there will be photos of different things and first this is a picture of moccasin reservoir that was just taken today. it's dry now because we have emptied it out but this shows the arrangements there. if you can see, that is the pipeline that carries drinking water to san francisco and it has stacks on it that you are pressure release stacks. two of those were knocked off in the event and so they've been replaced already. but that pipe that actually goes through a siphon under the pipe that cuts across the middle there of the picture and that's the pipe that normally takes the flow of moccasin creek. it normally flows in that pipe and carried out through the other side. that was not the case here. this is a photo of the moccasin dam spill way from the air. that wathat was taken by the sh.

i can see the chocolate milk color water, it's pristine. but after the water had flowed in from moccasin creek, it was really, really chocolaty. you see it coming down the spillway over to the best is where the fish hatchery. this is a photo of the emergency spillway. this is only truly for emergencies. this spillway is used. you can see it was totally flowing heavily through the emergency spillway as well. there was a lot of water coming down. we haven't estimated the actual volume but we'll have that in a few days. this is a photo downstream of the moccasin stream fish hatchery. there's a layer of mud over the fish hatchery area so about 90% of the fish were washed out or killed. the remaining 10% actually were evacuated out by truck and put

into don pedro reservoir, where they meet the happy fishermen down there. the fish hatchery is definitely out of commission for a while. this is the moccasin creek watershed. and you will note that that steep hillside had the giant red gash down the middle of it. that gash is the color of the soil threw. so basically the rain was intense enough to create a number of locations like this where it simply washed down this hillside taking all the plants and debris and everything and washing it down to the moccasin creek. this was taken by an aerial surveillance that the irrigation district went on and they allowed our staff to survey the damage and the watershed. but there are a number of situations like this in the watershed that have that appearance. this is a photo of the moccasin creek diversion dam. the diversion dam is across there in the center of it where you see some rs, that is where

the water normally goes into the pipe that goes under the reservoir. but you can see that the -- this is called bank flow condition where it literally, then channel of the creek is full from bank to bank with a huge amount of debris, it's a hand rail there that was catching all that. there's normally nothing ever there. we had a similar overflow last year over moccasin creek that had no debris and i'll show the difference between the two at the end of this presentation. this is highway 49 right adjacent to the dam where you can see the water spilling over. it eroded half of highway 49 there. this was not the only place of highway 49 that was effected. there were other spots where highway 69 was effected so it's currently closed to allow for reconstruction of large parts of the highway. this slide and it's too bad

about the type because it's right in the way of seeing what actually was caused us to take an action here. this is seepage coming through. it's flowing and it's muddy water flowing out of the face of the dam. that is a fin sign there is a rl problem with the dam and potential failure is upon us. that was the point which we said this is truly an emergency and envoke the evacuation orders for the folks who are downstream to make sure that we were able to take care of it. fortunately we lowered the level of the water in the reservoir and the dam survived. this say photo of the emergency spillway. there is a grey mass in the lower right corner of the picture. that's what is called the set of gabians. they're large, wire mesh baskets

that contain rocks. they're often used for erosion control. those gabians, a single bag, a ton or so. you can see that that gabian should have been up against the grass. the grass is pulled with it as it slid off the hillside there. so that displaced five feet it looks like there. the power of water is tremendous and really demonstrated in this situation. >> they had to dump rock so they can get out there with this excavator to start dismantling that log jam on top of the dam. we were able, on saturday, to restore flow into the moccasin creek diversion. those twisted metal gates there normally are just blocking logs and things that go in so they're just beat up royally to

demonstrate again the impact of this. this is the slide that actually shows the difference between this event and last year's event. the upper graph there shows the three-day period of precipitation. the blue-line shows what happened in the event in february of 2017 that over flowed the diversion dam. the red line shows the march 22nd event. you see there right above the 1.5 mark, that's where we had three inches of rain in about four hours. so it was -- basically the entire event last year was three inches of rain. so we had almost five inches total but throw inches and a very short period of time. you can see on the lower graph, again, sort of the reservoir elevation. again, the blue-line, we managed it. we were able to get water out of the reservoir and it didn't come along. in the case of thursday's event,

that red spike, the spike is up so the water got within 1.2 feet in top of the dam. over topping the dam is the last thing you want to have. so we were close to that. fortunately the rain started to abate and we were able to evacuate water from the dam to start to bring the water levels down. so now we're into the recovery phase. we have a lot of follow-up actions. on friday, there was a thorough inspection with a team who our producer report for us today on immediate actions recommended to go forward. primarily around investigating the status of the dam and the spill ways to make sure that they are still functioning but. cleaning up moccasin facilities and assisting the hatchery with clean up and restoration. we are repairing portable water lines. we provide portable water to them so we have to restore those

lines. until they're restored we're trucking water to the residents. we have to inspect the tows and pipelines that may have been damaged and make repairs there. our plan is to restore the water delivery by april 5th. we had planned on restoring water supply today but there's too much work to do. it's going to be next week before we can restore the supply. we're able to handle it with local supplies. we have a perform further investigations of the spill ways and it was a huge event and i want to acknowledge all of the p.u.c. staff who have nipped to help us man through this and particularly the hetch tetchy water. they're good at responding to emergencies and this was no exception. margaret and her staff did a great job of responding to this and manage it going forward. so with that, i would be happy to answer any questions. >> our compliments to the team

that we know. it's a pretty daunting thing. i have two questions. were there leaks in the dam? what was the magnitude? >> well the seepage there -- first thing, we always like to make all dams leak a little bit. even on cottage country dams leak a little bit. the seepage is extraordinary leakage. that is when you see that there is a real sign of trouble is when you see a big change and water that is running with the muddy color to it, that is when you have great concerns about it and so we need to do some investigations, potentially other things to understand what was going on inside the dam and see if we need to make any physical changes to it. we have possibly will have to. >> how long were the residents evacuated? >> they were evacuated, that was thursday afternoon. i believe we had the residents in the fish hatchery property on

sunday. it might have been yesterday. the moccasin residents were allowed to go back to their residents on saturday. there are still a couple of residentses that are downstream. they're on the other side of highway 120. those folks have been allowed back but they don't have any water supply so that's where we're trucking water to. >> commissioners, anything? >> i have a question. mr. richy, could you comment on the article i'm paraphrasing here. stated there were consultants that inspected the dam within the last five years. they were very quick to suggest the failure was due to our oversight. they contradict each other. i would assume in the past.

it's the fault lie if it's too premature to talk about that. >> well, we inspect our dams routinely. the division and safety of dams are inspected annually. they released the last five years of inspection records, which showed the damn was in good shape. in fact in this case, it was truly an overwhelming event that created the bad situation. the article last saturday's chronicle had quotes from two outside experts who actually have never been to the dam, not even seen it as far as i know. i know for sure one of them was talking hypothetically because he didn't have information. these are the kind of things you would be concerned about and look for. i think the headline writer with the very unfortunate headline that said those outside experts are blaming san francisco p.u.c. for this. they were not doing that but

obviously that's something to look at. certainly, the division safety of dam staff that was out with our staff on thursday afternoon concurred that our staff took all the necessary actions to deal with it. the spill ways work. they didn't clog up with things. it was just a massive amount of water in a very short period of time. so yes, our communication staff has been in communication with the chronicle and certainly they've just modified the headline at least in the online version to could be a problem. i think that's where we all are. we all are going to look at the whole situation and see are there physical problems with the dam. of course it was built in 1925. so it's an old dam. it has performed well for years. are there things that we need to do differently about how we manage it? do we need to modify the space? all those things are on the table in terms of getting at what happened, why and is it safe going forward. those are the critical

conditions we need to answer and we're prepared to answer them. >> well, i thought it was unfortunate but as you probably know, the headlines are not written by the author of the piece so it's the headline guy writes it. >> yep, i've had that experience too many times. >> anything else? >> thank you, very much. >> thank you. >> is there any public comment on this item? item 9, the bay area water supply report will not be heard today because they were unable to attend the meeting. item 10 is a 2018 water and wastewater rate study update. with mr. sandler.

commissioners, erik sandler c.f.o. of the p.u.c. and i'm here to present, with some colleagues, a number of items. set the stage on april 10th, you will have before you recommendations to make adjustments to water rates, sewer rage and water and sewer capacity charges. and in may, there will be a number of items before you related to miscellaneous fees and charges as well as rules and regulations regarding sewer service charge for parcels. what i wanted to do in this particular presentation, is to highlight for you some of the work that we've been doing and some of the items that you will be seeing in the next few meetings. so in terms of major topics, i'll talk about the rate study you've been hearing about over the past 18 months. provide background with some overview of the rate-setting process. some of the elements of the scope of the study and some of

the highlights of the proposed changes to rates and charges. and then the second half of the presentation, it's going to be provided by simone hudson and john scarpula and really it's addressing all of the work we've been doing over the last 18 months with respect to affordability and the impacts of our rates and charges on low-income customers. and i understand four years ago when you were considering rates and charges, the commission emphasized that it really wanted to understand a little bit more than this over all percentage of medicinmedian household affordabilities. when we went through the budget process two years ago, i remember commissioner vietor, you encouraged us to do a lot of work. i know this is a long presentation but the work that the staff has done to address this question, i think is

tremendous. and a lot of resources were dedicated to get a better picture of the situation. so, i'm going to start with rates and charges. so just providing a little bit of background with respect to this study, the city charter requires that every five years we engage a third-party expert to conduct a cost of service study. and what is important is that really the state constitution prop 218, requires that rates and charges be set based on cost of service. the requirement of the city charter and the rate study is the main document that insures that we can set rates based on cost of service and we comply with the legal requirements of the state constitution and the

city charter. 218 also contains not just the rates setting and also some procedural requirements that guide how notified rates. provide them an opportunity for public comment as well as protest. the package that we're talking about is a 4-year rate package starting july 1st, 2018. so this has been an effort that's been conducted over the past 18 months. and it has engage a lot of the organizations, not just the rates and charges team, but a lot of the organization as well as outside stakeholders such as the rate fairness board, citizens advisory committee and we have here a variety of the work streams we've engage in so we stained the consultant in the

april-june 2016 timeframe. we spent the last year we spent some time with you reviewing a number of critical financial policies that performed the policy. that formed the policy context of this study. and we've conducted some of the main efforts in the rate study itself as well as community outreach and again the rates and charges will be before you aprie july 1st, 2018. so i spend a little time talking about the statutory framework in which we set rates and charges. now i'm going to spend just a moment talking about the policy framework. over the last year or so, we had a number of policies before you for revision and consolidation, enhancement, and actually a few new policies. the rate pay era insurance policy is the over arching policy that guides rates and

charges. sufficient to meet environments of the agency to appropriately budget for repair and reconstruction and replacement of assets and setting rates and charges to achieve certain policy goals to properly fund the organization to ensure customer equity, environmental sustainability, predictability of rates and charges, simplicitying anand of course affordability. there are a number of financial policies. i listed them here. fund balance reserve and capital financialing policy. they influence the revenue requirement. those policies we talked about when we were reviewing the budget in january and february as well as the 10-year capital and financial plans. they impact the rate and charge process through the revenue requirements. these are the real -- the three elements of the scope of work with respect to the rate study.

the first is the revenue requirement scope of work and the revenue -- [ please stand by ]

>> -- there needs to be an adjustment in fact revenue requirement of about 6 or 7% a year for water and wastewater enterprises. and we also understood that of the increased revenue generated from these adjustments, 80% it was targeted for investment or capital, and that would either be directly funding cash capital investments or bond issues to make those capital investments. the next work stream in the rate study relates to the cost of service. this is kind of the boring financial and engineering exercise, but it's absolutely critical to ensuring that our rates are compliant with state law. we made a number of updates under the hood with respect to

the rate study that really enhance the quality of the work product, and this is really a collective effort of not just the rates and charges and finance team but also engineering team and the various folks at water and wastewater enterprise, so i wanted to thank -- this part is really an organizational effort. some of the key things that we addressed, we really looked at the system peaking factors, the peak hour, peak day, seasonal peaks, and really tried to refine this information on a system level and a customer class level, because these -- that's the main way that we allocate cost to achieve our tier structure and -- for our residential customers. we also went through a detailed allocation of operating expenses, we reviewed all of our asset allocations. we made a major improvement in terms of how we credit revenues from our wholesale customers to

different functional categories and cost categories, speak we did a completely new and costal indication of bureau expenses to the enterprise. so before i talk about any changes to rate design, i thought i'd review for you what our current and water rate structure for you here is. we have fixed charges and variable charges. fixed charges are based on either meter size or account. and then, you have residential -- or you have variable charges that are based on meter water used or estimated discharge to the sewer system. so in the water rate structure, we have a fixed charge for -- that's based on meter size. for residential water customers, we have variable charges that are two tiers. the first tier, for a single-family residential customers is four units, and the first tier for multi-family

residential customers is three units, and they have different prices. for our nonresidential customers, the usage characteristics vary so much that we don't have tiers, and we currently have some different volumetric rates for specific categories of customers, and one thing we looked at was simplifying the volumetric rates for nonresidential customers. on the water side, you've been hearing from me for the past three years, we do not have a waustwater charge for customers. all of it is build on a volume2rdvolum volumetric tier. there are three chemical characteristics, and theose ar the constituents that are used

to characterize the strength as sewage, and there's a designed strength for residential customers and then for nonresidential customers, we have strengths that are really based on industrial classification codes, and so depending on the nature of your activities, we estimate what the strength of your sewage is in terms of discharge through the sewer system, in terms of pod, css, and oil and grease. so that's how we currently charge our customers for water and sewer service. what are some of the changes that we're proposing in the recommended rates and charges? so we're proposing a fixed monthly service charge for water, which we currently have, and then also a small fixed monthly sewer charge for the wastewater enterprise. we're proposing phasing in the fixed charge four wastewater

over a four year period so it can mitigate the impact to low volume users. it would be about $1 peryear increase in the rate for users. one way of looking at fixed charges is to consider the share of enterprise revenue that's considered with the fixed charge. so california urban water conservation council recommends a rate structure that recovers no more than 30% of your water revenues on a fixed charge so that there's an incentive to conserve that resource. as you can see here, what we have is a graph of what percentage of revenues from our water system are collected on a fixed charge. that's about 13.9% currently. we're proposing to keep that the same percentage in the rate package that we'll be recommending in april. and as i mentioned, the

wastewater fixed charge will increase over the four-year period and ultimately result and recover about 2.6% of enterprise revenue on a fixed charge. so now, let's talk about the variable charge for residential customers. we're making note, the cost of service study indicated that the tier break points for single-family residential customers and multifamily residential customers still make sense. we updated the cost allocation to refine the difference for the two different tiers. so what we've allocated to the second tier is a share of the peaking cost. by customer class we've included the cost of conservation, water supply

diver diverseification, and the needs to meet water distribution, storage. we've proposed a change to those rates over a four year period and ultimately it results in a slight compression of the tiers over time. so in terms of nonresidential variable charges, we're proposing pretty significant simplification of how we charge our nonresidential customers for rates or for volumetric charges. we have a number of customers that we have slightly different rates for. these are a small percentage of our overall rates for, and it doesn't make sense to keep them. so to meet the overall simp plistic overall rate structure, we're proposing to move them

all to the same rate. now when you look at all these changes, here's what's happening with the average single-family residential bill. what we have here is the combined water and sewer bill broken up by fixed charge and variable charge. this represents a typical single-family residential customer use of 5.3 units. we're talking pennies per-gallon, and currently, single-family residential customer using this amount pays about $108 a month. you can see how that breaks down in terms of water, delivering high quality quarter and collecting sanitary waste and treating and disposing of it safely. the proposed increase will increase the monthly bill by $10, so each year, the monthly

bill will go up by $10. now, one of the things that we, of course, our rates are set on based on cost of service, but we also like to look at how the combined bill compares to peer agencies in the bay area, and what we have here is a graph of water and sewer charges in various cities throughout the bay area, and these represent fiscal year '18 rates, or current rates and charges. you can see here that the puc in the median here, 107.66 -- $107.66, so $108 a month that was on the prior slide. with the adjustments that's being proposed, it would be $116 permonth, still in range of the other -- you can imagine the other bars here will be increasing annually at a similar rate. one thing i'd like to point out is that the sewer charge for the puc includes not just sanitary waste but stormwater

collection and treatment and disposal. we're the only combined system on the -- in coastal california, and actually california. sacramento has a small combined system, but in order to really to an apples to apples comparison, you need to look at the cost of stormwater in these areas, as well, so that's kind of a challenging thing to do because each different area deals with stormwater differently, and it's hard to identify those costs. so we have a bit of an apples to orange comparison because our sewer charge provides a higher level of service. one of the new features of the rate and charge proposal that's before you is the concept of a temporary drought surcharge. this is a strategy that's been utilized throughout the state in particular as a response to last drought. what we're talking about is a

surcharge that's triggered by commission action related to the water shortage allocation plan. now, that's a specific plan contained in the urban water management plan that you've adopted that essentially calls for a combination of voluntarily-mandatory reductions in use that is a response to shortage allocation. so it's only triggered in the event that our system has a supply shortage and not triggered by a general -- generalized call for contradrot the state level or conservation at the state level. and the way this surcharge -- the way this surcharge would work is the -- that would come before the commission, pursuant to the urban water management plan's shortage allocation, would request, would declare a particular stage of the drought, of the shortage allocation plan with a

direction for reduction from customers. staff would then calculated based on estimated sales volumes and estimated expenses at that time what the surcharge should be. in no event would it be more than what has been noticed to the customers on the 218 notice. it would be a surcharge on all the volumetric rates on water and wastewater, and it would be removed when the commission removes the shortage allocation designation. and so now, i wanted to turn -- are there any questions for that portion of the presentation? okay. so now, i wanted to turn the mic over to my colleague, simone hudson and john scapulla

who's going to present all the information that's been presented to our low income customers. i'll set the table for a second. you'll remember that the measure of affordability that's utilized by the epa and the industry is really a level of service in our sewer system improvement program is a comparison of the water and wastewater bill as a percentage of median household income. we have some programs directed at low income customers. you had requested us to get much more information on this, and this is that existing affordability metric. and what you can see, the water bill is graphed in blue, the sewer bill is graphed in green, the combined bill is graphed in gray, and you can see how those compare to the median household income over time. and we looked at this when we looked at the ten year capital and financial plan, but this is

the launch point for the rest of our inquiry. and so now i'll turn the mic over to simone hudson who is a city hall fellow in the finance department and is now working in the community benefits group, and also, john scarpulla. >> thank you, eric. good afternoon, commissioners. i'm really glad to be with you today to share about our affordability work which has really been a collaborative effort across the agency to think critically about how we can serve customers burdened by their bills, low income customers, and take a holistic view of affordability as an agency. so we've developed four goals, calling these the affordability project goals, to frame a variety of work groups. so the first is to improve assistance to customers in

single-family residences. as eric mentioned, we have a cap program to provide assistance to customers who are direct billpayers to the sfpuc and under 200% of the federal poverty line. so what we wanted to do was to identify the universe of customers who are burdened by their bills, and the universe of customers who could be eligible for cap, and then think through improvements to that program through the data analysis, so i'll go into that data work in a couple of slides, but that's our first goal. the second, my colleague john scarpulla will go into, but as part of a citywide effort, really lead by the justice project, to look at how fines and fees are hurting low income folks across the city, we wanted to look at our own fees and shutoff policies and see how we could make some changes. this third goal, we're really excited about some innovative approaches that instead of

being a band-aid solution to the issue of cost burden households, actually support families to become more economically stable as a way of addressing affordability in a more long-term and sustainable manner. so i won't go into this third goal in detail, but we have some exciting partnerships in the works, especially with the office of financial empowerment to leverage resources and programs already that exist to be able to better support our customers. and our fourth goal, to evaluate assistance to multifamily customers. we're aware that about 60% of sf residents are not in individually metered households. they don't pay directly to the sfpuc, but many of them are struggling with the high cost of living in the city, so we are embarking on a pretty exciting area of work to think through what are some of the creative ways we can support

perhaps nonprofit housing providers, single-family residences -- excuse me, sro housing for multi-family properties to provide tangible and sustainable support, so that is continued work. but overall, these goals represent a pretty holistic approach of afford jabl, moving away from a bill for a how's hold, thinking about how we as an agency can enhance affordability in san francisco. so i want to dive into the first one and share information that information in the area for single-family residences. in -- we wanted to analyze two questions. the first is how many households are eligible for our customer assistance program cap, and again, these customers who are eligible are direct

bil billpayers, under 200% of the federal poverty line. those are our initial criteria, and i've included the graph here to show you what example incomes as to what the threshold of 200% of federal poverty level are. the second question is how many households are paying more than 2.5% of their income on their water and sewer bill, and what are their characteristics? so as another way of looking at who's burdened by their bills, we wanted to take this threshold, this 2.5% metric, which eric mentioned, and compare it to median household income. in order to get a more detailed picture, we thought about well, what if we look at who in san francisco is paying above 2.5% of their income on their water and sewer bill and what are their characteristics? so using the american community

survey, we could answer these questions, and this is the new data that we're so glad to have. you may ask who are our current cap customers? this graph shows -- each dot represents a currently enrolled cap customer, and you'll notice that these dots are concentrated, of course, in correlation with where single-family residential housing stock exists throughout the city, so this is of course not illustrative of where low income folks are, but it is where our cap program recipients are in single-family homes. so we wanted to ask, well, what's the universe of cap eligible households? of all sf households, a portion pay their bills directly to us, so that's this blue circle here, direct billpayers. everybody perhaps pays through

their landlord or another measure. but we can cross that with the low income households under 200% of the federal poverty line, again, our eligibility criteria for cap, and our question was who is eligible for cap? the answer is about 26,000 households. so those are households under 200% of the federal poverty line, directly paying their bill to the sfpuc, and of that, we are serving about 1,200. i'll note that agencies all over struggle with evenrollmen and the data that i have that i'll share in a moment helps us focus our effort. so the second question we wanted to analyze is who's burdened by their bills, you know, setting aside the criteria for cap eligibility, who's paying above 2.5% of their income on their sfpuc bills?

so using the american community's survey, we get a lot of great information. first of all, we can learn who pays their water and sewer bill directly. we can learn what they pay on their bill, and we can learn their household income. so we used this to calculate what share the water and sewer bill represents of a household's annual income, and so we're defining this cost burden calculation at households paying above 2.5% of their income on their combined water and sewer bill or defining those households for the purpose of this analysis as water-cost burdened. so as a very basic level, we can learn that about 13% of our accounts are water cost burdened households. we can also learn about the income of folks who are water cost burdened, so this graph shows the blue bars represent burdened households paying

above 2.5% of their income on their sfpuc bill. the red bars are nonburdened households. so i think this tells us kind of two things. one is that the majority of burdened households are below 200% of the federal poverty line, and that also means that our cap threshold of 200% fpl actually does include most burdened households. other take aways from this analysis, again, about 19,000 households are cost burdened -- >> i'm sorry. can you go back to the last chart and step me through that again? >> sure. was there a particular question, commissioner? >> just do it again. i'm a little slow on that. >> oh, sure. so the way i like to think about this is if we have two rooms, one is a blue room, and one is a red room, and in the blue room, we have a representative sample of

burdened households, those who are paying above 2.5% of their income on their water and sewer bill. and in the red room, we have folks who are paying under 2.5%, who are nonburdened. if we're looking at the blue room of cost burdened households, and if we're looking based on federal poverty level, the income spread in that room, the majority of the people in that room are under 200% of the federal poverty line, about 70% of the people in that room. an additional portion are under 300%, but certainly, when we're looking at cost burdened, and of course it aligns with the fact that we're measuring cost burden based on household income, the majority of those cost burdened households are under 200% of the federal poverty line. >> what is it -- what does it mean, looking at the last -- the bottom paragraphs that

it's -- these are households where it's 500% or more of the median -- no, of poverty level? >> yes, exactly. >> and that would be about what amount of income? >> that's a great question. i believe the calculation is about -- well, for 200%, a family of one is about $32,000, so maybe it was someone -- we're calculating it. it's a great question, but certainly, we would not consider someone who's 500% of the federal poverty level to below income. >> and what would the circumstance be that such a person was water cost burdened? >> right. so the way we're thinking about this is if a family is above 500% of the federal poverty line, but still, you can see a

portion of them are cost burdened perour definition, they may have a very large water bill. again, our -- our equation here that is a little hard with the text, but x is greater than 2.5 if there's a very high bill or very low income, most water burdened households are burdened because they have low income, but a portion of them are burdened, a small portion because they have extremely large bills, perhaps they are big water user dos or they hav massive garden or pool they fill quite frequently in relation to their income. >> okay. >> so for a family of one to be at 500% of the federal poverty

line, their income would be up around $80,000. >> okay. which is -- that's a -- just trying to think in terms of our median income. >> about 87,000 perthe census of 2012 to 2016. [ inaudible ] >> i'm sorry? >> family of one or is that a family of two or four or -- >> that's a figure for the median household, which i think is about 2.6 people. >> okay. >> but again, around 500% of the federal poverty line, those folks, even if they are burdened, this analysis is really trying to get at who's burdened because they have low incomes, and what we can see here is that the majority of households are burdened due to being low income, and that's really who we are trying to serve through this analysis and our recommendations.

so again, with our key take aways, we can also learn with this analysis that cost burdened households are predominantly families and female-led households. our census analysis also showed us that in cost burdened households, as compared to nonburdened households, there is a higher share of residents who identify on the census as over 65, as asian, hispanic, or black, and a higher share of households that are linguistically isolated, which means no one in the household over the age of 14 speaks english in the house or better. and we also learned that the southeast has the highest rate of burdened households across the city. so again, this data is particularly useful as we think through how we want to develop our outreach programs and really be intentional about that outreach.

so in terms of next steps, we are working a way in response to this data, but also our agencies response on affordability in a few different areas. so the first is to provide stream lined enrollment and verification processes. in particular with cap, our customer assistance program, we are trying to remove bare jerz to enrollment f to -- barriers for customers to really make sure if folks need assistance, they can get it, that burden is eased for both customers and customer services. as i mentioned, we're also developing and executing a more robust outreach strategy for our assistance programs and the programs in development around financial empowerment. and lastly, on that note, we are partnering with the human services agency and the office of financial empowerment to more effectively support

customers by leveraging existing programs within the city to provide more long-term support, and i'm happy to take any additional questions before introducing john scarpulla. >> first of all, thank you very much. it was very interesting information. i am curious, on the last point, and i know it's not the -- the topic of this discussion, but i want to go there, any way. when you think about those areas of partnership, what kinds of things are you contemplating or what do you envision there? >> thank you for that question. so it's quite a range. with human services agency, there's a citywide effort to develop a verification tool that would utilize their tremendous customer data and -- and create a database that would allow our customer services staff to easily look

up a customer if they're applying to the cap program and asking for assistance. instead of asking that customer to bring in a lot of paperwork and fill out numerous forms, we could more easily verify that they are under 200% of the federal poverty like using hsa data with customer permission, so that's one area of work. with the office of financial empowerment, we're thinking through how to develop financial interventions. for instance, if a customer is frequently delinquent on their bill, we know that there may be other things going on in that household that -- like a financial empowerment program could support to help them become more financially stable, to ease the burden on customer services staff who may be frequently in touch with that customer. so overall, this -- this work is certainly in a more -- in a phase of exploration, but we're excited to be able to leverage those resources that exist to more effectively support

customers. >> and is there a component of this -- your -- your enumerator was the amount of water used. is there an element of the program that goes after that, as well? >> another great question, so conservation is absolutely front of mind as we think about how to support customer affordability. we're really glad our current cap program brings that in quite strongly with our tie in of water evaluations that will be highly encouraged for cap applicants. these will be offered as a way to say look, we have ways that will allow you to conserve water and save money. it's a win-win. so conservation is front of mie mind. we're really mindful for master meter properties, customers sometimes need some educational

and programattical programs, and we're thinking how to be creative as well to support low income customers and multifamily properties. >> i have a question, and i think i have the answer, but i just want to verify with you. so my question was what percentage of the tax payer -- to the total taxpayers are eligible for our three programs, and i think you came up with 13%? >> so another great question. so in terms of our three programs, the one that residents who are paying their bills directly to the sfpuc who are in single-family homes, that program that's available is the cap program, customer assistance program, and we've identified that 26,000

customers are eligible, and that's 26,000 out of about 146,0014 147,000, so i think that's about 17, 18%, thank you eric. but -- but as your question perhaps gets to, that's not the full universe of our customers. i don't have the number top of mind, for instance, of multifamily properties, what portion may be eligible for multifamily discount support. we can definitely follow up with some of that information, but of single-family residential rate payers, about 18%, it sounds like, are el i didn't believe for our cap program is what we've learned through this analysis. >> okay. then what -- on slide 27, what is that 13%? >> so those are the cost burdens customer base of our

single-family residential billpayers, our direct billpayers. so of all of our households that are in, you know, single-family homes throughout the city, about 13% are paying above 2.5% of their household income. >> i see. okay. >> that doesn't necessarily equate to being cap eligible because we don't have an eligiblity criteria rated to this, but we are proud of the eligibility criteria that we have of 200% of the federal poverty level does capture a large portion of the burdened household base. >> commissioner moller caen: so that leads me to ask, and i don't know if we could ever get a handle on it, what would these programs or what are these programs costing us? i'm sure that's not an easy fast number because of many

elements of it, but i would be curious to know, perhaps, at the end of all this discussion, we can come up with that because i think that's a perfect -- you know, that's something to put into the mix. >> absolutely. that's a great suggestion. >> commissioner kwon: okay. anything else? so we're going to go into public comment. i have two before me. >> pardon me. i don't mean to interrupt you, but john scarpulla who will share the additional fees on shutoff work. >> good afternoon, commissioners. john carpulla with the policy and government affairs team. >> john, before you start, i just wanted to -- about the cap program, one of the things that we're really focusing on working with the mayor's office

is to get a dedicated source to help fund this because we know that with prop 218, this may be problematic -- >> president keane >> commissioner moller caen: and i know there's many questions. >> all right. john. >> one more question back on the prior side, when we said single-family home, was that single meter home, so there may in fact be more than one family living there? >> yes. to be cap eligible, you must have a single meter and pay directly to the sfpuc for that meter. >> okay. but if it's a multigenerational family, it would count as a single-family home? >> yes, i believe so. >> okay. thank you. >> okay. john carpulla, policy of

internal affairs. third time is a charm. i'm ready, so the-- specifical how fees and shutoffs impact low income customers. there's been articles not only? industry magazines, but in local and national newspapers and magazines. as part of the rates analysis this cycle, staff identified fees that may disproportionately affect low income kpucustomers, on may 8t we plan to provide a plan for your consideration. however today i'd like to focus solely on fees related to the water shutoff process.

now, there's a lot going on on this slide, and i'd like to slowly walk us all through it together. so this slide displays the timeline for a monthly bill, from day one, when a bill is sent off to the customer, all the way to day 70, when an account may have its water shut off for nonpayment. the data on the chart regarding how many -- i'm sorry. data on the chart also showcases how many bills went through these various steps in fiscal year 16-17. in fiscal year 16-17, our agency sent out just over two million bills to approximately 175,000 customers. on this chart, again, day one is when -- is the day when we send out our monthly bill to all customers. of the total two million bills we sent out last fiscal year, over 95% made paymen