>> do you have a question? back in open session call the next line item arrest

whether to discolor all matters in closed session administrative code 67.1 a action >> not to disclose>> all in favor, say i. >> i. >> that item passes unanimously we're okay i'm sorry sergeant next line item adjournment. >> motion to adjourn. >> all in favor, say i. >> i. >> nancy pelosi's - passes unanimously

(clapping.)))

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>> good morning everybody. welcome to the san francisco board of supervisors budget and finance sub-committee meeting for wednesday july 22, 2015. my name is mark farrell. i will be chairing the committee. i am joined by supervisor katy tang and i would like to thank the clerk linda wong and sfgtv covering this meeting. madam clerk do we have any announcements? >> yes mr. chair. please silent all cell phones and electronic devices, complete speaker cards and documents to be part of the file should be submitted to the clerk. items acted on today will be on the july 28 board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. >> okay. thank you madam clerk. let's get rolling here. we have a number of items here and at the end we have two

hearings and please call item 1. >> item 1 hearing hearing to consider the release of reserved funds, arts commission to build out the secure basement storage space and related location costs for the city's civic art collection. >> great. we have tom mckinney here. >> good morning supervisors. as you know it will move to the veterans building in september of this year and our request is for the release of reserve funds for $50,000 to complete the move of the art collection to the war memorial. we are glad that the capitol planning committee has allocated a historic amount for the art collection and afford us to the opportunity to properly store the city's civic art collection and by many artists. this is where the documentation

for the civic art collection is stored as well as any works that are coming through for conservation and care so i have our senior registrar here alice coming to answer questions and we appreciate you're considering this item. >> thank you. mr. rose can we go to the report on item 1. >> yes mr. chairman and members of the committee it's shown in table one the arts commission budget for the relocation of the veterans memorial has been increased by 23% and the amount listed and from the original budget listed to the revised budget of one 1.4 million and page four we note that the use and sources moved to the war memorial building are in table two. we recommend that you approve the release of the $50,000 of the

reserve. >> okay. thank you. any questions? we will move to public comment? anyone to comment on item 1? seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] colleagues if no other comments i would like a motion to approve the release of funds. >> so moved. >> we will take that without identification. can you call item 1? >> mr. chair for clarification would you like to file item 1. >> yes. thank you. >> item two is a resolution authorizing the recreation and park department to accept and expend grant in approximately 130,000 from the san francisco parks alliance to support various recreation and park department operations for fiscal year 2013, 2014. >> okay. i have rec and park to speak on this item. >> yes, i am with the recreation and park department. this gift from the san francisco parks alliance is one that we bring to the board of supervisors each year. the

parks a liensz is the non-profit -- alliance is the non-profit partner of the parks and they ask as the fiscal sponsor managing 50 gift funds on the department's behalf and in fiscal year 13-14 the parks alliance contributed $133,961 from these gift funds to help sustain a wide variety of activities including the commemtive bench program and the four annual community events and improvements at camp mather and in natural areas and the volunteer program. thank you. i am happy to answer any questions. >> thank you very much. colleagues any questions. no budget analyst report so we will move to public comment. anyone to comment? seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] . >> i move approval of this item. >> okay. supervisor mar has

made a motion and take that without objection. madam clerk call item 3. >> item 3 is for accept and expend grant for california department of water resources for a new recycled water facility at the san francisco international airport mel leong industrial wastewater treatment plant for a four year term through january, 2015 through december 31, 2018. >> welcome. >> thank you. i am with the san francisco international airport. this item seeks the authorization for the airport accept and expend grant a grant in the amount of $750,000 from the california department of water resources through the association of bay area governments. in order to fund a portion of the upgrade project at the wastewater treatment plant last summer the california department of water resources awarded a $20 million grant to

abag to fund water projects throughout the region. sfo received a portion of this grant in the amount of $750,000 to fund a project at the wastewater treatment plant to work on recycle water in use of landscaping and toilet flushing throughout the airport terminals this. is just one piece of a much larger upgrade to the wastewater treatment plant. the larger project includes pipes, pumps, treatment facilities and water storage tanks as well as new linkage to upgrade airport terminal systems. the contract for the larger upgrade project will come before the board of supervisors for your consideration in the fall but this simply asks for your authorization for the airport to accept and expend grant the grant of $750,000. >> thank you. supervisor tang. >> thank you. can you talk about what the total is costing and the balance comes from? >> the larger project is part

of the capital plan and this is a small portion of the larger project, and it comes from airport -- i believe it's bond revenue that will pay for the entire project. >> okay. thank you. >> okay. if no other questions mr. rose can we go to your report. >> mr. chairman and members of the committee on page 6 of our report is shown in table two a total estimated cost of the upgrade is listed amount and the proposed grant of 750,000 or 12.4% is funded from the grant funds and the balance of just over $5 million is paid by airport revenue bonds. we recommend haw approve this resolution. >> thank you mr. rose. if no questions we will open it up for public comment. seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel]

>> all right. through the chair make a motion to send this forward with a positive recommendation to the full board. >> okay. we will take that without objection. madam clerk can you call item 4. >> item 4 is accept and expend grant for the public health and 200,000 for public health to participate in a program called "san francisco bay clinical trials unit" for the period of december 1, 2014 through november 30, 2015. >> okay thanks. we have dph to speak here. >> i am sharon and i am representing the department of public health. this is a supplemental grant awarded through a joint program to allow for collaborations between u.s. and brazilian investigators. this budget is funded a project in brazil to learn more about the size of the transgender population in rio deja dareo

and prepare for a project in that city is -- now recommended globally by the world's health organization. however, there is no coordinated program to deliver this to transwomen in the area and the risk of hiv is high. the grant will fund a portion of [inaudible] dr. lou and mcgoldrick fallen for one year between the investigators in brazil. dr. mc fallen will be training the team to measure the size of the trans population in rio. the other doctors have extensive experience in developing protocols for prep

demonstration projects and providing that expertise to the brazilian team. thank you for considering this request to accept and expend grant. >> thank you very much. colleagues any questions. we will move on to public comment. anyone to comment on item 4? seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] >> i move we approve this item and send to the full board with a positive recommendation. >> okay. motion by supervisor mar and take without objection. madam clerk can you call item 5. >> item 5 is a resolution retroactive three for the department of public health for a agreement with health care services to get reimbursement for children enrolled inlet healthy kids program and expend funds in the amount of up to 400,000 to finance the program for the period of january 1, 2015 through june 30, 2015. >> okay. thank you very much. >> thank you good morning chairs and supervisors. my name is stella chow, the director of managed care for the san

francisco health network of the department of public health. i'm asking for the approval of this resolution to retroactively enter into an agreement with the department of health care services to receive reimbursement for eligible for the kids in the healthy kids program and these funds to finance the program. this is a insurance program overseen by the department of public health and offers coverage to children 18 and under and at under the poverty level as listed that don't qualify for other programs. it also includes vision and dental coverage. both of which are vital in providing preventive health care for children. as june 2015 healthy kids enrollment was under 2,000 members. the federal funds are helpful to

support healthy kids by contributing towards continued operation and management of the program and resulting in no cost to the city and county to obtain these funds. as affordable health coverage the health care -- the healthy kids program promotes the health of all san franciscans and the proposed agreement require approval of the resolution by the san francisco board of supervisors. as a new unit we think the department of public health. the managers are organizing and reviewing requirements as stated in multiple managed care agreements it oversees and made aware of the requirements from the department of health care services of approved resolution to accompany its agreement with the city and county. thus we are requesting your retroactive

approval to satisfy the requirements of the agreement and continue with the healthy kids program. i thank you for your consideration and at this point the healthy kids program officer kath lean and myself are happy to address any questions that you have. >> thank you very much. colleagues any questions. okay mr. rose can we. >> to your report on item 5? >> yes mr. chairman. as shown in table two and page 10 of our report the net reimbursement to the county would be 119,443. we recommend that you approve this resolution. >> okay. thank you mr. rose. seeing no other comments i will move this on to public comment. anyone wish to comment on item 5? seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] >> thank you. >> thank you. colleagues do we have a motion to send it forward. >> so moved. >> motion by supervisor tang

and take without objection. madam clerk can you call item 6. >> item 6 is approval of bookstore lease - books inc. and the city and for a five-year term with two one-year options for 575,000 during the first year of the lease. >> thank you. >> thank you. cathy wagner with the san francisco international airport. item number 6 seeks the approval for a new lease with books inc. for a book store comprised of the square footage listed in the airport and has a term through june 2020 and two one year options to extend and minimum annual guarantee rent of $575,000 or a percentage of gross revenues whichever is greater and the result of a competitive process and books

inc. receiving the highest store and the budget analyst office recommends approval and i am happy to answer questions. >> okay. thank you. any questions colleagues? mr. rose report on item 6? >> yes mr. chair on page 13 of the report we note under this lease they're required to pay the airport the greater amount as $575,000 or percentage rent and on page 12 the subject lease will generate guaranteed guarantee revenues payable by books inc. to the airport of at least 2.8 million over the term and that excludes cpi adjustments and we recommend that you approve the resolution. >> thank you mr. rose. anyone wish to comment on public comment? seeing none. public comment is now closed. colleagues can i have a motion to send this forward. >> so moved. >> moved by supervisor mar. we will take this without objection. madam clerk call

item 7. >> item 7 is lease agreement and lease between the hudson group retail in square footage and concession space and minimum annual guarantee of 555,000 for the board. >> colleagues we will continue this item and first we will open it up to public comment. anyone wish to comment on item 7? seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] . can i have a motion to move this item? >> so moved. >> madam clerk can you call item 8. >> item 8 is lease amendment lease bayport concessions and the city and premises and modified lease term and annual guarantee of approximately 130,000.

>> okay. ms. wagner item 8. >> thank you chair farrell members of the committee. i am with the san francisco international airport. the next two items are similar to items you have seen recently where the airport is relocating current concessionaires to accommodate construction projects happening at the airport. this item, number 8, seeks your approval for the second amendment to our existing lease with bay port to relocate two willow creek concessions in terminal one and three. the board approved the first amendment to this lease in january of this year to replace a location in terminal three scheduled for demolition. staff has determined that willow creek's location in terminal one needs to be relocated to accommodate that renovation work and determined that the replacement premise approved in

january in terminal three is no longer feasible so there is a relocation of that space as well. the airport commission approved replacement of these terminals for the willow creek concessions. a new term of the lease and adjusted mag from $127,465 and the space will increase under the proposed amendment and the lease termination date for terminal one, the location in terminal one will be extended by two years and six months. this success treated as an extension of the current lease rather than going through a competitive request for proposal process due to the irregular amount of time that would be involved we would have a hard time getting a new concessionaire to build on such a short lease. the term for the replacement premises for bay

port will expire in january 2023 so the budget analyst office does recommend approval with the suggestion that the resolution be amended to take out any reference to the guarantee guarantee simply because that's not necessarily contemplated in the resolution as much as the change of location so it's a bit complicated but i am happy to answer any questions that you have. >> colleagues any questions? okay. mr. rose how about your report on item 8 please. >> yes mr. chairman and members of the committee on page 17 of the report we report that the airport estimates they will pay a percentage rate to the airport of 407,000-dollar. we do recommend that you amend the resolution and approve the proposed resolution as amended. >> thank you mr. rose. if no other questions we will move on to public comment. anyone to

comment on item 8? seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] motion to send this forward. >> through the chair i make a motion to amend the resolution in reference to the budget analyst recommendation to delete the reference of the new mag and send with positive recommendation to the full board. >> okay. we have a motion by tang tangs. we will take that without objection. madam clerk can you call item 9. >> item 9 resolution for a lease with gotham enterprise and replacement leases for two years and the adjustments to the minimum annual guarantee of approximately 27,000. >> okay. thank you very much. ms. wagner. >> thank you last item. the airport is seeking your approval for an amendment with the current lease with gotham enterprise doing business as petes coffee and tea to authorize replacement premises for the current terminal one location and to extend the lease

for this replacement facility through september of 2019. the terminal one redevelopment program requires the closure of gotham enterprise peter's coffee concessionaire and this terminal location is part of a lease that we have with goth ham that includes three locations. in april of this year the airport commission approved the placement in terminal one and extension of the lease term in the new location. this applies only to this one location, not the other two locations that are part of the lease and they will pay the airport minimum annual guarantee of $26,892 and/or whichever is greater and the airport treated this as an extension of the current lease

rather than a new request for proposal for such a short amount of time and because it doesn't include provisions for the mag the budget analyst office has suggested doing this and if you agree i will get these amended this afternoon. >> okay. thank you ms. wagner. if no questions we will move on to santa rosa. your report on item 9. >> >> yes on page 20 of the report we report that the airport estimates that they will pay the amount listed in percentage rent to the airport in 2015. that is 921,000 more than the 2015 minimum annual guarantee of 126800. we recommend that you approve the resolution to delete adjustment to the reference of the minimum annual guarantee of $26,892 and

approve the resolution as amended. >> thank you mr. rose. colleagues any questions. let's move on to public comment. anyone to comment on item 9? seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] we have an amendment by the budget analyst. >> i move that we accept the amendments by the budget analyst and adopt the item with a positive recommendation as amended. >> okay. motion by supervisor mar. we will take it without objection. call item 10. >> item 10 is approving and the ac sigz of one subsurface easement and one construction easement from kaiser foundation hospitals district for approximately 54,000 for the project known as the regional groundwater storage and recovery project. >> okay. mr. updike. >> good morning chair farrell members of the committee. so this is authorization to get easements from the kaiser foundation hospitals district. these easements will facilitate construction related to the

regional groundwater storage and recovery project. that boosts our regional dry water supply through the installation of groundwater walls and well stations. you have seen agreements at this committee before and there's a few more to come as well. this property is located on el camino real in san francisco. cities requiring a temporary construction easement and permanent telephone and electric easement to support the sfpuc facilities adjacent to the facility. and the cost is listed and pursuant to an appraisal which i approved. the san francisco public utilities commission authorized it which is in the board file and adopted august 12, 2014 and that's all i have on this item. >> okay. thank you mr. updike. no questions mr. rose. can we go to the report on item 10. >> yes mr. chairman, members of the committee. in the

report we report that it's shown in table one which is on page 23 of our report but based on 10,455 square feet and the cost of acquiring the easement is listed and funding was appropriated by the board of supervisors under the sfpuc water system improvement program. we recommend that you approve this resolution. >> okay. thank you mr. rose. colleagues any questions? we will move on to public comment. anyone wishing to comment on item 10? okay. seeing none. public comment is now closed. colleagues can i have a motion to move this forward. >> so moved. >> motion by supervisor tang. we can take it without objection. madam clerk call item 11. >> item 11 requisition of the real property at 490 south van ness, the purchase price of

$18,500,000. >> okay. we have the mayor's office of housing here. >> hello. the res before you is approve the acquisition of real property at 490 south van ness from the south van ness limited partnership benicia lake llc and maurice casey collectively referred as the seller for the agreed amount of $18,500,000 and the resolution ask that you adopt ceqa findings and consistent with the general plan under the code. there will be a deduction of transfer tax credited to the city upon closing as noted in the report and the final amount paid as listed and creates 255,000 buildable units for the acquisition of this parcel in the heart of the mission neighborhood. 490 south van ness is currently vacant site zoned urban mix use. its

former use was a gas station and now environmentally remediated and ready for development of the site is titled for a 72 unit multi-family development containing over 90,000 square feet of condition space with ground floor commercial and vehicular parking and ample high school parking. this represents the best efforts of the city and chunt community and recognizeing sites inlet the community and to the mission and if sites are identified and are available they will move with maximum dexterity and urgency to take title of the project as soon as possible to create affordable housing in the neighborhood. this opportunity is unique given the fully entitled nature and have them thoughtfully to

respond to the development on an expedited time line and serve low to moderate income households and 20% set aside for homeless families and with the city's goals of building out 30,000 units and a third being permanently affordable. the acquisition of this property is in addition to the pipeline in the neighborhood and they expect to close the transaction at the end of august and publish requests for proposals to procure a developer winter of this year. i would like to thank the city departments and the sellers and the community for having this transaction take place and reacting to the dynamics to produce desperately needed opportunities for our city and specifically the mission. this concludes my

presentation. i am available for questions. i brought a rendering so you have an idea of what the project looks like now and we hope to build in the new future. >> okay. thank you very much. supervisor mar. yes thank you kevin and the mayor's office of housing and development. this is from a gas station to 72 units of permanent affordable housing and it's great and i know we need to do more but what a great example how the city can address the housing crisis in creative ways. thank you. >> thank you. mr. rose can we go to your report. >> yes mr. chairman and members of the committee. on page 27 we report in june 2015 the real estate division conducted an independent appraisal of the 490 south van ness property and determined the fair marshal value as of -- fair

market value is listed and as the department indicated we report on page 28 of the report that the purchase sale certifies that the purchase price will be reduced by a credit of 462500 the amount of the real estate transfer tax that would otherwise be due on the transaction and pursuant to the city's business and tax regulations code. that section specifically exempts payment of the transfer tax for the purchase of property property of the city and as a result the general fund will not receive the transfer tax revenues for this transaction so our recommendation on page 29 is we recommend that you amend the proposed resolution to specify the purchase price with a credit as listed to reflect the city's

exemption of paying the city's real estate property transfer tax and result in adjusted city cost as listed and we recommend that you approve the proposed resolution as amended. >> okay. thank you mr. rose. colleagues any questions for mr. rose or our team? okay. we will move on to public comment. anyone wish to comment on item 11? seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] colleagues do we have the budget analyst recommendations in front of us and under line item. >> through the chair i make a motion to amend the purchase price reflecting what the budget analyst said for the transfer tax that the city is exempt from and move forward with a positive recommendation to the full board. >> okay. motion by supervisor tang and take that without objection. madam clerk can you call item 12. >> item 12 resolution approving and authorizing the sale of easement on the city's property at corner of 23rd street and potrero avenue to the pacific gas and electric for the

price of approximately 11,000. >> okay. welcome back mr. updike. >> thank you sir. john up dike director of director of real estate and this is to sale of easement at corner of 23rd street and potrero avenue and i was going to bring in something the size of the property but i decided not to. this is by the hospital and with adjustments serving the infrastructure adjustments that are made and this facilitates location of an electrical distribution pole. it's an area of over hang of wireos the city's property extending 5 feet on either side of the wires so that's the subject of the easement before you. the purchase price pursuant to an appraisal which i approved. because this is a sale of a permanent property right board approval is required and i am happy to answer

questions. >> thank you mr. mr. updike. any questions? we will move on to public comment? seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] >> i move that we approve this item. >> motion by supervisor mar. take that without objection. madam clerk can you call item 13. >> item 13 is contract contracts with cotton, shires and associates with arup north america limited and geostabilization international for the telegraph hill rock slope improvement project for stabilization and inn constitution of the northwest face of telegraph hill and not not to exceed the amount listed. >> okay. >> this is a project stabilized telegraph hill. it's an emergency project. there are three contractors involved in

this project. two of the contractors are engineering consultant. initially we declare emergencies in july 2014 for the project for all three contracts, but it had to go through a negotiation process. for the construction contract we solicited nine contractors to look at the project. four of them provided a proposal. we negotiated with the contractor that had the lowest cost and also had 2lbe components to their construction contract. one of the construction consulting engineering contract as a result of an agreement with block 60 lot five and the property that stipulated we were to retain them for engineering support during construction. we notified the board of supervisors in march of 2015

initially and the reason was for that we had to make sure that the scope of the work because it's a telegraph hill rock slope improvement project a lot of the work was behind vej taifive areas that we are to remove to finalize the scope and then we submitted the documentation in june of 2015 towards the end of the project so i will take any questions. >> okay. colleagues any questions? okay. thank you very much. mr. rose can we go to your report? >> yes mr. chairman and members of committee. on page 33 of our report we have a table one which shows the three original contracts total listed. however all three contractors submitted change orders which were approved by dpw for the revised amount as listed on the actual

expenditures that you see in that table are through june 30, 2015. on page 34 of our report we note that the director of public works declared an emergency in 2014 but the resolution approving the emergency determination was want submitted to the board of supervisors until one year later or specifically 346 days after the emergency was declared, and we note on page 35 that although a board of supervisors recently approved ordinances not yet effective it's significant to note that the proposed resolution was submitted 286 days in sceses excess of the 60 day limit pending before the board of supervisors. our recommendation is on page 35 and amend the proposed resolution to

delete the incorrect contract amount as listed with cotton, shires and associates and add the correct amount as listed. we recommend that you delete the incorrect amount as listed with geostabilization international and add the correct amount as listed. we recommend that you amend the proposed resolution to delete the innot to exceed amount as listed with and add the not to exceed amount as listed and we recommend that you approve the proposed resolution as amended. >> okay. thank you mr. roases. i appreciate that. colleagues any questions for mr. rose? okay we will move on to public comment. anyone wishing to comment? okay. seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] . colleagues we have a number of recommendations from the budget analyst and the

underlying item. can i have a motion to approve the items? >> i move that we approve the amendments and move it forward with a positive recommendation as amended. >> thank you very much supervisor mar. we have a motion and take that without objection. madam clerk can you call item 14. >> item 14 is approximately 4.2 million from permanent salaries and premium pay in the fridge departments in the sheriff's department and police department and public utilities commission and for the projected increases in overtime. >> thank you very much. we have ms. howard to speak on this item. >> good morning chair farrell and members of the committee. this item appropriates 4.2 dollars to over time and the same amount from premium and

fringe benefits for the departments for 2014. i believe the clerk has provided to you an amended version of this legislation for 5.$03 million which is based on final fiscal year 14-15 costs. i believe that the budget analyst report reflects the amended version of this item. the three departments included in the supplemental appropriation and deappropriation need to shift straight time salaries to over time for a variety of reasons and including law enforcement presences required at events this year, over time for deputy sheriffs to complete training requirements and vacancies in the public utilities commission. the action is required as a result of the city's over time ordinance and requires eight departments including these three come before you to request

the supplemental appropriation should over time spending in their departments exceed the budget. there is no general fund impact to this request because departments have sufficient salary premium pay and fringe benefit authorities in the budget. i am happy to answer any questions that you have. >> thank you ms. howard. colleagues any questions? mr. rose if we can go to your report. >> yes mr. chairman and members of the committee. on page 40 we have a chart and shows the funds and the department to be appropriated and use of funds to be reappropriated under the ordinance as listed for the amounts and we recommend that you approve this ordinance. >> okay thank you mr. rose. if no other questions or comments we will go to public comment. anyone wishing to comment on item 14? okay. seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] so colleagues could i have a motion to accept these amendments and then accept the

underlying item as amended? >> so moved. >> motion by supervisor mar. we can take that without objection. [gavel] okay. thank you everybody. we have gotten to the two final items and the two hearings and madam clerk call item 15 first. >> item 15 is hearing between the department of the environment's landfill disposal agreement with recology san francisco for the board resolution no. 171-05 and including discussion of the terms of the agreement and support the zero waste goal and time line and request the department of the environment to report. >> okay thank you madam clerk so i know i see mr. rodriquez here and our director of the department of the environment to speak so this hearing. if there are any members of the public that wish to comment please fill out speaker cards. if not we will open it up when the hearing

is concluded. >> good morning supervisors and we have copies of the powerpoint and the new agreement for your reference. first i would like to thank you supervisor farrell

for scheduling this hearing at our request. we wanted to make sure that we're clear and up front with the board about the change we are making in our contract language for this landfill agreement. i'm going to be speaking at a very high level but i have with me two of my colleagues, so if there's more specific questions if people want to dive in deeper we can certainly do that so i think it's important, and i don't know why there is -- [inaudible] okay. i'm sorry. i think it's important for you to understand when we as a department look at a landfill contract there are three standards that we're looking at no matter who we're awarding the contract to. number one the contract needs to be legally defensible and stand up in court and follow the rules and regulations of the city and seconds must be project of the

environment and supportive of the zero waste goal. incredibly important to us as a department and as a city and thirdly the contract has to be cost effective. we need to protect the ratepayers to make sure they're getting the lowest cost and the best service. looking at the current landfill agreement why are we here today? we are here today because we're notifying you of a small contract change, but there's a much larger issue going on. in 1987 the city entered into a contract with waste management to dispose of our solid waste and at the landfill in alameda county. the contract for was for 15 million tons or 65 years whichever came sooner. we are expected to reach that amount by the end of the calendar year, the beginning of 2016. it's important to note that the cost of a landfill agreement isn't strictly off to the rate payers.

we have in san francisco another process which is the rate process and that landfill amount is build into the overall garbage bill that the residents and businesses in san francisco pay. the important point is there lots of public interaction and public comment and time to weigh in as we look at our zero waste programs so just tracking the history of this landfill agreement. it started in neefn 87 and we started the process in 2007. in 2007 we held five public hearings to determine the guidelines for the process would be. in 2008 we did a competitive rfq process to look for qualified respondents. in 2009 we did a public rfp and got two bids and one from recology

and one from waste management. we looked at other environmental factors which came out fairly evenly, but the thing that was very striking was the difference in cost which would translate to over $100 million for ratepayers over the lifetime of this contract. so recology was selected by the panel. lawsuits were filed. lawsuits were dismissed and over the course of the next four years the board repeatedly took a look at this contract. you held four hearings, two votes and after the hearings and the votes the board unanimously approve the process and said in fact recology was the qualified bidder for the contract. >> supervisor mar. >> i just wanted to ask you to slow down a minute and on the environmental benefits of the recology contract my recollection is the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions

because of the green rail but with more miles trucking from tunnel road to oakland and then rail all the way to yuba county but that's changed and i know the sierra club raised some concerns about increase increased greenhouse gas emissions and the department of the environment said they're negligible but the contract was based on greener way of transporting the trucking and then the rail, and that's changed significantly and that is an environmental impact so i would like to know about the analysis but i know it may come up with the report later, but i wanted to say the price was a key thing with the points on the panel as i recall way back then, and the points because of the much lower pricing for the recology contract put the bid of recology way above waste

management. >> correct. >> but there were still environmental benefits of the green rail proposal which has changed now though. >> so in a way when you look back at that original contract they were half the price and they a appeared to have a transportation option that was greener and either way you look at it recology was the best practice. >> i am saying i don't want to gloss over the environmental benefits of the original contract. >> exactly, yes. >> because the pricing was critical in the points but proposed as a green rail project that was much superior to the other one. >> right. and that was incredibly exciting to us to think about the green rail and the contract was we would love to do that and if something happens we have a backup plan and go to a different landfill so any way you cut it it looked like the most protective of the

environment and for ratepayers. the green rail option turned out to be still of interest to us but it's a very long protracted process. it does need more environmental review and agreed with that and yuba county said we need a deeper look at the rail and as that became longer and longer we fell back to the backup landfill which is hey road. and i want you to know that melanie nutter and john avalos and i visited yuba county and livermore as well and the environmental benefits were critical in addition to the pricing you mentioned earlier. >> yeah, fair enough. thank you for bringing that up. this is high level and anything i am glossing over please stop and let's go into detail on, so you bring up the environmental review and the department feels like this new landfill going to hey road is not of significant

environmental impact so that word "significant" is a legal term and the determination of whether a environmental impact is significant takes place with the planning department through the ceqa process and transition to my next slide so what happened under the environmental review so the agreement with hay road versus althat month and the planning department looked at that and transportation and there is a 40-mile difference between taking the waste from our city to hay road for recology versus waste management so the question that needs to be answered from a legal perspective is that significant? does that trigger a full eir? that's the question that the planning department struggled with so we asked them to evaluate it and after nine

months they came back and did all of the calculations and assumed a 50 truck per day and looked at the 40-mile difference and was below the threshold of ceqa and i will come back to that and it's important as the environment doesn't that we understand a legal obligation and moral obligation so that determination was appealed. the planning department unanimously agreed with their staff -- i'm sorry the planning commission agreed with the planning department that negative declaration, the impact of the 40 miles of insignificant and a full eir didn't have to happen. now that's not the end of that discussion. that discussion and decision will come back to you in some time -- i expect in september, to redo and reevaluate so that you can feel comfortable that the city is in fact meeting the legal obligations to project the

environment in terms of emissions. that's not what today's hearing is about, and it's not the end of the story so i want to make that point. >> supervisor tang. >> just a question. i know this is again not the full purpose of the hearing but you or planning staff if you would like to answer this. we did receive some comments from i guess the opposing party there is no ceqa threshold at this time based on the number of vehicle miles traveled and therefore ceqa thresholds are met based on air quality, greenhouse gas or noise impacts resulting from vehicles miles traveled so i am wondering if you or the planning department can respond to that quickly? >> i cannot. >> erin [inaudible] from the department. i'm sorry. i am not prepared to talk about the environmental deration for that.

>> okay. perhaps we can follow up when it comes back to the board. >> absolutely. we will make note of that and that is important point is that this is coming back before the board to take a look at those issues in more detail, so the new agreement, the agreement that was being negotiated was of course the hay road landfill and looking thea a term of 5 million-tons and take about 15 years for us to reach given our efforts of zero waste and given the city's commitment to reducing what allly goes to landfill and our progress. this agreement that is now in your hands is actually reducing the term of the contract down to nine years and 3.4 million tons but allowing an extention and that permission would be heard

by you at the time we're approaching the end of the contract so the reason we shortened the term of the contract we want to honor the competitive bid process for all of the years and meetings and process that is legally defensible. it ensures rate stability because the department has the authority to sign the contract and ensure that a contract is in place before the existing contract ends at the end of the calendar year and honors public review and allows public review because the contract is shortened and allows the board to revisit it at the time of renewal and rather than wait 15 years the board can look at it in nine years. the other change to the contract was seeking about the whole ceqa issue and the environmental issue and the discussion that came up from people that had concerns over the 40-mile difference and what we put into the contract we capped the number of trucks that recology

could send to landfill at 50 per day. the reason we did that was the assumptions in ceqa made a 50 truck assumption but that wasn't set in stone so by doing that we're ensuring that the environmental impacts remain below the threshold and making a statement about the commitment to zero waste that no matter if the population increases, no matter what we will not send more trucks on the road than that number so the two changes to the contract were the term and the trucks. those were the two things that were changed so next steps. the department has the authority to sign such an agreement, and once it is signed that triggers an action that then allows another appeal of ceqa which may come before you. we expect when you come back in september, and then if you're comfortable with that analysis and then we will have this

contract in place by january, and all of the benefits that are part of that contract will be felt by the people of san francisco, so in closing i want to say again as i did in the opening that the contract process has been done with the utmost integrity with the weight of the law and the rules every step of the way front and center. it is protective of the environment. it is very much a strong contract to move us towards zero waste and the most cost effective one we can offer ratepayers at this time and again i have another colleagues here if you would like more detail so thank you very much again for forking us the opportunity to have this discussion yet again. >> okay. colleagues any further comments or questions? okay. could you just real quick i think -- we have been getting a lot of questions and from different people inquiry about

10 years versus -- >> 15 years versus nine years. >> right. could you talk about that more? >> the original contract had an amount and 5 million tons no how long it took and our calculation said it would take 15 years given the rate of disposal and a 15 year contract. shortening the contract does two things. it allows the department to sign and get the contract moving so we can make the deadline of end of the year and ensure rate stability because we're not hanging out there with not a full contract, and it allows the board to come back and weigh in sooner, so in a 15 year term it's gone. the last one was since 1987 so this way we get before you again after eight years to take a look how are we doing? are we meeting our goals? are we protective of

the environment? and any changes we want to make to the term of the contract so that was the thinking. >> okay. colleagues questions right now? okay. why don't we go to public comment and then we can go to follow up questions. i have a few speaker cards here if people are filling out other ones. [calling speaker names] mr. lazarus was on 16. we have two speaker cards. anyone else wishing to comment please line up against the side of the wall and everyone has two minutes and we can move from here. >> i am kevin carol and director of the [inaudible] hotel san francisco and work in an industry that welcomes people to san francisco and employs 24,000 people the majority that live and work in san francisco. i am in support of recology for

the contract. they have been a long-term partner of our industry and hotels. we work with them daily and part of the sustainability committee and a committee of hotels that work together to share best practices in partnership with the department of the environment and recology and many organizations in the space. that committee is one of the most active committee and recology and their employees are active participants as well. they have hosted us to share best practices and educate our members and their employees on best practices for achieving their zero waste goals. their employees as i mentioned continue to work with us and our teams as well. recology is fully committed collaborative and they partner with the hotels virtually everyday to reach our goals and i just wanted to remind you that we fully support their fulfillment of this agreement that is before you today and i appreciate your

time as well. thank you. >> thank you. before the next speaker comes actually i want to recognize we have the president of the environment commission here. you're welcome to come up and say a few words if you like. >> thank you chair farrell. is it morning still? i am speaking as president of the san francisco commission on the environment and thank you for the opportunity to speak and i wanted to speak in support of the department of the environment, our staff. we had a hearing about this conversation at our last meeting and asked a series of questions and comfortable with the fare and bidding process that resulted in the bids that came in and one being double than the other. what we liked about the contract that's before you and that we support is the ability to lock in a long-term rate that is low, and free us up to do what we want to do which is get to zero waste because that's the solution. we hope this is the

last landfill contract we have to sign because getting to zero means nothing, no more hauling waste,ing in except putting it back in the stream and going to the green and the blue and this contract will give us the ability to do that and we fully support the department. >> thank you. next speaker please come up. >> good morning mr. farrell and committee members. my name is john lynn smith and outside counsel to waste management. honesty i don't know where to begin. there are a lot of statements made that are contrary to the rfp issued but a couple of points i want to make. one is i sent the committee and the full board of supervisors a letter this monday outlining the process that has been conducted since 2008 with the rfq leading up to the proposal to enter

into a contract today with recology. i want to make sure that is part of your record. i hope you have it and if you don't i have a copy and can give it to you. i wanted to bring to your attention a couple of things about the deal. when the rfp was issued it was a 10 year deal or 5 million tons of disposal, whichever comes first. it wasn't a 5 million-ton deal. it was going to be from 2015 to 2016 or 2025 or 2026 or 5 million tons and whichever came first. when the resolution was presented to the board of supervisors on june 1, 2015, this year, the resolution was seeking approval for a 10 year contract, not a nine year contract. the effort to make it nine years not for transparency or the ability to come back to talk about this again. it's

basically so anybody can avoid a referendum, make it an administrative act and not a legislative act. the other point it's not 40 miles difference. it's 2,000 miles difference. 50 trucks times 40. that is what triggers the need for an eir and why the sierra club is fully advocating a full eir is done and by not going to the board for the approval you pushed off the appeal for another couple of months and recology and the department that are engaged in the process can get the contract up and running. >> sir, thank you. your time is up sir. >> [inaudible] (off mic). >> okay. thank you. next

speaker please. >> supervisor tang, supervisor farrell and supervisor mar thank you for having me today. i work for the gate gate golden gate association and (paused) because restaurants produce a large amounts of food waste we have a strong commitment to posting and having affordable ratings makes it possible for all restaurants to do it. we love the fact that farms and wineries use the waste and food comes full circle on the table of the member restaurants. recology has been supportive of the restaurant industry and had a representative for troubleshooting and our needs.

this is a strong one to allow restaurants to implement green practices without breaking the bank and different from members in oakland dealing with waste management and we support recology. >> thank you very much. next speaker please and if anyone else wishes to speak please line up and two minutes each. >> good morning. i am paul pender gas and here to speak on the san francisco small business network and 14 business organizations here in san francisco and chair the golden gate policy for san francisco and i am here to speak on recology and they have been active partners with small business and not just attending events and actually responsive to the needs and the phone calls and emails that small business interact with recology on a daily basis. they

are a shining example how a business can be responsive to the small business community. we only need to look at oakland to see how small business can't work with certain companies and we are in support of recology and the contract moving forward. thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> good morning. david pillpel speaking as an individual and i have been involved with these issues in the city and area including the rate setting process through the department of public works and the residential refuse collection and rate board and i am familiar with the 1932 ordinance and all the things related to that. i have expressed some concerns about the proposed agreement and a little bit about the process to both department of the environment staff and recology. they have been both responsive and addressed a number of my

concerns. however i think at this point and i am sorry i missed the presentation earlier i think the department of the environment should provide a copy of the agreement to the board if that hasn't been done and allow the public some time -- not a long period of time, but maybe a few days to comment on the latest version of the proposed agreement before signing and entering into it so if there are other concerns particularly about going to the nine and six scheme with the 50 truck limit et cetera that they can be reviewed before any decision to approve the agreement by the department of the environment. any other concerns that i might have i am happy to put in writing again to department of the environment. doe and copy the board. i understand there will be some kind of hearing on tuesday but then not considering the substance of the appeal at this time. thank you very much.

>> thank you very much. any other members of the public wish to comment on this item? okay. seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] colleagues this is simply a hearing item at the moment. we can make a motion to file this item. however if there are questions or comments at this time we can entertain them. okay. supervisor mar. >> just quickly i think i want to say the two elephants in the room are two powerful entities, recology definitely very influential clearly in this hearing today and the proposal that the panel as approved and this board unanimously over time and also a texas based large corporation that has at times "bullied and intimidated oakland city council members and others and ballot measures and

lawsuits, so i know this hearing is useful to hear the updates but my hope is we focus on the environmental benefits as joshua mentioned and ms. raphael proposed and i am hoping that the two elephants in the room don't pull us away from the zero waste goals and the greenhouse gas issues and the truck 20 more miles per trip and we shouldn't gloss over that as well but i am appreciative of this and it's been many years from supervisors before i got on this board, and i think these are big issues but let's focus on the environmental impacts and our very aggressive climate action goals for our city. thank you. >> okay. thank you supervisor mar. okay. with that i know we will continue to be working on this item and throughout this and beyond so with that colleagues i would like to entertain a motion to file item 15. >> all right. i make a motion

to file the hearing. >> okay. motion by supervisor tang. we can take that without objection. madam clerk can you call item 16 please. >> item 16 hearing on the control or's report and for office of economic and workforce development and office of small business, the controller, the planning department, office of building inspection and other city departments involved with the permitting process for . businesses to report. >> thank you. this is sponsored by supervisor tang. so supervisor take it away. >> thank you very much colleagues for entertaining this hearing today in response to a report by the controller's office and took a deep look how the city's permitting process works especially as it rer tains to restaurants so the purpose is identify ways that we can make sure city's permitting process

even more efficient for those looking to start or expand restaurants here in san francisco and hopefully from the lessons that we learn from the collaborative efforts, through the reports and other efforts by city departments that we can apply these lessons to other industries and for us -- at least for me it's about writing a better experience for our customers by the people looking to start or expand a business here in san francisco, and i know there have been efforts in the past to tackle this issue and what is different this time around is that i feel that we have approached this in a more comprehensive manner. for one we have a new online small business portal in san francisco and credit the team for bringing that up online and the controller's office report and is one of the most comprehensive to date and we made investments

in the office of economic and workforce development and i have seen first hand how that customized and personalized support that office has been providing to people has changed over the years. even several years ago when i was looking as a legislative aid and i was the main person trying to facilitate the relationship between the departments so now to have oewd to do that with the merchants is beneficial but of course there is more work to be done. i know there are some small businesses here today and many we encountered in our work that shared horror stories or impediments they experienced while trying to make the way through the permitting process so we want to identify where the kinks are and in the future we can make this a better process, but before we begin i want to highlight some of the positive things that i think have happened in the past, so as i mentioned earlier the small

business portal. we have completed phase one and the next step through this hearing we're going to gather some information that we can hope to move into phase two to bring for example permits that you can fill out online and payments submit online as well. we have in the last budget process thanks to the committee and the mayor's office and funding new client service manager hosted through the office of economic and workforce development and that person would be assigned to facilitate the permitting process across the departments for those looking to expand businesses in san francisco so in the coming years really just looking forward to working with the city departments as we try to move towards a true one stop shop as we co-locate various departments in the site inhabited by the goodwill on van ness and i wanted to layout the process today and i will call

up todd from the office of economic and workforce development. secondly i would like to bring up jane to talk about the business portal and ryan hunter from the controller's office to present their report and the office of small business and we have representatives available to answer questions and the planning department, dbi, department of public health and the tax and treasurer's office and the fire department so with that said let's begin with you. >> thank you so much supervisor tang. i appreciate the leadership on this issue and calling this hearing today. from day one the mayor has been this a priority and between the invested neighborhoods program, loans, targeted customized assistance for small businesses we have lead the effort with the city with great support from the committee and i want to thank you from that but we heard from small businesses, from each of

you and from the small business commission that the process needed to be improved and that's why in 2014 again through with partnership within oewd and office of technology and office of small business we launched a comprehensive business portal as you mentioned supervisor tang and brought that information into one place and most importantly shared that information from the perspective of a business. what it's like for a business to interface with government opposed to how government is structured. as you mentioned jane will be up in a moment to share an update on that but sharing how a process works isn't the same as making a process better and that's where the second half of the initiative is focused and i want to acknowledge the office for the report on business streamlining and ryan hunter will be up here in a moment to do a briefing out of that report. but i think most importantly what comes next?

what are those recommendations are going to be implemented to make a real impact for the small businesses and thanks to the mayor a budget as well as the support of this committee. we're going to be launching a small business accelerating team with a client services manager as you mentioned supervisor tang and regina will be up to talk about the implementation of that initiative as well as a couple of others focused on making these recommendations real. one final point before i hand it over to jane. this initiative is interagency and requires strong collaboration and i haven't seen such collaboration as with this effort and i want to thank and acknowledge the range of departments here today and department of technology and ben the controller, treasurer cisneros, john from planning and dbi and barbara and her team

and chief hayes white from the fire department. it's a team effort. we know the work isn't done and looking forward to present this to the committee today and next steps and questions and with they will bring up jane. >> thank you very much. >> good morning supervisors. thank you so much for having us present to you today. i am going to talk to you about where we were at the state of small businesses. the approach we took to building the san francisco small business portal and share the outcomes from the last eight months and where we're going next and feels like yesterday i was here in front of the budget and finance sub-committee to ask for the funding for the business portal and here we are eight months later so if we could go to the slide please. i like to call this the worse slide ever. the reason is this a representation of what the small businesses have to go through. not only

do they have to visit geographically dispersed departments and dig through websites and oftentimes if they find the information they're looking for and it's boroughed a lot of municipal code we don't understand so the intent was to build a single place to get the information and also get rid of some of the arrows in the process itself. our goal is create the first stop for everything business in san francisco, inn integrated scalable business solution that scales from the inception of a business owner's idea through the entire life cycle. what we did was sort of take an unprecedented approach. for the first time every government website is not just municipal code, maybe clip art and a couple of photos. we conducted user research. our users are internal users and the

permitting staff as well as the business owners so we conducted workshops and brought together nine departments and 20 permitting staff as well as the small business owners who were from the inception of the idea and a business was on the way out and we wanted to capture their experience as well. we looked at hundreds of analogous experiences in the private and public sector. from this research we put together a customer journey map so i have a bigger version if you want to see it up close but it's showing you that both during the consideration and the preparation phase and maintain and go it's more of a linear process but the orange section in the middle -- this is what i call the infin infinity loop of death and they're dealing with the government and they're reaching out to find information on permits, trying to stay compliant on ada requirements and they get cent around to

three departments and only to come back to the first one. >> >> that's the infinity loop of death you called it? >> actually just made that up on the spot so don't call it so the infinity loop is what we're trying to solve and this is a common goal with all of the departments that are here. this is what we're trying to make better. we came up with some design principles and i won't read through everything but they could be applied throughout the entire city to websites and digital services that we deliver. one is treat our constituents as customers and increasing the content and increasing the trust in what we deliver so we went into building the business portal. this is a collaboration with 18 different city departments. again as todd mentioned an unprecedented the effort and pulled information

on 400 permits and licenses. we wrote every piece of content in the business portal and made sure that the language was simple, easy to understand and translatable in spanish, chinese and seven other languages and designed to be responsive so users can access it from the phone, desk top and tablet and at the same time we engage with the business owners and staff to ensure accuracy and [inaudible] prelaunch. we did user testing and it showed that the people described the site as professional, easy, accessible, engaging, beautifully designed and comprehensive. not the usual words that people use to describe government websites. we conducted stress testing. made sure that the site could with stand 200,000 simultaneous hits at once to avoid any

healthcare.gov debacles and the soft launch took place in 2014. the full launch happened and we put together a promotional video and postcards and links and seeing referral traffic from the tax collector's office and sent out emails and staff and a lot of the non-profits that support the businesses and reached out through social media and muni bus ads and i will show you an example. am seeing these postcards in your office and in the city and now the outcomes. this is what i am excited to share with you. we're seeing 10 times as many users as a daily basis compared to the previous city online permitting site so right now seeing 117 users a day

compared to 10 users in the past. responses in the give back feature along with social media mentions have highlighted the portal for this and it's a pleasure to explore, make it easier to do business in san francisco and even in the words of one business owner they're saying we're doing them a solid. city, state federal officials -- even the white house have reached out to learn about the san francisco portal and we share this online and now we're able to use analytics and feedback to inform our decision making as we move forward in expanding and building out further features on the portal. the numbers -- so these are the numbers that we gathered since launch. we are seeing 14,055,000 -- 14,000 views a month and many come from the phones and

hopefully that will drive more content through the phone making it easier to see on a mobile surface. tablet users are 3%. 39% come from san francisco with 8% from the surrounding bay area. i am excited to share that in the third quarter of the previous fiscal year so january through march of 2015 there were 311 reps were able to resolve many cases just using the business portal and in the age break down and supervisor mar you talk about the digital divide quite a bit and it was surprising to me and conventional wisdom that the portal is geared towards a younger audience but the majority are over 35 years old and 61% of total users and that speaks to how we designed a portal that supports and helps

every demographic. awards. recently we were mentioned in a article for fast company and by the governor's office and kennedy from recognized it as a bright innovation and we were a web emmy nominee and this includes second phase features so these are in the works. we're looking at using software as a platform for forms that are submittable. we're using individual users and check lists and data storage and delivery and prefill are some of the other capabilities. portal maintenance is important. we want to make sure it's not another government website left alone and unattended and a year

from now or two it's obsolete so we update the content when legislation changes or important due dates to remind owners about fees that are due. we constantly create new content, new starter kits and adding information about the business registration going online and information about gross receipt taxes et cetera and we audit and fix links on the site and security updates and training manual of what we do to update the portal and i have been saying that technology shouldn't be the only thing that drives change. we also need to look at the process itself which is why in the last six months we had a great collaborative effort with the controller's office to map out the restaurant permit

process and why did we choose restaurants? san francisco has the most in the nation and $30 million in sales tax for the city. it creates 19,000 local jobs and 230 restaurants register each year and they face up to 24 individual permits and deal with many different state and federal and city departments and let's fix the process and add in the technology to make it even more efficient. next steps. portal streamlining once we did the mapping will move over into different sectors and implement all processes into a unified plan and recommend streamlining measurements between and within departments. we would also like to plan for the future integration of online and off line processes with the physical one-stop center as supervisor tang mentioned earlier. with technology we're

working with the tax collector, the assessor's office, county clerk to create a new functionality and integrate all of the forms with electronic and digital subjects as well as electronic payments and make recommendations to integrate city data bases. the portal maintenance continues and we hope to operationalize this maintenance and some of the projects that the team is consulting on is the mayor's housing prortal and with other commissions in the city and working with the creation of the public strategy. our ultimate goal is give san franciscans a single experience across city departments thereby making the government more responsive to citizens and bring government to the people by creating an exemplary service. the

possibilitys are endless and as we put up the slide of the supporters i would like to acknowledge the mayor's office and department of technology and other all the other departments for the collaborative effort. >> thank you for the effort. if you don't know jane worked in the office of small business and did a great job fusing working with the businesses that came through for help and assistance and bringing that to a wonderful online portal. if you haven't taken a look at it i recommend it and it's amazing and i couldn't believe it when i saw it and it was produced by government and i don't know if colleagues have any other questions. if not i will move on to the controller's office and we made strides and now the report will tell us about some of the challenges when people

are receiving services in person. >> thank you. good morning supervisors. my name is ryan hunter from the city performance unit of the controller office with our team and we have been working with the business portal team to map the process of opening a restaurant in san francisco so i will tell you about what we have been doing and what we found, what we're recommending. so this slide -- could we get the powerpoint? thank you. this slide has the journey map that the business portal team put together. really what we have been working on is trying to get into that infin itd loop and untangle that. could we see what is going on in and find ways to make it simpler? so we went through the process of opening a restaurant, find all of the permit processes relevant for a new owner so we mapped 22 restaurant processes across san

francisco departments and three state and federal departments. to supplement the work we interviewed local business owners, different department staff and talked to the acceleration team in new york city. we looked at permitting data from the treasurer and tax collector and a survey from business owners to ask them about the obstacles in the process. this is a look at the different departments that we worked with and mapped and the different areas so for each department we produced a map of that permitting process so this is a sample of one of those here and we really had a specific focus on what does this look like from the customer's perspective and what are the steps in the process for the customer and the back end processes that support that? so in this process you see the top row is always the customer and this particular one it's a lot of touch points for the customer. when we did that for all 22 of the processes we were

able to put them together into an overall permit process map of opening a restaurant and this was able to show us what do you need to do first? what are the permits you need to get before another permit? what's necessary to open your doors versus what can be done later? so what did we learn from all of our mapping? we made eight recommendations and two large groups. the first is about collaboration between departments so what we found was that often in a single department's internal process was relatively efficient and made sense, but those processes often crossed departments and there's not always good structure or good incentive for those departments to work together, and often customer is bounce friday one department to another with. >> >> little communication in between so the first set of recommendations is what can we

do to help businesses work better together and departments work better together and i will highlight a few of these. turn around time is key and when we asked departments how long does it take to get this permit or that permit it was usually a difficult question to answer and the first step in shortening the time span is having the information available and knowing how are we doing now and creating the structures to look at that and look at the turn around time. the second recommendation that we looked at was about how do we combine different permit processes together? we found that there were often groups of permits that shared some characteristics and we could bundle together, so for example often any person who is registering a new business usually also needs to register for business personal property

assessment with the assessor's office and often a fictitious name with the office and we looked at bundling those together and i will skip to number 5 which is about one stop shop and co-locating permits. we found there were so many different physical locations that one restaurant owner would need to visit to open a visit and second and townsend and mission and city hall or fox plaza and a lot of running around and exacerbated if the process is not clear and applicants don't know where to go next and an option was explore co-locating the permitting departments moving towards the one stop shop that several people have talked about. the second group of recommendations are about kind of a focus on the applicant so we found that the best departments thought about their

role as not only being about enforcing compliance of the process but about helping the applicants as customers, so we identified a number of permits that could be submitted online and sort of prioritized those. in general we found that if a permit was able to be submitted by mail that it could be submitted online and we produced a list of likely candidates for that, and we also found that it was often difficult to pay for permits. there were a number of departments that require something like a cashier's check or multiple payments for a single permit and when you multiply that across 22 departments it's onerous so we recommended that departments look at ways to streamline payments and have fewer payments for a single permit and to accept things like credit cards to make that payment process easier so i will leave it there but we are available for questions. >> thank you very much. and

next i would like to bring up regina from the office of small business. >> so thank you supervisor tang -- excuse me, chair farrell, supervisor tang and supervisor mar. so with this information that the controller's office has done through analyzing the permits with the business portal team we took a look at that information and thought all right what could we do with it and what's the best way to help our businesses move through that process? so

with director rufo convening different departments, the office of building inspection and department of public health and creating the small business accelerator team was formed and so i'm going to talk a bit about that as well. in the 2015-16 budget -- thank you supervisor tang for your leadership in establishing and creating the team. this will launch in the fall of 2015. we will be creating a client service manager that will be a part -- that would be the core component of the team and the team just to be clear will be comprised of representative simonson -- liaisons and working with the different departments to

either resolve or get questions on how to facilitate a particular business need. as presented to you there are roughly 230 restaurants that go through the permitting process each year, and the majority of these businesses are going to open one restaurant, maybe two restaurants within their lifetime, and so it's not within their interest to become experts in the permitting process. their core capacity is opening a restaurant, making food, delivering food and providing an excellent customer experience for their customers. the client service manager will own the business experience working with the different departments so starting with evaluating the business needs, taking a look at what will be the zoning requirements. will they need a

conditional use? will there need to be a change of use? what is the current space they're going into? will they need to did a complete build out? what is required for engaging with the office of building inspection? so they're reviewing the past permit applications with the individual business owner and working with the particular departments. they will be coordinating the services and helping to schedule inspections. by involving and having a case manager throughout the process the business owner will have an experienced partner. what we do find at the office of small business that most businesses and our small businesses really don't understand or know how to speak the language that we -- the city government language, so what does a conditional use process mean? what does a change of use process mean? so and what does the application process mean and why do i need to have -- you

know, when i file with the department of public health for my permit to operate that it needs to be routed through zoning, so interpreting all of that for the business owner is important and of course that will be one of the elements to help streamline the process in addition to taking a look at where we can improve the processes. the small business case manager will be co-located at the office of building inspection at 1660 mission street and while this is a position that is part of oewd what we do know is that not all businesses either touch point with the office of economic and workforce development and the invested neighborhood or with our office, the office of small

business through the business assistance center, but the one key touch point they have to touch is the office of building inspection when they go to open their business so it's very important to have this position co-located at the bpd bpd to ensure that -- office of building inspection and every restaurant that opens is able to engage with the client service manager. this will also ensure that we have the client service manager will have the opportunity to then have the access to all the key departments that are located at the dbi on the fifth floor which include the planning department, the public utilities department, dpw, fire, and -- dpw and the fire, so that way the client service manager will be able to engage with those departments if there's questions or needs or

things not clear can do that on behalf of the client. this will ensure that applications move swiftly so that the client service manager if something is bottlenecked will be able to engage with the department in a much more readily achievable fashion, and thus will save time and money for the business, but it will also -- we will begin to learn ways in which we can facilitate the process and the permitting which will also save us time and money as well. so we are working with a case management model so the permitting departments will designate a staff lead to sit on the business accelerator team. we will be including other -- all the departments that are involved in the permitting process to assist us with this. the client service manager is

charged with convening the departments and leads and guiding the restaurants through the entire process so the client service manager will have some authority to convene the departments and work with them and resolve issues, and they will be providing updates to the senior staff of the departments, the department heads, so that we can take this opportunity to learn our best practices and see where we can make improvements. the client service manager will also engage with the office of economic and workforce development, the office of small business, it is job squad and the small business development center. >> >> and touch point places that businesses engage with city agencies that are non regulatory city agencies but work closely with the golden gate student a restaurant association and we have the different groups

working with us and mission economic development center and make sure that those entities know that we have a client service manager for those engaging in the restaurant and food industry. there will be the single point of contact that will help provide increased accountability. the client service manager will start tracking the time that it takes -- the actual time it takes for a business to open in the different scenarios so from a full service high end restaurant to a very small take out service as an example. and i think the one important thing that will -- the timing of this that is taking place with the team coming on board in preparation for the one stop shop that is being developed at mission and

south van ness we will have real live experience how the permit process in real time is routed and what we can do to improve the customer experience and one stop permitting experience prior to opening what we call the project [inaudible] or the one stop location at mission and south van ness. i do want to thank all the departments that have been involved. as supervisor tang as talked about it. also the director that it's really with the departments engaged with the permitting process, working with the controller's office and working with jane kong and recognizing that this is a good means of helping our restaurants get open, so i too want to thank the department heads and especially

todd r ruffo and the other members who were really instrumental in forming the concept of the business accelerator team and determining the need that we need to have a case manager, so thank you. >> thank you very much to everyone for their presentations. and i'm actually going to do things differently because i know we have folks in the audience that would like to speak so before i launch into questions or comments i would like to see through the chair if we can open public comment. i know we have many businesses couldn't be here and they're busy running their shops and we have someone in the audience that runs a business in the neighborhood so i would like to therefore open up public comment first so i have a few speaker cards and come up if you like. [calling speaker names]

any microphone is fine. >> hi. my name is lauren crab. i own andy coffee town roasters in the sunset and katie's office asked me to talk about the experience with the planning department. we got the lease on our location in november of 2013 and it took us until -- oh no november 2012 and took us until march of 2014 to open. that is a year and a half of our lives building it out. a large portion of that was spent in the infinity loop of death i think it was called, and it was extremely frustrating and specifically going between the

different departments, kind we felt bombarded by one of the inspections after we had a preliminary inspection and then another guy came out and made us rebuild a bunch of stuff and it was a frustrating time and it's very good to hear that you guys are working to make it a little bit easier for people like myself, and yeah the online portal looks awesome. i'm kind of jealous that wasn't around when i was building out and i think that having the person at the planning department to help you -- help guide small business owners through the process is going to really help so i hope you continue to prioritize the projects and work on some some more. thank you. >> thank you very much for coming out. next speaker please. >> hi. samantha higgins,

golden gate restaurant association. i want to thank the team and the controller's office and supervisor tang for the leadership and everyone else that worked on it. i want to address the difficultly in the permitting process for restaurants as it's one of the most complicated processes to map out and understand and especially for small business owners as so many restaurants are. i wanted to mention the number of calls and questions we get on a daily basis from restaurants or people trying to open restaurants and particularly owners from other jurisdictions that are confused about the san francisco process and emphasize how important it is and streamlining the process would be for an industry as a whole. just looking through the report i want to suggest beginning with some of the easier things to tackle especially switching more applications to be done online and combining locations and i know we're working towards.

linking critical permits to other permits would make a difference and referring applicants to the planning department in the beginning of the process and i want to talk about the inspections and it could be difficult for businesses. one of the challenges which was brought up there is typically not one inspector assigned so restaurants or businesses will get different inspectors that tell them different things and can be confusing and lead to delays so if we could do that i think that would be helpful for restaurants is thank you everybody for the work on this and i look forward to continuing. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> supervisors jim lazarus san francisco chamber of commerce. thank you supervisor tang for your leadership on the issue and the departments involved. long over due. even looking at the portal and go online and look at the portal you wonder whether you take the next step to try to open a restaurant. it's a

daunting list of permits, applications, and approvals that you have to go through depending on what your business model is and where it's located. as i said this is long over due. if i look at los angeles, they have a restaurant and hospitality portal. they call it an express program in the city of los angeles. it's a multi-agency management network that does exactly what we're talking about doing here, and i think portals are great. the internet is great but having a real person through the small business commission staff and other departments working with dbi having one-on-one meetings and really helping assist the applicant through this very difficult process and it will never get that smooth and easy. in this city you won't get down to one internet page where you're able to click on buttons and send in the credit card check and get the permits. it's not going to happen that way and

having real people help real applicants is ultimately the way it will succeed and we appreciate the efforts and we will work with you to make it a success. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> good afternoon supervisors. supervisor tang thank you for doing this work. it's greatly appreciated. [inaudible] and merchantace association in the mission district and invest in neighborhoods. we have been working with the merchants for the last 17 years on the corridor. some of the biggest issues we heard from the merchants is affordability of the permits and affordability of space and the permit process to open up a business and the process afterwards of maintaining the business around the permits so we do appreciate this work. we seen a lot of proves over the years the. -- improvements over the years. i think what is key is definitely

having an individual that is able to guide the process with a lot of these folks. one of the things that we dealt with is the language barrier which is huge and also the high-tech and low tech. i think we need to have that balance of both so i think this person will be able to do that. i think -- you know, the portal it's awesome and the team is well balanced and i think we need to move in that direction making sure that we cover a lot of different communities and abilities around tech. i think it's important. the one stop shop i think it's very good also. it's been a task for folks to get around for the different permits. also creating a to do list by restaurant type because there are different types of restaurant and fast food, self service, bars and full restaurants and identify the type of restaurant you want to

open and then a list of tasks that you have to do in order to be get them all done because a lot of people don't realize there are so many different types and not aware of one thing they missed and penalizeed in the future so creating that list would be great, and also what we have seen in the past with some they combine the permits on to one statement. if you're allowed to have an option of opting in or opting out and some people would rather pay across the years and others at one time so looking at also. we appreciate the work that you're doing and look forward to the conversation. thank you. >> thank you very much. are there any other members of the public who wish to comment on this hearing? okay. seeing none through the chair if we could close public comment. >> public is closed. [gavel] >> thank you very much to everyone that came out and like i mentioned we heard stories

throughout the work as well, so one of the things that the controllary office made a recommendation through the report is improve turn around time. departments must measure time and targets to drive change and monitor performance so i don't know if there is something to be answered by the controller's office or the other departments here but i want to know which departments -- how many of the city departments are having this as a measurement? because i think it's important to gauge from a customer experience standpoint how much time it takes for people to go through the process? in the report it says on average someone i think went through a process and took four months but we see cases someone went through and waited two years to do a full build out. >> yeah, we didn't find that i recall and my team can speak to this maybe any departments that could readily produce that

information. there were some places where you could discern part of it by digging deep through the data but it wasn't a top line item for any of the departments that we spoke with. >> okay. and second question is based on one of the recommendations as well is to link the low awareness permits and have them packaged together with the critical to open permits so applicants can apply for them simultaneously. there was an example pointed out about the treasure's office, the new business registration with the assessor's new business registration as well as the clerk if i -- fictitious registration and i am wondering if departments are open to how we might collaborate and package the permits together? >> i am from the office of the treasurer and we are looking in

great interest how we can package all of the items into the business registration. one of the challenges with working with the assessor's office the businesses have to do a form called a 571l which is catchy and for ensecured property taxes and that form is state mandated and we're not allowed to change it so we're working with the way that we share data with them so they can get notified of businesses that open that will need to fill out this form and transfer the relevant information over to them so it's a bit easier and then we're doing some advocacy with the state to see if we can carve out our own 571l or at least add the business account number to make it easier for businesses. >> great. thank you for informing us of some of the efforts and in particular about the weights and measures and including that as part of the

health inspection process. i don't know if anyone is here that can answer that. >> good afternoon. richard lee acting director of environmental health. weights and measures is part of our unit but i want to point one thing out is that the registration is not required before a restaurant opens, so just like also for the certified food manager training that is not required so those things can actually happen after a restaurant is open and it's not going to be needed before it's opened. in terms of the inspections -- in terms of the food inspectors doing the weight and measures inspections that's not going to be actually allowed because there is a requirement that you have to be certified to do those weights and measure inspections so we have weights and weights inspectors certified to do that. our food inspectors are not certified to do that but again it will not delay the

approval of permits. >> okay. is there any way potentially they could -- i understand one doesn't have to be done before opening a shop -- i guess a store most likely but the other one, the actual health inspection you need before opening and is there a way to package the inspection -- even if they're two different people and have them occur at the same time or create additional efficiencies in that way. >> we will have to look into it. we would have linkage between the weight and measures and others to make sure it's done but we have to look into that. >> okay thank you. one other recommendations had to do with referring customers to the planning department at the beginning of the process so i wanted to find out -- i don't know if it's through the planning department or someone else that encounters customers first. currently what is going on, maybe why aren't people

referred to planning first? how is that happening? i know in some cases customers know to go to planning first but i wanted a better understanding of that. >> i could make a brief comment about that and if any other department wants to chime in. what is behind this recommendation is that there are plenty of places that the process can be slowed down or become expensive the planning in particular if you're trying to start a business in an area not properly zoned there is not much often that you can do about it and sometimes business owners experience that obstacle down the road when opening a business when they sunk time and money into that and probably despite the best efforts of departments people will come into the process from a lot of angles and are the ways to route people toward the planning department early on no matter where they

come in the process? >> okay. and then i don't know if planning wants to chime in. >> sure. i'm the assistant director of planning. as ryan mentioned we're not always in control of when people reach out to us but when they do reach out to us we have dedicated staff that staff the public counter as well as other planners that cycle through and all of the planners when we encounter folks thinking of opening a business and we tell them don't put money down on a lease or things of that nature until we're confident it can be permitted and try to walk them through the variables and oftentimes we get folks interested in opening a restaurant in a neighborhood but not have addresses in mind and in a neighborhood there could be different zoning districts and that could affect that. we try

to work with them to articulate that message and every property has different rules in san francisco and once we zone in on a address we can steer them to locations where there is an easier path to open the business. we have a preliminary zoning form that i know other agencies use. we will have folks come in with the form filled out and a way to start the conversation and ask the right key questions to give them right information, and we do have one of our small business liaisons is at the public counter and a really good point person working with the new acceleration team quite a bit. a couple of other points. efforts that the planning department has launched i would say in the last six months to a year to help particularly expedite small businesses, not

100% restaurants, but small businesses in general as well as small permits. we have restructured our staff who are working on what we call -- they're the inner agency referrals and from the health department and the entertainment commission and the alcohol beverage control, police department, those types of referrals. we restructured that so there is a little more oversight and coordination and we have performance measures in place for the turn around time on the zoning referrals. our objective is usually turn them around within 30 days. i ran a query of the last six months and we're beating that measure and turning it around in 15 days and volume of 830 referrals in the past six months so we focused on that. the other we created a small projects team last december to help deal with the influx of small projects, residential and commercial and we have one dedicated person on the team and processing the commercial permits so anything

that doesn't need a public hearing and just needs the notification we are expediting it through that team and we have seen some significant improvements through that. >> thank you. thank you for highlighting the changes that were made and i like working with planning on the issues and something that we hear from the small business community and sure you can make it through a department quickly and maybe planning went quickly and go to another department and there is another backlog that is separate there, so for example i know we have fire department here, dbi, so i would like to bring them up as well if they're here in the audience today, but again we have first hand experience where we got them quickly through other departments so i think that the new person, the client service manager that will be hired soon i hope will help with that facilitation of the process through the multiple departments but from the fire department's perspective if you could talk

about your backlog. how is it that you treat the businesses that you have available? so for example i know that planning department you're making the effort to really move through the cue of businesses that don't have to go through a public hearing or smaller nature but does fire have a similar structure or how does that work? >> good morning supervisors. ron thomas assistant director at the office of building inspection. our colleagues from the fire department have just arrived. >> [inaudible] >> hi good afternoon. i have talked with all my inspectors how we can try to speed up the process of permitting the restaurant business and for the fire department when we look at a restaurant we look at two different occupancies, a b occupancy for less than 49 people and a2 for more than 49 people. that's 50 and above.

one of the biggest problem that we find out with business owner is they go and sign a lease. they put in a lot of money invest in the business and find out that the business they want to run in the building it's not approved for let's a a2 so that means they can't run a business of 50 or more people and have to go through a change of use and that process is pretty long because it has to go through planning and building department if i understand and part of being a2 there are life safety requirements depending how much people are in there. if you have more than 99 people you need sprinklers and more than 199 you need two exists and more than 299 you need a fire alarm system and one of the permits that takes a long time to approve is the people who signed up to rent these spaces are not aware of all the changes they

have to do upgrade the business to be code compliant so at the front desk when someone says i want to start a business in san francisco and we ask them the address and we help them with the research and if we can't find anything supporting them we then ask them to check building department records and i agree with planning up here and before a business starts anything, dumps money into anything and do investment they should find out if the activities they want will be approved in that space. i think that would shorten it a lot and most of the turn around time -- let's say they're established and just a change in ownership of the moment hey say i'm the new owner and we're out there next week and if nothing needs to be maintained or approved we send them straight to the tax corrector and that's

the first hurdle the fire department faces and the second one is we send the paperwork to the tax collector and it's bounced back and says the location is not registered and then we have to call up the business owner and try to explain explain to them and although you have a business certificate to operate in san francisco you didn't find a place when you applied because they don't have the location attached to the certificate so now they have to update that and i have to wait for that before i send the paperwork again and please issue a license so the staff have looked into those two problem exercise if we can get. >> >> those problems resolved working with the department i think with the fire department the process will be much faster. >> thank you for sharing the challenge with us and it's not a linear process along the departments and that makes it more difficult. in terms of the issues that you brought up from

planning's perspective when people are for example coming to you first potentially or actually any other juncture is there some collaboration between the fire department for example to let them know that you should check and you could meet their requirements even before beginning? >> there is typically not a lot of coordination and our code is complicated enough to stay on top and we're not well versed on the other codes and 49 is a trigger for them and not united states since the code simplifications efforts happened and we suggest anytime they're opening a business and a first time person doing this we recommend they go to the office of building inspection and ask answer questions and even if we don't know what the trigger point is we refer them in advance of finishing out their

day at 1660. >> okay. i am glad you're all in the same room and talk with each other and hopefully help with the process moving forward and dbi -- i know folks have spoken about multiple inspections and it might not be just dbi and fire and other things so your perspectives. are there ways that your department can make that process a little easier for people especially if they have to rebuild things or what not? >> starting a new business that is specifically a restaurant we can see already through the control's analysis and presentation it's complicated and daunting task for anyone that wants to take on that endeavor. a small part of it, even though it's a very important part, is the actual construction side of it, but as a prelude to that is the permit

process itself. we have begun discussion on the executive team and how we can plan forward and we have looked at issues how we can deal with immediately within the environment that we control including our website, creating a faq specific to restaurants and full chart of the permit process itself. currently i am the point person for this effort. also for for project chess which is the new building with the new permit center. oftentimes now is termed as the one stop shop. this discussion needs to be more extensive on how we accomplish this goal. it's a very broad goal in one sense to execute it and have staffing from various agencies is something that needs to continue discussion. we do have

a core now at the city permit center at 1660 mission street primarily at the first floor but finishing up on the fifth floor and in a way a one stop service if you have your other ancillary permits and outside of construction type permits in hand and under your own control. we can help definitely with referrals to other departments such as san francisco department of public health and we do make that effort and we try to educate our staff to do that in in the point to point contact on the fifth floor. however when we get to that point it's the design professional we're faced with and not necessarily the owner of the project so we maybe able to fix and address the nuts and bolts issue and provide information about informations in the future once the permit has been approved, but the

owner not being present and not necessarily wanting to get into the technical issues of getting a permit maybe engaged in the future and have more hands on approach with this effort that we're putting together with a number of city agencies, so talking about the multiple inspections that's really coming down to the ability of the contractor, the subcontractor, maybe the project manager if they have one, and other people engaged and involved in the inspection side of it. that one takes on a very different number of individuals who need to be engaged that weren't necessarily engaged on the front end getting the permit itself, so we can separate the two tasks, big tasks, one to get the permit up front, have the permit issued to actually starts the construction side of it. hand off but

continue coordination with the staff that's -- professionals are engaged in constructing the site. i will through our efforts of coordination in our department we have looked at and discussed how we can specific to restaurants but also small businesses in general see how we could have a better interdivisional communication to see that we don't have at the end of a project when it really becomes acutely sensitive to time to the beginning of the payment of rent, things of that nature, and people are trying to at least get the temporary certificate of occupancy and things fall through the crack and prevented from having that opportunity to start in a timely manner or around the time they need to start their business. we're familiar with the fact there is a training period for any restaurant that takes anywhere from one week to upwards to two, three weeks.

we have been witness to that process as well, so we know that even before you have your first customer walk through the door there's a lot of work to be done and more than just getting your certificate of occupancy or temporary one to operate so within our department a more holistic look at the process, discussion between the interdivisional agencies, towards inspection and any subsequent revisions during the course of construction that are needed to be approved in a timely manner we will continue to look at that and engage our own staff and we started that recently and bring in staff and expand it with more staff and both in the inspection and the plan approval side so we can focus on this and make it better, more efficient, and usable customer friendly process. >> all right. thank you. i think that's a great segue to something that i'm going to make

a request of from some of the departments here. i realize we can't solve all of the problems in this hearing and there is much more work to be done, so one of the things i would like to ask of all of the departments and planning, dbi, fire, tax assessor's office and work with jane kong and the staff and further the small business portal so in the next phase we can take applications on-line and take payments and we need the coordination of all of you to bring the portal to a better place of people. secondly i would like to request that the following departments conduct an internal assessment. as the last gentleman there needs to be an internal look how you do your work and some of the challenges you face so i would like to

make a formal request so in six months that all of of the departments conduct a internal assessment of your own processes and keeping in mind with the interactions with other departments that you may interface with and receive a report to the board of supervisors by january 31 and then from there take that information and see what next steps need to be taken given the internal review so some of the things that i hope you think about is eliminating burdens for internal staff and make the processes more efficient. how do you eliminate hurdles for the applicants, the customers we're working with? and identify the needs that your department may need to actually achieve these improved efficiencies? so potentially it's funding, other resources. please think about that as well and lastly if you

can in your internal review think about the eight recommendations that were made through this controller's office report. i think they're very broad yet easy to tackle so i would like to you take the recommendations and see how your department can respond to that so with that colleagues i want to thank you for your time and everyone for being here and the ongoing work and helping the small businesses in san francisco. as we know they're incredibly important to the fabric of our city and neighborhoods so i also want to thank the small businesses that are in san francisco who have dared to open up shop here and hopefully in the future it will be easier if you want to expand or grow your businesses so with that colleagues i don't know if you have questions or comments but i want to thank you for your time and with that look forward to the upcoming information that you will provide to us so with they will make a motion to file the hearing. >> okay. thank you supervisor

tang has made a motion and i want to thank you for this hearing and all of the department heads and staff that came hear. ms. kong it's good to see you again. i remember working on the portal with you and the first month while on the board of supervisors and thanks for the leadership and everyone that makes that happen and means a ton to us but the broader san francisco community so the work is not unnoticed and thank you for your work and for every department here so with that we have a motion by supervisor tang and take that without objection. madam clerk do we have any other business in front of us? >> there is no further business. >> okay. we are adjourned. [gavel]

>> i'm your host of "culturewire," and today, here at electric works in san francisco. nice to see you today. thanks for inviting us in and showing us your amazing facility today. >> my pleasure. >> how long has electric works been around? >> electric works has been in san francisco since the beginning of 2007. we moved here from brisbane from

our old innovation. we do printmaking, gallery shows, and we have a fabulous retail store where there are lots of fun things to find. >> we will look at all of that as we walk around. it is incredible to me how many different things you do. how is it you identify that san francisco was in need of all these different services? >> it came from stepping out of graduate school in 1972. i wrote a little thing about how this is an idea, how our world should work. it should have printmaking, archiving, a gallery. it should have a retail store. in 1972, i wanted to have art sales, point-of-sale at the grocery store. >> so you go through the manifesto. with the bay area should have. you are making art incredibly accessible in so many different

ways, so that is a good segue. let's take a walk around the facilities. here we are in your gallery space. can you tell me about the current show? >> the current show is jeff chadsey. he is working on mylar velum, a smooth, beautiful drawing surface. i do not know anyone that draws as well as he does. it is perfect, following the contours and making the shape of the body. >> your gallery represents artists from all over, not just the bay area, an artist that work in a lot of different media. how to use some of what you look for in artists you represent? >> it is dependent on people are confident with their materials. that is a really important thing. there is enough stuff in the world already. >> you also have in his current show an artist who makes

sculpture out of some really interesting types of materials. let's go over and take a look at that. here we are in a smaller space. project gallery. >> artists used the parameters of this space to find relationships between the work that is not out in the big gallery. >> i noticed a lot of artists doing really site-specific work. >> this is a pile of balloons, something that is so familiar, like a child's balloon. in this proportion, suddenly, it becomes something out of a dream. >> or a nightmare. >> may be a nightmare. >> this one over here is even harder to figure out what the initial material is. >> this is made out of puffy paint. often, kids use it to decorate their clothes. she has made all these lines of paint. >> for the pieces we are looking at, is there a core of foam or

something in the middle of these pieces that she built on top of? >> i'm not telling. >> ah, a secret. >> this silver is aluminum foil, crumbled of aluminum foil. her aesthetic is very much that quiet, japanese spatial thing that i really admire. their attention to the materiality of the things of the world. >> this is a nice juxtaposition you have going on right now. you have a more established artists alongside and emerging artists. is that something important to you as well? >> very important in this space, to have artists who really have not shown much. now let's look at other aspects of electric works operation. let's go to the bookstore. >> ok. >> in all seriousness, here we

are in your store. this is the first space you encounter when you come in off the street. it has evolved since you open here into the most amazingly curious selection of things. >> this was the project for the berkeley art museum. it was -- this is from william wiley's retrospective, when he got up onstage to sing a song, 270 people put on the cat. >> it is not just a bookstore. it is a store. can you talk us through some of your favorites? >> these are made in china, but they are made out of cattails. >> these pieces of here, you have a whale head and various animals and their health over there, and they are jewelry. >> we do fund raisers for nonprofits, so we are doing a project for the magic theater, so there are some pretty funny

cartoons. they are probably not for prime time. >> you sort of have a kind of holistic relationship where you might do merchandise in the store that promotes their work and practice, and also, prince for them. maybe we should go back and look at the print operation now. >> let's go. >> before we go into the print shop, i noticed some incredible items you have talked back here. what are we standing in front of? >> this is william wiley, only one earth. this is a print edition. there are only eight total, and what we wanted to do was expand the idea of printmaking. this is really an art object.

there we go. >> besides the punball machine, what do you produce in limited edition? >> there is the slot machine. if you win the super jackpot, you have saved the world. >> what about work? >> the right design, it was three volumes with lithographs in each volume. the cab of count dracula with 20 lithographs inside and lined with beaver fur. really special. >> let's move on to the print shop. >> ok. the core of what we do is making things. this is an example. this is a print project that will be a fund-raiser for the contemporary music players. we decided to put it in the portfolio so you could either frame at or have it on your bookshelf. >> so nonprofits can come to

you, not just visual are nonprofits, but just nonprofits can come to you, and you will produce prints for them to sell, and the profits, they can keep. >> the return on investment is usually four times to 10 times the amount of investment. this is for the bio reserve in mexico, and this is one of the artists we represent. >> you also make prints for the artists that you represent. over here are some large prints by a phenomenal artist. >> he writes these beautiful things. anyone who has told you paradise is a book of rules is -- has only appeared through the windows. this is from all over coffee. we are contract printers for all kinds of organizations all across the country. >> thank you very much for showing us around today. i really appreciate you taking

the time to let me get better acquainted with the operation and also to share with our "culturewire" team. >> i love teaching. it is such an exhilarating experience when people began to feel their own creativity. >> this really is a place where all people can come and take a class and fill part of the community. this is very enriching as an artist. a lot of folks take these classes and take their digital imagery and turn it into negatives. >> there are not many black and

white darkrooms available anymore. that is a really big draw. >> this is a signature piece. this is the bill largest darkroom in the u.s.. >> there are a lot of people that want to get into that dark room. >> i think it is the heart of this place. you feel it when you come in. >> the people who just started taking pictures, so this is really an intersection for many generations of photographers and this is a great place to learn because if you need people from different areas and also everyone who works here is working in photography.

>> we get to build the community here. this is different. first of all, this is a great location. it is in a less-populated area. >> of lot of people come here just so that they can participate in this program. it is a great opportunity for people who have a little bit of photographic experience. the people have a lot, they can really come together and share a love and a passion. >> we offer everything from traditional black and white

darkrooms to learning how to process your first roll of film. we offer classes and workshops in digital camera, digital printing. we offer classes basically in the shooting, ton the town at night, treasure island. there is a way for the programs exploring everyone who would like to spend the day on this program. >> hello, my name is jennifer. >> my name is simone. we are going on a field trip to take pictures up the hill. >> c'mon, c'mon, c'mon.

>> actually, i have been here a lot. i have never looked closely enough to see everything. now, i get to take pictures. >> we want to try to get them to be more creative with it. we let them to be free with them but at the same time, we give them a little bit of direction. >> you can focus in here. >> that was cool. >> if you see that? >> behind the city, behind the houses, behind those hills. the see any more hills? >> these kids are wonderful. they get to explore, they get to see different things. >> we let them explore a little

bit. they get their best. if their parents ever ask, we can learn -- they can say that they learned about the depth of field or the rule of thirds or that the shadows can give a good contrast. some of the things they come up with are fantastic. that is what we're trying to encourage. these kids can bring up the creativity and also the love for photography. >> a lot of people come into my classes and they don't feel like they really are creative and through the process of working and showing them and giving them some tips and ideas. >> this is kind of the best kept secret. you should come on and take a

class. we have orientations on most saturdays. this is a really wonderful location and is the real jewel to the community. >> ready to develop your photography skills? the harvey milk photo center focuses on adult classes. and saturday workshops expose youth and adults to photography classes. >> hi today we have a special edition of building san francisco, stay safe, what we are going to be talking about san francisco's earth quakes, what you can do before an earthquake in your home, to be ready and after an earthquake to make sure that you are comfortable staying at home, while the city recovers. ♪

>> the next episode of stay safe, we have alicia johnson from san francisco's department of emergency management. hi, alicia thanks to coming >> it is a pleasure to be here with you. >> i wonder if you could tell us what you think people can do to get ready for what we know is a coming earthquake in san francisco. >> well, one of the most things that people can do is to make sure that you have a plan to communicate with people who live both in and out of state. having an out of state contact, to call, text or post on your social network is really important and being able to know how you are going to communicate with your friends, and family who live near you, where you might meet them if your home is uninhab hitable. >> how long do you think that

it will be before things are restored to normal in san francisco. >> it depends on the severity of the earthquake, we say to provide for 72 hours tha, is three days, and it helps to know that you might be without services for up to a week or more, depending on how heavy the shaking is and how many after shocks we have. >> what kind of neighborhood and community involvement might you want to have before an earthquake to make sure that you are going to able to have the support that you need. >> it is important to have a good relationship with your neighbors and your community. go to those community events, shop at local businesses, have a reciprocal relationship with them so that you know how to take care of yourself and who you can rely on and who can take care of you. it is important to have a battery-operated radio in your home so that you can keep track of what is happening in the community around and how you can communicate with other people. >> one of the things that seems important is to have access to your important documents.

>> yes, it is important to have copies of those and also stored them remotely. so a title to a home, a passport, a driver's license, any type of medical records that you need need, back those up or put them on a remote drive or store them on the cloud, the same is true with any vital information on your computer. back that up and have that on a cloud in case your hard drive does not work any more. >> in your home you should be prepared as well. >> absolutely. >> let's take a look at the kinds of things that you might want to have in your home. >> we have no water, what are we going to do about water? >> it is important for have extra water in your house, you want to have bottled water or a five gallon container of water able to use on a regular basis, both for bathing and cooking as well as for drinking. >> we have this big container and also in people's homes they have a hot water heater. >> absolutely, if you clean

your hot water heater out regularly you can use that for showering, drinking and bathing as well >> what other things do people need to have aren't their home. >> it is important to have extra every day items buy a couple extra cans of can food that you can eat without any preparation. >> here is a giant can of green giant canned corn. and this, a manual can opener, your electric can opener will not be working not only to have one but to know where to find it in your kitchen. >> yes. >> so in addition to canned goods, we are going to have fresh food and you have to preserve that and i know that we have an ice chest. >> having an ice chest on hand is really important because your refrigerator will not be working right away. it is important to have somebody else that can store cold foods so something that you might be able to take with you if you have to leave your home. >> and here, this is my very own personal emergency supply

box for my house. >> i hope that you have an alternative one at home. >> oh, i forgot. >> and in this is really important, you should have flashlights that have batteries, fresh batteries or hand crank flashlight. >> i have them right here. >> good. excellent. that is great. additionally, you are going to want to have candles a whistle, possibly a compass as well. markers if you want to label things if you need to, to people that you are safe in your home or that you have left your home. >> i am okay and i will meet you at... >> exactly. exactly. water proof matches are a great thing to have as well. >> we have matches here. and my spare glasses. >> and your spare glasses. >> if you have medication, you should keep it with you or have access to it. if it needs to be refrigerated make sure that it is in your ice box. >> inside, just to point out for you, we have spare batteries. >> very important.

>> we have a little first aid kit. >> and lots of different kinds of batteries. and another spare flashlight. >> so, alicia what else can we do to prepare our homes for an earthquake so we don't have damage? >> one of the most important things that you can do is to secure your valuable and breakable items. make sure that your tv is strapped down to your entertainment cabinet or wall so it does not move. also important is to make sure that your book case is secure to the wall so that it does not fall over and your valuable and breakables do not break on the ground. becoming prepared is not that difficult. taking care of your home, making sure that you have a few extra every-day items on hand helps to make the difference. >> that contributes dramatically to the way that the city as a whole can recover. >> absolutely. >> if you are able to control your own environment and house and recovery and your neighbors are doing the same the city as a whole will be a more

resilient city. >> we are all proud of living in san francisco and being prepared helps us stay here. >> so, thank you so much for joining us today, alicia, i appreciate it. >> absolutely, it is my pleasure. >> and thank you for joining us on another edition of building

113. this is the regular meeting ocommission on community investment and infrastructure. the agency commission to san francisco redevelopment agency for tuesday august 18, 2015. welcome to members of the public. madam secretary can you call the first item >> thank you madam chair,