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 consumed with cca >> i will definitely, i have the notes to get the 13-14 budget. i think that's something that's pretty easy for the clerk's office to produce for us, and i will talk to the clerk's office about the half clerk assignment and probably have someone come and present at the next meeting when we do the budget. what i would recommend is that you approve what's in front of you today so our process can keep moving forward. tpb not approval of the actual budget, we come back next month and we'll be able to hopefully answer your questions and you can approve or disapprove and we can accept the proposed budget and bring that back to the body and make an actual

decision at the next meeting on the budget itself. >> you have possible action, xavier. i for one see the need to have a reserve to pay for consultant services so i would like to keep that in and it's something that can be rolled over year and year if we don't use. i don't think it makes sense that we tie our hands from doing new work that a consultant could provide for us, setting direction for lafco. so i'm okay making that one-time allocation. we can continue it year after year if we need to and essentially lafco's operate on a budget that's continued year after year, it's been looked out in a research for a sense and not taken city and county funds for cca going forward. i'm looking forward to that.

i wasn't expecting to have a vote today even though it's a possible action item before. it hasn't been my experience necessarily that we interim budget

and before the 3 4 f1vote, commissioner breed. >> i don't feel i have enough information with certain items on the budget to say i'm comfortable moving it forward. based on things in the past that we discussed as possible action, as far as i was concerned, gave us the opportunity to determine whether or not we take action and i get that you have done it this way in the past in terms of taking action, but i just think that there's too much uncertainty to make me feel comfortable about moving the budget forward today. >> you are not moving the budget forward today, you are approving -- what you are doing is you are saying we've had this hearing, we've accepted this hearing, we've been presented with a budget, it now needs to go to the city and county of san francisco and come back and have discussion and actual real action on the budget at the next meeting. what you are doing today is not an actual budget, what you are saying is we've held this hearing, it's been heard and we are moving foreforward with the process itself. at the next meeting if you decide you are not comfortable approving a budget because we haven't answered all your questions, i would say, yes, allow the

process to continue to move so we can get the answers you are looking for and have a more rebust discussion at the next meeting. >> so is there a resolution outlining that so i can feel confident that that's specifically what i am approving? you are telling me something verbally but we don't have what we are approving as relates to any written communication because my understanding from how we've dealt with this situation in the past is we have approved was before us. so it would be helpful to know if there's a resolution that we are basically disagreeing he could use this as a draft budget in order to negotiate moving forward with the budget, that would make more sense to me. but in essence what i'm saying now is i support this budget budget, which i don't, and moving on forward in the future if i decide i don't want to support it at this time then i'm basically changing my mind about supporting it. that's how i see it. >> first off, you are not

approving a budget today, that's not what the potential was, what's being here is you are acknowledging that we've had this hearing, what we've presented a budget at this hearing. there are clearly questions that need to be addressed and we will address them --. >> i hear what you're saying. >> we've never done this by resolution. it's always just been a motion saying, acknowledging that this has occurred and to communicate to the city and county that this has been met at this point and that we could make changes, to the degree you want to say you can make changes because you had changes on x, y and z, by all means do that and that can be part of the communication we send to the city and county. >> i guess i don't understand why it's necessary. >> lisa is looking up the code.

>> government code 56381 requires the commission to adopt annually the proposed budget by may 1st. >> by when? >> may 1st. >> that's all you have in terms of --. >> i'm still reading the rest of it. >> so our clerk is still looking at the legislative code so what we can do, take additional comments, i think if commissioner breed still wants to continue , after that mr. lindo and then we'll go to public comment and hope we get an answer. mr. lindo. >> thank you. no, i was thinking, i think the code is going to clarify this. but it seems like there is a legislative requirement that is hovering over your head that you need to present something to someone, if i'm not mistaken. but it doesn't have to be an approved budged. is

that right? >> we don't approve a final budget until the second of the hearings and this is our first hearing. >> is it possible to approve a budged submitted by our executive director and you need to relay that information to, that we've relayed it and we will be voetding on it at our next meeting? >> are you talking about the proposed budget or the final budget? >> it sounds like you need a vote to say that we saw them, it's under review, and we will vote on it for a final version at a later date. >> from what i understand of the process is we need to knowledge that we've done this and that we're communicating a proposed budget. it is not by any stretch of the imagination a final budget. there is still work that needs to be done on t because we have may 1st to do it, you could decide not to do anything, but we would have to

have another properly noticed meeting. >> we could also just take action next week and have an official vote next week, next month. correct? >> correct. one of the things to keep in mind. >> you could decide we need to do another properly noticed meeting. there's a special notice that needs to be put out. >> let's not belabor this. if we're not ready to have a vote, let's not do a vote. i'd rather work out the differences over the next month, not just coming to the next lafco meeting but working with our offices and the folks here and the clerk in the interim and then we can have a spepbs going on next lafco meeting. i don't want here next lafco meeting

unless they change the date. so why don't we open this up for public comment? >> good afternoon again, commissioners, eric brooks, san francisco green party, our city and san francisco clean energy advocates. so on this item i would also, i'm kind of glad you are postponing this. i understand where director fried is coming from, but i think there's a lot that needs to be thought about. one has to do with the budget for the director and staff themselves. we expect that community choice will probably go along swimmingly early next year. however, i just want to remind, i know you have heard this ad nauseam, but it's so important that the reason the advocates have pushed this program for so long and worked

to get it off the ground for so long is my tenants said the local buildout. that may not be flushed out entirely and we may need commissioner porter and diligence than we might think. so let's be prepared. after cca does get off the ground, i think there are so many things that are so crucial that are coming up. once cca is put to bed, myself and a lot of other advocates community broad band is are groiing to make that our no. 1 priority. we've got the public banking issue that was brought up by commissioner avalos that also may need to be explored. we've got issues of getting the mta to expand. i think the role is lafco is to get the city to do

a more visionary policy, then we've got some very serious housing issues that we want to take up with study work at lafco. there's a lot of stuff we need to fund and i would urge you to give yourself the latitude to be flexible and able to do this. we've been able to do this. we've been very generous . >> thank you very much. we will close public comment. this item do we want to continue or we can file it. >> i would suggest continuing it to the next april meeting. >> so we'll continue this item to the call of the chair. we can take that, colleagues, without objection? >> first and second? >> actually, mr. chair, if you would like to make plans to change the meeting so that you are able to attend in order to

participate in the discussion around the budget i am open to that. so i'm not certain that we should specify the date that we are going to hear this item. >> question, can i -- do we have to do a decision here to change the date for next year's meeting or in the interim we can do that? >> we can do a pole and find out which would work, i would have to check with the clerk's office about proper neat ising so we can get that notice done properly. >> if we can have a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair and then we can set the special date. >> so moved. >> motion from commissioner breed, seconded by commissioner cruz and we'll cake that without objection. >> okay, let's go on with our

next item. abl there's a lot to add. >> can i call the item first? item no. 5, executive officer's report. a, status update regarding the study on the implementation and opportunities for undergrounding wires and expansion of fiber networks in san francisco and, b, status update regarding the study on open source elections. >> we're moving forward through the two items mentioned. we should have a report next week on the undergrounding expansion report. we should have something next week and i will put it out on the web site, submitted to all the folks who i know are submitted on our side and then give a presentation the next meeting about that report and we are continuing to work on the open source one as well. we might have both reports ready to go for the next meeting since we have our amazing intern working on that one. finally, just a reminder, that

april 1st is when your sunshine ethics and form 700 forms are due. if you are a member of the board of supervisors and you filled it out there, you are covered. please get your forms and stuff in so we have 100 percent participation. thank you. >> great. this item is now open up for public comment. public comment is open to the executive officer's report. >> good afternoon, iep steven edwards from the san francisco coalition to underground utilities. first i'd like to thank director fried for his assistance in trying to get the undergrounding of electrical and communications telecommunications utilities undergrounded. this is a perfect use for lafco and i would agree with previous speaker who said that the budget for lafco is exactly to study this kind of thing and for you to continue to have an

adequate budget means that an infrastructure project that cannot be researched by individuals or the general public can still be funded and studied by lafco. so thank you very much, director fried. >> thank you, any other member of the public who would like to comment? seeing none we will close public comment and go on to our next item. >> item no. 6, public comment. >> public comment again. any member of the public who would like to comment? seeing no one come forward we will close public comment and our next item. >> item no. 7, future agenda items. >> okay, colleagues, any future issues to bring forward? okay, we will have public comment on future agenda items and we'll close public and go to our last item. >> item no. 8, adjournment. >> colleagues, we are adjourned. i would like to thank jennifer low