we are live now.

good afternoon, today is friday, february 2nd, 2018, this is a special meeting of the building inspection commission. i would like to remind everyone to please turnoff your electronic devices. first is roll call. president mccarthy. vice president walker. commissioner gilman, commissioner constance. commissioner lee, commissioner warshell. commissioner clinch is excused. we have a quorum. next is item 2. discussion and possible action on the proposed double it of the department of knowledge inspections for fiscal years 2019 and 2020, 2018 and 2019.

>> good afternoon. deputy director for the department of building inspection. before you is the proposed fiscal year 18-19, 19-20 budget. we submitted a memo a week ago. i will present this as a powerpoint presentation so it will be easier to go through. first, similar to prior years, the budget funds positions, budget, training, it project to assist us in the strategic plan goals.

that including performing inspections, delivering high customer service, quality customer service, effective administrative practices and engaging and educating the customers and other stakeholders. that is what our budget is geared towards. this year in addition to focusing on those items, we are also going to focus on funding priorities. this year our funding priorities are going to be the executive director 1702. trying to get to streamlining the permitting and planning process for affordable housing to make sure we can get the 30,000 units built. implementation of the accessible business entrance program. mandatory soft story program. of course, emergency

preparedness. i won't say a new item but another eye tomorrow is on equity. that is ensuring to provide services equitably around the different neighborhood this is the city. so for our budget innstructions, we have the budget instructions. we are on a two year budget. this year it is 18-19, 19-20. the 18-19 budget was approved last year. it serves as the base for this budget, for the new two year budget. the mayor's office projects similar fund deficit similar to last year. general fund departments were instructed on 2.5 general fund reductions for the next two years. dbi is self-sufficient so we don't have to meet that

directive. we don't worry about those reductions. the mayor instructed the departments to maintain the current ft, not increase the number of full-time. as special revenue department we are required to do that. let's just get into it now with the actual budget. first chart here are you are revenues. it shows the historical what they have been. fiscal year 11-12. as you can see, we are projecting next year for revenues to be lower than prior years, but we talked about this during the monthly meetings. revenues are still strong. we expect it to go down a little bit. we had unprecedented growth in the past few years. a little more detail about the revenues. you will see -- revenues. it is a piechart that shows the

distribution of revenues. it shows although we have over 40 different individual revenue sources, we have 60% made up of two revenue sources. those are planned check revenues as well as building permit revenues. i will put the other ones up there. i think every one has. i will put up the major ones. we are going through quickly. the next slide will show you budget revenues. that just gives you a detail of revenues. once again if you look at the change, look at planned checking the third or fourth revenue. you notice we are increasing to about $4.5 million that is because two years ago when we started work on the budget our assumption was that we would be

a lot lower given a decrease in activity and because of the impact of the new fees. we still see the revenues are pretty active. that is why we are bumping it up. it will belower than we projected this year. the other revenue would be building permits. $13.7 million bumped up $700,000. those are the revenues. expenditures. once again we are seeing that we are projecting revenues to be higher than this current year. it is leveling out. that is primarily due to a variety of things and i will go over that when we get to that point. feel free to stop me if you have any questions while i go through the slides.

the next is a piechart of expenditures. similar to revenues to give you an idea where the focus of the expenditures are. the biggest bulk salaries then services of other departments, work orders. since we moved to people software that is $17 million. those are the major expenditur expenditures. then these are the details for the expenditures. you can see those details. you can see the salary and fringes increases in cola, retirement is going up, health is going up. that is where the increases are. you notice that services of

other departments has gone down because if you recall this year we transferred about $3 million into hotel, residential hotel funds that were to go to mohcd. that brought that number down. >> could i ask a question on the revenue side. with the degrees in 1 and 2 family rental unit fees. what is that about? >> basically, it is based on the trends. for the past three years we have not collected more than $1.2 million. we were budgeted at 1.5. we brought it to where we collected it. >> based on actual? >> yes, based on actual. >> thank you. >> here are a few of the

highlights o on the expenditure. we talked about salaries increasing because every timer and health. we also see that we are increasing our outreach. we are adding money for additional outreach for advertising, particularly for the accessible business entrance program. we are planning to have the earthquake safety fair. we will add extra money for outreach there. mandatory soft storage. we will do outreach. other programs i didn't include private schools, also private schools, too. we are focusing on getting the message out about the programs and doing all types of advertisement and different languages. we are adding more money to be sure we get the information out there. out there in fiscal year 20 we will

see a big increase because of the acella project. that will be a full year and we will on a new private cloud hosting, that means the amount has increased a lot. $1.1 million. that is why we will see a big uptick there. then in materials and supplies we talked about this at the last meeting, we had the electronic signature system. we did a pilot system on one side of fifth floor. because of that success we will implement that through the building. we added materials and supplies, computers, monitors, televisions to implement that. that is a summary of the highlights. >> those are purchases that we probably can transfer to the new building when we move there? >> thank you for bringing that

up. you won't see in this budget anything related to the new building. we are still in planning stages. what we will do is in 19-20 we will see a big increase next year to take into consideration the new furnishings with the building. everything else we purchase now we have spoken to our msi manager and he is working to make sure it fits with the new building. we are only gets things that can move over. we are scaling down. doing what is necessary but we didn't want to wait two years. the system is working well if we want to implement it. >> great. >> i think that is probably the highlights of it. i added in there if you were interested in knowing who were the services of other departments that we actually

fund the big ones assessors office, fire department, controller, city attorney. that is the budget at a high level. i would be more than happy to answer any questions. >> commissioner lee. since you brought up the new building. what is the target date of moving in the new building? >> i believe it is still 2020. since we are talking about money do we know approximately how much we need to spend? >> we do not. there is nothing in the budget. right now we are working with the team on looking at the internal layout, we ar we are wg with them. we haven't gotten to furnishing or anything like that. at this point we are unclear. we would assume they want to do something consistent through the building. we want instructions from them.

we may purchase the same types of equipment. >> moving costs as well you will discuss? >> moving cost and furnishings and everything else we will do. we will discuss that later. we weren't ready to think about that in this budget. we hope once we are done with finalizing the layout of our floors and this is happening city wide, then the next phase, i think dpw is managing it, to go to actual furnishings and that those is. >> what is going to happen once we move out? >> i know the building was sold. other than that i am not clear what will happen with that building? >> have we anticipated the costs of what commissioner lee was referring to out every serves? is there a reserve sept aside for -- set aside?

those aren't included in the budget. i know we have a reserve and we also have a. >> we do have a research. i -- a reserve. i am not sure if we have to dip into reserves. we have reserves we will be able to use if for instance a year or two from now revenues are going down and we don't have enough revenue to support it, but for now we should be okay. >> thank you. >> a question i had for the director with implementing the executive order 1702 i am concerned we are complying with the mayor's request not to increase fte. do we have the staffing to fully implement this directive? >> that is a good question. yes, at this point we are working to fill vacancies. we have a lot of positions.

in february at least five new people will be hired, about five people are retiring, too. we have vacancies that is the plan. not only the mayor's housing directive but also more on code enforce mend and accessible business entrance program to continuously try to fill vacancies. we just completed the building inspector list, and i think so far we hired three and there may be more from there. we will soon -- we are working on the housing list, on the electrical list and on a plumbing list. we are getting those lists ready to continuously fill the vacancies that are occurring due to retirements but also building up the staff to have enough people to meet the directives and get the job done.

>> just a couple of things. the acella program is, i guess, a november target. >> september of 2018. >> you know clearly the full support forgetting it implemented strongly is critical. that is not within your future budgeting. your 1.1 for additional support going forward is a separate issue. are we certain that we have enough money set aside to make sure any contingencies necessary to ensure full adoption is successful? >> yes, the acella project has project funds established a few years ago. that is what we are still

working on. the current tract is about $4.2 million is about $400,000 worth of contingency funds built in there. to get to the current at this point we have been told it will be 4.2. not the full 4.2. that including $400,000 contingency. we should have enough funding to get there. the reason you see the additional amount in fiscal year 20 is because the hosting model has changed. up to this point it was about 130,000. because we are going to a private cloud that means something just for the city, it is increased by -- to $900,000. that is why we won't see the full cost until fiscal year 2020. we are not going live until september 18. we will use the old hosting models on the pricing of it. >> your continuing gypsies look

at what. they look okay right now. let me use a caveat. dbi is not managing acella. that is at department of technology. we ordered $4.2 million to the department of technology in that contract for this phase to go live in september. there is about $400,000 in contingency. we heard that so far not very much has been used. i don't think any of it. there may be some used later, but not much has been used. >> i fully accept that you did a very wise use of history as the basis for all of the future plans and your adjustments make perfect sense. sometimes it is a very healthy thing to look at a zero base. if i had it to do over, what

would i change, what would i do? as you are most intimately familiar with all of the numbers. are there anyplaces if you had more discretion to not have it quite so zero based so history based and more zero based, are there anyplaces in particular you personally would see investments? i am talking on the expenditure side, not revenue side, that we haven't pursued in the interest of having this very clear historic reference? >> well, the revenues are definitely based on historic. the expenditures not necessarily. we are in a better position than most departments that we have the revenues to do what we need to do with them. a lot of times following prior years would limit us for doing something new. for instance where we need to

increase we have increased it. at the same time we have to balance with the fact we have to look at the prior spending because that is what the mayor's office is going to look at and the board of supervisors is going to look at. if we say we want more money in training to half a million dollars. i can guarantee if we put a half-million dollars into training when we only spend $200,000. that would be cut even if we wanted to. not because we don't have enough money because we do. it is because when others are reviewing the budget they look at the historical. for us we balance that with looking at other things. for instance, we probably will have to explain why we are increasing $1 million to the hosting and that will be a good professional services or current expenses. we will have to explain why we

are increasing advertising. we feel we have a legitimate and reason for that we will show that. we have to balance with the funding we have to balance with looking at what we have done in the past because others will do that and we have to justify it. we increase what we need to increase. >> i keep getting back to this from the point of view of big organizations change is hard. if you are implementing acella you have to anticipate a lot of work, a lot of investment to make to be sure that our whole staff is fully embracing it, fully trained on ate, really comfortable with it, and enthusiastically prepared to use it to its maximum effectiveness. same will come up when we have our whole new facility. that brings up not just buying

new furniture and equipment. it is getting everybody really on board with it so that not only we make it without any glitches, which is sort of a baseline, but we really are maximizing the potential of the new facility to be part of the whole vision we have of how are we more efficient, how are we more customer friendly, how are we serving people better? all of the thing that the new things can do so since we have been in this favorable surplus position, you know, i just am looking for ways to anticipate where some foreseeable wise investments for ensuring that these big change agents are most

effectively done and done to really maximize the vision that we have for the department of better service, efficiency, all of the things we believe in an long with the core mission of public safety and, you know, effectively performing our core function. getting ahead of things and, you know, especially when we are in surplus position so the justification is there, almost preparing people for it. it is something i would love to see us doing so that when we do make the presentation it is not that seems like too big a number, you know, let's cut it back and see if we can make it work with this smaller number

because the city budget overall is tough this year. the more we do of set asides or preparing people two years, three years, four years in advance that these are critical investments that we believe are important to our long-term success and reaching our true mission and goals are things that i would love to see the call outs and preparing it. >> just two things because you talked about the building and believes acella. for both big projects there is ocm associated with that. you may not see it in our budget but there is change of management and the city has a separate consultant working with all departments to make sure that happens. i am sure you are aware with acella the department heads

change management. lilly is out and henry have been working on that. it may not be called out in the budget. particularly, with acella because it is going on for a long time and because we had funding in the budget and the project, annually we don't have to keep adding money because we have had a project set aside years ago. i do agree that we have to make sure people are involved and ready for the changes. we are working on that on the acella side and the city is working on that on the building side. . >> thank you very much. >> thank you for the presentation. i don't know if you have the answer. if we go to services of other departments, city legal services, and i notice that number hasn't changed very much

over the years. my question sometimes we see situations where the department is not involved with the decision that the city attorney might make in regard to proceeding against some building permits or whatever. it might have gone through our litigation or niv processor whatever. the city attorney would take it upon themselves to take action. it is a department's kind of just based on what it finds or the fines leveed to that. does the department -- do we build for those times? is that something we are involved in? >> yes, we are billed. you are correct the budget for the city attorney has not changed. expenditures changed. last year we moved money at the

end of the year because of a huge case. the one thing in the budget a lot of times that is not necessarily driven by the department would be those work orders. i expect those to change. we have not -- if you look at your powerpoint presentation compared to what you received on january 31, you will see the numbers going up. we are just starting to get information about the work orders from other departments. you are correct, there are cases. there could be other cases city wide if it is part of the building permit. then we are charged to are that, too. >> it talks to your bottom line, you know. if a huge case is tone upon where we are not involved in the decision making. at what point do you know the fees and what that comes to?

how do you accept the bill and it is automatically put in? >> we accept the bill. i may not know specifically about it until i see the bill. look at this bill. they are working with code enforcement and other this is the departments. what happens is that we just have to make it happen and pay for the bill. in the case of this, this case i am riverring to that we really over spent our budget by a huge amount, a case was won with that. we should be getting some of those costs back. >> i get that part. the open checkbook policy that i am trying to figure out. would that be necessarily, for example, if other departments would have that same policy?

would dpd or planning have the same issue? >> we don't really have. planning takes money to us. we collect fees. for planning, but there are city-wide work orders that will happen on the department of technology. we will not know what the time number will be until it is placed in the budget, but we have made a request that before you go over expenditures please let us know. dbi has money but it needs to be appropriated. we need to know about it ahead of time. >> somebody with quite a few legal fees, it is hard sometimes to know. what part of that investigation is ours? what part of the investigation could belong to another department? how do you -- it is just dbi

bill? >> it is basically a dbi bill. we would not know what part of the investigation if it was the madison case and it just said someone did 500 hours on that and is given to dbi. the assumption that is for dbi. sometimes the bill can be as specific as saying providing they talked to an inspector but sometimes just about a case that is associated with dbi, that is given to the bill and that is what is paid. >> okay. >> commissioner walker, please. >> i would imagine we could get a better like a percentage break down. it is usually based on time spent on the building code violation versus planning code violations, and again when we settle and when we get a

settlement, it does get des dispersed. it would be good to find out if it is the same as what we get billed. if the billing project the same percentage as the win so to speak. it is a good question. i like that we are engaged like this in code enforcement because ultimately this is what sets the tone for our building. i personally am ready to do that. >> in spirit of commissioner walker's point i get that they can do this enforcement when it comes to our code. i feel as a commission and litigation committee we do a good job making sure that we litigate these, and i wonder how come we can't be part of that

even thoughts it is made outside the department. we should have some say in if you should proceed based that we will be billed and we don't understand what that billing is. we probably will get reimbursed. i am looking down. i don't know if that is the way. >> i think there was a recent change that allowed the city attorney to act even if we don't on issues that affect our code. normally we are involved with the task force or litigation committee or department referral directly so people know. now even if we don't, i think what motivated this is some conditions in housing that were just let go for too long. finally they wanted to just act on it. it would be good to know what is coming so we can make sure we

are budgeted for it. >> to the city attorney's office and the success liabilities is great. it is not a criticism. if we stick with the budgets and so on we have someone to stand in, but just a conversation. that is all. >> well related to that, we have had many hearings recently where things have been brought up that have been brought to our attention that we have accepted some past ways of doing things have not always been as aggressive as they could be, and that as commissioner walker was saying, we are almost in a catch up phase of this has gone on for a while, and we need to take a

much more aggressive stance. in anticipation of places where, you know, wise investment can be made, it is almost anticipating that this commission is definitely interested in being very proactive and using the full powers of the city attorney wherever appropriate to rectify situations that don't always measure up to the best standards, and if we have been budgeting historically and conservatively, it feels to me as somebody only on commission a little over a year that there is

a very strong desire throughout the commission to be sure we are facing all of these things head on and dealing with them very pro actively, very aggressively and using the tools, prime among them being the city attorney to be sure we get to the root of the problem and have a very effective solution. i appreciate the comments that we have it budgeted sort of on straight line, and, you know, my gut feeling is that it may be wise to anticipate that we may look to using their services more aggressively in the coming

years. >> for a point of clarification when i say budgeting on a straight line that is what take city attorney has in there. the work orders are particularly for the city attorney we wouldn't know what to budget. the request is what should we budget and it hasn't changed yet. last year when we went over such a large amount. i did send out e-mails saying we are scrambling to find more money now, should i increase it for the next year. it wasn't increased. we have to come on an agreement on it. that is the number the city attorney has there. once again, that number may change, like all of the other numbers may change. a lot of times the work order for the last things. what may happen when i come back in june to tell you what the mayor submitted you may see

something different. the mayor's office gets to balancing work orders and looking at departments such as the city attorney and dt that are pretty much funded through other departments of doing a balancing there. >> okay. i accept that. certainly as we go forward things will change. this is the first hearing. we have a series of them. that makes perfect sense. it is my feeling and observation that this very well could be a reasonable area to put under scrutiny for possible additional funding and i appreciate your openness to pursuing that. >> i can follow up with departments to make sure we are looking like we over spent last year. are you planning?

some departments i have done that already. for real estate, for instance, the base budget is there. i did reach out saying is rent going up at the parking lot? they have said they haven't gotten to that yet. they won't get to it until later. >> i just wanted to make two comments for clarification for the commissions and for deputy director madison. two things to remember when looking at this budget in june, which is as enterprise department in particular not dependent on the general fund we can do budget revisions and shift around expenses if we see a trend. second of all, at least in my time on the commission i do not think we have chosen not to be proactive because we were concerned about paying for city attorney fees. for the record i don't think it was your intent. it could be interpreted that we

haven't been aggressive with code enforcement because we were concerned with over budget with the work order to the city attorney. i am sure the commission has never thought of how much you pay the city attorney is why we would not take action against someone who is aggressive. we are an enterprise department with a heav a rainy day fund. we have flexibility to do what needs done and i felt compelled to say that. >> i see no more. deputy director thanks is it. >> do we vote? >> no, we don't. the second meeting. there has to be two hearings but one vote. >> it says the next meeting is the seventh. >> it is on the 14th. >> this is wrong? >> yes.

attachment c. >> the budget schedule says february 14th. >> it is on february 14th. everyone will be sent an invitation. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> okay. our next special meeting is going to be on february 14th at 9:00 a.m. in room 408. i will send a reminder to everyone as well. is there any public comment? no. all commissioners available on the 14th? >> yes. >> okay. our next item is item three adjournment motion to adjourn? second? are all commissioners in favor? any opposed? we are now adjourned. it is 1:47 p.m.

>> a way of life in san francisco. when the next major quake hits, the city hopes a new law requiring seismic upgrades to five story buildings will help keep more residents safe and sound. tell me a little about the soft story program. what is it? >> it's a program the mayor signed into law about a year and a half ago and the whole idea behind it was to help homeowners strengthen buildings so that they would not collapse. >> did you the soft story program apply to all buildings

or building that were built in a certain time frame? >> it only applies to buildings built in the time frame of 1978 and earlier. it's aimed at wood framed buildings that are three or more stories and five or more units. but the openings at the garage level and the street level aren't supported in many buildings. and without the support during a major earthquake, they are expected to pancake and flatten ~. many of the buildings in this program are under rent control so it's to everybody's advantage to do the work and make sure they protect their investment and their tenant. >> notices have gone out to more than 6,000 owners of potentially at-risk properties but fewer than one-third have responded and thousands might miss an important deadline in september to tell the city what they plan to do. let's talk worst case scenario.

what happens in a collapse? >> buildings have the tendency of rolling over. the first soft story walls lean over and the building collapse. in an earthquake the building is a total loss. >> can you describe what kind of strengthening is involved in the retrofit? >> one of the basic concepts, you want to think of this building kind of like rubber band and the upper three floor are very rigid box and the garage is a very flexible element. in an earthquake the garage will have a tendency to rollover. you have to rubber band analogy that the first floor is a very tough but flexible rubber band such that you never drive force he to the upper floors. where all your damage goes into controlled element like plywood or steel frame. >> so, here we are actually inside of a soft story building. can we talk a little about what kinds of repairs property owners might expect?

>> it's a very simple process. we deliberately tried to keep it that way. so, what's involved is plywood, which when you install it and make a wall as we have done here already, then you cover it with this gypsum material. this adds some flexibility so that during the earthquake you'll get movement but not collapse. and that gets strengthened even more when we go over to the steel frame to support the upper floor. >> so, potentially the wood and the steel -- it sounds like a fairly straightforward process takes your odds of collapse from one in 4 to one in 30? >> that's exactly right. that's why we're hoping that people will move quickly and make this happen. >> great. let's take a look. so, let's talk steel frames. tell me what we have going on here.

>> well, we have a steel frame here. there are two of these and they go up to the lower floor and there is a beam that go across, basically a box that is much stiffer and stronger. ~ goes so that during the earthquake the upper floor will not collapse down on this story. it can be done in about two weeks' time. voila, you're done. easy. >> for more information on how to get your building earthquake readit.

>> shop & dine in the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges resident to do their shop & dine in the 49 within the 49 square miles of san francisco by supporting local services in the neighborhood we help san francisco remain unique successful and vibrant so we're will you shop & dine in the 49 chinatown has to be one the best unique shopping areas in san francisco that is color fulfill and safe each vegetation and seafood and find everything in chinatown the walk shop in chinatown

welcome to jason dessert i'm the fifth generation of candy in san francisco still that serves 2000 district in the chinatown in the past it was the tradition and my family was the royal chef in the pot pals that's why we learned this stuff and moved from here to have dragon candy i want people to know that is art we will explain a walk and they can't walk in and out it is different techniques from stir frying to smoking to steaming and they do show of. >> beer a royalty for the age berry up to now not people know that especially the toughest they think this is - i really

appreciate they love this art. >> from the cantonese to the hypomania and we have hot pots we have all of the cuisines of china in our chinatown you don't have to go far. >> small business is important to our neighborhood because if we really make a lot of people lives better more people get a job here not just a big firm. >> you don't have to go anywhere else we have pocketed of great neighborhoods haul have all have their own uniqueness. >> san francisco has to allaf

to the san francisco planning commission regular hearing for thursday, february 1, 2018. i'd like to remind members of the public that the commission does not told rate any out bursts of any kind. please silence your mobil devices that may sound off during these proceedings and when speaking before the commission, if you care to, state your name for the record. i'd like to take roll at this time. [roll call] commissioners melgar and richards are here and should be joining us shortly. commissioners first on your agenda is consideration of items proposed for continuance. item one,