on your budget, line item 3, 4 and 5 as well as 8 all get rolled into it, the current budget into next year's budget, those will all be rolled into that one item. it makes it easier for the clerk's office and on us for monitoring the various costs. finally i broke out the lafco staff and benefits to our legal and consultant services. partly because we have had some changes in how lafco is operating over the last fiscal year and i wanted to reflect that. one of the key considerations, and i will get to this in a minute but i will mention this now, next year we are scheduled to launch the cca program. there will still be some work for me to do over monitoring and oversight of that program after it gets laufrpked, -- launched, there

will be a window on it, but if there's work still being done that will be under the general fund budget. so i have increased the amount of time staff will spend next fiscal year because of that change. it could be at some point, i'm not encouraging this discussion to happen today or right now, but there will be a need for a discussion on what does non-lafco work like look. we need to start thinking about this long-term picture of what does lafco look like and what are our staffing needs. is there a need for a full-time executive officer or do you go back to a part-time position or how dusz that all work. this next fiscal year i fully imagine we will need, if everything runs on schedule, we will need a full lafco staff to help oversee the cca project and other projects we are working on. you will note that the budget that we had for the current year and the budget going next

year is slightly different. that gets back to us trying to finalize what the exact amount we are properly entitled to under the chpf of 2000. so one of the things i've been working on with chair avalos over the last several months is making sure we have steps in place for a proper budget that ensures that we're taking care of our needs and being respectful to the city and county since we are start to go request money again that we're in a place where we can stand by what we're asking for and that we're not doing stuff that's duplicative or not needed. several things we've already done this year is bring the executive officer duties in house. you will remember miss mueller used to be our executive officer. i anticipate this fiscal year we will save about $40,000 by bringing that work in house and having me do it. some of those savings are spread between the cca and the general fund account but it is still savings we are seeing from a general fund perspective.

>> those savings would be accounted under legal and consulting services, that $40,000 is part of that 104? >> correct. that's where those savings would now be seen. the current budget doesn't separate out the two, next year's budget does. in the current budget, if you looked at the current budget line items, it's actually staff, legal services and consulting is the current line item as it stands on the budget. next year's budget i'm looking to change. >> the current year is 196810, they will be separated, then for our consultant services, miss mueller provides, she will probably be doing less of that work than she was doing the consultant services and the executive interim executive officer and she will still continue to do consultant work but we could have funding to do other consulting work. >> some of that money is actually coming from the cca fund and not from this account. it's a little difficult when

you are starting to talk about two different funding sources, it's not 40,000 from one, most of it is from the cca side, but as we transition off cca work, that savings, if we had made that change, we would have to have 40,000 more than we're asking for on the non-cca side as we transition from cca work to non-cca work as next year's program gets launched. >> commissioner breed. >> thank you. so i guess i have some questions about the specifics of this particular budget, if we can go back to that slide. clerk of the board, admin support costs, i don't understand what part of previous item means. >> line item 1 and line item 2 in our current budget, if you were not looking at this year's budget memo but looking at last year's budget memo, you would see it would be one line item

in our budget. i am taking that and breaking it into two line items. when it says part of last year that means the current item in the 14 budget is considered one year. in next year's budget what i'm saying is we should split those two items up and have one line item that is just our committee clerk's work, then a second line item that is all the administrative support work they do. when you add those two numbers up, it comes up to 91,957, there's a slight increase because of the union contracts, all staff get paid a little bit more. you see the change going down in the third column, that's because we've taken several other items and merged them into the administrative cost line. we are actually seeing a savings by doing it all together.

>> does that mean we're paying for half of their salary, period? so explain to me how that works because we meet once a month and i don't understand the need to pay half her salary. i don't understand how har a clerk's salary is necessary for lafco. >> that is a very good question. i have not specifically asked how they determined half. i know miss mueller when she was executive officer a few years ago had that conversation with the clerk's office and that's been where it's at. i have not questioned that. i can go back to the clerk's office and get that answer for you, i'll get you an answer between meetings but i'll definitely have an

official answer. >> i guess i would need to know where is their time coming from, where is the other half and what's the responsibility there. again, even if you look at lafco meeting once a month and those hours along with ours associated with work outside of lafco, it's definitely probably more than likely won't even be one-fourth of the time. i just need to have a clear understanding of how the time is broken down for that in particular. secondly, i think what i'm missing here, i know this is really from my understanding and just, i was hoping you could clarify, we're talking about this budget in the context of general fund dollars, not necessarily the cca dollars that come from the puc >> this is lafco general fund, which is separate from city and county general fund. >> okay. and so where is this money coming from? >> this money, the city prior to i think any of the current

commissioners, lafco for many, for multiple years had been receiving a large chunk of money from the city and county and we just had built up a very large reserve. so what we have been doing for the last 7 years is spending down that reserve. it all came from the city and county of san francisco, that's our only funding source when you take away the cca funding stuff. when you take away all of that, all our funding comes from the city and county of san francisco. >> but part of it comes from the puc >> that's a separate item. that has nothing to do with the budget that's presented today. >> and i do understand that and i think in terms of the context of what we're actually spending. as far as i'm concerned they are still all public dollars and just having a better understanding of the full context of the budget and where the sources of funding comes from as it relates to that full context is basically what i'm looking for here. >> okay, i think i -- so

there's this budget and the money that's not being spent here, this previous year has really been three things. it's been the intranet report that was done, that cost us $210,000 to have done, that came from cca funding. the portion of my staff time that is not spent on -- all my cca time, that gets kharpblgd, and any time miss miller spends doing legal services or something to deal with cca, those are basically the three items that we've charged over this past year to the cca funds. >> so from my perspective i guess what i'm looking for, for example, last fiscal year, not even the current fiscal year we are in, but in fiscal year 2013 or 2014 specifically what were the sources of funds, what were they specifically used to pay for and what is lafco, you know, overall costing us? so i'd like to see that sort of

clarity, have an understanding there and also have an understanding specifically of these different costs associated with the budget that we are being asked to approve before i feel comfortable moving forward. >> okay. i will be more than happy to get back to you on how the 13-14, where the various funding sources were coming from and what was spent out of each funding source. that's not a problem. so some of the other cost-saving measures --. >> thank you for the presentation. no questions, commissioner breed, but it would be awesome to see what the total amount spent was for the previous fiscal year, just to get an idea of how much money we are spending. but i was also thinking you brought this up, mr. fried, was about what does lafco look like

moving forward. and i think it would be great for us, i don't think it has to be next meeting or the meet after, but to think about is there a planning meeting that we can have with the commissioners to understand what do we see lafco doing as less and less work is coming in from cca, which is going to be some time but to anticipate that and try to understand how do we make sure that we have the funding and also that the work we're doing is unique to lafco and is something that can be utilized foertd people that seek the resources and the help from lafco, including the board of supervisors and public that comes to us for research and questions. >> okay. so some of the other things, we've also established a proper reserve policy. you may remember passing that a few months ago. one of the things i wanted to do is get our budget more in line with how

the city and county does its budgeting currently so our process looks similar to theirs. i have worked with the chair to step a good review process to make sure it all occurs. factors to consider for our request to the city and county as we go forward is, as we've done, we've always been very responsible with the money we get from the city and county, making sure we spend it carefully and responsibly. by the end of this year we should have about 116 left in our reserve account that can be spent, moving that and using that to pay for next year's budget, that's how we've been doing it in past years and that won't get us to the finish line. also cca's budget will be published next year, how that will affect us? once we're done with the report on

undergrounding of utility wires and the undergrounding system, there may be a further study desired done by outside staff. the last time we did an outside consult tapbtd for non-cca work was in 2011 or 2012 when the recology contract was coming up. it came up very quickly, we needed to get someone right away, if we didn't have the large reserve -- i didn't have any money set up for contract services. i would have to say, sorry, we kblt do that report right now, you have to wait for next year year until we have the money. so what i did, i kind of took some of the basic costs of how much really is it that we really need to ask the city and county for, came up with paying for half the clerk's salary,

the administrative support, my salary and fringes for the portion i think i might be spending on non-cca-related work, other parts which so far are service fees from the california lafco association, they try to help us when the time comes, when we put out rfp's and such they will spread it out to their networks. for potential legal services, again, not the cca work, if you take the 116 and subtract the 55,000, which is what i think is about what we would need if we were to do a recology report again, that leaves about 61 left in our reserve account that can be put toward next year, which means we need about $148,000 from the city, which is about half of what our full alow kaitdd request is that we could make so what i'm

suggesting is that we approve taking half and moving half forward as part of our request for this upcoming year. so with that i'll take any questions. >> so half would be 297 divided by two. >> correct. that's where you get the 148 -- i actually, honestly, just took 50 percent. the number we need is 142 but i'm doing a lot of things by estimates so if i move just a little bit, all of a sudden that gets eater up very quickly. i wanted to give us a little built of a vision. let's say we don't spend any of that $55,000, we have that money set aside and we already have --. >> (inaudible). >> yeah. the following year maybe we don't ask for as much because we don't need to replace that money. it's a matter of getting us in our own

personal financial space from lafco's position and then moving forward, only requesting as we have been doing, obl requesting what we really need moving forward. i will mention there have already been some discussions at the board of supervisors about this matter and there were some questions from budget chair farrell and vice chair khapk about that 50,000, so i do need some direction from the commission its several, it wants to make sure we are --. >> what did the internext report cost us? >> that came out of the cca fund. one report we do have, physically have done, was the report on garbage collection in the city and that cost us about $50,000 to do. it was actually done in two parts. my back has

been less, how much they cost, even if you do a very basic simple report on subject a, they tend to be 20, 25,000 as soon as you go to an outside consultant. if you can do a little more complex like we do with the garbage collection one, it gets up to 50,000. that's why i picked that number. one could say we want to have 100,000 in there so we can do more than one report, but i was trying to be fair and just to what we have in our system. >> thank you. commissioner cruz. >> thank you so much for the presentation on the budget. that's helpful, especially my first time doing lafco budget. do you recall how much the internext report was? >> $210,000 was the not to exceed rate, they actually went above that but only charged the

210 because that's what our contract had. they do a few extra hours out of kindness to us. >> so if we were to have 55,000 in the reserve for outside consult stability services or in the budge budget for outside services, could we enter into a report to purchase that type of information and then request additional funds, or would we just have to say no? >> we would have to say no or get the board or some other body to give us money to fund it. the one thing i'm looking at, the cca's tile reports are extremely technical and extremely expensive. when you see other reports that get done at a level for a lafco or for a big picture government agency,

there is really not anywhere near as costly as cca reports have been. there was a request for suspicious-looking (inaudible) it turns out the requester is not gopbt toing come to this body and request us to do that. yeah, they will need a report on that and it will cost them about 25,000 to do a report. the reports is not referring to those costs in this because normally speaking you don't get to the level you need. you are getting into they technical stuff that you get away with just drinking water every day ?l. just echoing commissioner breed's administrative -- the clerk's officery, i want you to know what the breakdown is on

that and also to look at the 13-14 budget would be helpful. i'm inclined to say that we're probably in line with the budget this year unless, you know, for the fy15-16 year, unless there's some sort of consideration to make for the committee clerk salary and benefits just so that we would have if enough in the budget if we wanted to use outside consultant services. but i think that just echoing back to commissioner lindo's thoughts on what do we do after that, is that we'll have a greater need for outside services as we sort of switch gears into a body that's not so