results in an investigation or not i can't say but we're certainly looking at other measures that we can take and i don't think we're necessarily prepared to answer all of that with finality but we're looking into options at that point. >> all right thank you. all right with that supervisor peskin? >> first of all let me thank president breed for holding this and i think if you don't have hearings like this people will repeat these things more often and i'm interested in one specific thing that troubles me and i realize we have 3 legged stools and pg&e and the state puc and what's particularly troubling to me is that ghilotti seems to have actively worked against the removal of the subcontractor i mean at the end of the day it's our problem

because it was our contract and our general and that general subbut i'm a little disturbed that we're dealing only with the suband not the general contractor and the general contractor if i'm reading everything right, seems to have gone to bat for the subcontractor and that kind of implicates the contractor so what is your thinking on that? >> that's certainly a good question. i think you know we focussed on the subcontractor who was performing the work who was responsible for the work while simultaneously notifying the general contractor that they were not doing adequate supervision and providing adequate safety oversight and there were provisions in the contract that they would have more than they did.

>> they being ghilotti as ? >> yes, ghilotti brothers. >> it is our position that ghilotti is responsible for completing this work and certainly the subcontractor who was doing the work is the one that we're most concerned with and felt that ghilotti could bring in another subcontractor who could do this work who has a better, who could bring a team to bare that could perform the necessary work in a safer manner despite repeated meetings and letters etc. we were really unable to reach a cord with synergy and so that's why we focussed on their removal in moving forward and you are right ghilotti has a responsibility as an oversight and it was their contract and we had to work through them to synergy in this case so --

>> and so what is the ultimate resolution? is ghilotti going to go there and finish the job? >> that's our intent at this point as i mentioned earlier we requested they provide new subcontractors and their qualifications to us which we have received from them at this point and we are in the process of reviewing that and proceedings with a contract modification to add them to the contract. >> thank you. >> thank you supervisor peskin and thank you for being here today. so with that i know i want to open it up to public comment if there are any members here from the public who would like to make any public comment at this time please come forward. >> thank you president breed

for holding this hearing it's very important. as the gentleman from the california puc said we didn't have an explosion i'd really not like to have an explosion and we do need to tighten up these procedures sounds like the general contractor was at fault as well as the sub. i know that we've been talking over a number of meetings and hearings in the press conference -- birds eye view -- here i am coming back to the haight and the bus is diverted and it goes on this route takes off of haight street up and around over to cole and i get off the bus and walk over to haight

street and see traffic cones i don't see a fire truck or pg&e truck or city personnel i say what's going on? i go over to a merchant and they say there's been another gas leak and i don't know there's nothing that says go through this area stay out of this area all clear. it's very upsetting for us residents us homeowners and us renters to know what to do so we appreciate your looking at this with a magnifying glass and thinking about the safety of all of our citizens thank you. >> thank you next speaker, please? >> as the gas leaks occurred they kept getting closer to my house. all of them occurred within a block. it is

important for me that you all understand that we're not raising questions about lowest bidder or the reporting requirements of puc to the city and county of san francisco but the responsibility of the city and county of san francisco to the residents of the city and county of san francisco. what is you all's responsibility? does it kick in after the second gas leak? is it the third gas leak? is it the 4th gas leak or is it the fifth gas leak? in this case we couldn't take it anymore and called for a press conference and supervisor breed showed up well and good and we had this hearing but what isn't discussed or what isn't on anybody's agenda is what is the responsibility of the city and county of san francisco to report in a timely and

comprehensive manner to residents of san francisco after let's say the second gas leak? the second potentially catastrophic event in a city-funded and designed public works project? it would seem to me that we need to see somebody from the city show up a lot quicker than after the fifth gas leak. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please? >> hi. i'm from the pan hand /-l resident's association and our concern is we're next to have our pipelines replace d and thank you for this hearing and i want to make sure that we do have you know things in place that this won't happen

again because it's primary residential where i am and don't have the businesses like haight street and people are gone and communication and if anything happens we don't have merchants that can say talk to people coming off the bus and reporting it we really have to rely on the contractors on good faith in other words so again thanks so much. >> thank you. are there any other members of the public who would like to give public comment at this time? seeing none we will close public comment and again i'd like to thank everyone for being here today. i do think it's important that before we move forward with mr. thomas with dpw, we do need some assurances that after the first gas leak in any construction project i mean what is going to be the

procedure? how are people going to be notified and when is enough enough and when will we shut down a project for further review and finally making sure that we're reporting all of these incidents to the california public utilities commission so what i'm hoping to get out of this hearing is a real plan of action so that we are not sure what we're gonna do because i'm not walking away right now feeling comfortable that there's clarity as to what happens when this happens again other than ghilotti brothers they are currently working on presenting new contractors okay so what's the procedure? what's gonna be the procedure moving forward? how are we going to hold them accountable? can you give me something that

assures the folks here from the neighborhood that we have this under control and we're gonna take action in a way that's not like what we had done before? >> if i may just a couple of seconds here if i wasn't clear, earlier i apologize but it's our intent to have titer contact so there's no confusion or lack of information on either our inspectors parts or otherwise. we intend to have additional supervision on-site and we've had some assurances from pg&e that they will

provide additional support as this project moves forward and we felt we took the prudent steps initially when the first hit happened and worked with them again on the second hit to make sure that you know we understood what happened and if you recall there were perceptions of extenuating circumstances but don't really hold water when it comes to this kind of effort and work and the code requires that you hand dig until it's exposed and we'll make sure that happens and the use of hand tools will prevent this from reoccurring and it isn't to say one hundred

percent guaranteed but i think with that oversight we'll be able to ensure that the neighborhood is safe moving forward. >> so you will have someone stationed 24-7 at the project site? >> well during the progress of the work we have inspection personnel as well as the resident engineer but as you can guess the projects are long linear projects and work can be going on in many locations simultaneously and can't expect to have one hundred percent oversight at all locations it's impossible to staff that way but we will make sure that both the general and subcontractors are aware i'm sure everybody is aware of the gravity of the situation and administer the contract as strictly as we can.

>> what's missing here is really how we communicate with the public about when this occurs so when we are in a situation where there is a gas leak how are we communicating with the public, how are we diverting traffic and informing the merchants and what is our plan of action so i'd like to say a plan of action so i can have a clear understanding of what you are proposing in order to ensure the folks in the community are there's like immediate response of how these things get dealt with so that the merchants know what to do so there's not a lot of confusing information we should probably prepare something in case this occurs this is what the procedures will be so that merchants and residents know because we hope it doesn't happen again but clearly because it's happened so many times there's still a breakdown

of trust with the city and how we're going to be operating this contract or any future contract. i know that we have to get it done but i want to make sure that we put procedures in place in order to deal with issues as they arise. >> there were 2 things that you mentioned there and the first is the procedure associated with hitting the gas line and the procedure for hitting a waterline and those would be in place and enforced and where the fire department and pg&e take control of the situation and we as public works support that effort and members of the public are either escorted out or told what they need to do and the second thing you mentioned is notification and closure to each one of those events and that i think we'll work on in our outreach and

present that to you as part of our plan of action. >> and lastly i want to make sure we consider adding a requirement that when there is a gas leak that we immediately report it to the california public utilities commission for an investigation because the other thing is there was one investigation for five gas leaks. that investigation made it clear who was at fault and why and we continue to have as all of us have said finger pointing as to whose responsibility it was and clearly the subcontractor was at fault and we're moving on to hopefully a new subcontractor that will be able to do a better job but i also want to make sure that we are communicating with the neighbors and the merchants and we are working to obtain as much information about the subcontractor and their track

record and the work that they have done to ensure residents and merchants that the person that we're choosing to work with is going to be someone that we can trust that can do the job well and that has a good safety track record so there's a lot of work ahead of us to get to a conclusion on making sure not only the work gets done but it gets done safely and i do appreciate you being here today along with other members from the community as well as from other departments and i just wanted to ask james if you had anything you wanted to add that we might have missed that we need to follow up on. >> thank you for the follow up. as i was listening i had all of these things going through my head and a couple of things mentioned that struck me. one,

it seemed like everybody who came up here conclusion was it's synergy and definitely synergy was most at fault and it's nice to hear dpw mention they are planning on reporting to the state puc and some of other concerns i had regarding specific incidents the last gas line from what i understand was hit 5 feet from the marking and seemed like there were some inaccuracies here and also the october 20th sinkhole was actually one that i reported myself so i'm fairly familiar with it and it was not an immediate reaction and yes it was not technically in the work zone but it was at the corner where they were parking all the heavy equipment and i think their response was about 16 or 18 hours after it was reported at 8 p.m. on the 20th so there

were some things that i urge we look a little deeper into what was said here and great speeches i was very impressed but i think we need to dig a little deeper and thank you again for hosting this hearing. >> thank you. supervisor yee did you have any questions or other comments? >> yeah, i just wanted to -- this just dawned on me that mr. king or several other people i guess mentioned that as you look at new contracts that you assign you will be looking at applying for their work history to make sure that they are competent and i guess part of what i'm thinking is you also have to look at what kind of

subcontractors they are hiring. is there a track record of hiring your poor performing subcontractors -- that's always going to be an issue. maybe the general will be doing okay work and all the subcontractors they hire are doing subpar work and that should not not a factor in giving the contract. >> so the issue is one of the issues is that when these jobs are bid they are bid based on what we ask contractors to say so we say hey we're gonna build a hole this big and wide what are your qualifications you have to meet xyz qualifications and when we write that down it has to be broad enough and

specific enough to /ebgs conclude poor performers and that's the tricky part in a nutshell and i guess i would describe the pool that we have now is contractors who might be a plus contractors and contractors who might be d plus but if you draw a line and say hey we want you to bid on this project there's no bonus for being a plus or b or anything whether it's the prime or the subso there's just a big pool of work and that's the way we do things now and we do run into problems when we have prequalification processes and when we draw specifications so narrowly no one can bid and as you can see from the example even after this many incidents

even at this stage we have people saying it's this guy's fault and that's the trick about writing stuff and i know you know that and we're trying to use the legal tools we have to address it. >> thank you. with that i do think it's important that we do an investigation through our budget and legislative analyst and ask them to look into the city departments responsible because i mean we're hearing you know just a lot of information from various city departments and i want to make sure that the board of supervisors budget and legislative analyst looks into this situation and comes back to us with policy recommendations and changes to legislation that could help make this a more solid system

because there's still a lot of different pieces moving here and nothing seems to be concrete nothing seems to have you know other than yes, there's a plan of action and this is the protocol that you followed but i do think we need to look at a way to make sure that we put something in place from the board of supervisors so we can ensure that we are protecting our residents when these contracts are awarded and thank you all again for being here and we still have much to do and i'll be keeping a close eye on what happens with any project in my district including north of pan hand /-l and including other places and hoping dpw is doing it's due

diligence and i'd like to thank the presenters today and taking leadership on this particular issue and also like to thank my colleagues for sitting through this hearing. another district five is the catalysts for the issue this could affect any district time in san francisco and i want to make sure we're putting clear checks and balances clear systems that will make people feel comfortable and safe with the procedures that the city has in place to do any of these projects and with that i'd like to move that we file this item to the call of the chair.

>> there's been a motion any objections? >> item moved. >> would you like to file or continue. >> i want to continue it to the call of the chair just in case we need to bring it back. >> any objection? none motion passes. thank you very much for your patience out there. madam clerk is there anything else? >> no further business. >> okay so in that case then the meeting is adjourned. >>