people have a full answer to that. that would be, if the commission wanted to, i could write that, once again working with the chair or the commission to do that during august. not a major rush as far as the legislation goes because the hearings at least on the board side won't be occurring until september. so we do have some time to put our thoughts down on paper, if we wanted to do so. that is my updates >> thank you. i can be available to help with the letter and my signature is only a few hours away during the month of august. >> okay. >> any other questions, colleagues? okay. thank you mr. hyams and mr. fried for your presentation. we'll open up the item for public comment. any member of the public wishing to comment? >> good afternoon,

commissioners. first to start with, kind of second to last item, ab 1110. i want commissioners to be fully aware that scott the very powerful lobbyist and representative of the utility workers unions including ibew on the 13th of this month was side-by-side with the bill author in committee promoting the bill. so it's clear that not only was ibew involved with the local ballot measure, but also with this bill. that is not to say however that we cannot work with the a ssembly member, californians for energy choice, which i'm also a co-coordinator, the coalition last year that successfully fought off ab 2145, scott's previous attack on community choice on behalf

of pg&e, basically. we have engaged with assembly member ting and spoken with him. he seem like he is going to work with us. i think the 2-year bill is looking like probably the right option, because i discovered by talking to analysts that the behind the meter issue is a little complex, in that if we made it so behind the meter solar, et cetera, was access accessible to allow pg&e and their territoris to suddenly count all of those resources. and actually make it easier for them to compete against us. so we have to be very careful how we do that and that means 2-year bill should definitely be in your ask. other specific asks that we have been asking from the assembly member, he seems open to them, but it would be help if they were reinforced that

new community choice programs like ourselves to adjust at the beginning of launch to any games that pg&e plays with rates and things like that, or shortages of hetch hetchy power. we need the flexibility for our first few years a community choice organization. and i think director fried is familiar with the other points that need to be asked for and could probably bounce those off of you. finally there is a problem with the rate case at the cpuc that could be a big issue. those rates are going to come into effect in in a couple of years and will dramatically reduce the rates for top-tier users. they will see before we roll them in and sign them up for us, that pg&e lowers their rate and pg&e will say that to them. this might be an incentive to them, to think i better stick with pg&e, especially since their incentive to do

renewables and efficiency will be so much lower, because their bills will be so much lower. >> thank you. any other member of the public who would like to comment? seeing none, we'll close public comment. and this is for information item. although we did express actions that we would like to take. let's go on to our next item item no. 4. >> item no. 4, amendment to the legal services agreement with miller & owen until the merger are renne sloan holtzman sakai is completed. >> we approved the extension of a contract for our legal services with renne sloan legal service because at the time we had thought that miller and owen who have merged with them. unfortunately due to some other complications outside that have nothing to do with lafco the merger has not occurred yet.

during the period of last meeting and today, chair avalos instructed me to sign an extension on the theory that we wanted to keep ms. miller and her service and it wasn't the new law necessarily we were looking for, but to retain ms. miller and her fine work she has done over the years for us. this is more a report to you that we're doing that and you could take an action that simply affirmed that the chair was correct in the actions to retain mismiller and we should continue down the path what has already been started by the chair and staff of this commission. that is all. >> okay. so yes, i had written a letter to the clerk of the board, that would extend the current contract until the new merger is finalized. and i think it just made sense that we could actually ensure that ms. miller was able to provide her support for the work of lafco in the interim period. so i think it's pretty consistent with what our goals

are. so before we actually -- if you folks want to comment, or members want to comment? we'll do public comment first and then make a decision upon whether we want to actually make any action item? so why don't we open this item up for public comment. any member of the public who wants to comment? seeing none, we'll close public comment. colleagues? commissioner crews. >> thank you. i think certainly we want to agree that chair avalos was acting in the spirit and intent that we would like to retain ms. miller's services. i think that perhaps i should make a motion that we are in agreement and we would like to extend that until the merger has been completed. >> okay. and we have concurrence from the commission. so done.

very good. item no. 5, please. >> item 5 status update regarding the study on the implementation and opportunities for undergrounding wires and expansion of fiber networks in san francisco. >> executive officer again, earlier this week you received from me a final version of the report we did. we have gotten -- we did get feedback. i took all of that feedback and made edits. it's my understanding that supervisor tang and her office are satisfied and happy with the work that was completed. what i would say at that point, what i would request that we accept the report and have it be completed. there might be some next steps that come out of this in future. but the next steps in some ways are sitting with the city and county at least and we might come back to these items later on. on the undergrounding utilities side, one the next steps that i'm recommending to the city and county of san francisco that they put together an

implementation plan and the costs for street resurfacing and sfpuc work underneath and fiber expansion and if they also incorporated undergrounding of utility wires with a real cost estimate. at that point, somebody would figure out where do we find the money to pay for that? there are several options in the report that could be available for folks, but at this point is, i would consider lafco's work on that side to be completed. on the [kpa-pbgs/] of expansion of the fiber networks, what would be my next steps recommendation is something that supervisor farrell asked to look at a business model perspective of what would it take? would it be smart for the city potentially to use the fiber that we have and expand it and create its own fiber network system that it sells or has some sort of public-private partnership? i would recommend that if lafco wants to get into this to wait for that report to be done to give us the next steps to move forward.

that would have been what i would have actually recommended what is being put into the report or at least what i understand is going to be put in the report and wait until that is done. at this point i would request that we accept the report and wait to see what the city and county does on the report and the undergrounding of utilities once we get that information back, at that point to come back to the item as individual, separate pieces. >> thank you. i thought we had a presentation on the undergrounding of utilities, poles, at one of our last meetings. but we didn't really go into a summary of what was explored in fiber, is that correct? >> we did the entire report at that meeting and so i didn't bring a powerpoint with me today. but can i talk about it if you want -- i can go into a

little more detail. >> how is the report being used at this point? >> well, it's my understanding supervisor tang has it and is reviewing it. on the fiber side, what i would honestly consider the next steps, is there a potential business model that the city wants to get into a full public ownership or private-public partnership and how do we use it throughout the city? they are doing that report and i would wait for that report to be done because that would have been next step i would have taken. i don't want to repeat work that they are already doing. >> in terms of supervisor tang, and her office, have you been given clear direction on what to do next? she had requested the utility pole undergrounding effort in the report. >> i believe the report covers what she was looking for at

this time. >> i believe in terms of fiber undergrounding that was supervisor mar, commissioner mar had discussed that and commissioner mar, if you would speak to that? >> i just wanted to say that i'm supportive of mr. fried's suggestion that we accept the report and take a wait-and-see for what the budget and legislative ao whether it's municipal broadband or public-private partnership. i wanted to thank eric brooks and bruce wolfe from various community groups for raising the various issues and thanking jean glenen one of the activists from our neighborhoods for continuing to bring the issue of undergrounding. hi mope whether it's lafco or budget analyst or any effort that involves organized groups work on this issue. i want to say that with

supervisor farrell's office and others and senior organizations who are working on a digital inclusion task force that would look at how the economic and tech boom doesn't believe behind low-income communities and that there is always a process where we engage our communities so that the city is doing everything that we can. so that the public institutions that we set up are really serving our communities and not just the various departments that set them up. so i wanted to say that we always have people from the various organizations speaking here and my hope is that even though we're accepting the report and looking at a budget analyst's report that we're always seeking that input from the community entities. i wanted to thank you, mr. fried. >> okay. very good. so we have had public comment on this item. any member of the public who would like to comment?

>> good afternoon, i'm jean glenen from the san francisco coalition to underground utilities. i mainly wanted to thank mr. fried and the commission for their attention to this item. and i think it's going to go a long way in our pursuit of this goal. and i hope we can count on your continuing support, as we try to put into place a plan that will actually rid our city of these ugly telephone poles. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> good afternoon again, commissioners, eric brooks, san francisco green party, our city san francisco and also, co-coordinator of public access san francisco. so i just want to thank lafco for geting this rolling. what is happening with the budget analyst sounds like it's an exciting next-step.

it's a little funky because it sort of sounds like they are deciding weren't we should do a public broadband system. i don't think where we are at. the issue is clear especially because of underserved communitis that we should do a universal citywide broadband system owned by the city and not a public-private partnership. i don't know if director fried can speak to it, but supervisor ammiano, when he was on lafco got the city to commission a very good study, i think back in 70 2007, i may have the year wrong, but scoping out public broadband in san francisco if the budget analyst and others who are not looking at, should look at it and as soon as whatever word we get

from the budget analyst and the others working on this, the next step for us should be to drive hard to get the ammiano study renewed. in other words,, spend a little money to bring it up to date with current times, which shouldn't cost very much and either have the board or lafco do that. so that we can get this thing rolling and instead of discussing whether or not we should do it, discuss how we're going to do it? so that is what i would recommend is making sure that we do an update of that study, either through lafco or the board of supervisors. thanks. >> thank you. and see nothing other member of the member of the public come forward we'll close public comment. we'll move on to executive officer's report. >> madame clerk. >> i. 6 executive officer's report. >> thank you, jason fried, executive officer.

first i wanted to introduce the person sitting next me, jabari, who has been interning with us over the summer, and lives in the east bay and we got him through james tracy, for those who know him, sent him to us and he has done an excellent job filling in random questions on various subject-matter and he has been and able to do the research. he likes to study non-violent direct actions as something that he has an interest in. so i know that fits well with a lot that goes on in san francisco. i wanted to thank him for his work and introduce him, if you haven't met him yet. very smart, intelligent and has done a lot of very good work for us. first off i wanted to give a status update on the open source elections. as of kind of taking a step back and remind you, this was a report given to us through the board of supervisors. when we originally talked about

doing this report, it was actually something that we were not going to be starting until right about now. because we had so many other things going on, but we were able to find a very good and talented intern out of ucsf, who did her cornerstone project and she passed her cornerstone and was so talented she was already hired after graduating. so we no longer have access to her and brings me where we are now. what i am look at this point is probably taking the next probably next couple of months, i don't have a lot of spare and free time to work on it. to put in a little time and effort and recirculate it again comments. because there were a lot of comments. the thing is to remember it's a very technical item and you had myself and angie, the one who helped us do this report, starting brand-new and fresh. so i wanted to take some of the technical comments to figure out how to merge into

a document for a non-technical reader, for lack of a better term, because that is actually who the audience will be for this. right now we have the comments that i will come back with you in future, once i have had a chance to get all of the comments put into place and recirculate it out, nor a second round of comments from everybody who gave us comments on the first-round for that report. the other item the cal lafco conference -- this time around they have an afternoon session on one of their days and they have two breakout sessions. one of them is on climate change. the other one is on broadband and i felt that fit very well within our purposes. i mentioned this at our last meeting. and there was some interest of possibly wanting to go. just for that afternoon session. it's an expensive conference to attend fully.

but what i got back from cal lafco if we wanted to attend just the afternoon session they would charge us $100 per person. it's $265 if you attend the full day, including meals and other things that are going on as well. if anyone is interested in attending please let me know. if no one is attending, i'm planning to go and can report-back. but i'm planning on going and i will report-back, if no one else attends with me. if someone else wants to attend, i would be happy to carpool. i might go the full day, because of the items relevant to staff rather than commissioners. >> if folks are interested, chime in; commissioner lindo. >> i wanted to thank jabari for coming and doing a lot of work and helping director fried. i know sometimes he is running out and pulling his hair out

and having an extra set of hands i'm sure is appreciated and the work you have done is high-caliber. hopefully we can discuss going, i'm very interested in attending the conference and that is a conversation that i would like to have. that is all i have. thanks. >> great. commissioner crews. >> thank you. director fried, i spoke with him earlier today and let him know i have a work commitment. so i won't be able to attend. how to i thought it was really interesting to see that they are covering more of the special reports-types of areas that our lafco is involved in. so i would be very supportive of you going and reporting back to us what you learned on the climate change and also the broadband areas. >> what is the date again? >> date of those particular sessions is september 3rd in the afternoon; it's in

sacramento. so if anyone is interested, we would probably have to leave late morning if we wanted to carpool or to go on our own, i would get you the details >> commissioner crews. >> chair, thank you. just going back to the study on open source elections. i just want to echo the importance of having a pipeline and having studies in the queue. i think that was very important that we had that lined up. and whenever we have the opportunity to work with interns that are going to help you with those types of reports, i think we should very much take advantage of it, and have things in the queue. that is sort of leading into another agenda item. i don't want to get on that, but i do want to say that we should back up to agenda item 5, chair avalos.

>> okay. yes. we need to make a motion to accept the report. so can we do that now? commissioner crews. >> just to accept the report on undergrounding and finalize it, so it can be released. >> seconded by commissioner mar. colleagues, can we take that without objection. >> mr. chair, that motion was under item 5, not item 6, correct. >> correct. >> do we have any public comment on the executive officer's report? >> hello, commissioners. my name is brent turner. i wanted to first start off by thanking mr. fried, and also angie, who did report on the

open source voting. i just wanted to mention to you that the speaker earlier talking about the community work for the electrical aggregation mentioned the words -- well, he didn't use the words "green washing." but the nuancing of standards is something that is also topical to our issue here regarding open source elections. and since i'm here, east even though we're rolling it over to a later date, i thought it would be a good time to mention that the main thing for us to remember here there are intellectual property groups coming into the conversation, purporting to be open source groups. the main thing for you to remember when we get to the point of looking at the report, there are national/international standards attached to open source. the people that are adverse to open source will try to blur the lines and say, that this

will no discernible standards. i would encourage you to take a look at what is called "general public license version 3." this is what the open source community per open source initiative has defined as the "standard for open source." particularly in the application of voting systems. so we have good information available to you on this, and want to make sure there is no confusion coming in from the proprietary intellectual property community on this issue. because we're seeing them show up now. also, i don't know if the commissioners noticed but the -- the u.s. house of representatives recently, upon years and years' of urging by our groups and groups associated, has now embraced open source for their internal systems. which is a major step for us. because this proves up the argument that of course, open source is a good security

environment, and also, there is an economic driver attached. we are currently, when i say "we" i mean california association of voting officials, are currently working with the white house office of science and technology policy, making sure that they are aware of these issues. what we call "open washing." which is akin to green washing, but in the open source arena. so we want to make sure there is clarity for you on this point. we're glad to provide that clarity and evidence and make sure that you, like the u.s. house of representatives, is well-aware as we move towards open source there are well-defined standards per open source initiative. if you want to look up that website, that is open source.org. we're available for you for all of these purposes. i just wanted to also mention that the timing of this is --

if we started now in san francisco county, working with the current secretary of state padilla, we could have a system put together. unfortunately not by 2016 for the presidential e election, but likely within the next couple of years. the amount of money necessary to do this project we're estimating at approximately $5 million. whenever that money comes from we'll figure out, but the idea being that we're also seeing the same groups that are trying to bring forward software code that is not technically open-source. they are also spouting numbers like $18 million $20 million. and we reject all of those figures and just want to again add clarity to any attempts at confusion. thank you. >> thank you very much. any other member of public who would like to comment? and seeing none, we'll close public comment. and go on to our next item.

>> item no. 7, public comment. >> now we have general public comment for anything relate the to the lafco work, and seeing no member of the public come forward we'll close public comment and go on to the next item. >> item no. 8, future agenda items. >> okay. commissioner crews. >> maybe i should turn this over to director fried. >> jason fried, executive officer. at the last meeting there was a request by vice-chair crews to create a list of potential items that we had talked about in past, that had not actually gone into any deeper action on. in your packet, you will see a document that brings up two items that we have had discussions about in the past. one of which is the municipal banking idea, which is still an open thing we can work on today. there has not been much activity on that as far as lafco is concerned.

i know there is a working group working through chair avalos' office and supervisor, putting this together. they are trying to finalize stuff, according to supervisor avalos staff, we got a couple more months before we would potentially be active on that. the other item that i think is more directly to what commissioner crews was looking for was there was -- when we were talking about how vacancies for elected offices get filled there was kind of a second part to that discussion that we never got to, which was how do commission seats get appointed and what does that process look like in we never got to that part of the study. we stayed to the first part and at the time it was completed, there was an interest in folks notice looking at that just yet. so that was an item brought and discussed as a potential future item. i

thought those were the two that fit this item. two things to keep in mind looking at future agenda items, i think it's always good to have items in the pipeline. as commissioner crews mentioned earlier, one thing to keep in mind that anything that we take now, because i'm going assume that cca continues to be my top-priority and it's going to be an extremely busy topic for the next several months, but not to stop talking and looking at future agenda items. on that caveat, the work that we did with the usf and the intern from that program, they have sent me a name if we had another item fiting in that program scope would be interested in potentially working with us. at the time when they sent it to [ph-erbgs/] i didn't have items pore them to work with at, but, but they are look for someone to do a cornerstone paper much like angie did. :if there was an interest i

could check if there was an interest and it become a lot less work on my part, managing a person, but that is something that i couldezly manage within my scope of work. on that, i will leave that and the other thing to keep in mind we may eventually come back and talk about undergrounding of utilities and when the city or bla report comes back on fiber network, those items could come back, but i wouldn't consider them current right now, but things to think about moving forward. with that, i will yield back to the commission. >> commissioner crews. >> thank you. i really like the idea of having an intern work on the report for how commission seats get appointed. i think that is something that we should set on the agenda to discuss as a new study, especially if we will have